The Twilight of Mechanized Lumpenleisure

John Howard Kunstler writes about The Twilight of Mechanized Lumpenleisure. Apparently, the proletariat should not be heard nor seen especially in the sacred wilderness of the cultured classes who have the requisite tastes to appreciate the beauty of nature.

First of all, he establishes his creditentials as a non-Marxist (even though mentioned the word "class"):

I write this, by the way, as someone who does not have a Marxist bone in his body – in the sense that I am devoid of the impulse to reform the social class system per se, precisely because I regard it as an implacable fact of life. The universe is organized hierarchically and that’s all there is to it. All of the subcategories of things in it tend to be organized hierarchically, too, especially the social life of animals, including human beings. It might be argued that the hunter-gatherers of pre-history enjoyed more pure equality in their little bands and tribes, but that was only because they possessed next to nothing in material wealth. The rest, literally, is history. Once civilization got up and running the story was nothing but class, since our complex societies required many layers of organization in the making, moving, and caretaking of things, and some persons enjoyed more favorable roles than others.

Mr. Kunstler likes the way society is organised (except for the dependence on cheap oil and the consequent buggering up of cities and countryside). In this, he is a typical liberal: the structure of the economy and society is sound in theory and practice except for the ugly bits.

He is correct that class has been part of human history once humans acquired material wealth. He omits the class conflict as the driving force of history (but then he is not a Marxist).

The argument about the natural hierarchy of the universe is specious. The hierarchical order is an artifice of human reasoning because this makes the universe more comprehensible to us. Only one other species does the leader of the pack not feed himself and that is the lion. There the male is looked after by the females who do the hunting for the pride. In the other primate species, everyone feeds themselves and their youngsters. Even though there is a hierarchy of power, no one lives off the labour of others. The acquisition of surplus production allowed human societies to do this.

There has been benefits to this: specialist workers to make tools, pottery, etc.. However, this surplus has allowed people to be trained in warfare to take the food from the peasants while giving nothing in return.

Mr. Kunstler is also correct in saying that complex societies need a hierarchy to operate successfully. The problem is how the hierarchy is controlled and who occupies it. Feudalism said that birth determined ability and therefore a self-pertuating nobility should run things. Capitalism says that people with ability should run things and that ability is expressed by how much money in your possession.

Mr. Kunstler gives the reason for the failure of Communism as:

... It failed because it eliminated the necessary incentives for producing industrial wealth in the first place – namely, the legal right of persons to accumulate it – while it failed additionally to abolish privilege among the politically-connected. So privileged persons in places like the Soviet Union simply worked around the artificial impediments to a superior lifestyle, while the masses toiled in squalid and resigned futility. ...

Mr. Kunstler ignores the huge industrial gains made by the USSR between 1923 (when the country was devastated after a bitter civil aided by foreign invasion) and 1945 (when it defeated Nazi Germany despite losing 20 million people). A peasant economy in 1923 was able to transform itself within twenty years to become the second largest ecomony after the USA (which had 80 years to do the same).

The collapse of Communism in the USSR came about of the lack of democracy in the Soviet state. The people were left of the decision making and therefore had no reason to defend the system when it came under attack from the bureaucrats in the 1980's. Mr. Kunstler fails to mention the very same privileged politically connected people are now the new Capitalist class. The same people are running the place. They call themselves Capitalists instead of Communists.

Mr. Kunstler is probably ignorant that Marxism covers three (3) broad areas:

1. History as class conflict. Progress is achieved by resolution of contradictions which then opens up new contradictions that need to resolve.
2. Description of the workings of Capitalism.
3. Description of the society that should replace Capitalism: Communism with Socialism as a transitional stage.

Mr. Kunstler seems to have no problem with item #1, ignorant of item #2, and critical of item #3. The strange thing is that informed Capitalists recognise that Marx was spot on with his description of Capitalism. In other words, to understand how Capitalism, you have to study Marx.

The critical argument is about item #3: what replaces Capitalism? Possible answers are:

• Nothing as Capitalism is perfect.
• Socialism
• Anarchy (the political system).
• Barbarism (communes).

Enough tub thumping for tonight.

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