The Fun, Expert, Tickle Trunk

It's been a while, and to the (now) two or three of you who still regularly check in, I apologise. Summertime here on Christmas Island is filled with guests and travel and employment. I've been enjoying all three, in one capacity or another--some more than others.

Guests I like because the guest is to be cherished.

Employment I like because you need to be employed to get unemployment.

Travel I like because other people have been doing it for me, namely going to wild, wacky, wonderful Portland to get some of my books--namely my "happy fun books" as the getter of said books called them. The box is thus a "tickle trunk" of sorts, as the words and thoughts there in are a non stop source of giggles and mirth.

Certainly you have a tickle trunk of your own, and everyone loves summertime reading...what's in your fun time summer reading tickle trunk? Answer in the comments!!!

Here's my list, with some fun excerpts:

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Fanon, Frantz: The Wretched of the Earth (with an introduction by Jean-Paul Sartre)

p210-211
When we consider the efforts made to carry out the cultural estrangement so characteristic of the colonial epoch, we realise that nothing has been left to chance and that the total result looked for by colonial domination was indeed to convince the natives that colonialism came to lighten their darkness. The effect consciously sought by colonialism was to drive into the natives' heads the idea that if the settlers were to leave, they would at once fall back into barbarism, degradation, and bestiality.

On the unconscious plane, colonialism therefore did not seek to be considered by the native as a gentle, loving mother who protects her child from a hostile environment, but rather as a mother who unceasingly restrains her fundamentally perverse offspring from managing to commit suicide and from giving free rein to its evil instincts. The colonial mother protects her child from itself, from its ego, and from its physiology, its biology, and its own unhappiness which is its very essence.

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Said, Edward W.: Culture and Imperialism

p.189
An extraordinary, but nevertheless typical, example of American wilfulness is at hand in the relationship between Haiti and the United States. As J. Michael Dash reads it in Haiti and the United States: National Stereotypes and the Literary Imagination, almost from the moment Haiti gained its independence as a Black republic in 1803 Americans tended to imagine it as a void into which they could pour their own ideas. Abolitionists, says Dash, thought of Haiti not as a place with its own integrity and people but as a convenient site for relocating feed slaves. Later the island and its people came to represent degeneracy and of course racial inferiority. The United States occupied the island in 1915 (and Nicaragua in 1916) and set in place a native tyranny that exacerbated an already desperate state of affairs. (15) And when in 1991 and 1992 thousands of Haitian refugees tried to gain entry into Florida, most were forcibly returned.

Few Americans have agonised over places like Haiti or Iraq once the crisis or their country's actual intervention was over. Strangely, and despite both its intercontinental range and its genuinely various elements, American domination is insular. The foreign-policy elite has no long-standing tradition of direct rule overseas, as was the case with the British or the French, so American attention works in spurts; great masses of rhetoric and huge resources are lavished somewhere (Vietnam, Libya, Iraq, Panama), followed by virtual silence. Again Kiernan: "More multifarious than the British empire, the new hegemony was even less capable of finding any coherent programme of action other than of bullheaded negation. Hence its readiness to let plans be made for it, by company directors or secret agents."(16)

(15) See J. Michael Dash, Haiti and the United States: National Stereotypes and the Literary Imagination (London: Macmillian, 1988), pp. 9, 22-25 and passim.

(16) V. G. Kiernan, America: The New Imperialism: From White Settlement to World Hegemony (London: Zed, 1978) p.206

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Debord, Guy: The Society of the Spectacle

12. The spectacle manifests itself as an enormous positivity, out of reach and beyond dispute. All it says is: "Everything that appears is good; whatever is good will appear." The attitude that it demands in principle is the same passive acceptance that it has already secured by means of its seeming incontrovertibly, and indeed by its monopolization of the realm of appearances.

24. By means of the spectacle the ruling order discourses endlessly upon itself in an uninterrupted monologue of self-praise. The spectacle is the self-portrait of power in the age of power's totalitarian rule over the conditions of existence. The fetishistic appearance of pure objectivity in spectacular relationships conceals their true character as relationships between human beings and between classes; a Second Nature thus seems to impose inescapable laws upon our environment. but the spectacle is by no means the inevitable outcome of a technical development perceived as natural; on the contrary, the society of the spectacle is a form that chooses its own technical content. If the spectacle -- understood in the limited sense of those "mass media" that are its most stultifying superficial manifestation -- seems at times to be invading society in the shape of a mere apparatus, it should be remembered that this apparatus has nothing neutral about it, and that it answers precisely to the needs of the spectacle's internal dynamics. If the social requirements of the age which develops such techniques can be met only through their mediation, if the administration of society and all contact between people now depends on the intervention of such "instant" communication, it is because this "communication" is essentially one-way; the concentration of the media thus amounts to the monopolization by the administrators of the existing system of the means to pursue their particular form of administration. The social cleavage that the spectacle expresses is inseparable from the modern State, which, as the product of the social division of labour and the organ of class rule, is the general form of all social division.

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Dixon, Bill: L'Opera

p.33-34
...it would seem that instead of the constant, repetitious cant about (i) how things are done at Bennington; (ii) this is the Bennington way of doing things; (iii) the specialness of the Bennington students (which, after a while, makes one just a bit curious as to why so much time should be spent defending what is done rather than letting /as it does most eloquently/ one view or hear any of the works that are done, where one can immediately be made aware that there is, indeed, a 'Bennington way' of both learning and presenting what has been theoretically within the purview of the listener /in the instance of music/), there would be an attempt to let the work, etc. speak for itself.

It also doesn't seem to me that trying to spark a conversation about what might just be the EXPECTATION of a Bennington student who has made the indication of expecting to MAJOR in the subject (music) can at all be even remotely related to treachery or being negative. Why then the resistance to HONEST dialogue, since honest dialogue would certainly include those things that would have to be both wrong with the place (the inadequacies, probably other goals) that while not possibly attainable at this time might also be composed of those things and ideas that one might feel would certainly aid in the teaching and learning and thus would auger well for the future of the college in terms of an elevation of the program and a more forward looking attitude concerning the future. It is an ancient and outmoded idea that at Bennington the acme of teaching of the subject has not only been attained by those in the Music Division, but even worse, that there is no way (if that is the case) that it cannot only be improved upon but that one cannot even suggest it. Not refuting this, it obviously either affects preservation or protection of ideals or philosophies that serve to support or reinforce rather thoroughly entrenched ideas that music conceived and performed from the standpoint of Western formal concert philosophies (white, if you will) should always and unreservedly serve as the theoretical and philosophical modus operandi for all music study (at this place) with the result that any other idea or aspect of music and how it is considered convenient, sometimes serve as some sort of obscure, exotic phenomenon.

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Young, Ben: Dixonia

p.181-182
Bill Dixon: "The Bennington Music Division had said that there was no such thing as Black Music, so I had no basis to say that I wanted the music to be taught here unless I could prove it. They didn't want to include it on any level. 1. They didn't think it existed as an aesthetic. 2. They couldn't do it. 3. In the past they had evinced no interest in it. So the first thing I did was to research everything that had ever been taught at the school--just for information. I found out about the Jazz weekend that they had done in 1964 and a couple of things that Lou Calabro had tried to do with improvisation. Then I was able to frame my thesis: 'You're saying Black Music doesn't exist because that's not within your purview'. Then I made a proposal that I be allowed to head a Black Music Institute--an independent entity, separate from all of the existing divisions--for which I would answer to the President. After that proposal, everyone became outraged along the lines of 'Who does he think he is? Why can't he just be in a department like everybody else?' That was turned down flatly when I first brought it up in 1973, a little while after I came back from Madison. So I went back to the drawing board and made a request to do this thing for a year--with the curriculum, budget, and everything all figured out. I was willing to make this 'audition' for a year, and if I passed I wanted to request being made the eighth department of the college.

