One sentence I want to highlight that I read and re-read and for the life of me find difficult to understand what it is saying -- I don't know if I'm just being dense, if I'm just not familiar enough with the referenced content, or if it is genuinely a difficult idea being expressed -- I wanted to post to see if others found it either difficult or really, really obvious. Page 53, paragraph 3, sentence begins on line 8:

It therefore prescribes the place of a problematic that puts phenomenology into confrontation with every thought of non-consciousness that would know how to approach the genuine stakes and profound agency where the decision is made: the concept of time

I gather that this means that the domination of the now prescribes the importance of the concept of time, which is the same metaphysic both of the greek world and the modern world where the idea is thought of as representation. Followed by saying that The phenomenolgoy of Internal Time-Consciousness is not some chance fluke, but rather very important to the point Derrida wants to make.

But that was some guess work on my part

There's some guess-work in this rendition so by all means please bring in your own thoughts on this chapter. This is just a first stab. I found it hard to follow at times.




I decided to reread 1-3. I think there's actually more argument going on in the first three chapters than I initially surmised. Especially in 2 and 3 -- which are linking indication and expression, respectively, to the metaphysics of presence. 1 still reads as a introduction to the problem Derrida wishes to explore along with a quick announcement of how he's going to tackle said problem. And 4 is a statement of Husserl's arguments in favor of the distinction between indication and expression in order to see how they likewise work in favor of presence and absence (and, also, against the sign -- or, rather, for the sign as a modification of presence); or, as Husserl would have it, the "solitary life of the soul" bears the weight for the distinction between expression and indication, and this -- according to Derrida's reading, at least -- is the reaffirmation of the metaphysics of presence which from this point onward never goes unquestioned by Husserl. Chapter five begins:

The sharp point of the instant, the identify of lived-experience present to itself in the same instant bears therefore the whole weight of this demonstration

If I'm correct in my reading then 1-4 are meant to justify this statement.

The introduction to this section is surmised a few paragraphs down:

If the punctuality of the instant is a myth, a spatial or mechanical metaphor, a metaphysical concept inherited, or all of that at once, if the present of the presence to self is not simple, if it is constituted in an originary or irreducible synthesis, then the principle of Husserl's entire argumentation is threatened

I read this as -- if a or b or c or (a and b and c), or d, or e, then p

Purely in a logical way, at least. I don't think the disjunctive language is meant to spell out a rather messy syllogism, but is meant to elucidate the meaning of the term

"the present of the prsence to self is not simple"

So that this can be read as --

if q, then p

And the remainder of the chapter is basically arguing for "q", thereby concluding that Husserl's entire argumentation is threatened. The interesting part about "q", from my standpoint at least, is that Derrida is attempting to make that argument primarily by way of citation of Husserl's texts. (note that I am certainly in no position to evaluate whether or not what Derrida states of Husserl's is a fair reading -- this is just my summation of how the argument works).




1. Punctuality plays a major role in Husserl's thought even while Husserl attempts to disavow this.

Although the flowing of time is "indivisible into fragments that could be by themselves, and indivisible into phases that could be by themselves, into points of continuity," the "mods of the flowing of an immanent temporal object have a beginning, a, so to speak, source-point This is the mode of flowing by which the immanent object begins to be. It is characterized as present" Despite all the complexity of its structure, temporality has a non-displaceable center, an eye or a living nucleus, and that is the puncutality of the actual now

Derrida goes on to claim that this domination of the now is characteristic of the metaphysics of presence. In contradistinction to said metaphysic Derrida here makes reference to Freud's unconscious (or similar constructions, one presumes) to elucidate in what way Husserl is committed to this metaphysics of presence, and goes on to quote Husserl rejection of the unconscious.


I must admit that part 2's argument is something I find difficult to evaluate because of my lack of familiarity with the content it's drawing from. But what I gather is the following

2. In LI Husserl utilizes punctuality. This allows him to make the distinction between expression and indication, which likewise is how Husserl is able to interpret language, at large, as a modification of presence (and, hence, non-expressive). However, in The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness and elsewhere the content of the description forbids us from speaking of a simple self-identity of the present. So self-identity is not simple.

