Archive for the politics Category

DRAFT III, My Residency at Digital Art Lab /////

Wednesday, July 6th, 2011 | Permalink

DRAFT III

JessyCom (working title)

The JessyCom project will continue the Miscommunication Technologies series of works, following Miss Information, deadSwap, YOU NEVER LISTEN TO ME!?, and Thimbl.

Miscommunication Technologies is an ongoing project by Dmytri Kleiner in collaboration with the Telekommunisten Network. Miscommunication Technologies employ satire and emphasize simplicity and human interactions over technological sophistication, creating platforms that don’t often work as expected, or work in unexpected ways. Miscommunication Technologies uncover the social relations embedded in network topologies and communications platforms.

During his residency at the Digital Art Center, Dmytri will give a presentation on the Telekommunist Manifesto, which discusses the Political Economy of networks and information. The manifesto outlines many ideas that are core to the practice of the Telekommunisten Network. Dmytri will also introduce Thimbl, deadSwap and other Telekommunisten projects.

The main focus of the residency will the development of jessyCom. With the help of Tsila Hassine and the Israeli Center for Digital Art Center, a storefront in the Jessy Cohen neighborhood will be converted into a kiosk that resembles those used to market mobile telephone service, but instead will promote “JessyCom” a platform where users can “Share Messages and Win Prizes.”
The Jessy Cohen neighbourhood is an underprivileged neighbourhood, many neighbourhood people, especially youth, have mobile phones, but most have no credit, so they can receive calls, but not make any.

When JessyCom receives a phone call, it automatically connects the caller to a randomly selected person that has signed-up for JessyCom, the caller can then pass on a message to this person. Starting from these two people, JessyCom is an implementation of the “random phone call” model of network broadcasting. Information is passed by word of mouth throughout an entire network byway of a series of calls between randomly selected people.

The original message is passed vocally from person to person in a “broken telephone” style until every person in the group has received the message. Other than the original caller, nobody else needs to have any phone credit to participate, as all random calls are initiated by the JessyCom telephone switch and thus are incoming calls for the participants.

To build interest in JessyCom the project will focus around a contest. People will be encouraged to sign-up for JessyCom for the chance to win free top-up cards to get credit for their existing mobile operator. The contest will employ the system to spread special messages into the community, and then award prizes of phone credit to randomly selected community members who know the original message.
Explaining this contest will be the primary role of the storefront, website and other materials. We hope that the contest will incentivize members of the community to join. Once they know how the system works by joining the contest, they can initiate new messages own and employ JessyCom as they like.

Unlike typical social networks, where communication is self-selected into circles of “friends,” JessyCom works byway of co-operation of randomly selected people. The “random phone call” broadcast model will connect random people. Users of different ages, with different ethnic and economic backgrounds will need to talk to each and work together for the communication platform to work.

With a bit of co-operation, JessyCom allows one phone call to reach an entire community.

http://www.digitalartlab.org.il/Index.asp

 

Posted in art, politics, publish, technology | No Comments »

Excerpt on Immaterial Peer Production (ping @mrteacup)

Thursday, June 16th, 2011 | Permalink

From The Telekommunist Manifesto

http://telekommunisten.net/the-telekommunist-manifesto

Excerpt from “PEER PRODUCTION AND THE POVERTY OF NETWORKS”

For peer production to have any effect on general material wealth it has to operate within the context of an overall system of goods and services, where the physical means of production and the virtual means of production are both available in the commons for peer production. By establishing a commons-based peer production in the context of an information-only commons, Benkler is creating a trap, ensuring the value created in the peer economy is appropriated by property privilege. We have found Benkler standing on his head, and we will need to redefine peer production to put his head above his feet again.

Posted in art, politics, publish, technology | No Comments »

Two Short Excerpts on Imposed Asymmetries In Networks (ping @mrteacup)

Thursday, June 16th, 2011 | Permalink

From The Telekommunist Manifesto

http://telekommunisten.net/the-telekommunist-manifesto

Excerpt from “THE CONDITIONS OF THE WORKING CLASS ON THE INTERNET”

Capitalism depends on the state to impose control within the network
economy, particularly to control relations through authorized channels, and thereby capture value that would otherwise be retained by its producers. Points of control are introduced into the natural mesh of social relations. The ‘market economy’ is then the imposition of the’unfree’ terms of a
physical marketplace onto society broadly. The distinction between producer and consumer must be enforced so that circulation can be controlled.
Hierarchy and authority must have privileged access.

