#primitive capitalism

[pateralba]

İLKEL KAPİTALİZM

Merkantilizm, feodalizmin bağrından koptu. Merkantilizm, bir çeşit ilkel kapitalist teoridir. Merkant, burjuva sözcüğünden türemiştir. Kendine kapitalist sistemin hemen öncesinde uygulama alanı buldu. Merkantilizm, feodalizmin çökerek, monarşist devletlerin kurulduğu ve ticaret kapitalizminin geliştiği süreçte ortaya çıktı. Merkantilizmin temelinde ulus devletin ortaya çıkması, uluslar arası ticaretin gelişmesi ve ticaret sermayesinin güç kazanması vardır. Merkantilistler, ulusal ekonomik gücün en yüksek seviyeye çıkması için ekonomiye müdahaleyi savundular. Merkantilizm, paraya ve dış ticarete büyük önem verir. Altın ve gümüş paranın, tek ekonomik güç kaynağı olduğunu kabul eder. Bireyin değil devletin yararı ön plandadır. Çünkü devlet bireylerin topluluğundan başka bir şey değildir. Ekonomik güç peşinde koşmak en yüce amaç olunca, yetkiler de buna göre belirlendi. Bunun için ekonomik olarak güçlenmenin koşulları araştırıldı. Devletler gözetiminde talanlar ve korsanlıklar yapıldı. Din tarafından da ekonomik olarak iyi durumda olmak yüceltildiği için devletin ve toplumun amaçları bu yönde gelişti. Bu düşünceye göre para, altın ve gümüşün varlığına dayandığından devlet; elindeki altın ve gümüş miktarına göre gücünü belirler. Asıl önemli olan dış ticaretten elde edilen faiz fonlardır. Çünkü ülkenin maden miktarının arttırılabilmesi ülke içinde değerli maden üretilmediği sürece ancak dış ticaret yoluyla mümkündür. Bu da dış ticarete önem vererek, yurt içine daha fazla altın ve gümüş girmesini teşvik ederek sağlanır. Merkantilizme göre dünyada sabit bir ekonomi vardır ve biri ekonomik olarak güçlüyken diğeri zayıf olmalıdır. Ülkenin ekonomik olarak gücünün artması da ithalatın yasaklanarak ihracatın arttırılması ile mümkündür. Feodalizm sınıfları burjuvaların yönetimine bırakırken, merkantilizm yönetimin devlete verilmesini sağladı. Merkantilizm, hedeflerine ulaşmak için devletin ekonomiye müdahalesini normal gördü. İçe karşı müdahaleci ve sanayileşmeci, dışa karşı ise korumacı bir ekonomi politikası izledi. Ayrıca koloni sahibi olmak ve kolonileri diğer ülkelerin rekabetine kapatmak çok önemlidir. Çünkü bu koloniler ucuz ham madde kaynağıdır ve bu ham maddelerden üretilen pahalı maddenin pazarıdır. Merkantilizm, ilkel kapitalizmin rekabet yasası gereği, ulusalcı bir görüşe sahip olmakla birlikte merkeziyetçi bir yayılma politikasını da savundu. Devletler ekonomik açıdan ulusçudur ve bu da dış ticarette koruma ilkesini benimsetir. Burjuvalığın teşvik edilmesi, insan ve para bolluğu, sanayinin ve ihracatın gelişmesi, devletin koruyucu rolü oldukça öne çıkmıştır. Ayrıca merkantilistler, ülkelerinin nüfuslarının artmasından yanadır. Çünkü insan bolluğu emek bulmayı rahatlatacaktır ve düşük ücrete yol açacaktır. Büyük ordulara sahip olmayı sağladığı ise ayrı bir konudur. Kalabalık nüfus, iş gücünü artırır ve maliyeti düşürür, bu da ihracatta avantaj sağlar. Bu açıkça sömürecek emek için, emekçi aramaktır.

