GM Looking Into the Past? (Chloe) by Chloë

Last night, for the first time I saw the documentary, Who Killed the Electric Car? It is an enjoyable movie and I highly recommend it. It seems though that I watched this movie at a rather ironic time.

GM has developed a new electric car, the Chevy Volt, as its argument for government bail out money. President Obama's task force visited GM on Monday and test drove the new car. The task force is charged with figuring out if GM is still an economically viable company and if it deserves bail out money.

It seems ironic though that GM is going back to a car, the EV1, that it developed in the late 90's and later took off the market because it wasn't deemed profitable. The new economic shift is forcing GM to revive the old idea in search of a way to revive their company. The Chevy Volt is expected to be available in 2010. If you would like to follow the Volt, check out this blog or if you are just a bit bored CHECK out some other electic cars like Aptera 2e which will be available in Cali in October!

Technological Change and the Revolutionary Process (Keith) by Keith

The work of the inventor and futurist Ray Kurweil was a part of our discussion in a study group in New Brunswick. (We hope to stream our study groups on line soon so that comrades outside of town can particpate too).   Here is a talk that Kurweil gave on "technology's acceralating power."

On this blog and in our practical work we have been developing the theory of revolutionary democray in a way we think is unusual among the left, we eagerly look to the future,  instead of the past. We are not critics of counsmer culture and consumption so much as we are fighting for better as well as more opportunities for consumption. We are more interetsed in productive process that have a future rather than preserving the past. 

In previos posts I argued that What is revolutionay about the working class is that workers are best able to bring down the system and today these workers are in high tech sectors of the economy.  We have also argued that the most advanced communications technology provides the scaffolding of revolutionary democratic orgainzation and enhanbces its possibilities.  Understanding technological change and its social effects is crucial for develping revolutionary democratic stratgey and tactics. 

This talk by Kurzweil raises a number of questions which it would be worth investigating further. Here are the ones that jumped out at me:

Kurzweil early in the talk says "humanity is a technology creating animal" and throughout the talk he erradicates the distinction between natural history and social history.  

Is there no difference between political/social/cultural history and natural history (evolution)? 

Kurzweil says: "price performance” improve continuously. In other words the price of technology continously declines. This is pretty easily explained by Marx's value theory. But it is impossible to explain with modern bouregois economic theory which argues prices are determined by individual subjective preferences. 

How does bourgeosie or neoclassical economics (the less deragatory term), and Kurzweil understand improved "price performance"? (Also what he calls the 40-50% defaltion rate-- which is price deflation. He also inadvertently mentions teh radical increase in teh rate of exploitation. Worker productivity in the U.S.rose from $30 per/hour to $150 per/hour) 

Is Kurweil aware of the incapablity of his theory with theories of price formation in neoclassical economics? How are the conradictions resolved ideologically? Are there openings to create division between the technocratic classes and neocalssical economics here?

Kurzweil speaks about the laws of technological evolution. What are these laws? How are they enforced? Kurzweil mentions competition (it is not clear if the laws are enforced by competition in this talk. If so, that would be Marx's basic view, but it is only under capitalist social relations that competition is orgianzed and universalized). Kurzweil seems to argue that technologival change is a given rather than a social product. 

Kurzweil use the trem "research pressure." Where does this pressure come from?

In our study group we also discussed some of the questions raised by rapid technological change in the context of Marx's theory of tendency for the rate of profit to fall. Simply stated: the amount of human labor in each commodity is reduced by technological innovations which develop labors productivity. This causes the price of the commodity to fall and th3 rate of profit to decline. Here is a paragraph from the Grundrisse where Max talks about technological changed and the end of capitalism. 

"To the degree that labour time -- the mere quantity of labour -- is posited by capital as the sole determinant element, to that degree does direct labour and its quantity disappear as the determinant principle of production -- of the creation of use values -- and is reduced both quantitatively, to a smaller proportion, and qualitatively, as an, of course, indispensable but subordinate moment, compared to general scientific labour, technological application of natural sciences, on one side, and to the general productive force arising from social combination [Gliederung] in total production on the other side -- a combination which appears as a natural fruit of social labour (although it is a historic product). Capital thus works towards its own dissolution as the form dominating production."

So I would also ask what are the barriers that capitalist social relationships pose to the development technology and labors' productive power and how can we find ways to explain the obstacles posed by capitalism?

It would be great if we can begin a discussion here, and do further research, discuss it at study group, write it up notes from the discussion as a blog post for those who can't make it to study cirle. 

Pirate Bay Piracy Trial (Keith) by Keith

This is a press release from: The Bureau for Piracy and The Pirate Bay via the internets.

