[-empyre-] Biomes

Sat Apr 25 19:26:33 EST 2009

Michael,

It's not finally a matter of exchange but rather whether capital and 
capitalism should be defined as a universal in the way that Nick 
suggests. It's clear that even in the use of the biochemical example of 
'breathing as a capitalist action' Nick is applying his local social 
norms to define capital as a universal. It would be a small movement for 
a communist to make precisely the same case and define communism as a 
universal 'breathing as a communist action', as a consequence exchange 
and capital should not be considered as equivalent. As a universal 
capital remains more deeply social and ungiving than the more normal 
alternatives of purely economic definitions of (M-C-M). 

The question becomes does a position which defines capital's thereness 
as material and biochemical enable social change or even social 
evolution and whether the deep pessimism that seems unavoidable with the 
conceptualisation of capital as a universal (breathing as a capitalist 
action) give us any grounds for hope.

steve

Michael Angelo Tata, PhD wrote:
> Nick + Steve:
>  
> I think the question is whether or not there can be a history of 
> exchange, or whether "exchange" transcends historical analysis 
> because, like Being and Time in Heidegger's system, it has always been 
> there as a primary given or noumenon, and we have no analytical access 
> to its fundamental thereness.  Personally, I think that even if we 
> trace exchange back to metabolism, there is the possibility of 
> constructing a genealogy, albeit a biochemical one.  Currently, I'm 
> reading Lynn Margulis' /Dazzle Gradually/, and paying a lot of 
> attention to her idea that life began as symbiosis (a motile 
> spirochete invading a stationary archaebacterium, and the two forming 
> a stable and transmissible system).  But even in her thought, there is 
> pre-exchange, a time preceding even the push and pull of metabolism or 
> symbiosis, making it possible to rephrase the question of a history of 
> exchange as a problematics of bacteriology.  For her, even the 
> exchanges of capital refer back to the exchanges of metabolism, which 
> ultimately begin with the interactions of bacteria with environment 
> and one another, which hearken back to the autopoiesis that made 
> individual existence and its interactions possible in the first place.   
>
>
> *******************************************
> *Michael Angelo Tata, PhD  347.776.1931-USA*
> *http://www.MichaelAngeloTata.com/* <http://www.michaelangelotata.com/>
>
>
>
>  
> > Date: Fri, 24 Apr 2009 10:27:47 -0700
> > From: editor at intertheory.org
> > To: empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> > Subject: Re: [-empyre-] local currencies
> >
> >
> > sd...it all depends upon how you read/perceive a market...and 
> exchange...my view is quasi-empirical: in such a view, 'breathing' is 
> a capitalist action, wherein a being, call it 'A' --capitalizes upon 
> the extant oxygen in a given gas containing milieu, further utilizing 
> that oxygen to drive cellular processes that enable energy production 
> in the form of cellular ATP. The Romantics will call such activity, as 
> it drives a certain familiar mammal around the planet, human 'life'. 
> There is even a built-in regulator of ecological balance, in the sense 
> that one person can only breathe so much at a time...on the other 
> hand, other activities of anthro-capital utilization (e.g. financial 
> speculation, local currency creation,etc.) are checked by more 
> anthropic laws...
> >
> > Nicholas Ruiz III, Ph.D
> > Editor, Kritikos
> > http://intertheory.org
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ----- Original Message ----
> > From: "sdv at krokodile.co.uk" <sdv at krokodile.co.uk>
> > To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> > Sent: Tuesday, April 21, 2009 2:25:39 PM
> > Subject: Re: [-empyre-] local currencies
> >
> > Nick
> >
> > Given that earlier you claimed that 'we are all capitalists' and in the
> > same note proceeded to mention the 'market' in terms which effectively
> > continue the fetishization of the concept which we've been living with
> > throughout the last three decades, to then revert back to a currency
> > localized in geographic terms seems a little inconsistent...
> >
> > Still there have always been methods of exchange which are external to
> > capitalist markets, for markets existed before capital and will exist
> > long after capital has been superceded.
> >
> > steve
> >
> >
> >
> > Nicholas Ruiz III wrote:
> > > these people may really be on to something with this 
> practice...why wouldn't or shouldn't every locale have their own currency?
> > >
> > > NRIII
> > >
> > > Nicholas Ruiz III, Ph.D
> > > Editor, Kritikos
> > > http://intertheory.org
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > ----- Original Message ----
> > > From: davin heckman <davinheckman at gmail.com>
> > > To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> > > Sent: Monday, April 6, 2009 2:35:14 PM
> > > Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Eddies, Whirlwinds, Trade Winds
> > >
> > > I just read an article in the Detroit News on their new local 
> currency:
> > > 
> http://www.detnews.com/article/20090323/BIZ/903230389/Detroit+cash+keeps+hometown+humming
> > >
> > > It's not "extra-marketable"... but I do like that it tries to keep 
> money local.
> > >
> > > Davin
> > >
> > >
> > > On Sun, Apr 5, 2009 at 8:58 PM, { brad brace } <bbrace at eskimo.com> 
> wrote:
> > >
> > >> On Sun, 5 Apr 2009, G.H. Hovagimyan wrote:
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>>> ghh...what might an 'extra-marketable' utopia look like...?
> > >>>>
> > >>> ... In New York there are hundreds of artists collectives that
> > >>> are now functioning outside of the market. They share loft spaces,
> > >>> produce work online and offline and function despite the
> > >>> market...
> > >>>
> > >> you'd know better than me G.H. (I haven't set foot in NYC
> > >> since the 70-80's), so I'm genuinely interested to know
> > >> about all these many suddenly successful artists' co-ops...
> > >> care to name a few? (or is this wistful posturing...)
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> /:b
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> _______________________________________________
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> > >> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> > >> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
> > >>
> > >>
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