Temelde merkantilizm, düşük ücret politikasına dayanıyor. Emekçi, emeğinin karşılığını kesinlikle alamıyor. Ücret yükselmesinin emek verme sürecini arttıracağı, düşük ücretlerin ise emekçiyi çalışmak zorunda bırakacağı düşünülüyor. Ayrıca ücretlerin yükselmemesi için bir yandan nüfusun fazla olması isteniyor, diğer yandan ürün fiyatlarının bolluk yıllarında da yüksek olması isteniyor. Ticaret kapitalizminin hacmi büyüdükçe ve ticaret burjuvazisinin planları öne çıktıkça merkantilistlerin bu görüşleri de belirginleşti. 16.yy sonlarında, yaklaşık 100 senede merkantilist ülkeler arttı. Sürekli dış ticaret fazlası vermeye çalışan ülkeler, diğer ülkelerin ekonomik olarak zayıflamasına sebep oldu. Ekonomik olarak zayıf ülkelerde üretilen malları satın alacak para kalmadı. Çünkü ekonomik olarak güçlü ülkeler satış karşılığında yalnızca altın ve gümüş alıyordu ve ham madde ithalatı da yasaktı. Bu da ekonomik olarak zayıf ülkelerde talebi arttırdı. Ayrıca ekonomik olarak güçlü ülkelerde aşırı maden oluşu madenlerin değerini azalttı ve ülkelerde enflasyona sebep oldu. Bu süreçte sermaye grupları aralarında çekişiyordu ve bu durum feodallerle köylülerin yan yana gelmesine neden oluyordu. Bu süreçten itibaren politik ekonomi de sınıf iktidarına giden bir araç olmaya başladı. Burjuvazinin birikim silahı olarak bilimselleşti ve kapitalizmin yapılanmasına yol açtı. Çekişme, merkantilizm karşısında durumu burjuvazi öncesi burjuva bakış ile analiz eden fizyokrasinin ön görüsünü destekledi. Merkantilizmin dünya egemenliği 19.yy başlarında liberal teorilerin güçlenmesine kadar sürdü. Bu süreçten sonra güç kaybetti ve yerini serbest piyasa ekonomisine dayalı liberalizme bıraktı. Sanayi devrimi ile pazar arayışları merkantilizmin yok olmasına neden oldu.

Ekonominin işleyişinde doğal bir düzen olduğunu savunan, devletin ekonomiye müdahale etmemesini isteyen, gücün tek kaynağını tarım olarak gören fizyokrasi, altınla, parayla veya sanayiyle uğraşmaz. Mantığı çok basittir. Güç insandan gelir, insan topraktan beslenir. İnsan sayısı ve toprak miktarı ne kadar fazlaysa bir ülke o kadar güçlüdür. Fizyokratlara göre üretimde tek verimli alan tarımdır. Tarım tüketilenden daha fazla üretime yol açar. Oluşan bu fazlalık net üründür. Ticaret ve sanayi ise kısırdır, çünkü net ürün oluşturmaz. Fizyokratlara göre gelir dağılımı açısından toplum üç sınıfa ayrılır. Verimli sınıf (çiftçiler), toprak sahipleri, kısır sınıf (sanayici ve burjuvalar). Sınıflar arası gelir dağılımı şöyledir: Çiftçiler, topraktan sağladıkları net ürünü toprak sahiplerine kira olarak verirler. Toprak sahipleri, toprağın işletilmesinin bedeli olan bu net ürünü alırlar. Kısır sınıf ise ham maddeyi işlenmiş maddeye dönüştürmek için imalathane ve işçiye ihtiyaç duyar. Bu yüzden bu sınıfın elde ettiği net gelir, diğer iki sınıfa dönmek zorundadır. Fizyokrasiye göre denge bu şekildedir. Verimli alan tarım olduğu için vergi de tarımdan alınmalıdır. İhracat, tarıma dayanmalıdır. Sermaye yalnızca tarımsal yatırımlarda kullanılmalıdır. Fizyokratlara göre ekonomi kutsal bir düzendedir. Üreticiler ve tüketiciler kendi çıkarlarına göre hareket etme hakkına sahiptir. Özel mülkiyet ve serbest girişim ilkelerine dayanan bu düzende ekonomi kendi kendine işler. Doğal kaynakların ülkeler arasında farklı dağılımı, bu ülkelerin birbirleriyle alışverişini kutsal bir duruma getirmiştir. Bu farklılık nedeniyle fizyokratlar "uluslararası dayanışma" içinde başka ülkelerin yoksulluğuna karşı çıktılar. Yani fizyokrasinin dayanışmayı kutsallaştıran teolojik bir yapısı vardır. Fakat fizyokratlara göre ilkel kapitalizmde, temelde yapılacak tek değişiklik, devlet müdahalesinden kurtulmaktır. Fizyokratlar teorilerini hazırlarken ekonomiler tamamen tarımcıydı, merkantilistler ise ticari kapitalizmin etkisiyle devletçi oldular. Fizyokrasi kendine etkin alan bulamasa da ekonomik hayatta serbestlikten yana olduğu için ekonomik liberalizmin kurucusu sayılabilir. Temel farkı özetlemek gerekirse, merkantiliste göre değerin yaratıcısı ticaret, fizyokrata göre topraktır.

[loneberry]

A sea lily marine animal on the sea floor of the Clarion-Clipperton Zone at a depth of 4,800m

“The deepest parts of the Pacific Ocean have rested undisturbed for millennia. But now creatures living thousands of metres beneath the surface may be confronted by new visitors: companies mining minerals key to the green energy transition.

“The International Seabed Authority (ISA), the UN-backed regulator, is preparing to consider the world’s first commercial deep-sea mining application as soon as July, despite many member states warning it is too soon for extraction to leap from land into water.”

///

“Ecological treasures on the seabed include creatures such as the transparent ghost fish, dumbo octopus and giant sea anemone, as well as microscopic worms that scientists say could hold the key to understanding human evolution.”

“The Clarion-Clipperton Zone in the Pacific Ocean, where most exploration has taken place, is ‘one of the most biodiverse sedimented marine habitats on our planet’.”

