Capital and Nature

[blindpig]

wolfgang von skeptik
05-04-2007, 11:25 PM

A radical sociologist or perhaps social critic of the late 1950s -- don't remember whom save that he was someone who managed to survive the McCarthy purges without being a rat or a collaborator -- observed rather pointedly that the true U.S. religion was "moneytheism."

If I understand correctly what Marx is saying (and I'm not entirely sure I do -- it's been a very long, very hard day), a more apt description by the aforementioned sociologist/critic would have been to assert that the entire capitalist world -- ruling class and working class alike (but especially the working class as this misconceoption is the source of much of our self-victimization) -- is afflicted not by "moneytheism" but rather by "commoditytheism" -- the deification not only of commodities per se but of the entire notion of "market forces" aka "god's will."

(Which, I should note, could easily deteriorate into "commodetheism" -- the deification of flush toilets, as will surely happen after the apocalypse.)

[blindpig]

PPLE
05-05-2007, 11:37 PM

A radical sociologist or perhaps social critic of the late 1950s -- don't remember whom save that he was someone who managed to survive the McCarthy purges without being a rat or a collaborator -- observed rather pointedly that the true U.S. religion was "moneytheism."

If I understand correctly what Marx is saying (and I'm not entirely sure I do -- it's been a very long, very hard day), a more apt description by the aforementioned sociologist/critic would have been to assert that the entire capitalist world -- ruling class and working class alike (but especially the working class as this misconceoption is the source of much of our self-victimization) -- is afflicted not by "moneytheism" but rather by "commoditytheism" -- the deification not only of commodities per se but of the entire notion of "market forces" aka "god's will."

(Which, I should note, could easily deteriorate into "commodetheism" -- the deification of flush toilets, as will surely happen after the apocalypse.)

Moneytheism: Call For Entries

Slack Republic Note

Project: This two-part book addresses the global significance of money through a series of essays accompanied by re-interpretations of paper currency from around the world. Both components will address the relationship between wealth accumulation, class, and culture. STCR is eager to accept innovative submissions from visual artists and writers before August 31, 2007.

Whether personal anecdotes or fictional accounts, irreverent, or audaciously absurd, all discourse submitted for the literary component must be poignant, concise, and critical. Submissions must be 1000 words or less and submitted in their entirety within the body text of the email and as a word attachment.

Submissions for the graphic element may depict family heritage or nationalism, personal heroes or cultural icons. Entries are not limited by scale, technique, materials or dimensions. However, strong entries will acknowledge the significance of currency as a portable history book and the artistic traditions that contributed to the production of paper money throughout the world (i.e. etching, guilloché patterns, embossing, stamping, foils, letter pressing, woodblock engraving, and watermarking). JPEG attachments should be screen-depth and 500k or less. Larger printable files will be requested after the initial selection process has been completed. All submissions and inquiries should be addressed to info at staplecrops dot com with the subject line Moneytheism.

The deadline for all submissions is August 31, 2007.
http://staplecrops.com/?page_id=300

Cultural Asymmetry, "Tittytainment" and Neo-Malthusianism



A world deemed to have no alternative other than capitalism can only move towards a culture with a strongly capitalist homogenization: that is to say, a consumerist uniformity (among those who can afford to consume). Like the growth of economic capitalist homogenization, which is led by the European Union, Japan and above all the United States, cultural and spiritual uniformity (even more significant than the economic capitalist model) is largely Eurocentric (i. e., British, German and French) and especially prone to becoming Americanized. This uniformity is not to be mistaken for "Western" culture any longer by typically Islamic and anti-colonialist criticisms. Genuine and historical "Western" culture is rooted in a Greco-Roman and Christian heritage, which, it must be remembered, have quite Oriental origins. This vigorous heritage has little to do with relativistic moneytheism, variegated "new age" and disenchanted postmodernism. That is not the type of Western culture which should be leading the world. What does "McDonald's" have in common with Plato, Cicero, or St. Paul, Erasmus or Newton? We should never confuse a global mass culture with a single worldwide civilization. The most influential culture today is the Anglo-Saxon one, and, on a lesser scale, the German, French and Japanese. We mean some intellectual and commercial élites from these cultural areas. Cultural exchange between all different countries in the world is overwhelmingly asymmetric. It does not follow a model of dialogue and harmonization, but of absorption. Instead of promoting a real globalization, it aggravates the distrust and the splits between cultures. The Islamic distrust towards "the West" is an eloquent example.

