Pill Pod 119 - Stiegler and Posthumanist Post-Marxism (ft. Diego Ruzzarin)
Added 2023-04-14 15:01:00 +0000 UTCDiego's back is back and so are we to have a look at why Stiegler believes that the class war is over, the techno/grammatological pharmakon is in and proletarianization has been total. We looked at the first half of "A New Critique of Political Economy", which was suggested to us by a patron (thank you). Find Diego's work (mostly esp) on the internet (he's easy to find).
Comments
Great episode- re the question of mass consumption (ie consumption by Amazon workers rather than Jeff Bezos, the "proletarian" consumer) I think the market is oriented in such a way that too much consumption by too many people will drive "inflation" (spending more money than the productive capacity can create.) The capitalist economy, as such, has more "stability" if only a relatively small number of people (with a vast purchasing power) consume- rather than many people consuming smaller amounts. An individual "proletarian" consumer can more readily orient their consumption toward existing productive capacity than the "mass." In other words, Jeff Bezos is the new "proletarian" and the existing proletariat becomes the lumpenproletariat (an undisciplined mass that can be bought off and manipulated, but that is no longer capable of the "historic task" of overcoming capitalism.)
Isaac Suárez
2023-04-23 04:15:41 +0000 UTCThe consumer as proletariat seems a bit dated. Consumption may have been the motor, but waste management feels more the the driving force now. And the proletariat seems more the class that capitalism exploits value from in their expungement, in their desperation, in their waste. The junkie, the mad, the homeless, the imprisoned, and the horde of roofers and factory workers that social media would paint as no longer existing under this mass of the anarchy of consumption class. The waste is a source of value creation. Waste management, sustainability control systems, and Bataille feel more prescient than the priority of consumption over waste. Waste management is the motor of mafia capitalism. The flood of consumers is just how they clean their money.
Zack Klug
2023-04-19 12:53:42 +0000 UTC
