Aesthetic Materialism

Just kidding.

  Marxists aren't opposed to technocracy.  Nietzcheans are opposed to technocracy.  And understandably so.  They have a point! But Marxists aren't opposed to technocracy.  When Engels claims, in Anti-Dühring (1877), that "the government of persons" will be "replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production," this is a perfect description of technocracy.  Technocracy is the administration of things.  It is not the government of persons - indeed, the human element has been completely removed.  This is what Nietzsche would call the Last Man, or what Kojeve would call the end of history and the "disappearance of Man," in which humanity, having lost all meaningful ambition, "remains alive as an animal in harmony with Nature or given Being."  Foucault recognizes this world as the world of "biopower": "Starting from the 18th century, societies took on board the fundamental biological fact tha...

Obviously, I am not the first person to whom the problem of glory has occurred, nor do I claim to be. How can the problem of glory be solved?  There are a variety of strategies for working on this problem, which can be utilized by thinkers in the Jewish tradition, the Christian tradition, the Muslim tradition, and other traditions. One way is to simply deny the premise: that all things exist for the glory of God.  Perhaps existents, like humans, exist not for his glory, but simply by dint of his mercy.  He doesn't so much will us to exist; rather, he simply allows us to exist.  As finite beings, we cannot substantially diminish his perfection, so why should he care about us?  In other words, it's not so much that he created us, let alone that he created us for a purpose - it's just that so far, he hasn't bothered to destroy us.  We are so meaningless that we aren't even worth the trouble of destroying. Another, perhaps related strategy, is not so much to d...

  Everyone thinks of themselves as being higher status than they really are.  This is probably mostly true of people all over the world, and probably mostly true of people throughout history, but it's especially true in the contemporary United States.  According to a recent Gallup poll , 54% of Americans consider themselves middle class.  This is actually considerably down from historic levels - according to the same source, from 2002 to 2006, 61% of Americans considered themselves middle class - after the 2008 economic collapse this dropped sharply, and it has mostly held steady since then, sometimes rising a bit and sometimes falling.  Go back into the 20th century and the number was much higher.  Of course in reality, people who can afford to survive on their investments alone, without working, are the bourgeoisie.  Everyone else - everyone who, in order to live, either needs to work and receive some kind of wage or salary or pension, or who depends...

    Lenin studied law at Kazan University.  He was expelled for his political activity, but nonetheless managed to pass the law exam - indeed, he was top-ranked - and was awarded a law degree in 1891.  Of course, his career took a different turn.  But he would have made a great lawyer.  He had a very lawyerly mind. What is a lawyer?  To use some contemporary (or perhaps slightly outdated) vocabulary, a lawyer is a member of the " professional managerial class ," or more accurately, the professionalized, that is to say, highly educated and salaried, sector of the proletariat - a highly specialized form of labor.  Indeed, Lenin's primary historical importance is his role in the historical development of the complex blending together of the movement of proletarian socialism with the general tendency of capitalism towards specialization and professionalization.  Lenin made important contributions to the theory of the "professional revolutionary,"...

 Recently, on facebook, someone commented that "You can't have markets without private property."  This was my response: You definitely can have markets without private property. Remember, in the Communist Manifesto, Marx distinguishes between "private property" and "personal property." He doesn't have any quarrel with personal property (individual property, like your toothbrush and your lawnmower). His quarrel is with private property - that is, bourgeois ownership of the means of production. (Notice that this is usually NOT individual property: rarely does 1 person own a factory. Usually a factory is owned by a corporation, a "fictive person," a made-up person that is recognized by the law, which is in turn owned collectively by its stockholders, which may number in the millions, all over the world.)   Private property is an innovation of capitalism. Early examples include the British East India Company and the V.O.C.,...