Interestingly, this guy's book info online seems very much in line with Marxist thought, but then further surfing shows that he is interested in "Money as debt" and other such things. I hafta say that this content, apparently source material for the propagandizing, err..., educating of our youth is in itself a disturbing state of affairs worth talking about here as well.

Even so, I found this dude's list of "thesis statements" for discussion to be a worthy one, some of them about things on which we here will be in agreement and others which we've already agreed are crap. Anyway, at the bottom, I point to a single one I'd be pleased to see taken up here as it has been a topic 'round my house of late, and a somewhat heated one for some odd reason. I guess I questioned religion or sumpin. (It is however pleasant to find myself presently somewhat entangled with another who is willing to take up matters like these, even to Bring Them Up - no matter that he is, as is the prevailing way, full of bullshit).

Thesis Statements from http://faculty.plattsburgh.edu/richard.robbins/legacy/thesis_statements.html

The following thesis statements are intended to generate thought and discussion. They are purposely provocative, although some more than others; you may agree or disagree with them, although you should be able to offer evidence for your responses.

Chapter One: The Consumer
Thesis Statement 1:

American culture, and Western culture in general, may be characterized as the culture of capitalism, or more specifically consumer capitalism, and American society may be characterized as the society of perpetual growth.
Thesis Statement 2:

The core premise of the culture of consumer capitalism is that commodity consumption is the source of well-being.
Thesis Statement 3:

The central roles in the culture of capitalism are the consumer, the laborer, and the capitalist, each operating according to a set of rules orchestrated and enforced by the nation-state.
Thesis Statement 4:

The culture of capitalism and the society of perpetual growth require for the their maintenance the exploitation of most of the world's resources and peoples.
Thesis Statement 5:

It is central to the successful operation of the culture of capitalism that the consumer be segregated or masked from the consequences of his or her lifestyle on the laborer, on the environment, and on the way of life of those whose degradation makes his or her life possible.


Chapter 2: The Laborer
Thesis Statement 6:

Profit in a capitalist culture comes largely from the capitalist's control of the surplus value of labor.
Thesis Statement 7:

The whole process of capital investment, making a profit, finding the cheapest labor, and so on represents what Karl Marx called commodity fetishism in which the real source of profits and the non-economic consequences of capitalism are largely hidden from view.
Thesis Statement 8:

Racism and sexism are direct consequences of the process of the segmentation of labor, and the requirement in the culture of capitalism to provide a ready source of cheap labor.
Thesis Statement 9:

There is an inherent tendency of laborers to resist the discipline imposed on them by capitalists.
Thesis Statement 10:

As in the creation of the consumer, children are among the main victims in the process of the creation of the laborer.


Chapter 3: The Capitalist

Thesis Statement 11:

In the course of the expansion of the culture of capitalism, there has been a growing concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands, a concentration that is the direct result of the workings of the capitalist economy.

Thesis Statement 12:

In the course of the development of the culture of capitalism, there has been a marked change in the organization of capital and how it is controlled. The result is that only a few organizations control vast wealth and are able to dictate the nature of social, political, economic, and cultural life.

Thesis Statement 13:

One of the dominant historical trends has been the growing integration of the global economy, to the extent that anything that happens in one area of the world has repercussions in all others.

Thesis Statement 14:

In the process of providing financial support to stricken economies, the IMF is essentially reducing the risks of international financial investors, while, at the same time, transferring the suffering to ordinary citizens of stricken countries.

Thesis Statement 15:

Democracy, as a system of government, has been largely superseded by the operation of the global economy; the principle of one person, one vote, has largely been replaced by a system where people vote with their dollars.


Chapter 4: The Nation-State
Thesis Statement 16:

The most important function of the nation-state in the culture of capitalism is the regulation of trade and commerce within and without its borders, and to provide for the orderly production, distribution, and sale of commodities.
Thesis Statement 17:

In order to provide the economic integration required for the smooth functioning of the economy, the modern state must convince its populace that they share a common culture or destiny. This is accomplished largely through the state control of mandatory education.
Thesis Statement 18:

Those individuals and groups that call into question the myth of the nation-state or who refuse to be assimilated into it are generally subject to extermination; or as Pierre L. van den Berghe said, "The terror and horror of mass genocidal killing are not aberrations of the modern state; they are in the very nature of it. We live in an era of routinized holocausts."
Thesis Statement 19:

The nation-state will soon be replaced by new institutions, the most important being the transnational corporation.
Thesis Statement 20:

The growth in importance of the non-governmental organization (NGO), or the non-profit sector, is largely the result of the withdrawal of the state from the provision of services (health, education, welfare, etc.) that it had, traditionally, provided.


