The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> Re: Karl Marx meet the North Carolina NAACP

Re: Karl Marx meet the North Carolina NAACP
Posted by Marcello (Guest) - Wednesday, December 4 2013, 18:30:40 (UTC)
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Herbert Marcuse (Markuza) in his 1969 book, "An Essay on Liberation" wrote:

"Not the automobile is repressive, not the television set is repressive, not the household gadgets, but the automobile, the television, the gadgets which, produced with the requirements of the profitable exchange, have become part and parcel of the people's own existence, own "actualization." Thus they have to buy part and parcel of their own existence on the market; this existence is the realization of capital. The naked class interest builds the unsafe and obsolescent automobiles, and through them promotes destructive energy; the class interest employs the media for the advertising of violence and stupidity, for the creation of captive audiences. In doing so, the masters only obey the demand of the public, of the masses; the famous law of supply and demand establishes the harmony between the rulers and the ruled. This harmony is indeed preestablished to the degree to which the masters have created the public which asks for their wares, and asks for them more insistently if it can release, in and through the wares, its frustration and the aggressiveness resulting from this frustration. Self-determination, the autonomy of the individual, asserts itself in the right to race his automobile, to handle his power tools, to buy a gun, to communicate to mass audiences his opinion, no matter how ignorant, how aggressive, it may be. Organized capitalism has sublimated and turned to socially productive use frustration and primary aggressiveness on an unprecedented scale -- unprecedented not in terms of the quality of violence but rather in terms of its capacity to produce lone-range contentment and satisfaction, to reproduce the "voluntary servitude." To be sure, frustration, unhappiness, and sickness remain the basis of of this sublimation, but the productivity and the brute power of the system still keep the basis well under control. The achievements justify the system of domination. The established values become the people's own values; adaptation turns into spontaneity, autonomy; and the choice between social necessities appears as freedom. In this sense, the continuing exploitation is not only hidden behind the technological veil, but actually "transfigured." The capitalist production relations are responsible not only for the servitude and toil but also for the greater happiness and fun available to the majority of the population -- and they deliver more goods than before."


Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones (who befriended Tariq Ali in London and wrote the song "Street Fighting Man" about Tariq) was no dummy, bubble-gum rock star when he wrote "I Can't Get No Satisfaction"... surely he must have read Marcuse.

Marcuse also talks about "A Biological Foundation for Socialism", describing how a second-nature develops within the collective psyche of the masses through introjection by way of subliminal messages on TV, billboards, movies, etc., establishing a want factor disguised as a need, like our need for water, food, sex, survival becomes equivalent with the artificial want for newest gadgets, cars, TV sets, jewelry... and yet, even after the shopping spree, even after the purchase, we're left in a state of needing (wanting) more, because we can never get enough satisfaction:

When I'm drivin' in my car
And that man comes on the radio
He's tellin' me more and more
About some useless information
Supposed to fire my imagination
I can't get no, oh no, no, no
Hey hey hey, that's what I say

I can't get no satisfaction
I can't get no satisfaction
'Cause I try and I try and I try and I try
I can't get no, I can't get no

When I'm watchin' my T.V.
And that man comes on to tell me
How white my shirts can be
But he can't be a man 'cause he doesn't smoke
The same cigarrettes as me
I can't get no, oh no, no, no
Hey hey hey, that's what I say

(excerpt from Stone's "Satisfaction"
written by Jagger/Richards)

As you know corporations hire child psychologists to help them induce the "nag factor" through adverts, cartoons, movies, to drive children to nag at their parents to take them to Walmart or Target to buy this and that for them. And the parents slowly go insane, GREAT!, they have products for them, too: Oxycontin (legal heroin), or Prozac (legal speed), to numb them out and give them enough energy to work, work, work...

We can start by, as you say, tap into this second-nature and understand how this artificial need factor operates and stop buying their products. But through globalization, the same products, like cigarettes, for instance, get sold to 8-year-old kids in Indonesia, or some other Third-World nation who try to emulate the Western film heroes they see in the Hollywood pictures. There are different versions of the same film, so in the US the hero doesn't smoke, but the same film shown in Jakarta, has him smoking Marlboros. In the past, they sent missionaries to bring the word of god, before the armies moved in to secure the resources for the transnationals; these days, the new missionaries are Rap artists, Hollywood stars, and models.



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