Has anyone seen The Gladiators (The Peace Game) made in 1968 by Peter Watkins? It concerns a future in which the world powers have collaborated to prevent WWIII by instituting internationally televised Peace Games which are reality-TV styled wars that conclude with awards ceremonies. These games help channel international aggressions away from nuclear solutions and prevent real wars from breaking out. From the description you might imagine what type of movie it would be, but the reality of it is one of the most ridiculous pseudo-comedies I have ever seen. It's a great concept and there are a lot of worthwhile scenes, but the overall feel of the movie is bizarrely inane.

Watkins is still around and his website has an interesting essay about the detrimental effects of mass audio visual media due to its reliance on what he calls "The Monoform"

http://www.mnsi.net/~pwatkins/hollywood.htm

Earwicker wrote:

big_dave wrote:Claiming individual choice at the heart of everything is just wish fulfillment and projection.

I'm not sure I see what wish is being fulfilled here but - whatever.

I've said before that the system is important but if you are basically saying, it seems to me, that the world is totally deterministic and therefore no one should be held responsible for their actions.
If that's what people think then fine - I can see the argument for that. But can you not just say that. Are folks scared to say that for some reason?

Or are some people seen as culpable for their actions but others aren't? And, if so, by what criteria are you making distinctions?

I'll ask what I asked Cranius above:
Should a Chairman or CEO of a corporation be held accountable for the deaths of workers who die as a result of cost cutting for the sake of profit?

I can answer this question quite easily.
My answer says, 'fuck yes, and throw away the key'

What's your answer?

My answer is the same as it's consistently been in this and other threads, when you've asked me. So at the risk of repeating myself ad nauseam:

Politics has to be adequate to capital. You can't partialize it and say that this or that is the consequence of one individual's choices in isolation from a formal framework of historical events, social relations, regimes of domination and material systems. There is a depth and complexity to it that goes far beyond apportioning blame and the politics I prefer goes someway towards fixing the problem.

In a way, your answer is an emotional response--an understandable one--and not unimportant. But I'm wary of anything that oversimplifies things into moral judgements. However if an individual has a legal case to answer(corporate manslaughter, corruption, human-rights abuses etc,.) so be it, but everything beyond that is an ethical consideration. I'm more interested in how you might produce an ethics that in turn might produce a better world.

You keep asking me the same question, but it's one that could easily be reflexively turned back on you. Who are these individuals? How long is the list of the culpable? Thousands, millions, everyone in the West? The consequence of this logic is limitless and could easily fall prey to some sort of negative ideology.

Also, I think you place way too much emphasis on the individual. That is a symptom of our society. You imagine a system with a head that can be snipped off, but for me the system has no head.

Re: bad guys and evil-doers. There's plenty of them. CEOs, bankers, financiers, heads of state, etc. Ranting about how they should all be locked up or shot is utterly juvenile (and not because they shouldn't be the first against the wall). Honestly, I'm not the most mature 29-year-old around, but I'm past engaging in discourse worthy of 16-year-olds with grown men. The relation between political-economy and the law is complex. But to the extent individuals can be held accountable, I'm all for it. I'll leave it at that.

Meanwhile, I'm not advocating some facile "reform or revolution" bullshit. What is missing more than anything else in our reformism (so far as it exists) is a broad, structural account of systems and a longterm vision (however incipient and provisional) to guide our reforms, such that rather than continually retying soft rags around the tip of capital's bayonets, only to see them fall off when the larger blades emerge, our tactics are commensurate with a sustainable anti-capitalist strategy. No easy thing.

There is no necessary dichotomy between reformers and radicals. I know grassroots community, labor, and environmental organizers, legal advocates, public health advocates, social workers, etc, etc, who have dedicated their lives to social struggle via reform. For reforms to stick and matter however - for a sustainable future to emerge - we need, actively to construct a post-capitalist politics (call it socialist or not, I don't care).

Nothing could seem less plausible in the current "social imaginary" of the West; our social imaginary is seriously retarded.

There was a lot of "whither the left" re-assessment in the 90s. Then "Seattle" and the "anti-globalization" stuff emerged (The World Social Forum, etc,); there is still a definite, widespread anti-capitalist current, but the "multitude" stuff seems almost comic-book worthy to me....

We all suffer from a chronic case of Antonio Gramsci's paradox, of living in a time whose old order is dying (and taking civilization with it) while the new one does not seem able to be born.

Rick Reuben wrote:

big_dave wrote:Claiming individual choice at the heart of everything is just wish fulfillment and projection.

Socrates believed that man must make morality his ultimate concern in order to achieve true happiness, and since one's morality is formed through a series of individual choices, it is obvious that the choices one makes are the essence of being. You can extend the template of morality to career or romance or any other relationship one has with his environment, or economy, or culture. It is always choice.

This might have been Dave's lamest effort yet to exempt capitalists from responsibility for capitalism. Adam Smith's 'invisible hand' is an extension of individual choices.