Chapter 5 Population
Thesis Statement 21:

"Short of nuclear war itself, population growth is the gravest issue the world faces. If we do not act, the problem will be solved by famine, riots, insurrection and war." -Robert McNamara, Former President of the World Bank
Thesis Statement 22:

Most of the problems faced by countries in the periphery, such as poverty, hunger, and environmental destruction, are the consequences of excessive population growth.
Thesis Statement 23:

The specter of population growth is a device used in the culture of capitalism to shift the blame for global problems to their victims, and to obscure the real cause, perpetual and uneven economic growth.
Thesis Statement 24:

Family structure and the status of women in society are the prime determinants of fertility and population growth.


Chapter 6: Poverty and Hunger
Thesis Statement 25:

Since food in the culture of capitalism is simply one of hundreds of thousands of commodities, hunger is largely a matter of people not having enough money to purchase it.
Thesis Statement 26:

The evolution of agriculture in the culture of capitalism is characterized by the steadily increasing concentration of agricultural wealth (land and factors of production), and the growing dependency of the many on the few.
Thesis Statement 27:

Programs of so-called "food aid" (e.g. Food for Peace or Public Law 480) are simply ways that the state funnels tax dollars to agribusiness, increases the influence of food aid organizations, and promotes the ruin of small, local food growers.
Thesis Statement 28:

The fact that people are starving to death because they haven't the money to buy food is obscured by calling starvation "malnutrition," and treating it as a medical problem.
Thesis Statement 29:

The major solution to hunger is by building entitlements and focusing on the economic well-being of women.


Chapter 7: Consumption and the Environment
Thesis Statement 30:

There exists a global environmental crisis, and consumption or consumerism (overdevelopment and the culture of capitalism) is the major, if not the only, cause.

Thesis Statement 31:

Our consumption needs, and even our eating habits, are formed largely to fill the needs of economic expansion and maintain the society of perpetual growth.

Thesis Statement 32:

It is not only impossible to sustain the culture of capitalism at its present rate of consumption, but the expansion of that culture and its consumption habits to other areas of the globe will vastly accelerate environmental collapse.

Thesis Statement 33:

Given the nature of the culture of capitalism, it is impossible to halt the destruction of the environment.




Chapter 8: Disease
Thesis Statement 34:

Every culture or age has its characteristic illness and disease; for the culture of capitalism, characteristic diseases are those linked to poverty, hunger, and environmental devastation, and the increasing disparity in wealth between the rich and the poor.

Thesis Statement 35:

From a microbial perspective, the culture of capitalism has created the ideal environment for the development and spread of infectious disease.

Thesis Statement 36:

AIDS, above all illnesses, is the signature disease of the culture of capitalism.

Thesis Statement 37:

It is likely that within the next two decades, the world will experience a plague not unlike those that swept Europe in the fourteenth century, and, perhaps, not unlike that which stuck the New World at the time of European contact.




Chapter 9: Indigenous People and Ethnic Conflict

Thesis Statement 38:

The cultures of indigenous peoples are vulnerable to destruction from capitalist expansion partially because their way of life differs so significantly from that in the culture of capitalism.

Thesis Statement 39:

A careful examination of the conditions of indigenous peoples before and after their incorporation into the world market economy,

leads to the conclusion that their standard of living is lowered, not raised, by economic progress--and often to a dramatic decline. This is perhaps the most outstanding and inescapable fact to emerge from the years of research that anthropologists have devoted to the study of culture change and modernization. (Emphasis added) John Bodley

Thesis Statement40:

If, instead of needy dependents living largely outmoded ways of life, we appreciate the resemblance between indigenous societies and a modern, socially responsible corporation that carefully manages its resources, provides well for its workers, and plans for the long-term rather than the short term, we are better able to appreciate why indigenous societies can't survive.

