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.

Reactions to Foucault

Foucault makes the point that discourse is not the translation of an idea into language. Rather, language is involved in the formation of an idea even before it is committed to some form of interpersonal communication. Language will therefore shape the thoughts we have them even before we attempt to speak them. Since language is inherently structured, what is produced with language will be structured. This structure within discourse in turn creates the structures and systems we might call "academic fields," even those these fields might contain drastically contradictory theories.

Within Biblical Studies, we can see this happening. Modern biblical scholarship ranges from scholars who assert the "inerrant fact" of Scripture and those that assert that Scripture is an anthology of fictional narratives. The analysis both of these methods produces varies wildly, and yet both fall under the aegis of "Biblical Studies." They are studying the same core text, but do so in radically different ways and with different tools. They would not need to be considered the same field. A chemist and a physicist can both study elemental hydrogen, but would do so with different goals in mind. They also would not be considered the same academic discipline.

The minimalist and the maximalist both contribute to biblical studies. Both attempt to find the "truth" which is believed to be found within the text of sacred writings. This truth varies for each of them. It could be what the ancients believed a text to mean, what the text can mean today, what historical reality can we find from the text, how the text points to doctrinal statements made/held today, etc. This web around Scripture and "truth," with varying definitions of all of the included terms, can be held to be "Biblical Studies."