What happened next is really a book in itself. I was attacked in every way imaginable. The Music Department fought it as viciously as they could, but when they realised it was being considered they had to back off."

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Mencken, H. L.: Minority Report

260
Life on this earth is not only without rational significance, but also apparently unintentional. The cosmic laws seem to have been set going for some purpose quite unrelated to human existence. Man is thus a sort of accidental by-product, as the sparks are an accidental by-product of the horse shoe a blacksmith fashions on his anvil. The sparks are far more brilliant than the horseshoe, but all the same they remain essentially meaningless. They constitute, at best, a disease of the horseshoe--the involve a destruction of its tissue. Perhaps life, in the same way, is a disease of the cosmos.

269
Artists can seldom account for their own work, and when they show actual genius hardly ever. The moment they try to explain it they become absurd, and what they have to say is commonly borrowed from the jargon of critics, which is to say, non-artists. The process of creation is only partly intellectual. The rest of it seems to be based on instinct rather than on idea.

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Fukuoka, Masanobu: The Natural Way of Farming--The Theory and Practice of Green Philosophy

p.27-28
Leave Nature Alone.

Man has always deluded himself into thinking that he knows nature and is free to use it as he wishes to build his civilisation. But nature cannot be explained or expanded upon. As an organic whole, it is not subject to man's classifications; nor does it tolerate dissection and analysis. Once broken down, nature cannot be returned to its original state. All that remains is an empty skeleton devoid of the true essence of living nature. This skeletal image only serves to confuse man and lead him further astray. Nor is scientific reasoning of any avail in helping man understand nature and add to its creations.

Nature as perceived by man through discriminating knowledge is a falsehood. Man can never truly know even a single leaf, even a single handful of earth. Unable to fully comprehend plant life and soil, he sees these only through the filter of human intellect.

Although he may seek to return to the bosom of nature or use it to his advantage, he only touches one tiny part of nature--a dead portion at that--and has no affinity with the main body of living nature. he is, in effect, merely toying with delusions.

Man is but an arrogant fool who vainly believes that he knows all of nature and can achieve anything he sets his mind to. Seeing neither the logic nor order inherent in nature, he has selfishly appropriated it to his own ends and destroyed it. The world today is in such a sad state because man has not felt compelled to reflect upon the dangers of his high-handed ways.

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Nietzsche, Friedrich: Daybreak

177
Learning solitude. -- O you poor devils in the great cities of world politics, you gifted young men tormented by ambition who consider it your duty to pass some comment on everything that happens--and there is always something happening! Who when they raise the dust are always on the alert, always on the lookout for the moment when they can put their word in, lose all genuine productivity! However much they may desire to do great work, the profound speechlessness of pregnancy never comes to them! The event of the day drives them before it like chaff, while they think they are driving the event--poor devils! -- If one wants to represent a hero on the stage one must not think of making one of the chorus, indeed one must not even know how to make one of the chorus.

[does he mean "be in the chorus?"]

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Nietzsche, Friedrich: On the Genealogy of Morals/Ecce Homo

204
End and goal.--Not every end is the goal. The end of a melody is not its goal; and yet: as long as the melody has not reached its end, it also hasn't reached its goal. A parable.

[this reminds me of Bill Dixon discouraging "cadences" in our playing in ensemble class--the non resolving line.]

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Nietzsche, Friedrich: Human, All Too Human

152
Art of the ugly soul. -- One imposes far too narrow limitations on art when one demands that only well-ordered, morally balanced souls may express themselves in it. As in the plastic arts, so in music and poetry too there is an art of the ugly soul beside the art of the beautiful soul; and the mightiest effects of art, that which tames souls, moves stones and humanizes the beast, have perhaps been mostly achieved by precisely that art.

289
Value of illness. -- The man who lies ill in bed sometimes discovers that what he is ill from is usually his office, his business or his society and that through them he has lost all circumspection with regard to himself: he acquires this wisdom from the leisure to which his illness has compelled him.

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Nietzsche, Friedrich: The Gay Science

206
When it rains. -- It is raining, and I think of the poor who now huddle together with their many cares and without any practice at concealing these: each is ready and willing to hurt the other and to create for himself a wretched kind of pleasure even when the weather is bad. That and only that is the poverty of the poor.

[fighting over the 'chicken wing']

331
Better deaf than deafened.-- Formerly, one wished to acquire fame and be spoken of. Now that is no longer enough because the market has grown too large; nothing less that screaming will do. As a consequence, even good voices scream till they are hoarse, and the best goods are offered by cracked voices. Without the screaming of those who want to tell and without hoarseness there no longer is any genius.

This is surely an evil age for a thinker. He has to learn how to find his silence between to noises and to pretend to be deaf until he really becomes deaf. Until he has learned this, to be sure, he runs the risk of perishing of impatience and headaches. (60)

(60) Partly for the reasons noted here, partly because he was competing with Wagner, and partly because his solitude and the lack of any response to his books became intolerable for him, the tone of Nietzsche's own books grew shrill in the end.

[I'm sure I have no idea what they're talking about...]

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Nietzsche, Friedrich: The Anti-Christ (translated by H.L. Mencken)

3
The problem that I set here is not what shall replace mankind in the order of living creatures (--man is an end--): but what type of man must be bred, must be willed, as being the most valuable, the most worthy of life, the most secure guarantee of the future.

This most valuable type has appeared often enough in the past but always as a happy accident, as an exception, never as deliberately willed. Very often it has been precisely the most feared; hitherto it has been almost the terror of terrors;--and out of that terror the contrary type has been willed, cultivated and attained: the domestic animal, the herd animal, the sick brute-man--the Christian.

37
--Our age is proud of its historical sense: how, then, could it delude itself into believing that the crude fable of the wonder-worker and Saviour constituted the beginnings of Christianity--from the death on the cross onward--is the history of a progressively clumsier misunderstanding of an original symbolism. With every extension of Christianity among larger and ruder masses, even less capable of grasping the principles that gave birth to it, the need arose to make it more and more vulgar and barbarous--it absorbed the teachings and rites of all the subterranean cults of the imperium Romanum, and the absurdities engendered by all sorts of sickly reasoning. It was the fate of Christianity that its faith had to become as sickly, as low and as vulgar, as the needs were sickly, low and vulgar to which it had to administer. A sickly barbarism finally lifts itself to power as the church--the church, that incarnation of deadly hostility to all honesty, to all loftiness of soul, to all discipline of the spirit, to all spontaneous and kindly humanity. --Christian values--noble values: it is only we, we free spirits, who have reestablished this greatest of all antithesis in values!

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Berman, Marshall: Adventures in Marxism

p.51
Marx goes on to say, "At the historical dawn of capitalist accumulation -- and every capitalist upstart must go through this historical phase -- avarice, and the desire to get rich, are the ruling passions." (Here Marx makes the curious nineteenth-century assumption, found in every great thinker from Hegel through Freud, that each individual must re-enact in his own life the entire previous life of the species.) These passions never pass away. But later on, "when a certain stage of development has been reached, ... there is at the same time developed in his breast a Faustian conflict between the passion for accumulation and the desire for enjoyment" (650-51). In this "consumer" period the capitalist becomes like other men: he regards himself as a free agent, able to step back form his role as producer and accumulator, even to give it up entirely ofr the sake of pleasure or happiness; for the first time he sees his life as an open book, as something to be shaped according to his choice. Fetishism, then, infuses the youthful exuberance of capitalism with a religious zeal--and may slacken the pace, but leaves a new freedom in its wake. Men no longer feel compelled to fullfil the infinite demands of an alien Will; they are free at last to think of themselves.

p133-134
The basic fact of life for these intellectuals, as Marx sees them, is that they are "paid wage-labourers" of the bourgeoisie, members of "the modern working class, the proletariat." They may deny this identity--after all, who wants to belong to the proletariat? -- but they are thrown into the working class by the historically defined conditions under which they are forced to work. When Marx describes intellectuals as wage earners, he is trying to make us see modern culture as part of modern industry. Art, physical science, social theory like Marx's own, all are modes of production; the bourgeoisie controls the means of production in culture, as in everything else, and anyone who wants to create must work in the orbit of its power.