What McDonalization and the mass entertainment culture represent can more accurately be expressed with the formula coined by a former national security adviser of Jimmy Carter and ideologue of the Trilateral Commission, Zbigniew Brzezinski: "tittytainment." This term results from the combination of "entertainment" and an image of the nourishing milk of a nursing mother. Thus, "tittytainment" envelops a large-scale project aimed at contenting a frustrated unemployed majority of the world population by means of glaring entertainment, sustained by enough feeding. This is the "bread and circus" of the Romans. Such a strategy is designed to meet the situation foreseen of the 21st century when just 20 percent of the world's active population will supposedly be sufficient to keep the world economy in motion.

An interesting manifestation of that ideology took place in a 1995 meeting organized by the American Gorbachev Foundation and held in the Fairmont hotel in San Francisco. Five hundred top-ranking political, economic and scientific leaders from the five continents met for three days, discussed and planned with unanimity the future of humanity. People like George Bush, George Shultz and Margaret Thatcher shared their forecasts and solutions with leaders of transnational corporations, the high priests of economics from Stanford, Harvard and Oxford, the global players of the computer and financial businesses and delegates from Singapore and Beijing. The former leader of the Soviet Communist Party called it the new "Global Brain trust." These brainy pragmatists at the Fairmont established the formula "20 percent -- 80 percent": Twenty percent of the world's active population will be useful, while the rest will just be fed and entertained. Thereupon, as the Sun journalist Scott McNealy declared, the question will be "to have lunch or to be lunch." Even rich countries would lack a significant middle-class. The unanswerable reason is centered on nothing but the pressure of global competition (cf. H.-P. Martin & H. Schuman, idem, p. 7-25). Labor will no longer be a central way of self-realization, but merely a mode of the most competitive production.

The above analysis must not be disregarded or underrated by the usual triumphalist advocates of capitalist globalization, who accept as given that the capitalist model is the only possible form of globalization. It is untenable and uncritical to neglect the huge worldwide problems of starvation, abject poverty and constant violations of human rights. The only capitalist response is to blame every sort of "socialism," including state-directed capitalism. Whatever problem may be raised, the invariable cause is said to be a lack of capitalism. According to such "orthodoxy," capitalism cannot but be pure capitalism. At this point, capitalist globalism fails to differ itself from 19th century "Manchester" capitalism altogether. Capitalist globalism claims to be the only and irreversible successful system for economy and politics. It is ironic that it assumes no responsibility for the scandalous and ongoing injustices in the economic and political fields.

Something to be acknowledged about the leaders of global business is their clarity of ideas which is no longer witnessed in many national governments, fluctuating as they do between an enthusiastic economic liberalism and a threatening protectionism. For instance, President Clinton proposed global trade talks within the powerful World Trade Organization (established as a result of the Uruguay Round) in order to promote the export of US agricultural products. At the same time he threatened Japan with a trade fight over steel exports. While large corporations aim solely at their own private economic interests and can manufacture wherever they like in the world, wherever they find the weakest governments and labor unions, national governments, especially if they have to represent their communities, waver between the real interest of the public and the pressure of these insatiable corporations.

Those supposedly in charge of the common good weaken in the face of the overwhelming private economic interests of large corporations that provide financial support for electoral campaigns. Political regulation tends to affect smaller corporations more than the dominant ones, which impose on the world the lowest wages and the worst working conditions (cf. Blanchette, idem, p. 25). Many political leaders wish to welcome as many multinational firms as possible without realizing that they are only welcoming a Trojan horse. In the long term, it is untrue that large corporations benefit a country. Their interests are too divergent from those of a country. The mirage consists in the fact that "the economic well-being of every nation has been reduced to the survival of its oligopolistic system" of large corporations (ibid., p. 23).

The purely economic interests of capitalist globalism and its transnational agents, with their impressive strategies, are extremely wide and far-reaching. These agents know that their dominion of the world economy will not be total and unquestioned until they control all strata of culture and the human spirit. That is why the support of the "new age" and postmodernism, through the fostering of a radical relativism, is so important for their cause. "Moneytheism" has as its main dogma that everything can be bought and sold, money being the measure of everything. In other words, pure relativity is the measure of everything. Instead of overcoming the old dichotomy between the individual and the society, the relativism of global "moneytheism" implies a mass individualism. Almost everything is left for the individual to decide. Each of us can make his own combination of religions, investments, aesthetics, politics and purchases, but then we live in the midst of constant perplexity, recurrent weariness and worldwide mass fashion. Of course, there is an abundance of constructive and helpful novelties in our contemporary world, but this is despite capitalist globalism where there is only room for the strongest; Nietzsche comes to mind.