Excerpt from “PEER PRODUCTION AND THE POVERTY OF NETWORKS”

A freer internet cannot exist within the present system of capitalist
financing. Arguments for the clear technical superiority of distributed
technologies over centralized ones have not been the deciding factors in the ultimate development of our global communications infrastructure, which has become more consolidated, regulated and restrictive. The determining factor is, as always, the fact that those whose interests are served by restricting freedom have more wealth at their disposal to relentlessly push toward their ends than is available to resist them.

Posted in politics, publish, technology | No Comments »

Capital doesn’t automate, it entangles.

Sunday, May 15th, 2011 | Permalink

During Nick Dyer-Witheford’s presentation at #PlatPol11 the issue of Capital replacing Labour in production entered the conversation and persisted throughout the informal discussions. Would Capitalism automate itself out of existence? Probably not. As Nick noted, it’s not the unskilled, menial jobs Capitalism automates, but usually the skilled ones. Rather than a future characterized by gleaming fully automated robot factories producing untold wealth while humans enjoy a life of leisure and pursuit of higher consciousness, a more realistic vision of capitalist automation is the panicked teenager frantically responding to various beeps and buzzers and flashing lights in the kitchen of a fast-food restaurant. 

Up until the 50s only short-order cooks made simple, fast-cooked meals and snacks, and the booming diner industry of the era employed many of them. An in-demand occupation, good short-order cooks could be hard to come by, and needed to be paid relatively well. Insta-Burger King, established in 1953 by Matthew Burns and Keith J. Kramer in Jacksonville, Florida developed a way to sell burgers cheaper, by eliminating skilled short-order cooks, replacing them with unskilled labour through the use of their ”Insta-Broiler.” Carl N. Karcher, founder of Carl’s Jr, followed suit, replacing his cooks with unskilled kitchen workers and automated kitchen equipment. This is not limited to the Fast Food industry, from call centers, to airports, from hospitals to factories, “Deskilling” has replaced skilled labor by the introduction of technologies operated by semiskilled or unskilled workers. Labour continues to be at the heart of the value creation proces, it just becomes more and more embodied in an authoritarian, monitoring and directing, automated Capital super-structure. It is not “Labour” that Capital is replacing, but rather “Human Capital.” As Wikipedia describes it “That stock of competences, knowledge and personality attributes embodied in the ability to perform labor so as to produce economic value.” So rather than automation, perhaps it makes more sense to understand this process as the Dehumanization of Capital, the embedding of human skill into equipment, and the embedding of human labour into automation.

The technologies that are employed in deskilled production are of course themselves produced, and their design involves increasingly complex engineering that employs highly-skilled workers. Skilled labour is not so much replaced, but rather displaced. Moved away from the direct production of consumer goods, to the indirect production of capital goods. This also has a depoliticizing effect. The bargaining power of the masses of deskilled labour is greatly reduced, since they are more replaceable. While the skilled technologists that design the software are increasingly separated from the location of direct production, where surlus-value is created, and thus are abstracted from the appropriation of surplus value.

Technologists, often do not see themselves as exploited labour. Since they do not directly toil in the production of consumer goods or services, they often feel enabled, not exploited by capital. They produce ideas, designs, maybe prototypes, but never final products for sale. The Capitalists allow them to realize their technical visions, they don’t directly take anything from them.

At #PlatPol11, during Chris Chesher’s talk he presented a Robot waitress that was being marketed at a Korean trade show. It was noted that waitresses are minimum wage labourers, and therefore it was highly unlikely that such a product would be widely used, since it would be much more expensive to maintain a crew of Robot waitresses, then human ones. While the Technology industry may like to show off such novelties like robot pets and servants, Chris noted that the real money and development was in Military robots, designed to kill.

Capitalism will not automate itself out of existence. It will not eliminate the workforce, and it will not even try. What it will do is create a deskilled workforce, ever more dependent on capital for the ability to produce, and create a divided workforce, that does not share a common proletarian consciousness, thus diffusing its class power. And, for when and where discontent does bubble up, it will automate the deadly force required to repress uprisings. The brutal Enforcement Droid is much more viable than the pleasant robot servant.

A system that directs production towards the creation of exchange value has many motivations to create control, since capture of scarce resources is at the heart of the formation of exchange value, however, it has no motivation to create general abundance. Only a workers society, where people produced and shared as equals would be interested in achieving abundance, since more wealth and less work would be enjoyed by all.