Modern professionals, intellectuals and artists, insofar as they are members of the proletariat,

live only so long as they find work, and ... find work only so long as their labor increases capital. These workers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market (479)

Thus they can wrote books, paint pictures, discover physical or historical laws, save lives, only if someone with capital will pay them. But the pressures of bourgeois society are such that no one will pay them unless it pays to pay them -- that is, unless their works somehow help to "increase capital." They must "sell themselves piecemeal" to an employer willing to exploit their brains for profit. They must scheme and hustle to present themselves in a maximally profitable light; they must compete (often brutally and unscrupulously) for the privilege of being bought, simply in order to go on with their work. Once the work is done they are, like all other workers, separated from the products of their labor. Their goods and services go on sale, and it is "the vicissitudes of competition, the fluctuations of the market," rather than any intrinsic truth or beauty or value--or, for that matter, any lack of truth or beauty or value -- that will determine their fate. Marx does not expect that great ideas and works will fall stillborn for want of a market: the modern bourgeoisie is remarkably resourceful in wringing profit out of thought. What will happen instead is that creative processes and products will be used and transformed in ways that will dumbfound or horrify their creators. But the creators will be powerless to resist, because they must sell their labour power in order to live.

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Berman, Marshall: All That Is Solid Melts Into Air

p.100
If we look behind the sober scenes that the members of our bourgeoisie create, and see the way they really work and act, we see that these solid citizens would tear down the world if it paid. Even as they frighten everyone with fantasies of proletarian rapacity and revenge, they themselves, through their inexhaustible dealing and developing, hurtle masses of men, materials and money up and down the earth, and erode or explode the foundations of everyone's lives as they go. Their secret--a secret they have managed to keep even from themselves--is that, behind their facades, they are the most violently destructive ruling class in history. All the anarchic, measureless, explosive drives that a later generation will baptise by the name of "nihilism"--drives that Nietzsche and his followers will ascribe to such cosmic traumas as the Death of God--are located by Marx in the seemingly banal everyday working of the market economy. He unveils the modern bourgeois as consummate nihilists on a far vaster scale than modern intellectuals can conceive.* But these bourgeois have alienated themselves from their own creativity because they cannot bear to look into the moral, social and psycic abyss that their creativity opens up.

* Actually, the term "nihilism" springs from Marx's own generation: it was coined by Turgenev as a motto for his radical hero Bazarov in Fathers and Sons (1861), and elaborated in a far more serious way by Dostoevsky in Notes from Underground (1864) and Crime and Punishment (1866-67). Nietzsche explores the sources and meanings of nihilism most proundly in The Will to Power (1885-88), especially in Book One, "European Nihilism." It is rarely mentioned, but but worth noting, that Nietzsche considered modern politics and economics profoundly nihilistic in their own right. See Section 1, an inventory of the roots of contemporary nihilism. Some of Nietzsche's images and analyses here have a surprisingly Marxistic ring. See Section 63 on the spiritual consequences, both negative and positive, of "the fact of credit, or world wide trade and means of transportation"; 67 on "the breaking up of landed property...newspapers (in place of daily prayers), railway, telegraph. Centralization of a tremendous number of interests in a single soul, which for that reason must be very strong and protean." (Translated by Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale, Vintage, 1968.) But these connections between the modern soul and the modern economy are never worked out by Nietzsche, and (with very rare exceptions) never even noticed by his followers.)

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Hughes, Robert: Culture of Complaint, The Fraying of America

p.185-186
Throughout the whole history of the avant-garde, this hope has been refuted by experience. No work of art in the 20th century has ever been refuted by experience. NO work of art in the 20th century has ever had the kind of impact that Uncle Tom's Cabin did on the way Americans thought about slavery, or The Gulag Archipelago did on illusions about the real nature of Communism. The most celebrated, widely reproduced and universally recognizable political painting of the 20th century is Picasso's Guernica, and it didn't change Franco's regime one inch or shorten his life by so much as one day. what really changes political opinion is events, arguments, press photographs, and TV.

The catalogue convention of the 90s is to dwell on activist artists "addressing issues" of racism, sexism, AIDS, and so forth. But an artist's merits are not a function of his or her gender, ideology, sexual preference, skin color or medical condition, and to address an issue is not to address a public. The HIV virus isn't listening. Joe Sixpack isn't looking at the virtuous feminist knockoffs of John Heartfield on the Whitney wall--he's got a Playmate taped on the sheet rock next to the band saw, and all the Babara Krugers in the world aren't going to get him or anyone else to mend his ways. The political art we have in postmodernist America is one long exercise in preaching to the converted. as Adam Gopnik pointed out in the New Yorker when reviewing the Carnegie International in Pittsburgh, it consisted basically of taking an unexceptional if obvious idea--"racism is wrong," or "New York shouldn't have thousands of beggars and lunatics on the street" --then coding it so obliquely that when the viewer has re-translated it he feels the glow of being included in what we call the "discourse" of the art world.(6) But the fact that a work of art is about AIDS or bigotry no more endows it with aesthetic merit than the fact that it's about mermaids and palm trees.

(6) Edward Said, "The politics of Knowledge," Raritan, Summer 1991

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Hughes, Robert: Nothing If Not Critical

p.396-397
The market is always converting works of art into passive fictions of eternity and immutability, of transcendent value for which no price may necessarily be too high. When the word priceless crops up, the haggling has only just begun. Hence the battered state of the word masterpiece, which used to mean a work that proved an artist's graduation into full professional skill, but now means an object whose aura and accumulated myth strike people blind temporarily and render their judgement timid. It refers more to myths of status than processes of comparison, and that kind of mythmaking is the seed of what New York dealer Ben Heller, in one of the great Freudian slips of recent art history, was heard to call "creative pricing"

It is the element of fantasy in the art market, the sense that art prices are so weakly tied to more mundane kinds of economic activity, and that there is something neurotic about them, that gives them their odd liability. The art market can be set pitching and rolling by a single act, which is why it is so notoriously vulnerable to manipulation. A ring of three or four promoters can bid up the price of a dubious young star painter at auction and although the New York art world may know what's going on, the collectors in Akron, Ohio, are not to likely to--all they see is the price that was, after all, publicly bid and duly paid, and is henceforth true.

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Horkheimer, Max and Adorno, Theodor W.: Dialectic of Enlightenment

p.139
Nothing that the experts have devised as a stimulant must escape the weary eye; no stupidity is allowed in the face of all the trickery; one has to follow everything and even display the smart responses shown and recommended in the film. This raises the question whether the culture industry fullfils the function of diverting minds which it boasts about so loudly. If most of the radio stations and movie theaters were closed down, the consumers would probably not lose so very much. To walk from the street into the movie theater is no longer to enter a world of dream; as soon as the very existence of these institutions no longer made it obligatory to use them, there would be no great urge to do so. Such closures would not be reactionary machine wrecking. The disappointment would be felt not so much by the enthusiasts as by the slow-witted, who are the ones who suffer for everything anyhow. In spite of the films which are intended to complete her integration, the housewife finds in the darkness of the movie theater a place of refuge where she can site for a few hours with nobody watching, just as she use to look out of the window when there were still homes and rest in the evening. The unemployed in the great cities find coolness in the summer and warmth in the winter in these temperature-controlled locations. Otherwise, despite its size, this bloated pleasure apparatus adds no dignity to man's lives. The idea of "fully exploiting" available technical resources and the facilities for aesthetic mass consumption is part of the economic system which refuses to exploit resources to abolish hunger.

