Dear Psycho-History Group Members,
Pasted-in below is the first part, entitled "THE SOCIAL-UNCONSCIOUS MIND", of a multi-part synthesis of psycho-historical crisis theory, whose overall title is --
Malady and Remedy: What's Wrong, and What to Do About It
-- and encompassing the following sub-titled sub-parts --
The "Law" of "Value"
The Dimension of "Consumer Value"
The Dimension of "Investor Value"
'Pseudo-Subjectivity' and 'Pseudo-Objectivity'
The Inverted World
The Inversion of the Inversion
The Emergent Subjectivity, and the Strategy, of the Core Plutocracy
-- which is applied also to the present crisis, and which is available in full via the following URL:
www.equitism.org . . .
Regards,
Miguel
THE SOCIAL-UNCONSCIOUS MIND
Part of our mission, in this section, is to help raise, into the social consciousness of its readers, crucial aspects of the present '''social unconscious''', of the unconsciousness of the human behavior, of the human practices, of the human "praxis", by which we have brought ourselves into this Crisis, this Predicament.
This "social unconscious" consists of portions of our own social behavior, of our own social activity, of our own social practices — of our own "social praxis" — which are highly 'causative', highly consequential, but of which the social majority is, presently, deeply unaware, both as to our conduct of that "praxis", and as to the profound consequences that its action brings back around upon our lives.
That is, this "social unconscious" consists of the human action by which we have collectively delivered ourselves into the present Global Crisis of Humanity.
This "social unconscious" is also a key part of the action — of which we-present are all a part — by human society, back upon human society: the activity by which we semi-consciously continue and also grow our human social existence, the collective human activity which we name
'''human society self-[re-]producing praxis'''.
These unconscious consequences arise, indeed, from our collective '''value(s)-system''', as collectively practiced: as we actually live it [not necessarily as we profess it].
The "Law" of "Value"
A unity of these unconscious consequences, in modern society, is what we will name '''the law of [political-economic] value'''.
Our purpose in this section is to analyze the human behavior — our collective behavior — which produces and reproduces this [un-legislated, "unwritten"] "social law", a "law" which operates as if it were a "law of nature", a "mechanical law" of unconscious being(s) — and which will continue to do so until "we" collectively awaken, as more-conscious , more-human, more-social beings than we
have been.
Now, '''capital-value''', and '''value''' itself, are not "hard", "objective" substances, that exist wholly outside our skins, and outside our human minds.
They are collective human mental habits / conventions, socio-cultural institutions.
They are, as we shall elaborate below, '''social relationships of [the present-day mode of human-life-]production''', and present-day
'''forms of human, social intercourse'''.
We hold them as shared '''mental templates''', that we make
effectively objectively real, by collectively and individually — and actively, behaviorally — projecting them onto the world outside our minds; collectively acting as if they are "real".
This value is the continually-changing / -evolving total relationship, relation, 'relatio', or "ratio of interchange" — the social «verhaltnisse», for those of you who know the German language; the social «rapport» for those of you who know the French language — among all of our social-"good(s)"-producing activities, and their products,
and, in particular, between waged/salaried labor as a whole, and capital property as a whole.
The Dimension of "Consumer Value"
For "consumers", "value" — as popularly discussed, as cited in commercial advertisements, etc. — is a relationship, a '''relation''', a 'relatio', a '''ratio of exchange''', which brings together "use-value" and "exchange-value" [money-price], into an expression of a '''complex unity''' between the two of them.
That is, the unit of measure of such a "value" metric is not simply pure dollars: it is a heterogeneous one.
This "value" is the ratio between the "use-value", the "utility", of a commodity offered to consumers for sale, and the money-price offered for the purchase of that same commodity: [utility divided by price]; [utility/price].
Such a ratio, evidently, should be "measured" in units of, say, [utils divided by dollars], "utils per dollar", or [u/$], wherein "u" denotes '''utils''' as the unit of measure of this utility.
The lower the price [denominator], and the higher the utility [numerator], of the commodity offer, the greater is its "value" — the greater is the "value" of the offer — the greater is the magnitude of this [utility/price] ratio.
But that unit of measure of utility, "u", is problematic for us.