Capital doesn’t automate, it entangles. Its technological apparatus does not free labour, it encloses, envelopes human life and labour within it - invading, harassing and extracting. The tremendous wealth-producing power of technology can only truly reduce toil when the wage system is abolished, and when classes are eliminated. Only then could the inovation and determination of people be genuinely applied to using technology to reduce work and increase leisure, until then it is only a sci-fi mirage.

 

Posted in politics, publish, technology | 1 Comment »

Insurgent Finance! My thoughts written on my phone on the way to #platpol11 last night, cleaned up and edited.

Thursday, May 12th, 2011 | Permalink

Insurgent Finance!

In the 70′s and 80′s Michael Milken was part of something rather remarkable. The son of an accountant, Milken was hardly born into old money, yet he raised billions of dollars to finance takeovers of major companies. In the process, Milken pulled in anual salaries so hefty that David Rockefeller himself called excessive, and later-day presidential hopeful Donald Trump, never himself allergic to ostentation, noted of Milken’s remuneration “you can be happy on a lot less money.”

Some of the companies that Milken funded where declining industrial concerns, which Milken’s clients downsized, asset stripped and generaly liquidated. These clients where the “Corporate Raiders,” the villains in what was popularly understood as a morality story of unrestrained greed. Other clients built new telecommunications companies, like MCI, that would become industry giants. Milken did this by way of issuing high-yield, “speculative grade” bonds, commonly derided as “Junk Bonds.” Milken himself was labeled the “Junk Bond King.” Milken never saw himself as a raider, and certainly not a king. The bonds that the establishment called junk, represented to Milken a democratization of Capital. Milken believed that he was a liberator that broke open the Capitalist vaults, getting Capital in the hands of a new generation of
businesses that would otherwise have been shut out by the conservative old elite. In some sense that is true. Milken helped fuel the rise of many insurgents into a previously well-heeled old guard, notably himself and the likes of Rupert Murdoch. Milken’s methods opened the door for a generation of gate crashers, elbowing crudely and aggressively into the ruling class. However, in the end this only created new elites, and did not democratize capital, let alone Capitalism. Today, capital continues to be concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, even if there may be a little more diversity among them. Any attempt to democratize Capitalism while retaining the wage labour system will always lead to the such concentration, but I can’t help but wonder could there be a Communist Micheal Milken? Could the financial techniques used to fund the hostile acquisitions of the Corporate Raiders be used to fund an insurgent Venture Communism?

Several years into the Telekommunisten project I’m increasingly haunted by Marx’s warning that when the proletariat undertakes “Doctrinaire” experiments like Co-operative banking, labour exchange, etc, it seeks to “bring about it’s emancipation behind the back of society, in private ways, within the narrow bounds of it’s class condition, and, consequently, inevitably fails.”

We can not overthrow society behind its back due to the narrow opportunities available in our class condition. Bootstrapping Venture Communism has not yet happened, in large part because the proletarian members of the Telekommunisten network have no Capital, and therefor need to keep full time jobs to sustain ourselves and our families. Our part-time capacity to build new ventures is vastly insufficient to actually compete against capital funded firms. Bootstrapping Venture Communism by initiating self-funding ventures seems like more and more of a longshot for us.

Perhaps it’s simple desperation driven by revolutionary zeal, but the idea of employing insurgent finance to capture and mutualize existing operating companies is very attractive, and in many ways the conditions seem simular. Interests rates are at historic lows, and investors are looking for securities with better yields, even if they come with some risk as the markets themselves are unstable. Also, the declining Industrial concerns giving way to Globalizing Industry are perhaps mirrored by declining independent Internet Service Providers and the distributed, P2P infrastructure they traded in giving way to massive conglomerates and centralized platforms. The few remaining ISPs seem like ideal targets for Venture Communist take-over. And such take overs would be supported even by those who deny class struggle, yet oppose the centralization of the internet on sharing and privacy grounds.

Will the next proletarian revolutions take place, not via violence, nor by way of ballot boxes, but on the trading floors?

 

Posted in politics, publish | No Comments »

Final Manifesto Text for Translating, Remixing, etc.