The trial against The Pirate Bay that started three days ago in Stockholm, Sweden is one of the most important issues of our time. Our adversaries basically wants to close down internets and remodel it into something similar of a sodamachine serving entertainment. During the trial, the prosecutor together with a coterie of representatives for a disabled business model will put up a tacky theater by telling stories designed to convince the court that The Pirate Bay infact is a menace to society.

What differs this trial from most earlier trials is that everything in and surrounding it will whirl round and round in diverse channels of communication; to be discussed, reinterpreted, copied and critizised. Every crack in their appeal will be penetrated by the gaze of thousands upon thousands of eyes on the internets, in all the channels covering the trial. Old cliches from the antipiracy lobby wont stick. You won’t be able to say stuff like, ”you can’t compete with free” or ”filesharing is theft” without a thousand voices making fun of you.

We will create numerous scenes where quite different plays will take place. In local channels like spectrial.bloggy.se where the immediate physical surroundings of the court are being discussed. ”Which cafés nearby will give us connection?” ”How can we get electricity to the bus?” But also in international channels like Twitter, where right now the torrent of information is being translated into fifteen different languages. Translations and coverage being made by ordinary users of internets. Volunteers sign up to make trial-tourist guides to the surroundings, drive the bus or hook up audio. People fly in from far away countries to cover the trial and tell the world their video story of the Sweden they see.

Here all participants are potential actors in the Spectrial. Our channels form a meltingpot of reporting and engagement.

 Our communication around the spectacle aims in no way towards an objective report on an external chain of events. Rather, the trial is a hub around which a whole new network of actors is instigated. Neither is the spectacle a question of old media against digital, social medias. Our social medias include a paper fanzine and a 32 year old bus, connecting us and others physically.

It’s not about the protocols nor the technology. It’s about using these to create new congregations, where anyone is invited and anyone can find their role, build new scenes and make their own performances.

The future is built by us. Us who participate in conversations. The future is built by us who explore how information and performativity is coming together. To refuse a debate and still expect to be able to charge consumers is since long a closed door. To also try and outlaw certain types of conversations is downright disgraceful.

The coverage of the trial is not unique in these qualities. More and more areas see the creation of conversations on and the exploration of new stances on culture and cultural economy. A gigantic collective exploration has set sails. Every route differs from the other. But they have one thing in common: The industry interests that the state is representing are never present in these conversations. This is why they wont be part in building the future.

maintain hardline kopimi

Pirate Bay, Copyright, and the End of the Market (Keith) by Keith

Today’s Financial Times reports the opening of the trial of the Pirate Bay website in Stockholm. The Financial Times calls the comrades who run the site, “the most notorious and defiant individuals in the world of file sharing.”  Not only is the site accused of hosting bit torrent tracker files that allow peer to peer file sharing, the site is often used as a platform to, in the words of the FT, “campaign against copyright, advocating that media industries should create new business models rather than try to prevent copying. “

This is a crucial issue for revolutionary democracy because it touches on cultural production, and knowledge production two crucial arenas for the development of working class power, organization, and consciousness.

The first thing to notice is the way that capitalist social relations impede on the further development of the “productive forces.” (The “productive forces” were a shorthand way that Marx used to talk about the productive power of social labor; are ability to produce a certain amount of wealth in a certain amount of time). The market has become a completely useless way to distribute these various forms of information (music, software, scientific research). The market does not facilitate the distribution or production of this information but instead impedes it, and the attempts to keep labor’s productive powers within the confines of market relations and bourgeois property relations is a significant fetter on further development.

The market acts as a rationing mechanism (only those with the ability to pay have access to goods and services distributed by a market) but p2p technology means that there is no longer a need for this rationing mechanism because the information doesn’t need to be rationed, there is no scarcity, there is only abundance.

The only real question facing revolutionary democracy, which should take its stand clearly on the side the of p2p and free information is how to financially support the artists, scientists, and workers who actually create these various forms of information. 

Futurism and the End of Capitalism (Keith) by Keith

The Financial Times has published a number of commentaries on Ray Kurzweil and the “singularity”. The FT columnist takes a standard conservative view of radical change but it is interesting that the FT is covering these developments with such regularity. This relatively intense coverage is because Kurzweil research is a part of the central contradiction of capitalism: rising productivity of labor manifests in a falling rate of profit. In other words the systems development brings about its demise. At a moment of intense crisis like now, the need to dramatically increase the productive power of labor is felt along with the danger of that increase.

