Political Scatology
Pat's had some really hip posts this week which are exactly what I'm interested in. Props to Pat--http://prisonship.wordpress.com/2006/11/28/attention-nick-bishop/#comments
as well as http://prisonship.wordpress.com/2006/11/28/lets-eliminate-these-adjectives/ Ideas being tossed around is good but I'd like to continue a theme common to Ben and Rob's (This guy is seriously MIA) posts and expand on this a little.
Ultimately subjectively we all have certain concepts that we can't stand, in many cases concepts that the meaning of which is so amorphous that we can't really understand them or easilly confuse them, although without many of them (or the feelings and instincts behind them) we couldn't survive and maintain our own identities, or identify with expressive concepts, because ultimately all are theraputic (wrong word I know, its all in HOW you use them) in some sense. The same can be said with political attributes/concepts, although these seem to be a little more high stakes in that they to a large extent create the reality that we can/can't stand, and. Many of the words mentioned i've used, or haven't. And I'm sure as you all were checking those posts (and hopefully this one) you felt the same.
What excites me are the larger relationships that form these modes of speech that form the foundations of how we relate, or are led by the political systems and intricacies that dominate our consciences and vice versa. Lets remember that neither inductive logic nor deductive logic can ultimatly make sense of these distinctions, also ultimately we can't prove cause and effect through numbers alone either. I think we have a better shot of "scientifically" unlocking these connections through geographic analysis. What say you.
Free Market: That condition of society in which all economic transactions result from voluntary choice without coercion.
The State: That institution which interferes with the Free Market through the direct exervise of coercion or the granting of privelages (backed by coercion)
Tax: That form of coercion or interference with the Free Market in which the State collects tribute, allowing it to hire armed forces to practice coercion in defense of privelage, alnd also to engage in such wars, adventures, experiments, "reforms," etc., as it pleases, not at its own cost, but at the cost of "its" subjects.
Privilege: From the latin privi, private, and lege, law. An advantage granted by the State and protected by its powers of coercion. A law for private benefit.
Landlordism: That form of privilege or interference with the Free Market in which one State-supported group "owns" the land and thereby takes tribute (rent) from those who live, work, or produce on the land.
Tariff: That form of privilege or interference with the Free Market in which commodities produced outside the State are not allowed to compete equally with those produced inside the State.
Capitalism: That organization of society, incorporating elements of tax, usury, landlordism, tariff, which thus denies the Free Market while pretending to exemplify it.
Conservatism: That school of capitalist philosophy which claims allegiance to the Free Market while actually supporting usury, landlordism, tariff, and sometimes (frequently as of recent) taxation
Liberalism: That school of capitalist philosophy which attempts to correct the injustices of capitalism by adding new laws to the existing laws. Each time conservatives pass a law creating privilege, liberals pass another law modifying privilege, leading conservatives to pass a more subtle law recreating privilege, etc., until "everything not forbidden is compulsory" and "everything not compulsory is forvidded."
Socialism: The attempted abolition of all privilege by restoring power entirely to the coercive agent behind privelege, the State, thereby converting capitalist oligarchy ito Statist monopoly. Watewashing a wall by painting it black.
Anarchism: That organization of society in which the Free Market operates freely, without taxes, usury, landlordism, tarrifs, or other forms of coercion or privilege. Right anarchists predict that in the Free Market people would voluntarily choose to compete more often than cooperate. Left anarchists predict that in the Free Market people would voluntarily choose to cooperate more often than to compete.
Anyone who can place this scatology? Guesses? Thoughts?
posted by prison guard @ 7:15 PM
6 Comments:
Are we supposed to guess who came up with these categories/terms?
In any case, I enjoyed reading them.
They all came from a book, I was just wondering if anyone has read it. I think its a pretty good analysis of the disinformation/double meaning associated with political terms.
I haven't read the book, obviously. What is it? I need some schooling in this area.
It's from Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminatus Trilogy. This is an exteremely small part of the book, which doesn't deal with politics at all, it just takes a look at people's fascination with conspiracy (and its underlying relation to stereotypes and paranoia). Anyways, I stumbled onto this right after reading some of Pat's post, and thought that this passage (written in the 70s) could probably still mostly hold up to scrutiny under today's political climate. Which, I would argue hasn't really changed much except that many of these terms have continued to be exploited in ways that mystify their true relation to forms of life. Wilson here tho is pretty well on point, methinks.
Yea, agreed, although given the two party system and the inevitable dialectic that emerges, I think RAW's qoutes are pretty representative of how it ends up working in America (i.e. I think he's pretty close to explaining just what that interaction is and has been for the past few decades).
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