Saturday, May 7th, 2011 | Permalink

TelekommnunistManifesto_Kleiner_FINALTEXT.rtf
Download this file

TelekommunistManifesto_BACKCOVER_FINAL.doc
Download this file

 

Posted in art, politics, publish, technology | No Comments »

Democracy Diner. (Written before the Obama election)

Tuesday, May 3rd, 2011 | Permalink

DEMOCRACY DINER

Dmytri Kleiner

The US election is dominating the press and airwaves worldwide, but what
is the real relevance of this spectacle?

Neither McCain nor Obama nor Palin nor Biden will have any more control of
America Inc than the Revlon Spokesmodel has over Revlon Inc, or the
Playmate of the Month has over Playboy Inc, or Ronald McDonald has
over McDonald’s Inc.

The candidates are competing for the job of representing government policy
to the public, not the job of deciding it. The job of deciding policy is
not an elected position, but rather is a ruthless, cut-throat, back alley,
no-holds-barred cage match of raw power. Any candidate who is not already
vetted as being willing and able, nay, eager, to serve the powerful never
raises above school trustee, if they make it that far.

The candidates are selling themselves to the power elite, what they are
selling is an ability to gain compliance from the American people. What
they will gain compliance for, exactly, is not up to them, but rather
decided by full-contact conflicts among the rivalrous, and internationally
involved, power elite. And whatever campaign platforms they take or
promises they make in selling themselves, including policy promises, are
not binding, but rather a screen-test of their ability to represent a
certain policy, and a market research project to help the elite understand
exactly what sort of masses they need compliance from.

The candidates are competing for the job of legitimizing the interests of
the elite, not for representing the people. A head of state is no more
chosen by the people than a Pope or a King is chosen by god, the public
spectacle of the choice is only needed as a means of creating legitimacy.
Each time a new leader is chosen, the crimes and failings of the nation’s
elite are washed away. No matter how much legitimacy was squandered during
the last administration, a brand new celebrity spokesmodel is an
absolution, the very act of the previous administration’s end of term
is celebrated as a victory for it’s victims and discontents. The Holly
King kills the Oak King, yet the two are one and the same.

The individual presidential candidates and their parties fight just as
bitterly for the job as the mothers of juvenile beauty queens fight for
their daughter’s crown, but that the job is quite important to those that
seek it should not lead anyone to conclude that it makes a difference to
anybody not involved in the contest.

Democracy is like going to a restaurant with only one thing on the menu and being given the choice of which waiter serves it to you.

Posted in politics, publish | No Comments »

The Thimbl Story. // #facebookpurge // Pass it on.

Friday, April 29th, 2011 | Permalink

# The Thimbl Story

People should finger each other as often as possible. Maybe even several times a day, hell, why not once an hour? As  often as you like! 

People thrive on interaction with other people. Mutual stimulation is a
deeply felt human need, a key characteristic of what makes us human. Imagine that
instead of reading your status updates on Twitter or Facebook, your
friends would just finger you instead.

The Finger protocol was originally developed in the 1970s as a way to
publish user and status information, such as who you are, what you’re working on,
and what you’re doing now. This is how the relatively few folks with access to
networks posted pithy personal bios. From when colourful polyester pants
were still groovy until the 90s people Fingered each other all the time!

Finger evolved into a completely decentralized system, where any user
could finger any other user as long as they were both on the Internet. There
were no big companies in the middle to control these users, or monitor them, or
try to turn their personal data into money. Fingering was a personal matter
between users, direct and unmediated, and nobody really knew exactly who was
fingering who. Promiscuous, right?

Sadly, these heady days of open relationships slowly came to an end.
Finger software was developed before the Internet had many users, and before
development was driven by commercial interests. The idea was bold, but the
software was primitive.

Capitalists and their desire for profit have no interest in such freedom
and promiscuity and chose to instead fund centrally controlled systems, in
which they are intermediaries. Investors wanted control, so that they can
commodify and monetize these relationships. Instead of users fingering each other
with reckless abandon, people are now stuck with centralized, privately owned
services like Facebook; chaperoning their relationships, imposing user
policies on them, and monitoring and monetizing their conversations.

Back in June 2010, Telekommunisten had had enough! “People must be freed
from these puritanical, controlling, consumerist, profit-seeking cults”, they
thought. If witchcraft, rocker hair and skinny jeans could make comebacks,
why not Finger?

The Thimbl project was born, and we immediately started working on giving
the project an online identity and releasing tools to create a microblogging
platform built on Finger, that groovy 70s protocol.

In October, Telekommunisten received the news that Thimbl was one of three
projects nominated for Transmediale/Mozilla Foundation Open Web Award and
almost immediately, the project started to attract significant interest.

