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Date sent: Mon, 23 Feb 1998 11:06:54 -0800
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From: James Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: the Titanic
Over the weekend, I heard an album by the anarchist-singer U. Utah
Phillips, where he suggested that the (U.S.) Democratic Party, and by
implication liberalism in general, involves simply "rearranging the
deck-chairs on the Titanic." This, plus our current torrential rains,
brought my fevered brain back to thoughts of pen-l. This cliche' had also
shown up in the discussion of the comparison between capitalism and the
movie version of the Titanic.
Despite agreeing with much or all of the critique of the liberals and
Democrats, I think it's a bad metaphor that should be dropped (along with
"hey hey ho ho this {fill in the blank} has got to go").
Sure capitalism gets itself into serious, world-shaking, crises -- the
Depression of the 1930s, the environmental mess, the current global "race
to the bottom" to lower wages, conditions, social benefits, and
environmental standards. But it's not like the Titanic sinking. It's true
that those who steer capitalism's helm are a bit like the designers and
captains of the T, but the fact is that if capitalism is going to be
collapse, it will have to involve some pushing.
Capitalism is a system that, despite its rampant injustice and
destructiveness, shows amazing resilience. The Collapse of the early 1930s
led to a decade or more of stagnation and war, while it's quite possible
that ecocide will have similar effects. (Wojtek pondered the possibilities
of war awhile back, in late December.)
But absent strong, democratic, and deeply-rooted mass movements capable of
replacing capitalism with socialist, the demise of capitalism will lead to
either (a) an eventual recovery of capitalism; or (b) a Hobbesian war of
each against all, or what Marx and Engels termed "the common ruin of the
contending classes," Luxembourg's "barbarism"; or (c) some new class system.
Liberalism aims to reform capitalism to save it, but it's not just to avoid
socialism, but to avoid transition to (b) or (c), just as the late-Soviet
reformers tinkered with the planning system to avoid chaos or capitalism.
Can anyone think of a better metaphor than the Titanic one?
I haven't read the discussion of Boucher's article, but the above seems
relevant to it.
in pen-l solidarity,
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] &
http://clawww.lmu.edu/1997F/ECON/jdevine.html
"Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let
people talk.) -- K. Marx, paraphrasing Dante A.
Response: Actually the classroom exercise involved finding 'aspects'
of the Titanic episode as a metaphor for 'aspects' of capitalism.
Further, although liberalism or conservatism might be seen as also
involving something like trying to find the 'optimum' arrangement of
deck chairs on the Titanic, the specific reference was to so-called
"mainstream economics."
To extend the list, the White Star executive who kept pushing to
"establish new records" and wound up hiding in a lifeboat supposedly
for "women and children only" might be seen as a metaphor for those
capitalists whose core and derivative imperatives of profits for
power and power for profits cause massive misery for the many while
they attempt to escape the conditions generated by the inner logic of
capitalism to isolated and protected enclaves of privilege protected
by the State, private police and the illusion of privilege of the few
being the "natural order of things."
The character Jack, the poor and footlose Irishman, who won a ticket
on the Titanic, can be seen as a metaphor for all those who buy into
the system, look for corners of privileges, rationalize their
false consciousness and illusions and do ad hoc yet cumulative
Faustian bargains that add up to the ultimate Faustian bargain.
Yes the capitalist system has a plethora of tools, mystifications,
traps, enticing Faustian bargains etc that add to its historically
unprecedented resilience and ability to gloss over/manage
contradictions inherent in the inner and defining core of the
"system". And yes, it is not enough to sit by and let the "dialectic
unfold". Absolutely true.
It was only a classroom exercise that has produced considerable
thought by my students and myself. No suggestion was made that the
Titanic in its "totality" was a concentrated microcosm or metaphor
for the "totality" of capitalism. Some aspects fit, some don't.
Jim Craven
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