“Environmentalists say the plume of waste water emitted by deep-sea mining machinery could disturb ‘marine snow’, or carbon and nutrient-rich particles of biological matter, that usually settles on the seabed. Noise pollution may also disturb marine mammals.”

“Deep-sea ecosystems ‘take millennia to establish and can take seconds to destroy’, said Tony Worby, a marine scientist at Australian non-profit Minderoo Foundation. ‘We’re playing with fire to think we can go down to the deep sea and strip-mine it without massive repercussions.’”

.

.

Capitalism is becoming post-terrestrial. The next stage of primitive accumulation is beginning—there’s currently a scramble for mineral resources in the deep seas…all in the name of the bullshit ideology known as “green capitalism.”

My heart breaks thinking about all the ways we abuse our precious oceans.

Rachel Carson has this to say about marine snow:

“When I think of the floor of the deep sea, the single, overwhelming fact that possesses my imagination is the accumulation of sediments. I see always the steady, unremitting, downward drift of materials from above, flake upon flake, layer upon layer—a drift that has continued for hundreds of millions of years, that will go on as long as there are seas and continents.

“For the sediments are the materials of the most stupendous ‘snowfall’ the earth has ever seen.”

“The sediments are a sort of epic poem of the earth.”

(Read the entire chapter “The Long Snowfall” in The Sea Around Us—it is breathtakingly beautiful.)

Now imagine, instead of that gentle silent accrual of marine snow, you have plumes of industrial waste and the infernal racket of machines in a world where so many creatures use sound to orient themselves. It makes me sick.

[ranger-kellyn]

sometimes watching or listening to speculative alien stuff is so fucking exhausting because whenever it's the question of, "if there is alien life out there why aren't they talking to us?" they never seem to take into account that we as humans literally have not stopped warring with our own fucking species. we have racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, and all other phobia's and isms, and yet y'all wanna bring in the green dudes with 8 eyes and proboscis into the conversation and act like humanity would just be Chill about it

[mnemotechnicstoo]

Primitive Accumulation

A4 Collage cutout

[toastyslayingbutter]

I have a few recommendations for reading further:

The Dawn of Everything by. David Graeber & David Wengrow is a pretty fascinating and accessible text that details the rich history of communalist, anarchic, and socialist formations of people throughout the world pre-capitalist.

Even more helpful is it’s bibliography, which has a bountiful list of texts that provide greater information about pre-capitalist formations.

A Indigenous People’s History of the United States by. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz is another easily accessible, well-written, and authoritative book on pre-Columbus indigenous history, societal formations, and class.

As with the above text, you’ll get plenty out of the references and bibliography.

Tbh, and I say this as someone who would on some days call myself a Marxist, I think Marx's understanding of pre-industrial societies and their relationship to the industrial core (especially those of the Americas and Asia, which in his defense were not well-understood by even European scholars at the time) is completely inaccurate and using that as a starting point and going no further into decolonial and anti-imperialist theory winds you up at radically inappropriate theories and praxis in many ways

[spook-eboy]

i miss the beginning of my anth textbook

[psychotrenny]

I don't think "Fascist" is a very useful or accurate thing to call Caesar and his Legion (from Fallout: New Vegas) in the context of the game world itself. Like there are a lot of aesthetic similarities and basically all of their unironic real world fans are some sort of Nazi Nerd, but when talking about their place within the context of fictional post-nuclear Nevada it just doesn't work. Like Caesar's whole deal is that he's a Social Scientist who, living in a world that's been "blasted back to the Stone Age", figures that society must evolve through the same stages if it wants to properly return to modernity. The Legion is basically comprised of "Primitive Communists"* who've been forced into a Slave Society. His criticisms of the NCR boil down to them being a moribund remnant of/reversion to Old World Capitalism rather than something organically adapted to the post-Nuclear world. He repeatedly talks about how the Legion isn't meant to represent an ideal society but simply a stepping stone onto something better (the thesis that will clash with it's antithesis and evolve into a superior synthesis). His interactions with the Courier heavily imply that the Legion's Misogyny, Homophobia, Tech aversion etc. are much more tools of social organisation and control than values that Caesar personally holds. The Legion isn't just some band of mindlessly violent reactionaries but the product of very deliberate Social Engineering; a peculiarly post-nuclear sort of scientifically planned society

Now I'm not defending the Legion as a "good" choice or anything; Caesar's plan has a lot of problems, it's not hard to poke holes into and in terms of unadulterated cruelty The Legion is easily the most morally repugnant of the main factions. But the thing I really love about The Legion is how, within the specific context of Fallout's setting, it makes sense. Like once you really think about it you can understand why someone in Edward Sallow's position would arrive at these conclusions, and there are good reasons why (if you take your roleplaying seriously and don't treat the Player Character as an extension of yourself) someone living in this world might chose to side with him. The Legion may be terrible but it's not evil for the sake of evil; there's genuinely a compelling ideology behind it.