Thimbl was the subject of many articles, blog posts, tweets, and status
updates, won a Distinction at Transmediale and earned supported status at
Drumbeat. Finger was becoming cool again. The masses were longing to
finger each other!

Still, the problem remains: Capital will not fund free platforms like
Thimbl. Even with the buzz Thimbl has, building a community big enough to actually
create a viable platform without financing is a major challenge.

Thimbl directly addresses the technical and social issues facing the open
web in every aspect of the project, in the code, and in our manifestos. The
Telekommunisten argue that the major chalenge the open web must overcome
is political, not technical, and that the open web is not just critical to
the future of the Internet, but to society itself. And people are beginning to
take notice.

The project is still in an early stage, but we are advancing. Several
clients now exist, including a graphical web-based one and more are in
development, along with client libraries, and an HTTP to finger API. A small community
of Thimbl users now exists. A few finger servers are running again, and
people are fingering each other.

Apart from this tiny fledglng community, the multitudes are trapped and
frustrated, clinging to their social interactions within sterile,
commercial platforms, longing for wanton, unbridled realms of contact.

Join us in inscribing upon on our banners the revolutionary slogan, “Don’t
be a Twit, it feels good to be fingered!”

– 

For more info, see:

 

 - http://www.thimbl.net/manifesto.html

 - http://thimbl.tk

 - http://www.telekommunisten.net/the-telekommunist-manifesto

 

 

Posted in art, politics, publish, technology | 1 Comment »

Give Thimbl The Open Web Award!

Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011 | Permalink

//////////////////////////////////////////////// http://www.thimbl.net/award.html

# Why Thimbl should win the Transmediale/Mozilla Foundation Open Web Award

 

The Telekommunisten Collective thinks that people should finger each other as often as possible. Maybe even several times a day, hell, why not once an hour? As often as you like!

People thrive on interaction with other people. Mutual stimulation is a deeply felt human need, a key characteristic of what makes us human. Imagine that instead of reading your status updates on Twitter or Facebook, your friends would just finger you instead.

The Finger protocol was originally developed in the 1970s as a way to publish user and status information, such as who you are, what you’re working on, and what you’re doing now. This is how the relatively few folks with access to networks posted pithy personal bios. From when colourful polyester pants were still groovy until the 90s people used to Finger each other all the time! Finger evolved into a completely decentralized system, where any user could finger any other user as long as they were both on the Internet. There were no big companies in the middle to control these users, or monitor them, or try to turn their personal data into money. Fingering was a personal matter between users, direct and unmediated, and nobody really knew exactly who was fingering who. Promiscuous, right?

Sadly, these heady days of open relationships slowly came to an end. Finger software was developed before the Internet had many users, and before development was driven by commercial interests. The idea was bold, but the software was primitive. Capitalists and their desire for profit have no interest in such freedom and promiscuity and chose to instead fund centrally controlled systems, in which they are intermediaries. Investors wanted control, so that they can commodify and monetize these relationships. Instead of users fingering each other with reckless abandon, people are now stuck with centralized, privately owned services like Facebook; chaperoning their relationships, imposing user policies on them, and monitoring and monetizing their conversation.

Back in June 2010, Telekommunisten had had enough! “People must be freed from these puritanical, controlling, consumerist, profit-seeking cults”, they thought. If witchcraft, wet shaving, rocker hair and skinny jeans could make comebacks, why not Finger? The Thimbl project was born, and immediately started working on giving the project an online identity and releasing tools to create a microblogging platform built on Finger, that groovy 70s protocol.

In October, Telekommunisten received the news that Thimbl was one of three projects nominated for Transmediale/Mozilla Foundation Open Web Award and almost immediately, Thimbl broke on Hacker News and the project started to attract significant interest. Thimbl started popping up all over the place: P2Pfoundation, ecopolis, alt1040, O’Reilly Radar, OneThingWell, Ecrans, reboot.fm… Evan Prodromou from competing service identi.ca even took a playful swipe at us!

Finger was becoming cool again. The masses were longing to finger each other!

In a few short months, without much in the way of a marketing strategy and with a budget that could be stored in a matchbox, Thimbl has managed to gather over 250 followers on Twitter – the very service it someday hopes to compete with – and has been the subject of hundreds and hundreds of tweets. Thimbl even has a small following on identi.ca, which is closer to the heart of Thimbl than the service with birds and whales. The thimbl.net website has over 300 ‘Likes’ with its Facebook button and the Telekommunisten Facebook fan page is abuzz with talk of Thimbl. The project has even gathered over 100 votes on the Drumbeat platform. Not bad for a project that was completely unknown to all but a handful of people when the award nominations where announced!