3. Here Derrida opens with a restatement of the conclusions of 1 and 2, to give what he calls their "apparent irreconcilable possibilities" -- and then what follows is a reconciliation of the two by way of repetition. i.e. the sign.

It seems to me that Derrida restates this on several fronts -- that what makes expression possible is the hiatus between these two irreconcialable possibilities -- at least, irreconcialable unless one accepts the sign as what allows these two possibilities to co-exist. So it is not so much that Husserl is even wrong in his analysis, but rather, in accord with his own philosophical project, we can reconcile what is apparently contradictory if we think of language not in terms of a modification of presence, but rather as what allows this original distinction to make sense.

Or, if that not be the case, then expression at least is not linguistic, but expressive language is "added on to an originary and pre-expressive stratus of sense. Expressive language itself would have to supervene on the absolute silence of the self-relation"

Yup, definitely. Just got up and am getting on it now. (One of the reasons I was willing -- I have today off so have enough time to put in :) )

Sounds about right to me.

There's definitely a reversal at work in VP -- but I don't think the claim is that Husserl intended this reversal. Chapter 1 makes this pretty clear -- I think the last sentence of that chapter is really important to the remainder of this text:

We have chosen to be interested in this relation in which phenomenology belongs to classical ontology

(emphasis mine)

Derrida's reading of Husserl isn't exclusive of the second reading he proposes at the end of chapter 1. Rather, he has chosen to hone in on this possible reading which, if he is correct at least, the text affords or allows. Not that his reading is fixed by Husserl's intent, but that the text allows this as a possible reading.

Also, the notion of choice here being important because it means you could also choose to read the text in a different way from the one presented here -- one governed by authorial intent, for instance.

I think that Signature, Event, Context might be of some use here. He's engaging with Austin and the concept of communication there, but he also lays out his arguments for repeatability there, and ties it into the concepts of death (once again, much later).

http://users.clas.ufl.edu/burt/inc.pdf

Beginning on Page 7:

A written sign is proffered in the absence of the receiver. How to style this
absence? One could say that at the moment when I am writing, the receiver may
be absent from my field of present perception. But is not this absence merely a
distant presence, one which is delayed or which, in one form or another, is idealized
in its representation? This does not seem to be the case, or at least this
distance, divergence, delay, this deferral [differ-ance] must be capable of being
carried to a certain absoluteness of absence if the structure of writing, assuming
that writing exists, is to constitute itself. It is at that point that the differ-ance [difference
and deferral, trans. ] as writing could no longer (be) an (ontological)
modification of presence. In order for my "written communication" to retain its
function as writing, i.e., its readability, it must remain readable despite the absolute
disappearance of any receiver, determined in general. My communication
must be repeatable-iterable-in the absolute absence of the receiver or of any
empirically determinable collectivity of receivers. Such iterability-(iter, again,
probably comes from itara, other in Sanskrit, and everything that follows can be
read as the working out of the logic that ties repetition to alterity) structures the
mark of writing itself, no matter what particular type of writing is involved
(whether pictographical, hieroglyphic, ideographic, phonetiC, alphabetiC, to cite
the old categories). A writing that is not structurally readable-iterable-beyond
the death of the addressee would not be writing. Although this would seem to be
obvious, I do not want it accepted as such, and I shall examine the final objection
that could be made to this proposition. Imagine a writing whose code would be
so idiomatic as to be established and known, as secret cipher, by only two "subjects."
Could we maintain that, following the death of the receiver, or even of
both partners, the mark left by one of them is still writing? Yes, to the extent that,
organized by a code, even an unknown and nonlinguistic one, it is constituted in
its identity as mark by its iterability, in the absence of such and such a person, and
hence ultimately of every empirically determined "subject." This implies that
there is no such thing as a code-Drganon of iterability-which could be structurally
secret. The possibility of repeating and thus of identifying the marks is
implicit in every code, making it into a network [une grille] that is communicable,
transmittable, deCipherable, iterable for a third, and hence for every possible
user in general. To be what it is, all writing must, therefore, be capable of functioning
in the radical absence of every empirically determined receiver in general.
And this absence is not a continuous modification of presence, it is a rupture
in presence, the "death" or the possibility of the "death" of the receiver inscribed
in the structure of the mark (I note in passing that this is the point where the
value or the "effect" of transcendentality is linked necessarily to the possibility of
writing and of "death" as analyzed). The perhaps paradoxical consequence of my
here having recourse to iteration and to code: the disruption, in the last analysis,
of the authority of the code as a finite system of rules; at the same time, the radical
destruction of any context as the protocol of code. We will come to this in a
moment.