Thesis Statement 41:

If we examine cases of purported "ethnic conflict" we generally find that it involves more than "ancient hatred;" even the "hatreds" we find are relatively recent, and constructed by those ethnic entrepreneurs taking political advantage of situations rooted in colonial domination and fed by neo-colonial exploitation.

Thesis Statement 42:

There are few nation-states in which one group or another is not striving for greater representation, and few states which are not, in one way or another, answering those demands with force or the threat of force.


Chapter 10: Peasant Protest
Thesis Statement 43:

Capitalism is revolutionary in the sense that to foster perpetual growth, it must constantly revolutionize the factors of production, promote ever increasing consumption, and , consequently, regularly modify patterns of social, political, and economic relations.

Thesis Statement 44:

In the development of the culture of capitalism, there have been winners and there have been losers. Among the biggest losers are peasant or small-scale agriculturists, and, along with them, those dependent on wage labor, most women, most children, along with other groups who have been deprived of steady and viable employment.

Thesis Statement 45:

The goal of most peasant resistance is not necessarily to overthrow a system of oppression or domination, but, rather, to survive. The usual goal of peasants is "working the system to their minimum disadvantage." James Scott

Thesis Statement 46:

Colonial oppressors are apt not to recognize the suffering their oppression causes, and generally see protest as the illegitimate actions of a few.

Thesis Statement 47:

Given the structure of the modern economy, peasant or small-scale agriculture cannot survive.


Chapter 11: Antisystemic Protest

Thesis Statement 48:

The various forms of social protest such as workers organizations and strikes, national liberation, civil rights, feminist, militia, environmental, and fundamentalist religious movements can all be understood as reactions to the expansion of the culture of capitalism.

Thesis Statement 49:

Virtually all social protest may be seen as emerging from the two world revolutions, the one in 1848 and the one in 1968.

Thesis Statement 50:

Labor protest tends to emerge in industries that are marginally profitable, and that try to squeeze a profit by minimizing wages and scrimping on any safety measures that require capital expense.

Thesis Statement 51:

The subjugation of women is rooted in the patterns of economic exploitation endemic to the culture of capitalism.

Thesis Statement 52:

Contrary to Garrett Hardin's thesis of "the tragedy of the commons," communally held land, especially in the periphery, tends to be better preserved and regulated than privately owned resources.


Chapter 12: Religious Protest
Thesis Statement 53:

Religious antisystemic movements seek either the removal or destruction of what they believe is an immoral culture, a withdrawal from it, or the forceful or voluntary adoption of people of a new way of life.

Thesis Statement 54:

Indigenous religious movements, such as the Zionist movement among the Tshidi in South Africa, serve as a refuge and emblem for those who are marginalized by the expansion of capitalist culture

Thesis Statement 55:

The cultures represented by large-scale fundamentalist religious movements remain the only legitimate challengers to the global domination of capitalist culture.

Thesis Statement 56:

Protestant fundamentalism in Latin America is largely a conservative reaction to the emergence of Liberation Theology, and its critique of the culture of capitalism.


Chapter 13: Futuristic Projections

Thesis Statement 57:

The future of capitalism must be marked by the continuing concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, and the growing impoverishment of the many.

Thesis Statement 58:

Since the culture of capitalism must continually destroy the environment, expand economic hardship, and create continual conflict and resistence, it must inevitably collapse and be replaced by either a socialist world government or highly localized, independent, and self-sufficient cultures.
http://faculty.plattsburgh.edu/richard.robbins/legacy/thesis_statements.html

I'd like to start, tipping our hats to fetishism, with Statement # 43, please. It seems that the prevailing notion on the what the motive engine of capitalism is, at least insofar as I've heard in a recent discussion with an interested party, is the "want" of the consumer. This seems to fit nicely with the notion of marginal utility, something my discussant knows no more about than any other economic motion. So after our chat last night, I was reading a(rather bad, campy) novel, and there it was again: "As any MBA student will tell you, the customer's ability to choose the best quality goods and services is the cornerstone of our free enterprise system." Here it was, entirely too late for me to be having an outburst, and I could not help but laughing loudly at the re-emergence of this idea as concrete-hard conventional wisdom in a book about nothing of the sort, and only an hour or two after having this same thing thrown at me in conversation by someone who says we should "think for ourselves" and be willing to question whether "green is green" and to "not take everything from the past and make it our own." As I was so often inclined to say while working the last coupla of months on a military base and was confronted by the absurdity of things like $600 bedspreads, Whisky.Tango.Foxtrot. ?!?!?!