It's why I get sad when I see so many people dismiss them as the "dum dum fascist slavers" because there's so much more to them than that. Like I think the best part about The Legion is how ridiculous they first appear ("These raiders dress like Ben-Hur extras?????) but once you find out more about them then it all starts to click ("Oh I see their leader is trying to assimilate them into a distinct and alien culture in order to maintain their loyalty; severing their previous connections and giving them a whole new identity"). So it sucks to see so many people get caught up in the first part and never make enough connections to reach the second. Like in general, Fallout: New Vegas is very messy and flawed and yet it's full of all these interesting little nuances and I think that's worth appreciating it. It's why, time and time again, I keep walking down that dusty road

*in the very broad sense that Fallouts "Tribals" are meant to represent people who have reverted back to some sort of pre-state society; of course there are countless problems with how Fallout treats this matter (including but not limited to incredible amounts of racism) but in order to understand Caesar we're forced to meet the game on it's terms

[txttletale]

could you elaborate on the difference between liberalism and fascism? it often seems like the latter can evolve into the former, but the varying definitions of fascism sometimes make it unclear when the line is crossed - possibly due to fascism’s position both as a politics and a historic moment?

disclaimer: this is a very rough overview and by no means comprehensive

fascism is a political project by which capitalism reasserts itself in the face of the threat of socialist uprising -- fascism adopts some of the rhetoric of communism while offering no actual change to the ownership of the means of production (except further privatisation) and playacts at offering the masses power on a purely affective, expressive level (what walter benjamin calls 'the aestheticization of politics)

this siphons discontent and radicalism away from socialist politics and towards a movement that will violently suppress and attack socialists, offering a two-fold shield against any real threat to the bourgeoise's control of the means of production

when in power, fascists will shore up the power of the bourgeoise and allow an open mingling of private enterprise and the state (corporatism), and answer economic crisis by expanding the genocidal and ethnic supremacist policies of the colony to the nation itself in an act similar to what marx calls 'primitive accumulation'. because there's a finite amount of wealth to be seized by this method and because purely affective politics deliberately blinded to changing the ownership of the means of production, fascism inevitably turns to external war

[silverity]

i'm gonna make my painful contribution to The Discourse and say i do not see the harm in women reclaiming female centric spirituality.

i am not a religious person nor do i want to become one but spirituality is also about culture, community and celebration. i would much rather women celebrate nature, the female form, and "divine femininity" than patriarchal phallocentric religions. that "divine femininity" is used pejoratively has always tickled me considering we live in a world hooked on divine masculinity. the old matricentric religions are really the only form of female culture devoid of male-centric worship we can grasp at, since men have dominated our belief systems for thousands of years. and women learning about the old religions is the best way to unravel the myth of the male creator, and realise it is really women who are the closest thing to a "god" on Earth.

there's also an element here, which i think is deeply capitalist, patriarchal, and a little racist, of people considering the connection to & celebration of nature as somehow primitive. i think that the lifestyles most of us live now, with none of us knowing anything about the land around us is actually very infantile and regressive for humanity as a whole. the ways of life we consider "primitive" (primitive communism, matrilineal societies) are really what we need to find ways to return to post-capitalism. they were in tune to nature, sustainable, and much more communal & equal. how can nature be primitive or ascientific when science *is* in nature, and the practices of these old societies were early scientific discoveries & practices. as a Black person, my community is often trying to reclaim our lost practices. it makes sense to me that women would try to do so too.

[femalethink]

I detect in this question a pious hope that the oppression of women could be blamed on a particular form of society, a particular set of class arrangements. But it can't. If socialism—at least as it exists so far—is not self-evidently the solution, neither is capitalism self-evidently the culprit. Women have always been treated as inferior, have always been marginal politically and culturally. The oppression of women constitutes the most fundamental type of repression in organized societies. That is, it is the most ancient form of oppression, predating all oppression based on class, caste, and race. It is the most primitive form of hierarchy.

—Susan Sontag, “On Women.”

[transmutationisms]

from a non-academic, i find parts of comphet to be useful (heterosexuality becomes compulsory when you’re raised in a heterosexual society) but the foundations . suck. what do we do with theories like this, that have touched on a truth but also carry a lot of garbage? can we separate the truth from the founder?

i have to be slightly pedantic and say that i don't think rich's essay is an example of this phenomenon. my central issue with her formulation is its bioessentialist assumptions about human sex and therefore also sexuality. if i say "capitalism includes economic mechanisms that enforce heterosexual behaviour and exclude other possibilities", then what i mean by "heterosexual" is plainly not the same as what rich means—and for this reason i would seldom formulate the statement this way, without clarifying that i am talking about the enforcement of heterosexuality as a part of the creation and defence of sex/gender categories themselves. so rich and i do not actually agree on the very fundamental premises of this paper! rich was not the first or only person to point out that economic mechanisms as well as resultant social norms enforce heterosexual pairings; i actually don't even think the essay does a very clear job of interrogating the relationship between labour, economy, and the creation of sex/gender; she means something different and essentialist to what i mean by sex and sexuality; and i think her proposed responses to the phenomenon she identifies as 'compulsory heterosexuality' are uninteresting because they mainly propose psychological answers to a problem arising from conditions of political economy. so, in regards to this specific paper, i am actually totally comfortable just saying that it's not a useful formulation, and i don't feel a need to rescue elements of it.

