capital-schizofrenia on Nostr: Critique of Transcendental Miserabilism - (Nick Land, 2007) Nick Land's critique of ...
Critique of Transcendental Miserabilism - (Nick Land, 2007)
Nick Land's critique of the leftist position that no part of capital is desirable, no part of capitalism is good. The popular leftist stance which critiques everything that is a part of capitalism, as stemming from the pure pursuit of growth and things which are not valuable to humans, as all it leads to is alienation.
But then what is the left "left" with?
There is no actionable economic plan forward
there is only a rejection of the current mode of production
the alternative proposals are not social plans but merely alternatives of privilege
the focus on the politics of identity does not establish an alternative to capitalism
in this essay Land's fascination with capitalism is evident, as a truly creative process
"
Perhaps there will always be a fashionable anticapitalism, but each will become unfashionable, while capitalism – becoming ever more tightly identified with its own self-surpassing – will always, inevitably, be the latest thing. ‘Means’ and ‘relations’ of production have simultaneously emulsified into competitive decentralized networks under numerical control, rendering palaeomarxist hopes of extracting a postcapitalist future from the capitalism machine overtly unimaginable. The machines have sophisticated themselves beyond the possibility of socialist utility, incarnating market mechanics within their nanoassembled interstices and evolving themselves by quasi-darwinian algorithms that build hypercompetition into ‘the infrastructure’. It is no longer just society, but time itself, that has taken the ‘capitalist road’.
"
Nick Land's critique of the leftist position that no part of capital is desirable, no part of capitalism is good. The popular leftist stance which critiques everything that is a part of capitalism, as stemming from the pure pursuit of growth and things which are not valuable to humans, as all it leads to is alienation.
But then what is the left "left" with?
There is no actionable economic plan forward
there is only a rejection of the current mode of production
the alternative proposals are not social plans but merely alternatives of privilege
the focus on the politics of identity does not establish an alternative to capitalism
in this essay Land's fascination with capitalism is evident, as a truly creative process
"
Perhaps there will always be a fashionable anticapitalism, but each will become unfashionable, while capitalism – becoming ever more tightly identified with its own self-surpassing – will always, inevitably, be the latest thing. ‘Means’ and ‘relations’ of production have simultaneously emulsified into competitive decentralized networks under numerical control, rendering palaeomarxist hopes of extracting a postcapitalist future from the capitalism machine overtly unimaginable. The machines have sophisticated themselves beyond the possibility of socialist utility, incarnating market mechanics within their nanoassembled interstices and evolving themselves by quasi-darwinian algorithms that build hypercompetition into ‘the infrastructure’. It is no longer just society, but time itself, that has taken the ‘capitalist road’.
"