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Debord, Guy: Comments on the Society of the Spectacle

VII
With the destruction of history, contemporary events themselves retreat into a remote and fabulous realm of unverifiable stories, uncheckable statistics, unlikely explanations and untenable reasoning. For every imbecility presented by the spectacle, there are only the media's professionals to give an answer, with a few respectful rectifications or remonstrations. And they are hardly extravagant, even with these, for besides there extreme ignorance, their personal and professional solidarity with the spectacle's overall authority and the society it expresses makes it their duty, and their pleasure, never to diverge from that authority whose majesty must not be threatened. It must not be forgotten that every media professional is bound by wages and other rewards and recompenses to a master, and sometimes to several; and that everyone of them knows he is dispensable.

All experts serve the state and the media and only in that way do they achieve their status. Every expert follows his master, for all former possibilities for independence have been gradully reduced to nil by present society's mode of organisation. The most useful expert, of course, is the one who can lie. With their different motives, those who need experts are falsifiers and fools. Whenever individuals lose the capacity to see things for themselves, the expert is there to offer and absolute reassurance. Once there were experts in Etruscan art, and competent ones, for Etruscan art was not for sale. But a period which, for example, finds it profitable to fake by chemical means various famous wines, can only sell them if it has created wine experts able to con connoisseurs into admiring their new, more distinctive flavours...

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Adorno, Theodor W.: Prisms

p.127
Jazz fans, as has once again been emphatically shown by David Riesman, can be divided into two clearly distinguishable groups. In the inner circle sit the experts, or those who consider themselves such--for very often the most passionate devotees, those who flaunt the established terminology and differentiate jazz styles with ponderous pretention, are hardly able to give an account, in precise, technical musical concepts, of whatever it is that so moves them. Most of them consider themselves avant-gardistic, thus participating in a confusion that has become ubiquitous today. Among the symptoms of the disintegration of culture and education, not the least is the fact that the distinction between autonomous 'high' and commercial 'light' art, however questionable it may be, is neither critically reflected nor even noticed any more. And now that certain culturally defeatist intellectuals have pitted the latter against the former, the philistine champions of the culture industry can even take pride in the conviction that they are marching in the vanguard of the Zeitgeist. The organization of culture into 'levels' such as the first, second and third programmes, patterned after low, middle and highbrown, is reprehensible. but it cannot be overcome simply by the lowbrown sects declaring themselves to be highbrow. The legitimate discontent with culture provides a pretext but not the slightest justification for the glorification of a highly rationalized section of mass production, one which debases and betrays culture without at all transcending it, as the dawn of a new world-sensibility or for confusing it with cubism, Eliot's poetry and Joyce's prose. Regression is not origin, but origin is the ideology of regression. Anyone who allows the growing respectability of mass culture to seduce him into equating a popular song with modern art because of a few false notes squeaked by a clarinet; anyone who mistakes a triad studded with 'dirty notes' for atonality, has already capitulated to barbarism. Art which has degenerated to culture pays the price of being all the more readily confused with its own waste products as its aberrant influence grows.

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Hope you have a fun summer!

What What What?

What do you mean I didn't win the Bad-Plus blogging contest?

What do you mean I can't just keep renewing Capital Vol. 1 again and again and again and again?

My world is collapsing! That's what you get for being a slow reader--a collapsed world!

"Fortunately" here on Christmas Island, capitalism and all its promises saturate the air, water and ether. As such, I don't expect anyone will be taking Capital out of the library, and so tomorrow to the library I will go (with a quick stop at the bank first, so that I may be allowed back into the library) and Capital Vol. 1 will again be mine, even if only temporarily. At that juncture, we will continue with our investigation of the bisect of Marx and our beloved freely improvised music.

In the mean, there's always ol' "abc" Teddy. The ABC meaning "anything but class", and I have to admit, reading Adorno after Marx is kind of like, I dunno, eating the little parsley garnish after eating the steak. Not that the little parsely garnish doesn't have its place, and indeed, who doesn't love a litte garnish? Not that Adorno is light and fluffy or easily brushed off the plate, but there is a bit of difference between the dialectis of employment as exploitation (Marx) and the sillyness of the 6/8 passage in Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto (Adorno.)

Regardless, in the grand game of creating personal exchange value you've got to keep it fresh. (And you shouldn't swear either.)

So with that, while we wait for my library card to cool off and Capital Vol. 1 to return, some adorno:

The true danger of the virtuoso: his perfect control. Through being above the works, having them at his disposal, he no longer journeys all the way into them or takes their immanent demands quite so seriously any more. Sloppiness as a correlate of mastery. For example the blurring of phrases by great virtuosos, also vocal ones. -- Preferable to work with young, unfinished musicians who are not yet fully in control.

and later

Gretel asked me how it can be that actors, who are mostly of questionable intelligence and always uneducated, can represent people and deliver lines that convey the most difficult of ideas, as with Hamlet and Prospero, Faust, Mephistopheles. I ventured the reply: every poetic work contains not only the meaningful-significative element, but also the melodic-mimic aspect, tone, speech melody, and manner; and it is a substantial criterion for success how deeply the former is immersed in the latter, i.e. whether the mimetic, 'magical' aspect is able to invoke, to force the meaningful one, to such a degree that a tone of voice or gesture itself becomes the allegorical representation of an idea. The actor's ability is mimic in the true sense: he actually imitates the melodica-gestural aspect of language. And the more perfectly he achieves this, the more perfectly the idea enteres the representation, not least because -- and especially when -- he does not understand it. The opposite approach would be the explanatory one: but to explain the intention means to kill it rather than invoking it. One could almost say that it is the prerequisite for an actor not to 'understand', but rather to imitate blindly...

Adorno, Theodor. Towards a Theory of Musical Reproduction, p. 158-159

+ + +

Sloppiness as a correlate of mastery.

For those of you who read reviews of Bill Dixon's music, how many of you have read articles where Dixon's ability to 'play' the trumpet is put into question? For the most part, that seems to have gone out of style, but for a while it was a staple of Dixon criticism.

Why did that change? Did "we" evolve? Are "we" hearing music differently, or are "we" (the transformers of Value into Exchange-Value) faced with the reality that many of the "young, unfinished musicians who are not yet fully in control" (of the instrument or their destiny) sound enough like Dixon, that to continue "asking" if Dixon knows how to play the trumpet might not be good for the collection of surplus capital?

And how about uneducated actors blindly imitating Faust and Mephistopheles while not having the slightest idea of who or what (or from whence) they are imitating? Don't get me wrong, I am a firm believer in "fake it 'till you make it" and I think that spending a life acting and imitating probably a pretty good gig depending upon the pay. What would you rather do, imitate Faust or be Faust?

What would you rather do, imitate Charlie Parker or be Charlie Parker? How about Frank Zappa? Would you rather imitate or would you rather be Frank Zappa? (That might be a trick question.)

Speaking of Frank Zappa, copying, copyrights, ZPZ (vs. everyone else,) the concept of "perfection" (expected or otherwise) and the whole conflict-leads-to-sales strategym behind the Zappa-mimesis experience, there is this:

...he actually imitates the melodica-gestural aspect of language. And the more perfectly he achieves this, the more perfectly the idea enteres the representation, not least because -- and especially when -- he does not understand it.

Where, if at all, this bisects "misreading" in the Harold Bloom sense of the word, I don't know. Was (Frank) Zappa imitating the melodica-gestural aspect of language? If so whose? Because if he (Frank Zappa) did, he didn't do it perfectly, as his (Frank Zappa's) music--what you heard (past tense) when you went (also past tense) to a Frank Zappa concert was not like anything ever heard before. Was this because (Frank) Zappa understood what he was doing? Or was it because (Frank) Zappa gave not one fig about sounding like anything or anyone other than Frank Zappa?

I'm Just Going To Keep On Dancing (Dancing! Dancing!)

Diamonds are of very rare occurrence on the earth's surface, and hence their discover costs, on average, a great deal of labour-time. Consequently much labour is represented in a small volume...With richer mines, the same quantity of labour would be embodied in more diamonds, and their value would fall. If man succeeded without much labour, in transforming carbon into diamonds, their value might fall below that of bricks.