in general, i do know what you're talking about, and i think there's a false dichotomy here: as though we must either discard an idea entirely if it has elements we dislike, or we accept it on the condition that we can plausibly claim these elements and their author are irrelevant. these are not comprehensive options. instead, i would posit that every theory, hypothesis, or idea is laden with context, including values held and assumptions made by their progenitors. the point is not to find a mythical 'objective' truth unburdened by human bias or mistakes; this is impossible. instead, i think we need to take seriously the elements of an idea that we object to. why are they there? what sorts of assumptions or arguments motivate them, and are those actually separable from whatever we like in the idea? if so, can we be clear about which aspects of the theory are still useful or applicable, and where it is that the objectionable elements arise? and if we can identify these points, then what might we propose instead? this is all much more useful, imo, than either waiting for a perfect morally unimpeachable theory or trying to 'accept' a theory without grappling with its origins (political, social, intellectual).

a recent example that you might find interesting as a kind of case study is j lorand matory's book the fetish revisited, which argues that the 'fetish' concept in freud's and marx's work drew from their respective understandings of afro-atlantic gods. in other words, when marx said capitalists "fetishise" commodities or freud spoke about sexual "fetishism", they were each claiming that viewing an object as agentive, meaning-laden in itself (ie, devoid of the context of human meaning-making as a social and political activity) was comparable to 'primitive' and delusory religious practices.

matory's point here isn't that we should reject marx's entire contribution to political economy because he was racist, nor is it that we can somehow accept parts of what marx said by just excising any racist bits. rather, matory asks us to grapple seriously with the role that marx's anthropologically inflected racism plays in his ideas, and what limitations it imposes on them. why is it that marx could identify the commodity as being discursively abstracted and 'fetishised', but did not apply this understanding to other ideas and objects in a consistent way? and how is his understanding of this process of 'fetishisation' shaped by his beliefs about afro-atlantic peoples, and their 'intelligence' or civilisational achievements in comparison to northwestern europeans'? by this critique matory is able to nuance the fetish concept, and to argue that marx's formulation of it was both reductive and inconsistently applied (analogously to how freud viewed only some sexuality as 'fetishistic'). it is true in some sense that capital and the commodity are reified and abstracted in a manner comparable to the creation of a metaphysical entity, but what we get from matory is both a better, more nuanced understanding of this process of meaning-making (incl. a challenge to the racist idea of afro-atlantic gods as simply a result of inferior intelligence or cultural development), and the critical point that if this is fetishism, then we must understand a lot more human discourse and activity as hinging on fetishisation.

the answer of what we do with the shitty or poorly formulated parts of a theory won't always be the same, obviously; this is a dialogue we probably need to have (and then have again) every time we evaluate an idea or theory. but i hope this gives you some jumping-off points to consider, and an idea of what it might look like to grapple with ideas as things inherently shaped by people—and our biases and assumptions and failings—without assuming that means we can or should just discard them any time those failings show through. the point is not to waste time trying to find something objective, but to understand the subjective in its context and with its strengths and limitations, and then to decide from there what use we can or should make of it.

[apas-95]

Nazi antisemitism was not based on “economic needs of German capital under the burden of postwar reconstruction”. The price of operating extermination camps and sending out death squads far exceeded confiscation of Jewish wealth. It was based on sincerely belief in Jewish racial inferiority and that Jews, communists, & social democrats had sabotaged the German war effort in WWI.

The direct primitive accumulation of appropriated wealth was not the only economic benefit of the German program of depopulation, this is fairly basic — was the colonisation of the Americas principally carried out for the purpose of seizing indigenous belongings? Were the massacres carried out in the European colonies, such as the Bengali famine, done for the seizure of the wealth of individuals? The very plain fact is that the depopulation of Germany proper and its newly-seized territories in the east was carried out as part of a plan of economic reconstruction explicitly based on European settler-colonial projects, wherein the destruction of fixed capital and the establishment of small-producer wehrbaueren was intended to both reverse and inhibit the tendency of the rate of profit to fall under capitalism.

The further notion that Weimar Germany's opposition to communists was out of revanchism and not an actual threat to the ruling classes and their state is genuinely hilarious, and goes directly against both what was explicitly stated at the time and also basic facts.

Your position here is basic idealism - if you're interested in being correct, I'd suggest looking into Dialectical and Historical Materialism, and On Practice, etc.

[ryin-silverfish]

I know, I know. LMK is kinda its own fantasy setting at this point, not everything has to be mythos-accurate, yadda yadda yadda.

However, I won't be me if I don't take the chance to ramble and nitpick anyways.