Nope, I cannot but call bullshit. This notion of demand as driver is only the myopic view of the fetishist, no matter that he is one of billions so blurred and confused.

=http://media.gamerevolution.com/images/misc/Image/eye_crazy.jpg

http://www.montaraventures.com/pix/petrock.jpg

I rest my case.

Well, OK, I have to admit that capitalism does goad technical innovation, but it is subordinate to the search for profits. Great, useful things may be invented but not be provided to the populace because it is not profitable to do so just as useless crap will be distributed because it is profitable. And even great useful things can be massively mis-used in the hunt for profits, antibiotics being a prime example.

is the ultimate mistatement. The land referred to was not held in common but by individual farmers and the very idea of a tragedy (from the Greeks) is that it could have been prevented "if only..". Of course the concept of the "tragedy of the commons" is presented precisely in the reverse as an inexorable movement in the development of human history.

Not saying that you are wrong about that, just that I am not certain you are right - "capitalism does goad technical innovation."

It was this that I was unable to successfully make an argument for in my exchange yesterday. Consider this oft-quoted passage from the Manifesto:

The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the brutal display of vigor in the Middle Ages, which reactionaries so much admire, found its fitting complement in the most slothful indolence. It has been the first to show what man's activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former exoduses of nations and crusades.

The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real condition of life and his relations with his kind.

The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.

The bourgeoisie has, through its exploitation of the world market, given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of reactionaries, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilized nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature.

The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilization. The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it forces the barbarians' intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilization into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.

In the anarchy that reigns in place of planned production, the capitalist is compelled to compete to maintain and extend his position. This is only able to be accomplished via technical revolution.

Marx made this clear early on, in fact before the Manifesto:

We thus see how the method of production and the means of production are constantly enlarged, revolutionized, how division of labor necessarily draws after it greater division of labor, the employment of machinery greater employment of machinery, work upon a large scale work upon a still greater scale. This is the law that continually throws capitalist production out of its old ruts and compels capital to strain ever more the productive forces of labor for the very reason that it has already strained them – the law that grants it no respite, and constantly shouts in its ear: March! march! This is no other law than that which, within the periodical fluctuations of commerce, necessarily adjusts the price of a commodity to its cost of production.

No matter how powerful the means of production which a capitalist may bring into the field, competition will make their adoption general; and from the moment that they have been generally adopted, the sole result of the greater productiveness of his capital will be that he must furnish at the same price, 10, 20, 100 times as much as before. But since he must find a market for, perhaps, 1,000 times as much, in order to outweigh the lower selling price by the greater quantity of the sale; since now a more extensive sale is necessary not only to gain a greater profit, but also in order to replace the cost of production (the instrument of production itself grows always more costly, as we have seen), and since this more extensive sale has become a question of life and death not only for him, but also for his rivals, the old struggle must begin again, and it is all the more violent the more powerful the means of production already invented are. The division of labor and the application of machinery will therefore take a fresh start, and upon an even greater scale.

Whatever be the power of the means of production which are employed, competition seeks to rob capital of the golden fruits of this power by reducing the price of commodities to the cost of production; in the same measure in which production is cheapened - i.e., in the same measure in which more can be produced with the same amount of labor – it compels by a law which is irresistible a still greater cheapening of production, the sale of ever greater masses of product for smaller prices. Thus the capitalist will have gained nothing more by his efforts than the obligation to furnish a greater product in the same labor-time; in a word, more difficult conditions for the profitable employment of his capital. While competition, therefore, constantly pursues him with its law of the cost of production and turns against himself every weapon that he forges against his rivals, the capitalist continually seeks to get the best of competition by restlessly introducing further subdivision of labor and new machines, which, though more expensive, enable him to produce more cheaply, instead of waiting until the new machines shall have been rendered obsolete by competition.