In its attempt to dominate everything and to eliminate the weak, the basic policy of global capitalism and its magnates is an unscrupulous control over the world population. This is the Neo-Malthusian ideology. Malthus's prediction about the global incapability of producing enough commodities has proved to be totally groundless. Technology, new work systems and real scientific economy have once again refuted capitalist predictions. This is what capitalism does not want to recognize: the problem is not production, but distribution; the center of economy is not the capital, but the person whom the capital has to serve.
http://www.crvp.org/book/Series01/I-19/chapter_ii.htm

The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy (RVP)

Goals:

To understand and appreciate one’s own culture and the values that shape aspirations and motivate actions.

To understand other cultures and to develop a positive yet critical appreciation thereof.

To build cooperation among peoples by healing deep tensions and promoting peace and cooperation on a global scale.

[blindpig]

anaxarchos
05-06-2007, 04:10 PM

A radical sociologist or perhaps social critic of the late 1950s -- don't remember whom save that he was someone who managed to survive the McCarthy purges without being a rat or a collaborator -- observed rather pointedly that the true U.S. religion was "moneytheism."

If I understand correctly what Marx is saying (and I'm not entirely sure I do -- it's been a very long, very hard day), a more apt description by the aforementioned sociologist/critic would have been to assert that the entire capitalist world -- ruling class and working class alike (but especially the working class as this misconceoption is the source of much of our self-victimization) -- is afflicted not by "moneytheism" but rather by "commoditytheism" -- the deification not only of commodities per se but of the entire notion of "market forces" aka "god's will."

(Which, I should note, could easily deteriorate into "commodetheism" -- the deification of flush toilets, as will surely happen after the apocalypse.)

I think Marx would very much like how you termed that, i.e. "commoditheism", and, of course, it would be exactly the same as "moneytheism" (perhaps, just a different denomination), because it is only as the universal medium of exchange for all commodities that money gains its special "luster".

What Marx is talking about here is both much simpler and more profound, though you could very easily claim that Marx's fetishism is the likely root for the emergence of "commoditheism"... the immaculate conception of what becomes the exceedingly dirty business of worshipping commodities.

Marx is saying that commodities have two aspects: on the one hand, they have a utility which is inseparable from their physical characteristics and which because of their desirability or their "exchangeability", allows them to become commodities in the first place. On the other hand, this use value has nothing to do with the quantity in which different commodities exchange with one another. That is based on the amount of labor contained in each of them, or what is to say the same thing, the amount of labor expended in their production (Labor Theory of Value which derives from Adam Smith and David Ricardo). More, this labor is not the specific labor of the carpenter, field hand, or computer expert, but a kind of abstract social labor which reconciles the differences between the various types, skill levels, and characteristics of actual labor.

Now, take a step back…

Consider social labor in the forms of ancient slavery, feudal serfdom and the modern, "free" wage laborer. In all three cases, something similar is transpiring. In all three forms, some part of what the worker produces is separated from them and becomes the basis for sustaining one or more classes who do not labor. More than this, this surplus product is not just separated from those who create it but becomes part of the alienated and accumulated wealth which maintains them in a continuous state of expropriation. That "wealth" is the only possible foundation for the existence of the armed retainers of the slaveholders, the "men-at-arms" of the feudal lord or the complex but entirely unproductive systems of courts, cops, laws and private property of the present day.

Nevertheless, what is quite similar in substance among the three social forms above, is also very different in appearance. To the slave, who is owned body and soul by the slaveholder, it appears that the entire labor of the slave is immediately and entirely expropriated as soon as it is expended. Yet, the slave is wrong. In fact, due to the low productiveness of ancient slave labor, most of what the slaves produce comes back to them in the cost of the maintenance of the slaves. To do otherwise would be to eliminate the slaves, and with them, the wealth and the conditions for existence of the slaveholders.

To the medieval serfs, the circumstances for the expropriation of their surplus are somewhat clearer. Some portion of the serfs product is alienated from the producers in the form of feudal tithe to the church or, “rent” or “tax” to the lord. By virtue of that “removal”, both the subsistence existence of the serfs and the superior (and idle) position of the various feudal institutions are maintained. What that portion amounts to is subject to the most complex fabric of feudal “rights”, charters, and encyclicals but, in the end, it is identical to what is expropriated from the slave, i.e., that portion of the product of the serfs that is surplus to the maintenance of the serfs.