What holds for the receiver holds also, for the same reasons, for the sender or
the producer. To write is to produce a mark that will constitute a sort of machine
which is productive in turn, and which my future disappearance will not, in principle,
hinder in its functioning, offering things and itself to be read and to be
rewritten. When I say "my future disappearance" [disparition: also, demise,
trans.], it is in order to render this proposition more immediately acceptable. I
ought to be able to say my disappearance, pure and simple, my nonpresence in
general, for instance the nonpresence of my intention of saying something meaningful
[mon vouloir-dire, mon intention-de-signification], of my wish to communicate,
from the emission or production of the mark. For a writing to be a
writing it must continue to "act" and to be readable even when what is called the
author of the writing no longer answers for what he has written, for what he
seems to have signed, be it because of a temporary absence, because he is dead
or, more generally, because he has not employed his absolutely actual and present
intention or attention, the plenitude of his desire to say what he means, in
order to sustain what seems to be written "in his name. " One could repeat at this
point the analysis outlined above this time with regard to the addressee. The
situation of the writer and of the underwriter [du souscripteur: the signatory,
trans. ] is, concerning the written text, basically the same as that of the reader.
This essential drift [derive] bearing on writing as an iterative structure, cut off
from all absolute responsibility, from consciousness as the ultimate authority,
orphaned and separated at birth from the assistance of its father, is preCisely what
Plato condemns in the Phaedrus. If Plato's gesture is, as I believe, the philosophical
movement par excellence, one can measure what is at stake here.

And starting on page 16:

Austin thus excludes, along with what he calls a "sea-change," the "non-serious,"
"parasitism," "etiolation," "the non-ordinary" (along with the whole general theory
which, if it succeeded in accounting for them, would no longer be governed
by those oppositions), all of which he nevertheless recognizes as the possibility
available to every act of utterance. It is as just such a "parasite" that writing has
always been treated by the philosophical tradition, and the connection in this
case is by no means coincidental.

I would therefore pose the following question: is this general possibility
necessarily one of a failure or trap into which language may fall or lose itself as in
an abyss situated outside of or in front of itself? What is the status of this parasitism?
In other words, does the quality of risk admitted by Austin surround language
like a kind of ditch or external place of perdition which speech [la locution]
could never hope to leave, but which it can escape by remaining "at home,"
by and in itself, in the shelter of its essence or telos? Or, on the contrary, is this
risk rather its internal and positive condition of possibility? Is that outside its
inside, the very force and law of its emergence? In this last case, what would be
meant by an "ordinary" language defined by the exclusion of the very law of
language? In excluding the general theory of this structural parasitism, does not
Austin, who nevertheless claims to describe the facts and events of ordinary language,
pass off as ordinary an ethical and teleological determination (the univocity
of the utterance [enonel?}--that he acknowledges elsewhere [pp. 72-73] remains
a philosophical "ideal"-the presence to self of a total context, the
transparency of intentions, the presence of meaning [vouloir-dire] to the absolutely
singular uniqueness of a speech act, etc.)?

For, ultimately, isn't it true that what Austin excludes as anomaly, exception,
"non-serious,"9 citation (on stage, in a poem, or a soliloquy) is the determined
modification of a general citationality-Dr rather, a general iterability-without
which there would not even be a "successful" performative? So that-a paradoxical
but unavoidable conclusion-a successful performative is necessarily an "impure"
performative, to adopt the word advanced later on by Austin when he
acknowledges that there is no "pure" performative.