For a very long time socialists, radicals, and Marxists asserted that the main contradiction of capitalism is between private ownership and socialized production. The idea here is that workers work together to produce the wealth of the whole society but ownership of the means of production and therefore the power to appropriate that wealth lies with a private few. The problem with this old view is that there is nothing specific to capitalism about this contradiction (so it isn’t a part of capitalism’s essence), slavery and feudalism also had private appropriation of socialized production.
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The central contradiction of capitalism is expressed in the law of the tendential fall in the rate of profit. The contradiction was expressed by Marx this way: “The rising productivity of labor is manifest in a falling rate of profit.” That is why Marx says the only insurmountable barrier to capital accumulation is capital itself.

In Marx’s mature work the falling rate of profit is the essence of his crisis theory. The falling rate of profit is an expression of labor’s productive power outstripping capitalist social relations and a falling rate of profit crisis can only be solved through socialist revolution or destruction on a mass scale (like world war), in other words the falling rate of profit expresses the limits to capital. There is no solution to this kind of crisis within the exiting social relationships.

So on the one hand rising labor productivity undermines capitalist social relationships and on the other hand rising labor productivity is the essence of capitalist social development, capitalist compete with each other and at the heart of that competition is technological and organizational innovations that increase the productive power of labor (more social wealth –use values—are produced with less human labor), but paradoxically this results in the long run in a falling rate of profit.

Kurzweil’s new university will function within capitalist social relationships and for a time any successes towards dramatic technological innovations can be utilized by capitals to increase their competitive advantages. But in the long run these social relationships will become increasingly felt as fetters to further development and the barrier of these social relationships will compel more and more people to the camp of revolutionary democracy. One of our mid term tasks is to develop the our understanding of this contradiction and our ability to popularize it so that people working in other fields (like Kurweil himself) can understand it.

Artificial Intelligence and the revolutionary process (Keith) by Keith

The Financial Times reported on Feb 3rd that the futurist Ray Kurzweil will be opening a research institution with backing form Google and Nasa (private/public partnership). Kurzweil is pointing out, perhaps unwittingly and among other things, that in the foreseeable future, human labor will be so productive (with the aid of machines) that it will be possible to produce, with little to no environmental damage, an abundance of social wealth. The interesting thing politically is that as society approaches what Kurweil calls the “singularity” capitalism will enter into deeper and deeper crisis because the capitalist social relations will be in increasing conflicts with these developments. The rapidly increasing productivity of labor has the effect of driving down the costs of commodities and in circuitously this development causes profit rates to fall. Profit is the reason for capitalist production and so without profits the system will grind to a halt. Capitalist social relationships will have to be completely abolished before “new era of civilization” envisioned by Kurweil can come into existence. Here is the article:

Google and Nasa back new school for futurists
By David Gelles in San Francisco
Published: February 3 2009 05:02 | Last updated: February 3 2009 05:02
Google and Nasa are throwing their weight behind a new school for futurists in Silicon Valley to prepare scientists for an era when machines become cleverer than people.
The new institution, known as “Singularity University”, is to be headed by Ray Kurzweil, whose predictions about the exponential pace of technological change have made him a controversial figure in technology circles.
Google and Nasa’s backing demonstrates the growing mainstream acceptance of Mr Kurzweil’s views, which include a claim that before the middle of this century artificial intelligence will outstrip human beings, ushering in a new era of civilisation.
To be housed at Nasa’s Ames Research Center, a stone’s-throw from the Googleplex, the Singularity University will offer courses on biotechnology, nano-technology and artificial intelligence.
The so-called “singularity” is a theorised period of rapid technological progress in the near future. Mr Kurzweil, an American inventor, popularised the term in his 2005 book “The Singularity is Near”.
Proponents say that during the singularity, machines will be able to improve themselves using artificial intelligence and that smarter-than-human computers will solve problems including energy scarcity, climate change and hunger.
Yet many critics call the singularity dangerous. Some worry that a malicious artificial intelligence might annihilate the human race.
Mr Kurzweil said the university was launching now because many technologies were approaching a moment of radical advancement. “We’re getting to the steep part of the curve,” said Mr Kurzweil. “It’s not just electronics and computers. It’s any technology where we can measure the information content, like genetics.”
The school is backed by Larry Page, Google co-founder, and Peter Diamandis, chief executive of X-Prize, an organisation which provides grants to support technological change.
“We are anchoring the university in what is in the lab today, with an understanding of what’s in the realm of possibility in the future,” said Mr Diamandis, who will be vice-chancellor. “The day before something is truly a breakthrough, it’s a crazy idea.”
Despite its title, the school will not be an accredited university. Instead, it will be modelled on the International Space University in Strasbourg, France, the interdisciplinary, multi-cultural school that Mr Diamandis helped establish in 1987