The invisible hand is a metaphor coined by the economist Adam Smith. In The Wealth of Nations and other writings, Smith demonstrated that, in a free market, an individual pursuing his own self-interest tends to also promote the good of his community as a whole through a principle that he called “the invisible hand”.

Keep trolling, Dave.

I'm going to ignore your misappropriation of Socrates and Adam cocksucking Smith, for now.

But you see, that is the opposite of what I'm saying. I agree with Cranius the system is without a head, which only means increased responsibility to be levied upon capitalist individuals within the system by public agency. Paying taxes and public ownership are good ways make people start taking responsibility for their actions, rather than relying on a mystifcation of "free will" and misunderstanding of "individual choice".

Rick Reuben wrote:Go ahead, shitbrain- disconnect the invisible hand of Smith from individual choices. I dare you, troll moron.

A little help

Andrew. wrote:I agree it can be useful to bracket reality and talk about what's practicable within given coordinates

Well, word to that, and also I would argue that the inverse, to unbracket reality, would be hell of ambitious, no?

Cap-and-trade - because it is a "market solution" rather than an actual political-economic intervention - has lateral "externalities" in deforestation, escalating food costs, and further "accumulation by dispossession" in the global south. It imposes an artificial scarcity in one realm, hence the explosion of (unsustainable) capitalist production and exploitation in others.

This constitutes a criticism of the "cap" part, not the "trade" part. What solutions do you suggest short of caps?

Political-economical decision-making is not without contradictions. There's the cases where the relationship between the global (okay, local) commons and social justice are strained: you know, when the Chinese decide to cut back on their coal mines (scroll around a little), it will almost certainly send thousands of workers straight into abject poverty. That's ambiguous.

(Oh, on the topic of commies: I was also a witness to the perverse story of globalism, the pinko variety, through conversation with my (adopted) Angolan brother (though sure enough, Yankee couldn't wait to go to the mat on that one). Me meeting an African guy who had lost his parents and him becoming my brother is a pretty strong personal experience with globalisation at a pretty early age for me.)

Rick Reuben wrote:

big_dave wrote: I agree with Cranius the system is without a head, which only means increased responsibility to be levied upon capitalist individuals within the system by public agency.

Where do the people without heads begin, idiot? You can find people with heads at a certain level, and you can find them and slap taxes on them? Is that right? But don't these people have bosses? And don't their bosses have bosses? Up the pyramid you go, layer on top of layer of capitalists, richer and more powerful the higher you go. Too bad losers like you and Cranius can't see all the way to the top. Your policy of only going after mid-level corporate gangsters for their profits is sweet music to the elites.

This must have been your fiftieth failed attempt to deny the existence and power of elites, troll. I hope you are well paid for this. You must be so in love with your masters, you'll lie straight out about what Socrates and Smith wrote.

Do not make the mistake that I am seriously responding to your sad, lonely old-man bullshit.

I do not have to deny the existence of elites because they haven't been demonstrated yet, by you or by anybody else. There is nothing there to deny, aside from your own denial of your personal life in favour of this adolescent X-Files bullshits.

Did you have a nice day? What did you have for dinner? How is your life going, Bob?

Go ahead, shitbrain- disconnect the invisible hand of Smith from individual choices. I dare you, troll moron.

It is already disconnected. About as much as 1984 and Darkness At Noon are disconnected from NWO conspiracy thoeries.

Unlike how Ron Paul isn't at all disconnected from Globalist Capitalism and blood-for-profit, which has beat a drum for his entire career.

big_dave wrote:Unlike how Ron Paul isn't at all disconnected from Globalist Capitalism and blood-for-profit, which has beat a drum for his entire career.

Out of curiosity, do you have specific examples of 'blood for profit' in his career? Has any politician disconnected from globalist capitalism?

Skronk wrote:

big_dave wrote:Unlike how Ron Paul isn't at all disconnected from Globalist Capitalism and blood-for-profit, which has beat a drum for his entire career.

Out of curiosity, do you have specific examples of 'blood for profit' in his career? Has any politician disconnected from globalist capitalism?

No, but he supports the right of capitalists to exploit people in the name of profit as apparently "free will" and "free markets" will prevent anything bad happening from this.

Let's not have this conversation again. I'm not even sure I want to change your mind, you don't understand your own arguments let alone anything a little more, eh, realistic.

I mean, think about what you're been repeating over and over on this forum before we bring any of this shite up again.

big_dave wrote:Let's not have this conversation again. I'm not even sure I want to change your mind, you don't understand your own arguments let alone anything a little more, eh, realistic.

I mean, think about what you're been repeating over and over on this forum before we bring any of this shite up again.

I know full well what I've been arguing for, I'm not sure you do. You can act as much of a cunt as you want, but if you can't actually respond with a meaningful answer, then why even carry on this 'internets attitude'?