I take things up here from the perspective of positive possibility and not simply
as instances of failure or infelicity: would a performative utterance be possible
if a citational doubling [doublure] did not come to split and dissociate from
itself the pure singularity of the event? I pose the question in this form in order to
prevent an objection. For it might be said: you cannot claim to account for the socalled
graphematic structure of locution merely on the basis of the occurrence of
failures of the performative, however real those failures may be and however
effective or general their possibility. You cannot deny that there are also
performatives that succeed, and one has to account for them: meetings are called
to order (Paul Ricoeur did as much yesterday); people say: "I pose a question";
they bet, challenge, christen ships, and sometimes even marry. It would seem
that such events have occurred. And even if only one had taken place only once,
we would still be obliged to account for it.

I'll answer: "Perhaps." We should first be clear on what constitutes the status
of "occurrence" or the eventhood of an event that entails in its allegedly present
and Singular emergence the intervention of an utterance [enonel?] that in itself
can be only repetitive or citational in its structure, or rather, since those two
words may lead to confusion: iterable. I return then to a point that strikes me as
fundamental and that now concerns the status of events in general, of events of
speech or by speech, of the strange logic they entail and that often passes unseen.
Could a performative utterance succeed if its formulation did not repeat a
"coded" or iterable utterance, or in other words, if the formula I pronounce in
order to open a meeting, launch a ship or a marriage were not identifiable as
conforming with an iterable model, if it were not then identifiable in some way
as a "citation"? Not that citationality in this case is of the same sort as in a theatrical
play, a philosophical reference, or the recitation of a poem. That is why there
is a relative specificity, as Austin says, a "relative purity" of performatives. But this
relative purity does not emerge in opposition to citationality or iterability, but in
opposition to other kinds of iteration within a general iterability which constitutes
a violation of the allegedly rigorous purity of every event of discourse or
every speech act. Rather than oppose citation or iteration to the noniteration of an
event, one ought to construct a differential typology of forms of iteration, assuming
that such a project is tenable and can result in an exhaustive program, a
question I hold in abeyance here. In such a typology, the category of intention
will not disappear; it will have its place, but from that place it will no longer be
able to govern the entire scene and system of utterance [l'enonciation]. Above
all, at that point, we will be dealing with different kinds of marks or chains of
iterable marks and not with an opposition between citational utterances, on the
one hand, and singular and original event-utterances, on the other. The first consequence
of this will be the following: given that structure of iteration, the intention
animating the utterance will never be through and through present to itself
and to its content. The iteration structuring it a priori introduces into it a dehiscence
and a cleft [brisure] which are essential. The "non-serious ," the oratio obliqua
will no longer be able to be excluded, as Austin wished, from "ordinary"
language. And if one maintains that such ordinary language, or the ordinary circumstances
of language, excludes a general citationality or iterability, does that
not mean that the "ordinariness" in question-the thing and the notion-shelter
a lure, the teleological lure of consciousness (whose motivations, indestructible
necessity, and systematic effects would be subject to analysis)? Above all, this
essential absence of intending the actuality of utterance, this structural unconsciousness,
if you like, prohibits any saturation of the context. In order for a
context to be exhaustively determinable, in the sense required by Austin, conscious
intention would at the very least have to be totally present and immediately
transparent to itself and to others, since it is a determining center [foyer] of
context. The concept of -Dr the search for-the context thus seems to suffer at
this point from the same theoretical and "interested" uncertainty as the concept
of the "ordinary," from the same metaphysical origins: the ethical and teleological
discourse of consciousness. A reading of the connotations, this time, of Austin's
text, would confirm the reading of the descriptions; I have just indicated its
principle.

Probably easier to read it in the pdf, but I wanted to highlight areas in that essay where he talks about repetition -- and he touches on some of the same themes which VP is talking about now with respect to consciousness, death, meaning, and communication.

'Post-modernism' is not a school of thought, but a period of history. — Wayfarer

I think that hits the nail on the head. It's more akin to "the Enlightenment" than, say, "Transcendental Idealism" -- the former being a historical period of philosophy (which we posit to understand the history of philosophy), and the latter being a particular kind of philosophy (of which there are a handful of self-described adherents).


So, one can believe narratives play a role within some philosophical works without also, thereby, labeling oneself as a post-modernist.

What do you think? Are we, should we, each just make up our own narrative about what is most important, are we, should we each just make up our own narrative about how to live the best life possible? — anonymous66

Can we just make up narratives about what is most important or how to live the best life possible?