Marx, Capital, p. 130, 131

Is there a relation between value and excellence?

The recorded music of Lowell Davidson is of very rare occurrence on earth's surface. Does that alone--the rarity of Lowell Davidson's congealed labor--make his one record so completely valuable? And is that "value" the same as "excellence?"

What about Ken Vandermark? Would his music be any more valuable (or "excellent") if he had a total of 3 recordings to his name?

What would music (the sound of it, the experience of producing it, the experience of consuming it) be like if musicians could only release a total of 5 recordings? They could play live all they wanted, but only 5 recordings at the most.

Is anything happening to the "value" (or excellence) of music as a whole in light of the "digital revolution"--specifically said revolution's facilitating the self-release?

What would cars be worth if everyone could make their own in the back yard?

What would the experience of driving be worth if everyone on earth had their own car that they had made themselves?

(I really really really am asking questions here, and not trying to bate or "takedown" anyone or any industry. Honest.)

+ + +

Just as commodities have a dual character, possessing both use-value and exchange-value, so labour in itself has a twofold nature. Use-value is created by 'concrete' or 'useful' labour, defined by Marx as 'productive activity of a definite kind, carried on with a definite aim', whereas exchange-value derives from 'abstract' or 'undifferentiated' labour, which is measured purely in terms of its duration--and there is an inherent tension between the two. A tailor, for instance, may strive to make the hardest-wearing coat of which he or she is capable. If it is too hard-wearing, however, the purchaser need never return to buy a replacement, so jeopardizing the tailor's business. The same applies to the weaver who created the cloth from which the coat was swen. The need to create use-value thus finds itself in conflict with the need to continue creating exchange value.

...'Within its value relation to the linen,' (Marx) writes, 'the coat signifies more than it does outside it, just as some men count for more when inside a gold-braided uniform than they do otherwise'

Wheen, Francis. Marx's Das Kapital, A biography. p.41-42

What then, under capitalism, is the impetus for doing one's best? And why, under capitalism, are "we" disciplined and punished for not doing (the boss-capitalist's perception of) one's best?

Are "prestigeous" record labels a kind of "gold-braided uniform" that makes men (and their CD's) count for more when inside them?

Would John Coltrane still have made the music of John Coltrane (as we know it) if he was on the John Coltrane record label, distributed out of a garage somewhere on Long Island? Did Impulse or (ha! Prestige) ever artistically constrain John Coltrane due to extra musical, exchange-value reasons?

Holy crap I love that verysmallarray.com web site. Y'all have been right? I really love the graphs comparing Pitchfork Media and Billboard magazine.

Question: what would "music" (and by extension, life) be like if Pitchfork had Billboard's capital? Would it be exactly the same?

The stark comparison of Pitchfork and Billboard via graphs and the like made me wish that CD's came with (and CD reviews consisted of) a graph that showed what percentage of the music was "exchange value music" and what percentage was "use value music"--because it is a zero-sum deal.

Is the Lowell Davidson recording (singular) an example of a music with a very high use value and a very low exchange value?

Can we think of any recordings with a very low use value, but a very high exchange value?

Is there a relation between a recording's use value, exchange value, value, and the number of copies printed?

+ + +

Only the products of mutually independent acts of labour, performed in isolation, can confront each other as commodities.

(Marx, Capital, p.132)

People under capitalism do not relate to each other directly as human beings, they relate to one another through the myriad products which they encounter in the market

David Harvey, video 2, ca. 57'10"

However glorious its apparent economic triumphs, capitalism remains a disaster since it turns people into commodities, exchangeable for other commodities. Until humans can assert themselves as the subjects of history rather than its objects, there is no escape from this tyranny.

Wheen, Francis, Marx's Das Kapital, a biography, p. 13


There is a phrase, one I'm about to mangle, related to the economic nature of "Jazz", and that phrase is that it, (the economic nature of jazz) is a bunch of, uh, "Jazz musicians" fighting over a chicken wing on the corner. Ever hear that one?

When creating exchange-value music--nay, when consciously incorporating the slightest concession to the exchange-value-aesthetic (and don't tell me there isn't one), are musicians commodities or are musicians human, or are musicians human all too human?

Bill Dixon has at times suggested the existence of two kind of music producers: Musicians and Personalities. If I had to guess, and this is only a guess, a Musician creates use-value music, where as a Personality creates exchange-value music.

+ + +

In itself, an increase in the quantity of use-values constitutes an increase in material wealth. Two coats will clothe two men, one coat will only clothe one man, etc. Nevertheless, an increase in the amount of material wealth may correspond to a simultaneous fall in the magnitude of its value. This contradictory movement arises out of the twofold character of labour. By 'productivity' of course, we always mean the productivity of concrete useful labour; in reality this determines only the degree of effectiveness of productive activity directed towards a given purpose within a given period of time. Useful labour becomes, therefore, a more or less abundant source of products in direct proportion as its productivity rises or falls. As against this, however, variations in productivity have no impact whatever on the labour itself represented in value. As productivity is an attribute of labour in its concrete useful form, it naturally ceases to have any bearing on that labour as soon as we abstract from its concrete useful form. The same labour, therefore, performed for the same length of time, always yields the same amount of value, independently of any variations in productivity. But it provides different quantities of use-values during equal periods of time; more, if productivity rises; fewer, if it falls. For this reason, the same change in productivity which increase the fruitfulness of labour, and therefore the amount of use-values produced by it, also brings about a reduction in the value of this increased total amount, if it cuts down the total amount of labour-time necessary to produce the use-values.

Marx, Capital, p. 137

Learned: One can accumulate a great deal of wealth by making things of very little value.

What if you were only allowed to release 5 albums in your life time...

I like the part that says "variations in productivity have no impact whatever on the labor itself represented in the value." Does this mean if Lowell Davidson was given a MacArthur grant and used it to produce dozens upon dozens of releases, he (Lowell Davidson/Lowell Davidson's labour) would still be great but his recordings would be of proportionately less value?

What would our culture be like if the music of Lowell Davidson was a prevalent as Justin Timberlake? What if those two were to do a capital switch-a-roo? Would Justin Timberlake suddenly assume the identity-as-exchange-value previously, uh, enjoyed by Lowell Davidson during his active years of musical labor, or would he remain be the Justin Timberlake we've always known and loved?

So many questions!

(are you wishing me luck on the blog contest? if not, WISH ME LUCK ON THE BLOGGING CONTEST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

Send Sebadoh's "Give Up" Ringtone To your Cell

We have seen how the growing accumulation of capital involves its growing concentration. Thus the power of capital grows, in other words the autonomy of the social conditions of production, as personified by the capitalist, is asserted more and more as against the actual producers. Capital shows itself more and more to be a social power, with the capitalist as its functionary--a power that no longer stands in any possible kind of relationship to what the work of one particular individual can create, but an alienated social power which has gained an autonomous position and confronts society as a thing, and as the power that the capitalist has through this thing. The contradiction between the general social power into which capital has developed and the private power of the individual capitalist over these social conditions of production develops ever more blatantly, while this development also contains the solution to this situation, in that it simultaneously raises the conditions of production into general, communal, social conditions. This transformation is brought about by the development of the productive forces under capitalist production and by the manner and form in which this development is accomplished.

Marx, Capital III, p. 373

Hey did you hear The Bad Plus Inc. are having a blog writing competition? They, The Bad Plus want "to encourage younger musicians to give blogging a go." If you are a "new blogger" (which is to say, the walls of your cyber cell aren't totally smeared with your own virtual feces) you now have a chance make "$100 cash and, naturally, promotion on DTM. "

Further on, the point is made:

This is not a professional competition. $100 is not much - hopefully it’s just enough to encourage the participants. But blogging is not really professional to begin with; it is done by just those that want to do it.