Most complex of all is the condition of the free laborer. The wage laborer does not primarily produce products at all but commodities, whose “productiness” is merely a precondition for their later exchange (or sale). What is actually being produced are values. From the standpoint of the actual production process, everything seems aboveboard. Capital is employed and “refreshed”, raw materials are purchased and used, labor is hired and paid at its prevailing rate and commodities are produced which are later exchanged. And yet, when they get to that point of exchange, commodities perform an act of magic which puts to shame every mojo, charm, and rabbit’s foot: after their costs of production are subtracted, something “extra” is left behind.

Of course, that “extra” is nothing other than the same surplus that was extracted from the slave or the serf, this time expressed as surplus value (whatever its specific form as profit, interest, or rent) and amounting to no more than the differential between the price of labor (prevailing wages) and what that labor produces as value, subject to exchange. That this is realized only at the moment of exchange is entirely anticlimactic because the inevitability of that exchange is the only assumption that is required for the production of commodities. In truth, the surplus was extracted at the time of production, regardless of the details of its subsequent realization.

One side-effect of this form is that it creates a certain confusion about the actual processes in action. The value of the commodity appears as something intrinsic or innate to the commodity itself rather than a function of the social relationships within which it is produced, and this despite the fact that no electron microscope or chemical analysis can reveal one iota of “value” or “congealed human labor of the most abstract type” within them. The realization of surplus value appears, not through the relationships of people with each other but through that of things with each other. That obviously absurd “relationship” is the basis of fetishism in Marx.

In turn, one side-effect of that fetishism has got to be expressed in the way that people think about their existence: that they set themselves, incorrectly, with or against “things” is just a variation on the way that the phenomena of their every day life present themselves to them.

+++++++

It is an irony that a set of complex social relationships unimaginable to slaves also creates an indecipherable mystery to the modern participants in those relationships that would be obvious to those same slaves: stripped of his commodities, values, exchanges, etal., the master expropriates the products of the producers, returns to the producers that which is necessary to maintain the producer (at a changing, socially determined level) as a producer, and expropriates the rest, which then augments the power of the expropriator to maintain precisely those same conditions. The details of that expropriation are, of course, also the main props of the illusions of any age. They don’t need to be invented because they invent themselves from the whole cloth of the “social fabric”.

.

[blindpig]

PPLE
05-06-2007, 04:59 PM

Well, if you are done sparring with me about stone axes, read this discussion of "fetishism" by Marx (Capital, Volume I, Chapter 1, Section 4:The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret thereof):


What follows from this is that all thinking that proceeds directly (and sometimes indirectly) from a peculiar social form that expresses social relations as material relations, also has a tendency to present itself as similarly inverted and veiled relations (i.e. "humans vs nature") which, taking one simple step backward, reveal themselves as phenomena which cannot possibly be true as presented. In fact, these too, are the expression of the underlying social relations ("human versus human"), no matter what "it looks like to me".

PPLE, this is quite a perspective, above.

What... Do... You... Think...?

.

I think it makes my head hurt to read old Karl. And I wish it didn't. I need a Wednesday Night Manifesto Study group or sumpin'

That said, the dimensions of my understanding of materialism are broadened by this.

Still, it is too grueling for my lazy mind to be able to ascertain as peculiar.

[blindpig]

anaxarchos
05-06-2007, 05:10 PM

Well, if you are done sparring with me about stone axes, read this discussion of "fetishism" by Marx (Capital, Volume I, Chapter 1, Section 4:The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret thereof):


What follows from this is that all thinking that proceeds directly (and sometimes indirectly) from a peculiar social form that expresses social relations as material relations, also has a tendency to present itself as similarly inverted and veiled relations (i.e. "humans vs nature") which, taking one simple step backward, reveal themselves as phenomena which cannot possibly be true as presented. In fact, these too, are the expression of the underlying social relations ("human versus human"), no matter what "it looks like to me".

PPLE, this is quite a perspective, above.

What... Do... You... Think...?

.

I think it makes my head hurt to read old Karl. And I wish it didn't. I need a Wednesday Night Manifesto Study group or sumpin'

That said, the dimensions of my understanding of materialism are broadened by this.