If we now conceive this feverish agitation as it operates in the market of the whole world, we shall be in a position to comprehend how the growth, accumulation, and concentration of capital bring in their train an ever more detailed subdivision of labor, an ever greater improvement of old machines, and a constant application of new machine – a process which goes on uninterruptedly, with feverish haste, and upon an ever more gigantic scale.
http://boston.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labour/ch09.htm

That doesn't address what I am uncertain about, unless I am missing something.

BP said "capitalism goads technical innovation." I am not convinced of that. It might work more the other way around - "technical innovation goads capitalism."

but it wasn't until capitalism came along - with its attendant REQUISITE need for constant growth - that revolution of production became a normal event.

Today in normal conversation, folks take it for granted that one day 'they' will come up with (fill in the blank) whereas for centuries life remained largely unchanged in terms of the daily technological reality of average people.

I think both of the passages I pasted above directly answer your comment and that, yes, you must be missing something.

Mike is right

You substituted "revolutionizing production" for "technological innovation". The first quote discusses how every leader of industry is only fleeting and capitalism is a civilizing force (which is both true and not true as it turns out)

The second quote explains how the logic of production forces revolutions in production -- but these are not exclusively technological, although they are always technical. There is one certain counter-example to it being solely technological (ie instruments of production) and that is the ever narrower subdivision of labor which Marx took great pains to detail here and elsewhere.

But its in no way an exclusively technological question. I'm not weighing in on the question, but I don't think the snide remark at the end was necessary and I don't think the case is proved without a deeper probing.

Its really not a tenet of faith, either we can demonstrate its true or we can't

I'm not saying it was right (though I believe it was)... just that we talked about it. This is me on the subject from 2005:


The first textile manufactories in 15th Century Holland are simple long-sheds. The machinery is nothing other than domestic spinning wheels, relocated from domestic use and operated, initially, by their owners. A portion of their production accrues to the owner of the sheds who also buys the raw material and sells the result (and thus commands "capital"). The first advantage in productivity is the simple concentration of furnish and removal of finished product. Very quickly, this is supplemented by hired labor, both overseers and unskilled laborers, who allow the more efficient organization of production and a more advanced division of labor (the skilled labor of the spinner is broken down, methodically, into skilled and unskilled components). What comes next is obvious. Domestic spinning wheels are replaced by wheels of a type that are more suited in scale and characteristics to this organized production, even as they pass in ownership to the owner of the "enterprise" (and thus become a part of his capital). The spinners now become paid labor, initially as piece workers and later as day laborers.

At this point we have all of the components of modern production but without industry. No "technology" has yet been applied (even in the sense that you have used it). That comes next. Neither the mechanical means nor the "ideas" are "discovered". The initial examples of both have lain dormant for 2000 years. That Greek curiosity, the steam engine, which has also sat on the writing tables of medieval monks as nothing more than an object of conversation, suddenly becomes the motive force of this new production. So too, the mechanics of Archimedes, the geared "machines" of the Athenians, and the primitive "science" of Aristotle. Technology and science are pulled from the ends of the long-sheds much in the same way as thread and cloth are. Eventually new theories and technologies will be born, most often (initially) from the studies of the owners (from Newton to Ricardo) of this capital themselves.

But something else has also occurred in the process described above. The domestic spinners spun because the cloth and thread were useful to them. If any of that production was surplus and sold, it was incidental to the original act of production. Not anymore...

The usefulness of the thread and cloth produced is the precondition but no longer the object of the new type of production. The new form produces all that it creates for the purpose of sale, i.e. it is the purpose of this new form to produce commodities. Even this is not enough without more: that sale is predicated exclusively on the creation of a surplus or the augmentation of capital.

At this early stage in the development of industry, the elements of that surplus are also equally obvious. The original surplus accruing to the owner of the sheds came in the form of rent and on interest on the working capital which provided the furnish. With the transformation of the labor employed, the surplus primarily accrues in the form of profit. The surplus comes from the difference between the cost of labor and what labor produces and this simply increases with each act that increases the productivity or efficiency of that labor without increasing its cost.