Is that to say a profession is something you don't want to do? Regardless of the answer, the (above) made me think of this:

(One of three) cardinal fact(s) about capitalist production:

(1) The concentration of the means of production in a few hands, which means that they cease to appear as the property of the immediate workers and are transformed on the contrary into social powers of production. Even if this is at first as the private property of capitalists. The latter are trustees of bourgeois society, though they pocket all the fruits of this trusteeship.

Marx, Capital III, p. 375

This makes me think of a hee-larious apocryphal story about Frank-Zappa-as-capitalist:

Once upon a time there was a young and very talented musician who also was also very talented computer operator. This talented young person was so good with computers he eventually found himself in the employ of such global super capitalists as U2 and Frank Zappa. After working on some MIDI/computerized aspect Frank Zappa's fixed capital (i.e., getting all that computer crap running so the valorization process could continue unhindered) this young talented person enquired if there was any way he could get into the show (so as to see [and hear] the thing he fixed in action--the thing that without his labor, wouldn't otherwise be able to operate.) Frank Zappa's response? "What, do I look like the ticket counter?"

Instant alienation.

+ + +

A bit further down in the "a few more suggestions" section:

(2) Takedowns are not what I’m looking for, but I can’t deny that it is important to have dislikes as well as likes. If you do insist on a heavily critical piece I will allow it but expect the wrath of the internet (a phenomenon rather heart-stopping the first time it happens to the unprepared). But the point of this contest - like DTM in general - is the exploration and celebration of excellence.

The first phrase in section (2)--Takedowns are not what I'm looking for--though perhaps not anti-dialectical in its intent, none the less caught my attention as Capital thus far seems to be three volumes of "takedown"--and that seems to be quite close to, if not the essence of dialectics.

+ + +

quick pause: hands up, who remembers the ultra great super group Mule and the lyrics to I'm Hell?

You tell me what you think you need,
And I'll give you what I think you lack.

+ + +

Forgetting about things like "truth" for a moment, is the towering, awe inspiring, brain bending dialectical takedownedness of Capital incidental or is it central to the power of Capital as narration--as story--as thing to read?

Does Capital's stature of the greatest "takedown" ever written (a "takedown" of, arguably, the greatest blight humanity has yet to create) impinge upon its "knowledge" of subject or its "material" relevance? I guess that depends upon your tax returns. You did file your taxes, didn't you?

The last phrase: But the point of this contest - like DTM in general - is the exploration and celebration of excellence--especially when juxtaposed against section (3) But I will be looking for knowledge of music, not great writing brings about the kind of contradiction that dialecticians have loved for decades.

Contradiction: what happens when a knowledge of music can really only be assessed during the "take down?" Because really, any jackass can shake a pom-pom (Just pick up a copy of Down Beat, Signal to Noise or [gasp!] The Wire and see for yourself,) and really, said jack-assery most fully reveals itself in the failed 'take down'; back at a certain all girl drama academy, Bill Dixon used to tell the story of how he (and his peers) would get Down Beat, find the recordings the critics hated the most and then go look for those records--the logic being if the totally "alienated social power" that are the critics from Down Beat hated it, then there must be a pretty good recording, one worth checking out anyway.

+ + +

Certainly by now you've all made your way through the first instalment of David Harvey's most excellent video lecture series on Marx' Capital. In so doing, you most certainly had moment to pause and replay about 80 minutes into the thing wherein Mr. Harvey makes these point about value (which, after all, is a close cousin to "excellence"):

Who and how is value established?

There is a value being determined by a process we do not understand and it is not our choice, it is something that is happening to us, and how it is happening has to be 'unpacked.'

If you want to understand who you are and where you stand in this maelstrom of churning values...what you've got to do is to understand how value gets created, how it gets produced, and with what consequences--socially, environmentally and all the rest of it.

Value is not fixed--value is extremely sensitive to revolutions in technology, revolutions in productivity.

David Harvey lecture on Capital, video 1, introduction.

Is music a commodity?

Is "excellence" an adjective, adverb or noun? Is "excellence" in music an objective value or is it something created by external forces other than the music itself? If it is an objective reality, is this objective excellence something that can be accurately gauged equally by all peoples? Can (musical) excellence be gauged by someone whose own music is not excellent? Can it be gagued by someone who doesn't play music at all?

This theoretically objective "excellence"--is it theoretically permanent, or is this theoretical excellence like all that is solid melt(ing) into the air?

How about these revolutions in technology? Here's a real New Media 101 question: How has the technical revolution that is the web (and the blog) influenced the creation of "excellence" in music? Is the internet responsible for making something "excellent" that without the internet would not be "excellent" or typify "excellence" (or, using Marx's words, "represent value?")

Harvey goes on to ask the question "How is value represented?" (and I go on to ask "How is excellence represented?")

Well, let's see, there's price--like $21 for a download (at that price it must be good...)

Then there is the critic--lord knows they're an unbiased bunch.

Then there is self created propaganda--lord also knows how suited the web is for that, and how well 'self regulated'--and by extension meaningful--that aspect of the internet has become.

Lastly there is 'log rolling' by other (related/combined/concentrated) interests.

Did I miss any?

So all in all, it would appear that the representation of excellence (as well as value) in the aesthetic (particularly musical) sphere is, well, uh, reason enough to listen to the second lecture in David Harvey's excellent series.

Meanwhile, speaking of log-rolling by others, and to qualify this as a "jazz" blog, please do bring your virtual pint glass to the Brewery Tap to enjoy some real "jazz excellence." I call this the best, most excellent "Jazz" release of 2009 with a bit of reservation, as I haven't had adequate time and focus to really dig into the excellence that is Matt Weston's not to be taken away.

WISH ME LUCK IN THE BLOGGING CONTEST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Tambourine Assessment

Still skipping through Capital. It's a real springtime laugh riot!

I thought these were fun, and by fun I mean something we could do our ol' put-words-in-paranthesis game as a way to get our minds around some concepts:

As capital has the tendency to reduce the direct employment of living labour (get rid of the extraneous guys in the band) to the necessary minimum and constantly shorten the labour needed for the creation of a product by exploiting the social productivity of labour, i.e. economising as much as possible on directly applied living labour, (less pay for less people) so it also has the tendency to apply this labour, which has already been reduced to its necessary amount, under the most economical circumstances, i.e. to reduce the value of the constant capital (musicians) applied to the absolute minimum. If the value of commodities is determined by the necessary labour time contained in them (that includes rehearsal) and not simply by labour-time as such (the time it takes to play the songs), it is capital that first makes a reality of this mode of determination and immediately goes on to reduce continually the labour socially necessary for the production of a commodity (a CD, a concert, a DVD). The price of the commodity is therefore reduced to a minimum through reducing to a minimum each part of the labour required to produce it. (eventually you 'learn the songs' and can play them with ease--and less rehersal time.)

Marx, Carl, Capital Volume 3, the Transformation of Surplus-Value into Profit, p. 180

and then there's this one:

If we consider capitalist production in the narrow sense and ignore the process of circulation and the excesses of competition, it (capitalist production) is extremely sparing with the realised labour that is objectified in commodities. Yet it squanders human beings, living labour, more readily than does any other mode of production, squandering not only flesh and blood, but nerves and brain as well. In fact it is only through the most tremendous waste of individual development that the development of humanity in general is secured and pursued, in that epoch of history that directly precedes the conscious reconstruction of human society. Since the whole of the economising we are discussing here arises from the social character of labour, it is in fact precisely this directly social character of labour that produces this waste of the workers' life and health. The question raised by factory inspector R. Baker is very pertinent here:

'The whole question is one for serious consideration, in what way this sacrifice of infant life occasioned by congregational labour* can be best averted? (Reports of the Inspectors of Factories...31 October 1863, p. 157 [Marx emphasis].)

* 'Congregational labour' means here labour carried on by large masses of people working in association.