There are deep difficulties, for our prevailing «mentalité», in actually measuring "use-value", or "utility", in any universal way.
Therefore, the "values", in this sense, of different kinds of consumer commodities cannot be readily compared.
It is hard to say, in any explicit way, that one consumer commodity offer has greater "value" than another, let alone by "how much" the "value" of one consumer commodity offer exceeds another.
This is hard for us to say, because the common unit of measure, shared by the numerators of the offer '''value ratios''', the [utility/price] ratios, of any pair of consumer commodity offers — the '''utils''' unit of measure, denoted above by u — is obscure, uncertain,
'inarticulable' for us, unknown to us: still deeply buried within the implicitudes of our shared, "social-unconscious mind".
The Dimension of "Investor Value"
For "investors", as opposed to "consumers" — i.e., for a growing percentage of our fellow "consumers", at least until the present collapse of investment "asset values" — "value" — "shareholder value", etc. — is popularly conceived of in terms of "yield".
This "yield" is the "ratio" — the 'relatio[n]' — between how much money a "capital asset" — a home, a rental property that we might purchase, a unit of capital equity stock in some "publicly-issued" joint-stock corporation, a corporate or government bond, etc. — is expected to "return" in the future, in future dollars "discounted" to a "present" money magnitude, divided by the present money magnitude of
the "cost" required to purchase ownership of that "asset", the "price" of that "asset".
Once again, this "yield" is not measured in simple currency units — i.e., in "US dollars", or in "pounds sterling", or in "euros", or in "yen".
This "yield" is measured in units of, for example, "[dollars over dollars]", "[dollars divided by dollars]", [$/$], or [%], i.e., in "percent" units.
That is, the "yield" metric is supposedly a "dimensionless" metric, 'unit-ed' by a self-divided currency unit — $s divided by $s = $^+1 / $^+1 = dollars to the positive first power divided by dollars to the positive first power = dollars to the positive first power multiplied by dollars to the negative first power = $^(+1-1) = $^0 — a unit of
"zeroth power", or "zeroth degree", i.e., a "percent".
Notice how, in the units of this "yield-value", or "capital-value", ratio, in relation to the "consumer", "offer-value" ratio, the mysterious "u" unit in the numerator of the "offer-value" ratio is replaced by an, e.g., "$" unit in the numerator of the "capital-value"
ratio — because, generally speaking, "money" names the highest conception of "universal use-value", or of "universal utility", that our present social '''inter-subjectivity''' is capable of explicitly,
consciously expressing.
The "yield"-value of your "capital asset" — that is, of a
money-measured asset that is expected to make more money than it cost — is the ratio of the 'presentized' magnitude ["Net Present Value", or "NPV"] of its expected future money-returns to you, to its present cost, its present price of purchase, to you:
(expected NPV of expected money returns divided by cost)[$/$] = (yield)[%] = ( NPV(r)/c )[%], with "r" standing for the expected future magnitude of the money-returns to you from the asset, and with "c" standing for the present cost to you of acquiring "ownership" of that asset.
'Pseudo-Subjectivity' and 'Pseudo-Objectivity'
Below, we're going to be using the words "subject"[-ivity] and "object"[-ivity] as per the meaning of these words in the context of the analysis of our written and spoken sentences: in terms of the "subject verb object" structure of our [sentential] language(s).
Once the '''social mind''' — the cultural '''inter-subject-ivity''', the minds of the social majority, the preponderance of the human population of social individuals — is captured by this '''social gene''', this cultural '''meme''', of '''value-ing''', by this
value-system of consumer commodity offer-"value", of
'''exchange-"value''' and '''profit-"value''', i.e., of
'''yield-"value''', then something about our society '''hardens'''.
Once this new '''inter-subjectivity''' becomes predominant within humanity, then these new human habits of "value-ing", of value-action, of value-behavior "gel" and "congeal" into a 'pseudo-objectivity', one seemingly more solid than granite, one seemingly denser than stainless steel, one seemingly harder than a brick wall, and one whose "shape"
is seemingly harder to change than it is to change the "cut" of a diamond.
Once this social 'pseudo-objectivity' congeals, the recurrent "patterns", unintended "rules", or "laws", of '''value-dynamics'' that we will adduce herein — laws whose "trend" portends an eventual catastrophic collapse of '''human social reproduction''' — become, as if, objective "laws", "natural laws", even "mechanical laws".