Basically: What do I mean when I say "Chaos doesn't work that way in traditional Chinese cosmology", in regards to LMK S5?

When people think of Chaos in the pop culture sense, it tends to be this destructive, corrosive force of entrophy, or a maelstrom of changes and aimless activities.

Even when the Chaos/Order divide doesn't get simplified into Evil/Good, Chaos is still painted as the antithesis of Order, and the two forces are often engaged in an antagonistic, dualistic conflict.

The way the primodial chaos is described in LMK very much fits that mold. It is something Nvwa has to create the Pillar of Heaven to protect humanity from, its magic is dark and ominous-looking, and the villain of the season is obsessed with it.

Yet Chaos——Hundun, when it isn't this cute little guy in the Book of Mountains and Seas:

or the victim of two gods' failed cosmetics surgery in Zhuangzi, is simply the undifferentiated, pre-creation state of the world, before it separates into Yin and Yang and the Five Phases.

In fact, Chaos in early Daoism and later, internal alchemy is something one desires to return to, because with the division of Chaos into Yin and Yang and the subsequent formation of the world also comes life and death, suffering and disorder.

For early Daoists, they yearned to return to that primitive, undivided state, which was viewed as a golden age, on an individual and societal level. For practitioners of internal alchemy, it was a lot more personal: by returning oneself to that primodial, Pre-Heaven stage through the blending of one's Spiritual Mind and Vital Force, one can attain immortality.

In fact, the word for the sort of disorder and mayhem people imagine when they heard "Chaos" is not Hundun, but Luan in early Chinese sources.

Both early Daoists and Confucians used the word Luan in their writings, but had significantly different take on what caused it.

To early Daoists, Luan was the result of people imposing their arbitary moral standards and civilization onto the natural, undifferentiated state of the world, a.k.a. what the Confucians and their idealized sage kings had done.

By introducing order, they caused division in the undivided, and from such divisions comes disorder. After all, if you had to educate people on right and wrong and exhort them to do good, then the world you were living in was already an immoral one.

(That's what the fable of the failed cosmetics surgery in Zhuangzi means...probably. Where two sea gods try to artificially create the seven orifices for the faceless Central Lord Chaos to repay his favor, and end up killing him in the process.)

The early Confucians also shared the same yearning to return to the golden age of the ancients, but their idea of the golden age wasn't the sea of undifferentiated, primodial unity.

Instead, it's the reign of the virtuous sage kings. Luan was the result of a breakdown of the order they established, as people lost respect for propriety and hierarchy of relations and began to behave immorally.

Their most explicit mention of Hundun was in Zuo Zhuan, where it was one of the Four Perils, all of which were immoral offsprings of ancient kings who were exiled by Sage King Shun. It very much fits into the narrative of "triumph of the righteous ruler over rebellious vassals", civilization over disorder.

However, the Confucian Hundun was no actual, primodial force of chaos, merely a historicized personification of disorderly, wrongful *human* conducts. In return, order isn't the cosmological, capital "O" Order either, but a moral and societal one.

Anyways, that's why the Order/Chaos conflict doesn't map neatly onto ancient Chinese cosmology: to have an Order/Chaos conflict implies there is a division, when Hundun is actually the lack of any sort of division.

Neither is Hundun a cosmological force of destructive changes and entrophy. If anything, it's more like the state of nature, from which everything spawns and will ultimately return to.

A cosmic egg, a sea of warm primodial soup, instead of a maelstrom of destruction or a corrupting poison.

(TL;DR: reject Moorcock, embrace Zhuangzi. /lh)

[gothhabiba]

What makes most "uninhabited wilderness narratives" more similar to like. The European settlement of the Americas than the Polynesian exploration of islands. Like I also get that vibe but I can't form a coherent ideological reason and you seem like maybe you could put it to words.

You’re getting it backwards if you think that the criticism of the “terra nullius” narrative consists of “it’s unethical to go to, poke around, or settle a place that was actually previously uninhabited by human beings.”

Rather, "terra nullius" is a set of concepts and frameworks created and disseminated by Europeans over the course of European settler-colonisation. It consists, roughly, of ideas about land (it is inactive, to-be-acted-upon, eternally stagnant if not acted upon; it must be 'worked' and this work is backbreaking, unpleasant, and a moral and religious duty; 'working' the land completely transforms it; the land is valuable and ownable insofar as it is worked and transformed; land can be bought, sold, and traded)—

—ideas about exploration (another way to act upon land, which is to-be-acted-upon, is by 'exploring' it; 'exploring' land, naming it, mapping it, viewing it from above, even painting landscapes of it. are activities that give you authority and ownership over the land; 'exploration' produces knowledge about land, which only Europeans can produce and disseminate)—

—and ideas about Indigenous peoples (they have not 'worked' the land or claimed ownership in a way we recognise; thus they have no control, authority, or ownership of the land; because of this they are the land, part of the flora, fauna, and landscape to be explored, mapped out [as in linguistics and anthropology], controlled, moved, worked [read: enslaved], and killed; and, crucially, in a final move, once they have been moved or killed, they were never here in the first place).