Marx, Carl, Capital Volume 3, the Transformation of Surplus-Value into Profit, p. 182

+ + +

Capitalism hurts families--especially babies!

+ + +

Ah yes, the social character of labour. I seem to recall reading somewhere in that cute Goodwill-bought Lenin book that "labour becomes socialised, profit remains privatised" which I took to mean that while everyone in the band becomes friends (or not) and works together (regardless of the duress that may cause) profit remains the personal private plaything of "the leader" or "the owner" or "the boss."

What is "profit" anyway? Is it really earnings for something which the capitalist did not pay? Is it really an arbitrary amount arbitrarily chosen by the capitalist?

Reading Capital has given me a wonderful opportunity to confront my own Stockholm-syndrome reluctance to accept the idea that everyone should have the same hourly wage.

Tambourine players come to mind. 'Anyone' can play the tambourine, right? Shake the it a bit, smack it against your ass now and then and poof, you're a tambourine player. No need to go to Julliard (or Bennington) for that and so...what?

What would reggae music be without a tambourine? Reggae music without a tambourine, that's what...but what good is that? It would appear that in the song at the top of this blog, the tambourine seems pretty darn central. Someone had to play it...did they get paid less than the drummer? Did the tambourine player get paid less than the people at the record company, whom one cannot hear at all on the recording?

How does one begin to assess the, uh, "value percentage" (my term, obviously) of the tambourine contribution in relation to everything else?

Has that tambourine player been replaced by someone named Roland? If so, who benefitted from that change? The music? The out of work tambourine player? The recording industry? The lucky workers at the Roland factory?

If a job can be done by machines, does that mean it should be done by machines--is that all the justification needed?

Is there an instance (in music, at least) when efficiency and economy does not trump everything else?

Marx is so Hot Right Now (Universal Labor Music Mix)

Boing Boing...what can you say? They rule to where this humble blog runs the risk of becoming simply a place where I go "oooh, aaah" over their latest posts. But c'mon now, you gotta love a post called Marx was Right!

And indeed, as Marxism might have it, it is the people (and their comments) that bring the post to life, so do read those if you go.

Reading Capital is a real devotion. It's worth it, but it isn't easy. Not for me anyway, so I'm going to take Richard Metzger's tip and I'm going to read it with David Harvey. Won't you join me? C'mon, a Capital reading group featuring the lads of free jazz bloggery.

Because really, how can you deny passages like these:

Finally, however, it is only the experience of the combined worker that discovers and demonstrates how inventions already made can most simply be developed, how to overcome the practical frictions that arise in putting the theory into practice--its application to the production process, and so on.

We must distinguish here, incidentally, between universal labour and communal labour. They both play their part in the production process, and merge into one another, but they are each different as well. Universal labour is all scientific work, all discovery and invention. It is brought about partly by the cooperation of men now living, but partly also by building on earlier work. Communal labor, however, simply involves the direct cooperation of individuals.

All this receives fresh confirmation from certain facts that have frequently been observed:

(1) The great difference in costs between the first construction of a new machine and its reproductions. See Ure and Babbage*

(2) The much greater costs that are always involved in an enterprise based on new inventions, compared with later establishments that rise up on its ruins, ex suis ossibus.** The extent of this is so great that the pioneering entrepreneurs generally go bankrupt, and it is only their successors who flourish, thanks to their possession of cheaper buildings, machinery etc. Thus it is generally the most worthless and wretched kind of money-capitalists that draw the greatest profit from all new developments of the universal labour of the human spirit and their social applications by combined labour.

* This is Charles Babbage (1792 - 1871), best remembered as the inventor of the first calculating machine. Marx refers to his book On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, London, 1832. The work on the same subject by Andrew Ure (1778-1857), The Philosophy of Manufactures, published in 1835, Marx considered the best work of its time on large-scale industry, and he makes frequent use of it in Volume 1 of Capital
** from its bones

Marx, Karl. Capital. The Transformation of Surplus-Value into Profit, Economy in the Use of Constant Capital, p. 199. (Penguin Classics)

+ + +

Did you pick up on the part about Babbage and the calculating machine? I heard that the Sumerians had an abacus in 2700 BC. Don't you do calculations on an abacus? What am I not understanding about the meaning of words?

+ + +

Is music a "universal labor" or is it a "communal labor" that only sometimes dips into "universal labor?" Does it (our beloved improvised music) fall under the heading of "all discovery and invention?" Does it fall under the heading of "science?" Is it none of those things? It has to be something. I know that much.

If it is "the most worthless and wretched kind of money-capitalist" that preys upon the "universal labor of the human spirit," then what kind of money-capitalist preys upon definitely-not-universal-labor-music-but-music-just-the-same music?

And what is that music? Is that the symphony orchestra? Is that the "tribute" band? Is it less worthless and wretched to prey upon non-universal-labor-music because their job is somehow easier? Is it "easier" being in a pre determined right-and-wrong musical situation, or is it "easier" to be in a make-it-up-on-the-spot musical situation? I suppose they both have their attendant nightmares. Has anyone else ever heard of musicians in pit bands (on Broadway, for example) bringing books with them to read while they aren't actively playing? Inspiring, no?

These are all questions...not super important ones, but questions just the same.

Trust

Gotta love the Foreign Languages Press of Peking...especially for $.99 at Goodwill! If you're at Goodwill and you have $.99 to spare and you find a copy of V.I. Lenin's Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism, then by all means get it--it's totally worth every penny!

This handsome little book is just chock-a-block with gems of a kind that make me think of music (well, the music 'industry' anyway.) Sure it's about banks and what appears to be the capitalist's inborn inability to share, but by now you should know that words only sometimes mean something and as such you should have no problem substituting words like "Large Banks" with "Lincoln Center" and "upper stratum of the labour aristocracy" with the Jazz collective or "featured artist" of your choosing. Please feel free to do so, and most importantly, have fun!

Here are some highlights:

What is the economic basis of this world-historic phenomenon? Precisely the parasitism and decay of capitalism which are characteristic of its highest historical stage of development, i.e., imperialism. As is proved in this pamphlet, capitalism has now singled out a handful (less than one-tenth of the inhabitants of the globe; less than one-fifth at a most "generous" and liberal calculation) of exceptionally rich and powerful states which plunder the whole world simply by "clipping coupons." Capital exports yield an income of eight to ten billion francs per annum, at prewar prices and according to prewar bourgeois statistics. Now, of course, they yield much more.

Obviously, out of such enormous superprofits (since they are obtained over and above the profits which capitalists squeeze out of the workers of their "own" country) it is possible to bribe the labour leaders and the upper stratum of the labour aristocracy. And the capitalists of the "advanced" countries are bribing them; they bribe them in a thousand different ways, direct and indirect, overt and covert.

This stratum of bourgeoisified workers, or the "labor aristocracy," who are quite philistine in their mode of life, in the size of their earnings and in their entire outlook, is the principle prop of the Second International, and, in our days, the principal social (not military) prop of the bourgeoisie. for they are the real agents of the bourgeoisie in the working-class movement, the labour lieutenants of the capitalist class, real channels of reformism and chauvinism. In the civil war between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie they inevitably, and in no small numbers, take the side of the bourgeoisie...

(p.9-10)

[Is there a "labor aristocracy" in music? How about in our beloved improvised music? How about superprofits? If you are an improvising musician making zero dollars and zero cents, how much money would an improvising "labor aristocrat" have to make before it qualified as a "super profit?"]

and

The real beginning of modern monopoly goes back at the earliest, to the 'sixties. The first important period of development of monopoly commenced with the international industrial depression of the 'seventies' and lasted until the beginning of the 'nineties." "If we examine the question on a European scale, we will find that the development of free competition reached its apex in the 'sixties and 'seventies."

[hmm, anything else reach its apex in the (nineteen) 'sixties and 'seventies?]

Then it was that England completed the construction of its old-style capitalist organization. In Germany, this organization had entered into a fierce struggle with handicraft and domestic industry, and had begun to create for itself its own forms of existence."