Still, the problem remains: Capital will not fund free platforms like Thimbl. Even with the buzz Thimbl has, building a community big enough to actually create a viable platform without financing is a major challenge.

Wouldn’t it be great if Thimbl could actually win the Open Web award? The endorsement of Transmediale and the Mozilla Foundation would be a tremendous boost for the project, perhaps enough to give the community the needed escape velocity to break free from centralized social media like Twitter and Facebook and make Finger the once and future king of personal status updates! Transmediale and The Mozilla Foundation had a great idea: instead of having a jury decide the winner of the award, present three projects to a community engaged with the open web and its technical, political and artistic dimensions. Mozilla had recently launched the Drumbeat project, just for this purpose, as a hub for projects that embrace the open web to get support and find contributors. So it made perfect sense for Drumbeat to host the voting for the award.

Drumbeat is a fantastic initiative from Mozilla and has a really promising future. However, Drumbeat is a relatively new platform. As a result none of the projects received much attention from existing Drumbeat users or from the Transmediale community jumping on to Drumbeat to participate. The idea that an impartial community would consider the three projects and select a winner didn’t quite work out. Instead, it has become a competition to rally the existing supporters of the three projects to sign up to Drumbeat and vote for them specifically, without genuinely considering voting for the others. This means that, honestly, the vote count is about as impartially meaningful as a Florida election run by Diebold.

Thimbl is up against two cool projects as candidates for the Open Web Award; Booki, the book publishing platform behind FLOSSManuals and many great book writing sprints, and Graffiti Markup Language, a project to enable analysis and archiving of graffiti writing which has the support of many awesome, large and active communities like F.A.T. Lab and eyebeam. If the open web award is really meant to give well-earned support to existing, successful projects like Booki and GML, then we will celebrate their success with them at the award ceremony in a few days. We readily concede that Thimbl has not yet achieved anywhere near what these projects have and that our community is much, much smaller and far less known.

Unless we succeed in our desperate bid to convince Lady Gaga to dump Polaroid and instead dedicate her star power to the cause of ushering in a new golden age of rampant fingering, we are very unlikely to win based on Drumbeat vote count. But if Open Web Award aspires to “clearly demonstrate the unbound potential of the open web in ways that can spark new thinking and practices,” as stated, then, damn it, Thimbl is the most about the open web!

We live and breathe the open web, directly addressing the technical and social issues facing the open web in every aspect of the project, in the code, and in our manifestos. We talk to anyone who will listen about how the open web is not just critical to the future of the Internet, but to society itself. And people are beginning to take notice.

Selecting Thimbl for the Open Web Award at Transmediale would be one heck of a powerful spark. Igniting the new thinking and practice that led to the idea of Thimbl with a clear and bold statement of support for an open web that is truly open! The multitudes are trapped and frustrated, clinging to their social interactions within sterile, commercial platforms, longing for wanton, unbridled realms of contact.

Join us in inscribing upon on our banners the revolutionary slogan, “Don’t be a Twit, it feels good to be fingered!”

Give Thimbl the Open Web Award!

With Kind Regards, Your Telekommunisten.

http://www.thimbl.net   /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

(psst… pass it on)

 

Posted in art, politics, publish, technology | 1 Comment »

Bluffer’s Guide To Economics/ CAPITAL

Wednesday, June 10th, 2009 | Permalink

Image037

Capital is the stock of tools available for production. The return to Capital is called Interest, this is the portion of the productive output retained by owners of capital, their share for allowing this capital to be used in production. Yet, capital, which can be produced, can therefore have it’s price reduced to it’s own reproduction cost. This means that Capital can not capture any more than it’s own reproduction cost. This means there can be no Capitalist class. Capitalism can not exist within a free market. For Capital to have a return above its own costs, the capitalists must drive its price up by withholding the means of production from labour. By way of introducing scarcity and thereby including Rent in the price, Capital farms profit. This is done largely by way of State granted exclusivity, such as patents and copyrights, banking charters, and other legel priviledge. Preventing new suppliers of Capital from existing is the means by which the Capitalist class is sustained.

Posted in politics, publish | No Comments »

subscribe