Thereafter — after that congealing — it takes a profound
transformation of our '''mutual subjectivity'''; of our
'''inter-subjectivity''' — a deep change of the 'social unconscious mind', an irruptive rising into our '''inter-subjective''' conscience of previously socially-unconscious 'ideo-subjective material', one
brought about by our traumatic experiences of the massive, massively adverse, and unintended [by us] consequences of that formerly unconscious material — to change our social "laws".
When just one of us tries, or when even a few of us try, to change our "value(s)"-in-practice — our value-ing behaviors — our efforts are typically swamped, drowned, and brought to nought, or brought to ruin, by the overwhelming momentum of everyone else continuing — still behaving, still 'value-ing' — in the same old way, in accord with the same old semi-conscious 'value-paradigm'.
Only in rare instances, can a new 'value-behavior', accordant with a new 'value-paradigm', rapidly catalyze the adoption of this new behavioral paradigm by an expanding wave of others, tidally rippling out in a wave of behavioral change, and of habit-change, throughout our 'socio-mental space', and our 'social-objective space', until the
preponderant operating paradigm of our global society as a whole is transformed.
Such rare catalysis means that human social intersubjectivity adopts this new paradigm of daily-life action rapidly, as if all at once, in a way analogous to the way in which, in the process of "stellar [meta-]evolution", or 'stellar revolution' — for example, in the case
of the stellar core "helium flash" — a star, which has exhausted [completely converted into core Helium], its former core Hydrogen fuel, so that is inner fire has become extinguished, and which has thus begun to collapse, due to its unopposed "self-gravitation", suddenly, as the '''squeeze''' of that collapse-implosion crosses a
critical threshold, re-ignites, begins to burn that core Helium, that former "ash", and, as a consequence, abruptly leaves the Hydrogen-burning "stellar main sequence phase", and transitions to the "Helium[-burning] stellar main sequence phase", of its [meta-]evolution, becoming, in that process, a new kind of star, with qualitatively and quantitatively different dynamics. [e1]
Capital-value, and value itself, is not a "thing", an "object" wholly outside our minds, and wholly outside our skins.
It is more like a collective [de-][il-]lusion, that becomes real, that objectively characterizes our behavior, because we share it and communally practice it.
This "money-value" is partly subjective, partly an '''idea-object''', a 'psycho-historical material', though we tend to think of it, and act as if it were, a purely objective thing.
We "fetishize" value, "reify" value, "hypostatize" value, and "totemize" value, in effect worshipping it as if it were an entirely outer thing, wholly external to our '''subject-ivity''' or 'subject-ness'.
There is a hidden — occult, latent, unconscious — '''human-ism''' in the outwardly-expressed '''anti-human-ism''' of those among us who
"value" only money, or who "value" only "capital" — only "money [that is / when it is] making more money".
If we "value" only money, because of what money can buy — by our '''value-ing''' only what money can buy — we are also, implicitly, unconsciously "value-ing" the human creativity and the human life-time that stands behind the '''good(s)''' that money buys; that creates (that/)those '''good(s)'''.
The Inverted World
By communally "fetishizing" and worshiping money-value/capital-value, we create, and enforce upon ourselves — consciously or not, intentionally or not — the "rules" and the "social laws" of "the law of value".
We induce an inversion of social subject(s) and social object(s), of social subjectivity and social objectivity.
We turn ourselves into 'pseudo-objects', and we turn the objects that we create, and the constructs by which we "measure" them — money[-value] and, especially, capital[-value] — into 'pseudo-subjects'. We make the world of capital, the social objectivity that we produce, into a 'pseudo-subjectivity', and we turn ourselves, the real
subjects, into a 'pseudo-objectivity'.
The vast aggregation of our individual, daily '''value-ing''' actions creates an "invisible hand", an "iron hand" that rules over us almost as if it were a conscious, monarchical being, and that cancels out the
intentions of our "visible hands" in our efforts to self-govern our own lives.
The real subjects and the real objects become inverted; mis-revolved; upside-down — "bass-ackwards".