"The great revolution commenced with the crash of 1873, or rather, the depression which followed it and which, with hardly discernible interruptions in the early 'eighties, and the unusually violent, but short-lived boom about 1889, marks twenty-two years of European economic history." "during the short boom of 1889-90, the system of cartels was widely resorted to in order to take advantage of the favorable business conditions. An ill-considered policy drove prices up still more rapidly and still higher than would have been the case if there were no cartels, and nearly all these cartels perished ingloriously in the smash. Another five-year period of bad trade and low prices followed, but a new spirit reigned in industry; the depression was no longer regarded as something to be taken for granted: it was regarded as nothing more than a pause before another boom.

(p.19)

["oh just give it a little while, the economy will recover and everything will be back to 'normal'"]

"The cartel movement entered its second epoch: instead of being a transitory phenomenon, the cartels became one of the foundations of economic life. They are winning one field of industry after another, primarily, the raw materials industry. At the beginning of the 'nineties the cartel system had already acquired--in the organization of the coke syndicate on the model of which the coal syndicate was later formed--a cartel technique which could hardly be improved. For the first time the great boom at the close of the nineteenth century and the crisis of 1900-03 occurred entirely--in the mining and iron industries at least--under the aegis of the cartels. And while at that time it appeard to be something novel, now the general public take it for granted that large spheres of economic life have been, as a general rule, removed form the realm of free competition." (***)

(p. 19-20)

"so you wanna be a rock and roll star?"

and

Cartels come to an agreement on the conditions of sale, terms of payment, etc. They divide the markets among themselves. They fix the quantity of goods to be produced. They fix prices. They divide the profits among the various enterprises, etc.

(p.20)

and

The report of the American Government Commission on Trusts states: "Their superiority over competitors is due to the magnitude of its enterprises and their excellent technical equipment. Since its inception, the Tobacco Trust has devoted all its efforts to the substitution of mechanical for manual labor on an extensive scale. With this end in view it bought up all patents that had anything to do with the manufacture of tobacco and spent enormous sums for this purpose...

(p.22)

and

Competition becomes transformed into monopoly. The result is immense progress in the socialization of production...This is something quite different from the old free competition between manufacturers, scattered and out of touch with one another, and producing for an unknown market. Concentration has reached the point at which it is possible to make an approximate estimate of all sources of raw materials (for example, the iron ore deposition) of a country and even, as we shall see, of several countries, or of the whole world. Not only are such estimates made, but these sources are captured by gigantic monopolist combines. An approximate estimate of the capacity of markets is also made, and the combines "divide" them up amongst themselvs by agreement. Skilled labor is monopolized, the best engineers are engaged; the means of transport are captured: railways in America, shipping companies in Europe and America. Capitalism in its imperialist stage leads right up to the most comprehensive socialization of production; it, so to speak, drags the capitalists, against their will and consciousness, inot some sort of a new social order, a transitional one from complete free competition to complete socialization.

(p.24)

[Was there ever a time when musicians were "scattered and out of touch with one another, and producing for an unknown market"--you know, just making music for the joy (and fun!) of making music? If so, was that music any "good?" Has myspace/myface/facebook/blogger/wordpress/lookatmelookatme.com helped music?]

Production becomes social , but appropriation remains private. The social means of production remains the private property of a few. The general framework of formally recognized free competition remains, but the yoke of a few monopolists on the rest of the population becomes a hundred times heavier, more burdensome and intolerable.

(p.25)

and

The German economist, Kestner, has written a book especially devoted to "the struggle between the cartels and outsiders," i.e., the capitalists outside the cartels. He entitled his work Compulsory Organization, although, in order to present capitalism in its true light, he should, of course, have written about compulsory submission to monopolist combines. It is instructive to glance at least at the list of the methods the monopolist combines resort to in the present day, the latest, the civilized struggle for "organization":

1. Stopping supplies of raw materials (..."one of the most important methods of compelling adherence to the cartel");
2. Stopping the supply of labour by means of "alliances" (i.e., of agreements between the capitalists and the trade unions by which the later permit their members to work only in cartelized enterprises);
3. Stopping deliveries;
4. Closing of trade outlets;
5. Agreements with the buyers, by which the latter undertake to trade only with the cartels;
6. Systematic price cutting (to ruin "outside" firms, i.e., those which refuse to submit to the monopolists. Millions are spent in order to sell goods for a certain time below their cost price; there were instances when the price of benzine was thus reduced from 40 to 22 marks, i.e., almost by half!);
7. Stopping credits;
8. Boycott.

Here we no longer have competition between small and large, technically developed and backward enterprises. We see here the monopolists throttling those which do not submit to them, to their yoke, to their dictation.

(p.25-26)

and

"...Other banks will follow this same path and in time the three hundred men, who today govern Germany economically, will gradually be reduced to fifty, twenty-five or still fewer. It cannot be expected that this latest move towards concentration will be confined to banking. The close relations that exist between individual banks naturally lead to the bringing together of the industrial syndicates which these banks favour...One fine morning we shall wake up in surprise to see nothing but trusts before our eyes, and to find ourselves faced with the necessity of substituting state monopolies for private monopolies. However, we have nothing to reproach ourselves with, except for having allowed things to follow their own course, slightly accelerated by the manipulation of stocks." (*)

This is an example of the impotence of bourgeois journalism which differs from bourgeois science only in that the latter is less sincere and strives to obscure the essence of the matter, to conceal the wood by trees. To be "surprized" at the results of concentration, to "reproach" the government of capitalist Germany or capitalist "society" ("ourselves"), to fear that the introduction of stocks and shares might "accelerate" concentration in the same way as the German "cartel" specialist Tschierschky fears the American trusts and "prefers" the German cartels on the grounds that they "may not, like the trusts, excessively accelerate technical and economic progress"--is not this impotence?

(p.38)

and

Quite often industrial and commercial circles complain of the "terrorism" of the banks. And it is not surprising that such complaints are heard, for the big banks "command," as will be seen from the following example. On November 19, 1901, one of the big, so called Berlin "D" banks (the names of the four biggest banks begin with the letter D) wrote to the Board of Directors of the German Central Northwest Cement Syndicate in the following terms:

"As we learn from the notice you published in a certain newspaper of the 18th inst., we must reckon with the possibility that the next general meeting of your syndicate, to be held on the 30th of this month, may decide on measures which are likely to effect changes in your undertaking which are unacceptable to us. We deeply regret that, for these reasons, we are obliged to henceforth to withdraw the credit which had been hitherto allowed you...But if the said next general meeting does not decide upon measures which are unacceptable to us, and if we receive suitable guarantees on this matter for the future, we shall be quite willing to open negotiations with you on the grant of a new credit" (**)

(p.49)

and
and
and
and
and
and...

(*) A. Lansburgh, "Die Bank mit den 300 Millionen" in Die Bank, 1914, 1, p. 426
(**) Dr. Oscar Stillich, Geld- und Bankwesen, Berlin, 1907, p. 148
(***) Th. Vogelstein, Die finanzielle Organisation der kapitalistischen Industrie und die Monopolbildungen (Financial Organization of the Capitalist Industry and the Formation of Monopolies--Tr.) in Grundriss der Solialokonomik (Outline of Social Economics-tr.), VI Abt., Tubingen, 1914. Cf., also the same author: Organisationsformen der Eisenincustrie und Textilindustrie in England und Amerika (The Organizational Forms of the Iron and Textile Industry of England and America--Tr.), Bd. I., Lpz., 1910

+ + +

Anyone out there in "free jazz" blog world ever read all 8420 pages of Das Kapital? Just when I thought I couldn't make this blog any more fun...What if "we" went through Kapital page by page, connecting it to our beloved music and the scene which "we" have created for it? Oh the page views, oh the advertising revenue from the Google ads!

Mmmmmm Google ads....