Now, the production of thread and cloth, and their usefulness, etc. are long forgotten. The process may produce more cloth, or it may produce less cloth or it may stop producing cloth altogether, but it must create more profit. Nothing more is implied.

Efficiency and productivity as well as "economic activity" refer exclusively to the augmentation of capital and nothing else... So too, "technology".

http://www.progressiveindependent.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=224&topic_id=38009&mesg_id=38025

that gem is from before I started visiting this site.

in intent nor in substance "snide" about agreeing that TA may have missed something. Perhaps you're just on a roll after your own evisceration of another member here lately.

And, btw, "revolutionizing production" = "technical innovation."

No "substitution" required.

it clearly can't be that the two phrases mean exactly the same thing or else we could simply dispense with the term "technology". How are you distinguishing technical and technological?

Tell me how technology isn't simply another variant of fetishism in the context you've used it in.

I'll just toss out the last line; it may be an enticement for TA. And if so, he will find a discussion on the matter of technological revolution in capitalist production.

Capitalist production, therefore, develops technology, and the combining together of various processes into a social whole, only by sapping the original sources of all wealth-the soil and the labourer.

Natch, contradictions abound.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FM8ui2ByUI

I was thinking that night about Elvis
Day that he died, day that he died
I was thinking that night about Elvis
Day that he died, day that he died
Just a country boy that combed his hair
And put on a shirt his mother made and went on the air
And he shook it like a chorus girl
And he shook it like a Harlem queen
He shook it like a midnight rambler,
baby,
Like you never seen

I was thinking that night about Elvis
Day that he died, day that he died
I was thinking that night about Elvis
Day that he died, day that he died
How he took it all out of black and white
Grabbed his wand in the other hand and he held on tight
And he shook it like a hurricane
He shook it like to make it break
And he shook it like a holy roller, baby
With his soul at stake

I was thinking that night about Elvis
Day that he died, day that he died
I was thinking that night about Elvis
Day that he died, day that he died
He was all alone in a long decline
Thinking how happy John Henry was that he fell down and died
When he shook it and he rang like silver
He shook it and he shine like gold
He shook it and he beat that steam drill, baby
Well bless my soul

He shook it and he beat that steam drill, baby
Well bless my soul, what's wrong with me?

I was thinking that night about Elvis
Day that he died, day that he died
I was thinking that night about Elvis
Day that he died, day that he died
Just a country boy that combed his hair
Put on a shirt his mother made and he went on the air
And he shook it like a chorus girl
He shook it like a Harlem queen
He shook it like a midnight rambler, baby
Like he never seen

We are mixing several things together here. "In terms of the daily technological reality of average people" is different than "technological innovation."

Anax says below, quoting himself from a couple of years ago, that the steam engine, gears, etc, were sitting around as curiosities gathering dust. The "technological innovation" was already there, albeit gathering dust. Also, lots of technological innovation in modern times has been publicly funded, etc., without a direct connection to Capitalism.

What I am uncertain about is this (if this is what BP was saying) - that without Capitalism there would be no or little technological innovation or "progress." I am not saying that it isn't true, just that I am uncertain that it is true.

The printing press and movable type - technological innovation? Goaded by Capitalism? The sound post in instruments from the violin family. Technological innovation, no? Not goaded by Capitalism, I don't think. That idea didn't sit around gathering dust, either, and it soon became a part of the daily technological reality of average people all over the place.

Isn't there a danger in saying "Capitalism is bad, but at least it gave us technological innovation and progress, and now we have anti-biotics." I am saying I am not certain that Capitalism is the only imaginable path to get to anti-biotics, nor to get anti-biotics to everyday people.

"Technological innovation" is the same as "revolutionized production?" If so, then I don't have any disagreement with what BP said.

They seem like different things to me. As anaxarchos said the gears and the steam engines were sitting around gathering dust - technology that had already been innovated before production had been revolutionized.

I know we have been over this before.

Here is where I stumble:

[div class="excerpt"]No "technology" has yet been applied (even in the sense that you have used it). That comes next. Neither the mechanical means nor the "ideas" are "discovered". The initial examples of both have lain dormant for 2000 years.[/quote]

Everything before that and after that I am clear on.