These ideas arose variously in European scientific, literary, religious, legal, and literary discourses; in sermons, in travel narratives, in paintings, in memoirs and folk stories written by settler-colonists and sailors and traders. They arose partly as a development of things that had already been happening in Europe in the transition to capitalism (enclosure and other forms of primitive accumulation that rendered once-public resources, including land, private property), and partly as a response to the fact that this land was not empty of human life.

Plainly, there were people in the Americas, in Oceania. In fact, they had altered the land in various ways. The scientific and anthropologic majority, at least in Europe from the 17th to the 19th centuries, even held that they were descended from the same stock as Europeans were (though there was debate on that score). Nevertheless, there were resources and money and land (among other things) to be gained through colonisation and genocide.

The idea that these lands, then, were terrae nullius, empty lands, arose as justification for said settling and genocide. There were never people here, and if there were, then they didn't really have the right to be here; they didn't claim the land in ways that Europeans or their descendents legally recognised (in other words, Europeans created property laws on purpose in such a way to deny Indigenous peoples property rights); perhaps they didn't work the land because they were inherently lazy, or promiscuous, or gluttonous, or savage, and that's how a legal discourse becomes a 'racial' one.

So the answer to your question is basically: because Europeans are the ones who wrote "uninhabited wilderness narratives." Because (the peoples who would become) Polynesians in 3000 BC did not invent a bunch of related popular, religious, scientific, legal, and literary discourses in order to deny or justify the fact that they were enslaving, driving off, or slaughtering millions of human beings, this just has nothing to do with them.

[takemeinyrarmy]

BoyBoy book club⭑.ᐟ

These books have either been mentioned or recommended by the boys, list made to the best of my memory, some notes added for context + little abstract. [(A.) = Aleksa's rec; (L.) = Lucas' rec; (Al.) = Alex's rec] Reply or reblog to add more to update the list thanks! 

⊹ Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation - Silvia Federici  (A.) [Aleksa's commentary: Also 'Caliban and the Witch' by Silvia Federicci is brilliant. It's a great marxist-feminist retelling of the European witch-hunts, it's really really cool. It completely flipped my view of the birth of capitalism... She posits that capitalism is a reaction to a potential peasant revolution in Europe that never succeeded, and situates the witch-hunt as a tool of the capitalist class to break peasant social-ties and discipline women into their new role as reproducers of workers.] || Is a history of the body in the transition to capitalism. Moving from the peasant revolts of the late Middle Ages to the witch-hunts and the rise of mechanical philosophy, Federici investigates the capitalist rationalization of social reproduction. She shows how the battle against the rebel body and the conflict between body and mind are essential conditions for the development of labor power and self-ownership, two central principles of modern social organization.

⊹ The Age of Surveillance Capitalism - Shoshana Zuboff  (A.) || This book looks at the development of digital companies like Google and Amazon, and suggests that their business models represent a new form of capitalist accumulation that she calls "surveillance capitalism". While industrial capitalism exploited and controlled nature with devastating consequences, surveillance capitalism exploits and controls human nature with a totalitarian order as the endpoint of the development.

⊹ Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia -  Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (L.) || In this book , Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari set forth the following theory: Western society's innate herd instinct has allowed the government, the media, and even the principles of economics to take advantage of each person's unwillingness to be cut off from the group. What's more, those who suffer from mental disorders may not be insane, but could be individuals in the purest sense, because they are by nature isolated from society.

⊹ Open Veins of Latin America - Eduardo Galeano (A.) (Intro to LATAM history, infuriating but good.) (Personal recommendation if you know nothing about LATAM.) || An analysis of the impact that European settlement, imperialism, and slavery have had in Latin America. In the book, Galeano analyzes the history of the Americas as a whole, from the time period of the European settlement of the New World to contemporary Latin America, describing the effects of European and later United States economic exploitation and political dominance over the region. Throughout the book, Galeano analyses notions of colonialism, imperialism, and the dependency theory.

⊹ The Origin of Capitalism - Ellen Wood (A.) || Book on history and political economy, specifically the history of capitalism, written from the perspective of political Marxism.

⊹ If We Burn - Vincent Bevins (L.) || The book concerns the wave of mass protests during the 2010s and examines the question of how the organization and tactics of such protests resulted in a "missing revolution," given that most of these movements appear to have failed in their goals, and even led to a "record of failures, setbacks, and cataclysms".

⊹ The Jakarta Method - Vincent Bevins (A.) [Aleksa’s recommendation for leftists friends] || It concerns U.S. government support for and complicity in anti-communist mass killings around the world and their aggregate consequences from the Cold War until the present era. The title is a reference to Indonesian mass killings of 1965–66, during which an estimated one million people were killed in an effort to destroy the political left and movements for government reform in the country.

⊹ The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company - William Dalrymple (L.) [Not read by the boys yet, but wanted to read.] || History book that recounts the rise of the East India Company in the second half of the 18th century, against the backdrop of a crumbling Mughal Empire and the rise of regional powers.

