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I agree, with the qualification that these "early phases" have actually been going on for quite some time. My own view would be that what you call the industrial system has only ever been a substructure of capital, albeit a dominant substructure in the 19th century and an extremely important one through most of the 20th century. I would date the decline of the industrial system as a guiding force as coinciding with the final breakdown of the Bretton Woods system, 1968-71.
The fact that capital has thrived for over three decades as a floating signifier without even a nominal link between money as a unit of account and as a store of value could be some kind of hint that the store of value thing has been seriously downgraded if not entirely displaced. Comment
I have general agree with the above. At the time of Nixon's detaching the American dollar from gold or the breakdown of the Bretton Woods agreement I had no framework in which to understand events. I thought in 1971-73 the country was going to go fascists, when it only became more fascistic.
I knew Nixon's move had something to do with the demands of the "Japanese" for conversion of US currency into gold and manipulation of oil - probably an early agreement with the Saudis and in turn pumping these US dollars back to America and then back to the Saudis as infrastructure development. Hell . . . I could not see an end to the system of value or its break down and had no vision or inkling of such.
I figured back then we would end up with a big fat industrial socialism with an industrial infrastructure and production system and distribution that was more humane and not governed by profit motive . . . really. I even had a vision of some kind of Soviets that I no longer can recall.
My own inclination is that value as a law system of reproduction, as we have understood it in the past - pre Nixon years, is a thing of the past. I would tend to lean towards calling the industrial system a subculture of capital in as much as this industrial system is being transformed in front of us and this "thing" called capital - as a historically evolved social relations that is production, still persists and that, which is industrial only came to life on the basis of the value system as capital.
In real life I have felt compelled - perhaps because of my individual ideology, to separate that which is personified as capital from that which is the industrial system per excellent, as a practical program of insurgency. That is to say, I could not fight the machine . . . literally, and use it, but could fight against how the machine was being deployed. That is I did not have a vision of not going to work in a factory and producing something.
Today, I am glad we are clearly leaving the industrial epoch because it holds the promise of a possible happier future. In other words I will join any fight on principle against injustice but I am not advocating more jobs and "keeping work in America" and much of that, which strikes me as no more than narrow-minded chauvinism and backwardness. This is not because I have some grand vision of being a citizen of the world but because industrial stinks and is horribly destructive to little kids and everything that lives.
Nor do I advocate that factories be shipped overseas and such advocacy is not needed for the inherent working of imperial to take place. The export of things and a system of more developed production drives human history and does not require my agreement to be such. Today things are different for me and everyone else. Why go to work in a factory when most people intuitively understand such work as species activity is not necessary on one level or another?
I still do not get this "fiat money" thing other than habit enforced by military might and class interest - prejudice. Its like the old slave master thought who thought and fought against ending his way of doing business and life was the end of civilization and its was only the end of civilization as he was experiencing it. I guess this means we still have to convince people of a vision and purpose.
The stories about the Ford workers of Wixom crying and expressing dismay over losing their jobs is sad, but there are a lot of people in America worse much off . . . like the absolute majority of people in America.
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