Marx and the Post-Scarcity Economy

After finishing Wolff's book Why Read Marx Today, I find myself questioning some of the conclusions made in the book. Specifically, Wolff (and many others today) claims that communism failed. While it is true that the communist experiments of Eastern Europe fell and Chinese communism is in the process of moving to capitalism, I feel none of these really embody what Marx was speaking of when he talks of communism. Especially, if as Wolff says, he felt that a certain level of abundance was required, I'm not sure we could say any of the 20th century communist experiments attained this level of abundance. What was lacking is what is called in science-fiction/futurism the Post-Scarcity Economy.

What is the Post-Scarcity Economy? Go find an episode of Star Trek (any series, but The Next Generation might be the best example). How do the people on the ship deal with property? Mostly, they don't. In the many of the modern series (TNG, Deep Space Nine, Voyager), technology they call replicators effectively bridge the matter-energy barrier, allowing things to be created out of thin air. Since Star Trek already assumes abundant (meaning, easily available in virtually any quantity) energy, being able to create matter out of energy effectively removes any barrier to owning goods (or food, or clothing, etc.).

But that was the far future, right? Maybe not. Today, there is the MakerBot. There is an internet video linking the MakerBot to the emergent Post-Scarcity Economy, it can be found here. Yes, it's full of internet humor and cultural references, but the point is still there. If 3D printers (and the elements required run it) become as ubiquitous as home computers and printers are now, goods effectively become abundant.

What does this have to do with Marx? Could it be that Marx was more prescient than he knew, but was just off by a few centuries? Star Trek after all presents a world where money is virtually unused, save possibly between cultures. The Federation seems effectively to be a communistic culture per Marx: people do their jobs because they want to, goods are virtually free, and there is little want. (There are episodes pushing the boundaries of this, but I am focusing primarily on the Federation at its best.)

What would Marx do with a MakerBot? Is this the level of abundance that he was looking for? We already see some of the failure of capitalism in non-physical goods (music, videos, books, information) with the internet. Despite the vast amounts of money that traditional media companies have thrown at piracy, it still occurs. Further, there is a growing body of artists, programmers, authors, etc. who have embraced new methods of distribution and sales, many of which are done from a post (information) scarcity position, after all, there is no cost to making another pdf copy of a book, another mp3 of music, etc. If supply never bounds supply, how does supply/demand work? Does it work at all? Is this the collapse of capitalism that Marx foretold?

White, Hayden: Metahistory

(18ff) Contextualists start with an element (large or small) and pick out the relationships of other important elements within its context. Contextualism and Formism are the dominant methods. Organicism and Mechanicist thought tend to be "lasps" or "wandering into Philosophy"
(21) "There does, in fact, appear to be an irreducible ideological component in every historical account of reality."
22ff Explanation of Ideological Implication
(23) Why does no one have a good definition of Fascism yet everyone uses it?
The four political attitudes: Anarchist, Liberal, Conservative, Radical
Conservative - change should be delayed and slow.
Liberal - change is a number of small changes made to attune society
Radical - reconstruct society from the ground up
Anarchist - abolish wider "society" in favor of smaller "communities"
29 ff The problem of Historiographical Styles
Historiographical Styles are combinations of the three elements: emplotment, Mode of Argument, Mode of Ideological Implication. However, not all combinations are possible.
Historians first identify and classify the elements of the historical field. Then attempt to define the relationships between them and offer an explanation based on this.
Tropes provide a way to classify the possible explanation strategies.
31ff The Theory of Tropes
Four Tropes: Metaphor, Metonymy, Synecodoche, and Irony
Metonymy. Synecodoche, and Irony are kinds of Metaphor.
Excellent nuancing of all the tropes
38ff The Phases of Nineteenth Century Historical Consciousness
First was Ironic at the opening.
Pre-Romantics react against this. Eventually end up with a Synecdochic/Organicist view. Three big "schools": Romantic, Idealist, Positivist
Marx attempts to react against this, tending toward a combined Synecdochic and Metonymical strategy.
Nietzsche champions a rebirth of Irony.

White, Hayden. Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 1973.

Initial thoughts on Van Seters' "The Biblical Saga of King David"

Van Seters traces an original story and a later expansion of the story of David's rise to power and reign. The original account he ascribes to the Deuteronomist (Dtr) and places its composition at the end of the monarchy. (Though he argues that even if Dtr is was composed later, it still precedes the other account.) The expansion of the narrative he labels the David Saga (DS). This text, which is effectively 1 Sam 16:14-1 Kings 2 as we have it, takes the original Dtr account of David and radically subverts the themes within it.

Van Seters claims that the Dtr account of David functions as the center of the larger Dtr corpus. The establishment of the iconic king is necessary for Dtr in order to link the traditions of the north/Israel (Moses, the judges, etc.) with the Judahite tradition of David. Thus, David function to unite the kingdom and established an archetype for the ideal king.