Still, it is too grueling for my lazy mind to be able to ascertain as peculiar.

Start one... It's easy.

[blindpig]

Kid of the Black Hole
05-06-2007, 05:25 PM

OK, I've been doing some reading on this and mulling it over. One thing I came upon, and you formalized it by mentioning Labor Theory of Value is the claim that Marx was unable to counter the rather simplistic logic that goes as follows:

Labor can't be a full explanation value because labor is applied based on value. My own example here so hopefully I've got it straight - a prospector mines for gold because of demand for gold whereas gold doesn't derive its value from the amount of effort put into panning for it.

I don't necessarily see how a "marginal" approach any better explains that though. In fact, I don't see how its not a tertiary *critique* of Marxian economics anyway.

Oh, you brought up David Hume once and I'm not particularly familiar with his impact on economics. I skimmed wiki but it only touched on that stuff briefly. My brother who was in poli-sci says his most important idea was self-controlling balance of trade.

[blindpig]

Kid of the Black Hole
05-06-2007, 05:39 PM

Well, if you are done sparring with me about stone axes, read this discussion of "fetishism" by Marx (Capital, Volume I, Chapter 1, Section 4:The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret thereof):


What follows from this is that all thinking that proceeds directly (and sometimes indirectly) from a peculiar social form that expresses social relations as material relations, also has a tendency to present itself as similarly inverted and veiled relations (i.e. "humans vs nature") which, taking one simple step backward, reveal themselves as phenomena which cannot possibly be true as presented. In fact, these too, are the expression of the underlying social relations ("human versus human"), no matter what "it looks like to me".

PPLE, this is quite a perspective, above.

What... Do... You... Think...?

.

I think it makes my head hurt to read old Karl. And I wish it didn't. I need a Wednesday Night Manifesto Study group or sumpin'

That said, the dimensions of my understanding of materialism are broadened by this.

Still, it is too grueling for my lazy mind to be able to ascertain as peculiar.

Just for the record I don't think anax represents the concensus view regarding Marx's writing style. I think RichM once admitted to not being able to get through much of Marx for instance..the Manifesto does have the powerful one-liners though

[blindpig]

anaxarchos
05-06-2007, 06:01 PM

OK, I've been doing some reading on this and mulling it over. One thing I came upon, and you formalized it by mentioning Labor Theory of Value is the claim that Marx was unable to counter the rather simplistic logic that goes as follows:

Labor can't be a full explanation value because labor is applied based on value. My own example here so hopefully I've got it straight - a prospector mines for gold because of demand for gold whereas gold doesn't derive its value from the amount of effort put into panning for it.

I don't necessarily see how a "marginal" approach any better explains that though. In fact, I don't see how its not a tertiary *critique* of Marxian economics anyway.

Oh, you brought up David Hume once and I'm not particularly familiar with his impact on economics. I skimmed wiki but it only touched on that stuff briefly. My brother who was in poli-sci says his most important idea was self-controlling balance of trade.

The value of gold certainly comes from the "amount of effort put into panning for it." There is a book on gold, the name which escapes me at the moment but which I will find, that argues that gold is undervalued because of the effort that is expended (to find and not find it - all of which counts) compared to what is actually refined. Diamonds are even worse. Labor being applied based on value not yet realized is even sillier. No shit. It's like arguing that commodities which upon their exchange yield value and surplus value don't really do so because it can not be known with certainty at the time of their production that they will be successfully exchanged... Yawn...

To criticize Labor Theory of Value, you have to criticize Smith and Ricardo's "natural price" which is the foundation of "classical political economy". It has never been done (plausibly). Instead, Political Economy moved on to "The Theory Of Prices", or, what amounts to a discussion of how actual prices vary from their "natural price" (i.e. value), such as "supply and demand".

What is the source of your "blurb", earlier? It is correct but in its use of "formal" and the discussion of "abstract" and "real" categories, it uses modern conotation to imply something that doesn't exist. It is true that this describes the most general (or "abstract") forms, but only in the same way that a description of Hockey starts with a description of the rink, the rules of the game, the composition of the team as "two wingers, a center, two defensemen, and a goalie", and so on, without immediately launching off into a detailed discussion of the Buffalo Sabres and how they have become the expression of working-class sentiment in a dying industrial town, etc.

As to method, it is as we discussed in the Plato thread. Hegel's method is in Science of Logic but, as with learning, say, computer languages, sometimes it is best to begin with reading actual examples. The best example of Hegel's method I know is the first 80 or 90 pages of Capital. Presentation, as always, is from "the general to the particular", the exact opposite of how it is derived.