⊹ The Triumph of Evil: The Reality of the USA's Cold War Victory - Austin Murphy (A.) || Contrary to the USA false propaganda, this book documents the fact that the USA triumph in the Cold War has increased economic suffering and wars, which are shown to be endemic to the New World Order under USA capitalist domination.

⊹ Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism - Yanis Varoufakis (L.) || Big tech has replaced capitalism’s twin pillars—markets and profit—with its platforms and rents. With every click and scroll, we labor like serfs to increase its power.  Welcome to technofeudalism . . .

⊹ The History of the Russian Revolution - Leon Trotsky (A.) [Aleksa's commentary: This might be misconstrued since I'm not a massive fan of Trotsky... but... his book "History of the russian revolution" is amazing. It's so unique to have such a detailed history book compiled by someone who was an active participant in the events, and he's surprisingly hilarious. Makes some great jokes in there and really captures the revolutionary spirit of the time.] || The History of the Russian Revolution offers an unparalleled account of one of the most pivotal and hotly debated events in world history. This book presents, from the perspective of one of its central actors, the profound liberating character of the early Russian Revolution.

⊹ Rise of The Red Engineers - Joel Andreas (A.) [Aleksa's commentary: It's a sick history book, focusing on a single university in China following it's history from imperial china, through the revolution and to the modern day. It documents sincere efforts to revolutionize the education system, but does it from a very detailed, on-the-ground view of how these cataclysmic changes effect individual students and teachers at this institution.] || In a fascinating account, author Joel Andreas chronicles how two mutually hostile groups—the poorly educated peasant revolutionaries who seized power in 1949 and China's old educated elite—coalesced to form a new dominant class.

⊹ Adults in the Room: My Battle with the European and American Deep Establishment - Yanis Varoufakis (A.) [Aleksa's commentary: The book I mentioned earlier - "adults in the room" - is amazing. There's a great description of Greece's role in the European economy [as an archetype for other, small European countries] and the Union's successful attempts to discipline smaller countries to keep their monetary policy in line with the interest of central European bankers. I'd definitely reccommend it!] || What happens when you take on the establishment? In Adults in the Room, the renowned economist and former finance minister of Greece Yanis Varoufakis gives the full, blistering account of his momentous clash with the mightiest economic and political forces on earth.

Edit: Links added when possible! If they stop working let me know or if you have a link for the ones missing.

[reddest-flower]

Socialism, as we know, presupposes public ownership of the means of production. Under socialism, the exploitation of man by man is abolished. Of course, the Nazis have nothing of the kind. The coming of the Nazis to power and their domination for 8 years in Germany showed the whole world that these “socialists,” like no one before them, ensured the growth of profits for Krupp and Borsig. Suffice it to point out that during the years of fascist domination in Germany, the largest joint-stock companies grew unusually quickly. So, for example, in 1937 in Germany there were 6 supergiant concerns with a capital of over 100 million marks, in 1939 there were already 9 such concerns. Some joint-stock companies (Harpener Bergbau, Siemens-Halske, etc.) doubled and tripled their capital during the years of the domination of the fascists. Only in 1939, the profits of the joint-stock mining company Hibernia AG increased by a fabulous figure – 100 million marks. The German Chemical Trust (IG Farbenindustrie) made a net profit in 1939 of about 60 million marks. This is what Hitler’s “socialism” is! This is the “socialism” of the monopoly tycoons, the largest capitalists in the world.

The fascist leaders themselves stole huge sums of money. It is widely known that the Hermann Goering company has a capital of 800 million marks. This is quite eloquent evidence of the monstrous, predatory fever of enrichment that the “socialists” Hitler, Goering, Goebbels and Co. are gripping. This is what Hitler’s “socialism” looks like in industry. The same kind of “socialism” is carried out by the fascists in agriculture. After the fascists came to power, the old landowners’ farms began to gain strength and new landowners’ estates began to emerge. A former associate of Hitler, Hermann Rauschning, who fled from Hitler, says that he once asked Hitler: “But what about those points of the program that relate to agrarian reform, the destruction of wage labor and the nationalization of banks?” Hitler replied: “Do I really have to explain to you the meaning of this program? Are you so primitive that you take it literally and do not see that this is only a decoration for our performance? In this program, established for the masses, I will never change anything ... To nourish the hopes of the masses, it is necessary to establish some visible stages.” Thus, Hitler once again declared that the program and all sorts of talk about socialism are all the decoration of a spectacle played out by the imperialists in order to deceive the masses. Hitler’s Minister of Agriculture Darre in the first days after the Nazis came to power said: “I will not touch a single estate, no matter how large it may be (and I know that I say this in full agreement with the Reich Chancellor’s opinion) ... I also will not allow the violation of the property rights of the pledged large land holdings.” Indeed, the Nazis kept their promise. Not only did they not touch a single estate, but the number of landowners was increased: the leaders of fascism themselves became large landowners.

Who are the National Socialists? Pavel Yudin, 1942