In the DS account, the author subverts nearly all of the main parts of Dtr's ideology. David is portrayed as manipulative with a number of key characters in the narrative. Yet at the same time, David is constantly manipulated by Joab, among others. In the end, the very prophet who condemns David in his adultery with Bathsheba manipulates David's choice of heir. David and his family are shown breaking law after law (murder, adultery, incest-rape, theft, etc.) while the Dtr account claims that David was the king par excelance. By the end of the narrative, DS is subverting the very nature of the monarchy (Saul does no better than David, nor Solomon).

Van Seters places the composition of DS in the late Persian era. The court and military portrayed in it match Persian culture. With the end of exile, there would have been many political questions being asked. DS poses the question: Do we really want a monarchy? Van Seters points to Chronicles as the response to DS, in which the monarchy is presented as much more palatable.

Van Seters labels the genre of the account by Dtr as historiography. He calls DS a saga. In the case of Dtr, he claims it was an attempt to de-mythologize the past of Israel-Judah. For DS, the sagas he compares it to are the Icelandic sagas, specifically Njal's Saga. Sagas were used to create serious entertainment from history. Historiographical works were often used as sources. Feast, violence, and feuds are just some of the hallmarks of these sagas. All of these items are found in DS. However, like Njal's Saga, DS uses these ironically to remove the nostalgic veneer from the past.

Engaging White's terminology, I would label the Dtr account of David as a Conservative Romance with a Mechanistic argument: change occurs at YHWH's decree, David emerges victorious and establishes an utopian (or proto-utopian) kingdom.  The DS account is then an Anarchist* Satire with a Formist argument and heavy use of irony: David, the "perfect king," abuses royal and religious power, which is something every king does. The Anarchist designation is a bit arbitrary. DS mostly critiques the Dtr account. DS paints change as the arbitrary outcome from the personal machinations of political actors. As Van Seters has defined it, DS does not present how change should happen nor the society it envisions as ideal. It shows the possibility of abrupt change, but its argument is mostly aimed turning away from a particular vision, rather than presenting its own.

Further Foucault

Working through Foucault, one issue that comes to mind is how many times do you continue the circle of questioning traditions/basis? How low-level do we need to start before we can actually work out what we know?

For example, in biblical studies, the very nature of the discipline is built on a tradition: the text of the Bible. The notion of canon would need to be questioned. Do we go further? If the texts in the canon were written in conversation with other texts, which are now lost, can we even say anything about the texts?

In more general history, does our task get further complicated (or made impossible) the further back we go in time? If we suspect there are further texts available, do we need those before we can claim complete work?

Further, how do Foucault's theories work in the light of complexity/fractal theory? Complexity/fractals would claim that the rules providing us with the infinite complexity can be stated simply. While mathematics (in which I have engaged complexity theory the most, though not recently), the rules/terms of the system are often perhaps more easily stated than perhaps in history or literature, this does not mean that it wouldn't apply to other areas. History in particular lends itself to complexity's infinite (or near infinite) inputs into a system, regardless of how simple the rules of the system might be. Foucault lets (encourages) us render a discourse down into the specifics that we need to see how complex this actually becomes.

White, Hayden: Metahistory

1ff Introduction
Modern historical thought assumes that Western Culture can be shown to be better than those before it and those around it through the use of "history". White intends to explore the historical consciousness of the West, specifically by looking at the artifacts it produced: historical narratives and their form. He will endeavor not to critique the content of the works, but rather see if they draw upon a similar form. To do this, he will need to deduce a sample form from which they can be drawn.
5ff
White gives his terminology. Chronicles give sequences of events. Stories link certain events together to form a consistent narrative. Stories end, chronicles do not. Historians like to claim they "find" their stories in the historical data while novelists "invent" theirs, however this belies the amount of invention in historian's works. Framing, inclusion/exclusion, and narrative flow all alter the perception of events. Historians should attempt to argue for a particular story over and against others which could be drawn from the same data.
7ff
Emplotment is narrating a historical story using the techniques of particular literary frame: Tragedy, Comedy, Romance, and Satire. One of these is used by every history. They form a set of two axes, so a work might draw on a pair of them (Tragedy-Comedy and Romance-Satire). All of these are tools a history might use ti prove her/his point.
11ff
Formal Arguments can be used to make the point a historian is attempting to show through her/his story. These arguments happen through multiple methods: Formist, Organicist, Mechanistic, and Contextualist. All of these, applied to the same data, can generate differing ideas and reasons behind historical events. Formists look for sets of characteristics of events/plots. It shows the uniqueness of elements of history. Organicists depict events of history as "components of synthetic processes." They tend to show how things "grow out of" what came before. Less focused on "Laws" than "Ideals." Mechanistics tend "to be reductive rather than synthetic." They hold that there are causal laws within history. Formists would note that both Organicists and Mechanistics render individual agency out of historical fact. Contextualists want to inhabit a world where ideals/laws/truths are possible but that also does not lose individual agency.


White, Hayden. Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 1973.