Re: [PEN-L] music and the destruction of authority

[Waistline2]

> Let me know if I am off base about this.   The need for coordination in a complex economy makes calls for a cooperative organization of production seem hopelessly utopian. A common example is a production of symphonic music where a conductor prevents the musicians from creating a cacophony of sounds. Even Karl Marx suggested the necessity of a conductor: <   Comment   I do not believe you are off base, but rather approaching the need for cooperative organization within the framework of industrial logic or electromechanical processing.  Today's revolution in instruments, (in the illustration you provide the instruments are musical), the individuals can singularly command the sound of an entire symphony at their fingertips. The division of labor that was the conductor is still useful when using instruments of sound production characteristic of the rising industrial epoch, but this same role is sublated when using modern electronics.     Cooperation is not sublated or destroyed but rather industrial cooperation is sublated.     Here is my reasoning. Production on an industrial scale is a certain stage of development of production and all of these stages together is the meaning of the word epoch. An epoch can be broken down into ddistinct quantitave boundaries. One boundary is where water and then steam power is supplanted allowing for the extensive development of factories and the growth of the industrial infrastructure freed from local water supplies - or a power grid restricting and determining the boundary of intensive and extensive expansion. Cooperative takes place takes place within the singular factory.   The first large factories were built close to their primary energy source - water, and with the development of the gasoline and electric engine and power stations, genuine industrial cooperation takes shape and a world wide universal industrial infrastructure becomes possible. Although Marx speaks of the world market during his time, it was not really a world market but only a probable outline of a world market. Once an energy grid is erected that allows the extensive expansion of industrial production world wide, the industrial system begins to operate on the basis of the law system unique to it.   Our conductor - a real person and not an abstract coordinator, is a creature of the industrial epoch and is absolutely necessary for the development and advance of this symphony of production. Our conductor also expresses an indispensable bureaucratic function, which without, a symphony of music - industrial sounds in contradistinction to pastoral sounds and instruments, is not possible. The point is that bureaucracy - the industrial bureaucracy, is an indispensable necessity for extensive development, whose hierarchal features cannot be superseded just because we might think it the source of privilege, greed and power. The conductor does it fact have power over the individual - no matter how democratic the players are organized, and his recognized and approved function is to coordinate the flow and sound of his players. The conductors power over the individual does not arise on the basis of property or ownership of the instruments but as an _expression_ of a division of labor or production-creation process.   (In other words Walts question about crisis of capitalism was not dealt with in enough details because there is also a certain kind of crisis of the industrial system not identical to Marx conception of crisis of capitalist production).   What is required to supersede the industrial bureaucracy is a revolution in the means of production that renders such structures obsolete and an impediment to further development of the productive forces. I know this sounds so bland and deterministic but it really isn't deterministic at all. The art and skill of the conductor is a purely subjective matter depending upon a complex of other issues that do not mechanically flow from tools and instruments. Yet, his art and creativity are constrained and become manifest on the basis of a given set of instruments and the talents of the individual players, who also are using a given state of development of instruments.   For the past 200 years, bureaucracy - specifically industrial bureaucracy, has been the answer to industrial coordination and cooperation and the solution to organizing production that is freed from the constrain of water as energy source. Even the various calls for the democratic organizations of the workers - players, cannot exceed the material boundaries that is the musical instrument and the building in which the symphony is played. The building in which this symphony is played and the seating of the audience is important for maximum enjoyment and realization of the conductors efforts.   >> So perhaps, the power of the conductor is just a case of markets triumphing over art. It certainly would not be the first instance of such an outcome. I don't pretend to be an expert on music, but Fleischer's experience with the Orpheus Orchestra suggests that forms of organization that we take for granted may not be the best way of organizing society. <<     Would not the power of the conductor be rooted in and based on his instruments and players whose interactions are the art and the market - in this analogy, be the circumstances and conditions under which they play? The conductor is not that little clock like device that keeps time and rivets everyone to the same time sequence? I am saying that the conductor's role is not just a case of markets triumphing over art. The conductor is subject to all the market forces and their subjective expressions down to what kind of music is created and allowed to be played. Our conductor however, doesn't arise from the exchange relations - of anc between things, but on a technology platform and then operates within a market relation with circuit of exchange of things.     I think.   ore later     Melvin P.