I notice you are still playin' as well. You quote me an anonymous blurb that says this stuff is "dense" and "resistant to summarization", and then you immediately ask me to summarize it.

[blindpig]

anaxarchos
05-06-2007, 06:11 PM

Well, if you are done sparring with me about stone axes, read this discussion of "fetishism" by Marx (Capital, Volume I, Chapter 1, Section 4:The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret thereof):


What follows from this is that all thinking that proceeds directly (and sometimes indirectly) from a peculiar social form that expresses social relations as material relations, also has a tendency to present itself as similarly inverted and veiled relations (i.e. "humans vs nature") which, taking one simple step backward, reveal themselves as phenomena which cannot possibly be true as presented. In fact, these too, are the expression of the underlying social relations ("human versus human"), no matter what "it looks like to me".

PPLE, this is quite a perspective, above.

What... Do... You... Think...?

.

I think it makes my head hurt to read old Karl. And I wish it didn't. I need a Wednesday Night Manifesto Study group or sumpin'

That said, the dimensions of my understanding of materialism are broadened by this.

Still, it is too grueling for my lazy mind to be able to ascertain as peculiar.

Just for the record I don't think anax represents the concensus view regarding Marx's writing style. I think RichM once admitted to not being able to get through much of Marx for instance..the Manifesto does have the powerful one-liners though

You gets what you pays for... The grind is necessary but others can help. Otherwise, you gets it from RichM who got it from somebody else... With all due respect, he ain't that good and without the grind there is no way to confirm jack. Of all of the ideas in the society, the ones that are the least likely to be given to you, accurately, second or third hand, are those which exist in direct opposition to that society. What people call themselves is less than meaningless.

You can read the one liners... Or, you can read Lenin (it ain't called Marxism-Leninism for nothing) who is easy to read once you stick your eyeballs back into their sockets...

I don't represent the consensus view of dilettantes, maybe... Got news for you guys - I'm a softy.

[blindpig]

Kid of the Black Hole
05-06-2007, 06:50 PM

Well, if you are done sparring with me about stone axes, read this discussion of "fetishism" by Marx (Capital, Volume I, Chapter 1, Section 4:The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret thereof):


What follows from this is that all thinking that proceeds directly (and sometimes indirectly) from a peculiar social form that expresses social relations as material relations, also has a tendency to present itself as similarly inverted and veiled relations (i.e. "humans vs nature") which, taking one simple step backward, reveal themselves as phenomena which cannot possibly be true as presented. In fact, these too, are the expression of the underlying social relations ("human versus human"), no matter what "it looks like to me".

PPLE, this is quite a perspective, above.

What... Do... You... Think...?

.

I think it makes my head hurt to read old Karl. And I wish it didn't. I need a Wednesday Night Manifesto Study group or sumpin'

That said, the dimensions of my understanding of materialism are broadened by this.

Still, it is too grueling for my lazy mind to be able to ascertain as peculiar.

Just for the record I don't think anax represents the concensus view regarding Marx's writing style. I think RichM once admitted to not being able to get through much of Marx for instance..the Manifesto does have the powerful one-liners though

You gets what you pays for... The grind is necessary but others can help. Otherwise, you gets it from RichM who got it from somebody else... With all due respect, he ain't that good and without the grind there is no way to confirm jack. Of all of the ideas in the society, the ones that are the least likely to be given to you, accurately, second or third hand, are those which exist in direct opposition to that society. What people call themselves is less than meaningless.

You can read the one liners... Or, you can read Lenin (it ain't called Marxism-Leninism for nothing) who is easy to read once you stick your eyeballs back into their sockets...

I don't represent the consensus view of dilettantes, maybe... Got news for you guys - I'm a softy.

.

The blurb probably came from wiki, I don't really remember, it might've come from some random site I found on Google. I AM a dilettante, which I guess is a euphemism for 'lazy fucking druggie'..

EDIT: and I totally reject your theory on the Buffalo Sabres. More like a Toronot created "new NHL" hoax. HOW many video reviews go their way? Four lines that can score yet two mediocre NY teams pack it in and churn out lots of 2-1 games?

Oh and Lou Lamarillo can eat a shit sandwich..

EDIT#2: I wasn't invoking RichM as an authority, just as someone who professes to be a commie-pinko motherfucker