We create, and daily re-create, an upside-down world, an inverted world, a perverted world, in which only dead things — that living people have created, and that only living people can create — have value, and in which living, potentially richness-creating people — unemployed, homeless, starving, miserable, dying, abandoned — are treated as if they were '''value-less'''; worthless.
The Inversion of the Inversion
True social revolution is not nihilistic violence, or violence employed in the effort of a particular party or "special interest group" to attain alienated power — unchecked, unaccountable, unlimited power over everyone else.
True "social revolution" is the "revolution of this revolution; the restorative revolution to this mis-revolution, the inversion of the inversion, that restores subjectivity to the real subjects, and that
restores objectivity to the real objects — the return of subjectivity, by the real subjects, to the real subjects.
The whole story — the 'his-story' of so many 'his'-lives gone-by, and the 'her-story' of so many 'her'-lives gone by — of the history of the capital value(s)-system to-date, is a history of the semi-conscious struggle of humanity to overcome the "invisible hand" of its "law of value"; the struggle to replace that "invisible hand" with its own,
collective, democratically-controlled '''visible hand'''; to bring the horrific side of the human, social consequences of our unconsciously-created "law of value" under conscious, human, collective, democratic regulation and control; to restore human [inter-]subjectivity to the 'subject role' by overcoming the 'pseudo-objectivity' into which our money-value-ing, capital-value-ing intersubjectivity has cast us.
The Emergent Collective Subjectivity, and the Strategy, of the Core Plutocracy
Unfortunately, but 'expectably', the preponderance of that partial overcoming, to-date, of that "law of value", has been monopolized, by the tiny, ruling minority which is comprised by the preponderant owners of capital-property, for ends which are violently contrary to the best interests of the rest of us; of the global human species as a whole.
The presently ruling, capital-based plutocracy is generally already more conscious of this actual social, society-reproducing human praxis, and of its consequences, than is the rest of the human population, than are the rest of us. That plutocracy makes it their business to see to it that "the rest of us" work for them. Our ignorance of our own praxis, and of its consequences, is maintained, partly, by the designs of this plutocracy. As we shall show further
on, this plutocracy harbors their greater awareness of human praxis, only with a vitiating bias.
The presently reigning plutocracy uses their superior awareness of humanity's actual praxis to fool us, to engineer upon us, and into us, ideologies that lead us to play into their hands; to play into their horrific, '''humanocidal''' agenda.
We shall endeavor, here — in contrast to that plutocracy — to present this presently mostly unconscious material, with an 'equitarian' bias; with a bias which is pro humanity-as-a-whole.
By the plutocracy's success in accumulating and concentrating most of humanity's capital wealth in the hands of a tiny few worldwide, the economic side of the capital political-economy has, by now, increasingly outgrown and subsumed its political side. This outgrowing has destroyed the effectiveness of the existing, constitutional,
political-only "checks-and-balances" of capitalist representative democracy. These "checks-and-balances" had restrained the ruling plutocracy for a time, from imposing their genocidal, totalitarian tyrannies worldwide. These "checks-and-balances" had, for most of that time, confined that plutocracy to the proliferation of police-state,
mass-murderous servant-dictatorships throughout the "Third World", i.e., throughout the plutocracy-brutalized periphery of their 'acceleratedly', intensively and extensively growing global system of oligopolized capital.
The accumulation of capital-value — the centralization, consolidation, and concentration of capital wealth in the hands of a tiny global plutocracy, plus the desperate hunger for money and power on the part of that plutocracy's underlings — gives that plutocracy the power to "buy-out" the political branches of social governance — the executive,
the legislature, and the judiciary — "lock, stock, and barrel".
This "buy-out" is the crowning, cresting, and final [stealth] "hostile takeover" of that whole rising series of waves of competition-destroying, oligopolizing and monopolizing "Mergers and Acquisitions" that we have witnessed ever since the beginning of the twentieth century.
But this concentrated 'economico-political' power does not, in itself, supply the motive for the multi-genocidal, totalitarian strategy that the ruling plutocracy has lately adopted.
Instead, that motive is supplied by the threats to ruling class power that are inherent in the progressive changes in the technological composition of labor, plant, and equipment that lawfully arise, as capital accumulates, in accord with capital's own immanent essential dynamic.