"Technological innovation" means new ways or methods (innovation) to apply science or engineering to commerce or industry (technology.) Maybe "technological innovation" and "revolutionized production" are the same thing for all practical purposes in this context.

It has been very good. also, i hate that picture in Pinko's OP - it really creeps me out. just sayin'...

Thanks anax.

...prior to the technical revolution associated with Capitalism. It is competition which drives the application of technology and, with it, the increased productiveness of labor. At first, the actual tools are the same as had been used for a thousand years. Capitalism becomes fully formed with Medieval implements. It is the outsizing of the machinery in search of efficiency which replaces spinning wheels with forests of spindles and ever larger looms. With that super-sizing, human power is replaced by draft animals or water wheels. The simple mill becomes the motive force of the textile shed. Eventually, the restrictions imposed by hydro-power are overcome with the self powered wheel: the steam engine. That fundamental basis of the industrial revolution was known but unutilized for 1500 years. The Greeks considered it a toy, though they very well also understood its practical application. The social conditions (and the social classes which would have allowed its "proper" application) simply did not exist.

Thus it was with many ancient inventions. Certainly, they were employed when some large collective task came up, but those were few and far between. It took the arrival of those new social conditions to focus intense interest in the application of both dormant devices and the method which created them, and this not just in Holland but in Italy (the Renaissance) and Central Europe and the Rhine Valley - wherever early Capitalism took hold.

By the way, the illusion of the opposite - of technological innovation driving society rather than the other way around - that is a common form of "fetishism", to use a timely word.

http://www.dkimages.com/discover/DKIMAGES/Discover/previews/842/55019972.JPG
Hero's (or Heron's) Steam engine from 70 A.D.

http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/HeronAlexandria-Dateien/HeronSteamEngine1.jpg
Medieval drawing of Heron's engine

http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/HeronAlexandria-Dateien/BiancaSteamEngine.jpg
Giovani Bianca Steam Engine from 1629

... just as art does. Capitalism's unique contribution is not only that it accelerates technical innovation but "channels" it, and the last in an upside down way. It is only in the era of Capitalism that human beings appear to be enslaved by the machine. Of course that is nonsense. The enslavement comes only from Capital that has momentarily taken the form of the machine.

Technical innovation comes from need. Products of human hands and minds satisfy such needs. The Ottoman's were the first "technical empire", but they achieved this without once feeling burdened by their matchlocks or cannon.

The Greeks invented stuff to satisfy needs as well. The steam engine was not an accident. It simply wasn't fulfilling a need substantial enough to warrant single-minded development. This is what Hero intended for his:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5f/Heron%27s_Windwheel.jpg/601px-Heron%27s_Windwheel.jpg

The steam engine was apparently designed to provide more reliable power to his wind driven organ.

On a more practical basis, it was probably also designed to power his piston pump (often called his "fire engine"). Though the pump was widely used by the Romans, it apparently did not require up-scaling to a size sufficient to justify steam power (and thus the survival of his gadget as a "toy"):

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/09/Heron2.jpg/666px-Heron2.jpg

Innovation is at aminimum the necessary condition for any one capitalist's survival, if not genuine revolution.

This is not fetishism, it is the very condition - both the literal and figurative engine (i.e. motive force) of capitalist production/development. It is both the source of the capitalist's response to com.petition and his ultimate capitulation before it.

Are there other questions in the OP's list we may want to discuss?

except the picture stuff...

Really helpful thread...

taking place in different conditions/times. It would seem to me that the historical examples Anaxarchos made bear that perception out.

I understand now. Revolution in production and technological innovation are the same thing in this context.

Apologists for Capitalism like to say that it has unleashed creativity and given us lots of good things, so we don't want to get rid of it, but just regulate away the rough edges.

The thinking: Capitalism is good, because it gives people a profit motive (presumed to be universal and the only motive worthy of consideration) so they will then go out and invent useful and beneficial things (which would not happen without Capitalism.) Without Capitalism we would have to give up everything that is good and go back to living short, miserable, brutish, and ignorant lives.

"Hey it might not be perfect, but it is better than anything else that has been tried! Look at all of the progress and how much better life is! You may want to live in a mud hovel and eat grub worms, and please be my guest, but most people don't."