Foucault, Michel - The Archaeology of Knowledge: Part II

9/12/12
Part II The Discursive Regularities
Ch 1 The Unities of Discourse
(21f) We must rid ourselves of the notions over-arching systems which tie events, people, and ideas together: tradition, "spirit", influence, and evolution/progress. We must at least question them. Further, we must question/discard divisions of disciplines: politics, religion, literature, etc. The unity of works themselves becomes problematic, since texts pull from any number of previous sources. We must also be willing to allow events to occur without (knowable) causation.
(25f) Not all of these needs be rejected out of hand. Rather, must be questioned and their assumed nature challenged. Must start with a group of descriptions of discursive events and build out of it any such structure that might be within it. Even with all the questioning and discarding above, we may end up with a very similar set of unities built out of our set.
Must be willing to disregard preconceived ideas of how things are related. In biblical studies, perhaps we need to question the unity of the books themselves along with the traditions which hold them together. We might even push further and question the existence of the traditions themselves. Thus, to claim a "priestly" source, we would need to examine the evidence of a priestly caste and look for its presence. This could be done purely textually, but we would need to establish the nature of the texts themselves. We often assume a priesthood which performed acts at holy sites, but what evidence that it was unified (as presented in the Torah) is there?
Ch 2 Discursive Formations
(31f) Two questions arise: what are these "statements" (which he will deal with later) and what is the nature of the relationships between two (or more) statements? Are these relationships completely socially constructed or are they something which was formally set down in the past, evolving into their present status?
(32f) First hypothesis: statements are related if they are about the same thing. However, this ends up too narrow, or with so broadly defined an "object" as to be useless.
(33f) Second hypothesis: connect statements based upon form and kind. This one breaks down because style is constantly changing; the nuances of making statements and tools used to do so constantly change, making forging a unity out of them difficult.
(34f) Third hypothesis: base the relations on definitions. The problem here is that definitions are adapted, discarded, and created as a field progresses.
(35f) Fourth hypothesis: identify persistent themes between statements. This leads to multiple kinds of discourse on the same theme: a discourse based on unity to and one based on disjunction from. Rather than work with themes, one might work with possibilities over persistence.
(37f) None of these hypotheses are sufficient to describe disciplines enough to project a history of them. Rather, are going to look for a "system of dispersion" among elements in a group, calling this a "discursive formation". This approach does not promise to provide us with the clean unities we are holding in abeyance.
Here we will have to disregard the Bible as we have it, along with the "Traditional" understanding of methodology. We might be able to define the text by showing a history of what is included (in a particular book, in a particular canon, etc.). What would need follow would be a construction of a system of study, followed by application.
Ch 3 The Formation of Objects
(40f) Looking at the objects which fall into an (admittedly arbitrary) system of distribution, can we find similarities between them? He explores psychopathology beginning in the 19th century as an example. In the example, psychopathology is not defined by a group of objects in a clear dispersion, but rather from disparate objects which have been linked together to create a system. The objects exist under a complex system of connections. These relationships are extrinsic to the objects themselves. Further, there are kinds of relations: primary (clearly evident ones), secondary (ones which are produced in talking about the primary ones) and discursive ones (as yet undefined but dealing with the links between primary and secondary). Discursive relations exist at the boundaries: they define the areas in which the discourse is to take place.
(46f) Returning to the idea of disciplines, are they simply linked attempts of discourse? Rather, they are bound by a set of rules. This leaves us discussing not objects themselves, but analyzing them based on rules and the evolution of those rules through time. Definitions of specific objects are beyond the scope of historical discussion, to some extent. One can state what a term means, but not if that was accurate. (?)
What do we do here with regards biblical studies? Do we avoid debates on what a "priest" is (or should be) and rather attempt to present how they were described? Is this not particularly helpful? What "rules" would be extant for biblicists?
Ch 4 The Formation of Enuciative Modalities
(50f)
09/24/12
What is a physician and why are they allowed to make such statements as they are? These statements are built from 1) the social construct of what the title "Doctor" confers on the speaker, 2) the location(s) in which they are made, 3) The position within the wider range of the medical field (specialty, sub-specialty, plotical/social rank, etc.)
The act of discourse does not involve encoding an existing thought into language. Rather, language itself is required for the thought. Thoughts are discursive even when they are still in our head..
Ch 5 The Formation of Concepts
(56f) Knowledge structures (fields) are not built stone-by-stone as a building is. There is construction going on, but it is far more fluid than material building is. 1) Knowledge statements are successive (That is A leads to B, for varying definitions of the phrase "leads to") 2) statements coexist within a field (differing theories to the same problem), between fields (physics can impact biology), and in memory (old, discarded ideas still hold influence) 3) Fields have methods of interacting with their statements.
All of these parts are going on simultaneously and also form knowledge statements within the field themselves that can be shared between fields. They also shape the work that is (and can) be done within a particular field.
You do not state pre-extant "facts" through discourse, but rather discourse is producing a description of the relationships between elements within a field based on the realities of the field.
The structures of a field were not consciously constructed by a group/individual. Rather, they emerged over time from the relationships between discourses. Concepts are not formed from some concept of Platonic Forms nor through empirically finding ideas.

Ch 6. The Formation of Strategies
(64f) Strategies (themes/theories) within a field - do these emerge out of necessity? randomness? Is there an underlying structure to how theory is developed? How can we tell? 1) Identify where 2 (or more) ideas which coexist in some fashion are mutually exclusive, but one can present how these options arose in parallel, despite the positions themselves being mutually exclusive 2) Some possibilities are not realized -> explore the why of this 3) the function of a field of study is determined to soem degree by non-academic endeavors (capitalism drives the study of economics)
Can show a field extant if one can describe how its various strategies and discourses arose, even if those elements have some level of antagonism to one another.

Ch 7 Remarks and Consequences
(71f) How helpful is this current analysis over against other forms of defining field? - answered later in the book
Can we speak of unities (given this established method of defining them)?
1) Fields are not just discrete elements of knowledge, but also the relationships between them
2) The systems of a field (and discourse in general) arise from discourse itself. They are not imposed upon it from outside by participants nor are they pre-ordained (divine) structures which are necessary. Thus, systems are organic and complex, altering over time.
3) These systems are not the final part of the field. They are not the produced texts. They are where analysis occurs
"Discourse and system produce each other - and conjointly - only at the crest of this immense reserve" [of development and analysis].


Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge. Harper Colophon Books: New York, NY, 1972.