I think that we narrativize because it's a way of thinking. We tell a story about our lives to ourselves and to others. There's a sense in which it's made up, but I don't know if I'd say it's just made up -- as in, off the top of my head, purely imaginative play, or that my statements are imbued with a kind of magical ability to make themselves true by speaking them.

I may be mistaken in this, so correct me if I'm wrong -- but isn't phenomenology supposed to side step metaphysics by focusing in on lived experience?

I thought that to be one goal of phenomenology. Hence, if one could show that the same dichotomies which (purportedly) dominate the history of metaphysics also dominate phenomenology, then something would be gained by that critique -- that these dichotomies are not so easily escaped as it would seem (that metaphysical thinking re-introduces itself everywhere -- "always already" as the phrase has it).

That, I think in part, is the reason for the elliptical stylistic choice too -- there's a sense in which the text we're reading, the works of Derrida that is, would become dominated by the same categories that have always dominated metaphysics.

In some way I think you have to agree with Heidegger -- at least to a certain degree -- about the history of metaphysics to make sense of Derrida. I remember reading Heidegger was the sort of "lynch pin" that helped me to begin to see what was going on years ago (or, at least, gave my mind handholds)

I'm just trying to understand how the first 3 chapters bring us to the themes of chapter 4. If, in chapter 4, the tight - tho oft-interrupted - analysis gives way totally to a freewheeling impressionistic meditation on various phenomenological themes, well, I feel a little disappointed. — csalisbury

I think something to keep in mind is that this is par for the course for Derrida's writing -- he will often place chapters in a non-linear fashion, as if they came from two different books or as if he cut his original essay in half and flipped around the ends.

Also, I don't think his writing hinges as much on argument -- in the sense that we have an assertion supported or refuted. While it has some academic prose -- such as the distinctions you mention -- I think he reads more like Nietzsche, in the sense that you have to think along with the writing. So when we read the first three chapters it's sort of like reading LI1 as Derrida.

Something that's been helping me in reading along is the thought that the act of deconstruction isn't set out, but is implied by the reading on offer. So while there is the text, there's also how the text upon which a reading is "parasitic" to, the text is being re-arranged in a way to attempt to show us the metaphysical thinking within the text.



Not that people aren't familiar with any of this. But it's worth noting, I think -- at the very least, to prepare ourselves for disappointment ;). (I haven't finished the book yet so not sure if you will be, but it's possible)

I cited a book and a study, I may as well go forth and cite Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World which explains the theory behind mimesis. — Agustino

There's a difference between an argument and a citation.

What's the argument?

I mean, heck. I can shoot a search on google to find something that vaguely seems to support what I'm saying any day of the week. But, at the end of the day, if I don't have an argument then I'm just appealing to authority.

And the idea that it had no effect on what people thought of adultery is equally laughable. It certainly influenced what some folks thought about it, and it would be quite extreme to deny that. Do you not see so many 10-12 year olds do exactly what they see Kim Kardashian and other celebrities do? The same pattern of miming behaviour that is perceived as cool, either because it comes from a well-known leader, or otherwise, exists in adults.

Are adults the same as 10-12 year olds? No.

Is Bill Clinton the same as a pop celebrity? Also no.

Surely you're not positing that some adults think Bill Clinton is cool and his cool-factor influenced them to think that adultery might be OK.

Although, hey, maybe you are. Let's just say exactly that.

Where are these adults who mime the coolness of Bill Clinton and become swayed and tempted to commit adultery because of them trying to mime that hip papa?

OK. Catching up. Just finished chapter 4. Would be willing to do the next, chapter 5. (finally have the time to do it next weekend :) )

Do you disagree with the psychological fact that people emulate those who are perceived as leaders? Really this is a silly game - what do you expect me to do? Quote to you research studies about this finding? If you just open your eyes and look around you, you will see that people do seek to emulate those who are perceived to be leaders - there would be no need for a study — Agustino

Emulate? I certainly question that assertion. Leaders have followers. But what is following? Well, there is no following in the abstract -- one has to attend to a particular situation. In a church? Sure, I'd grant some emulation (though I'd stress *some*, and also the need to attend to particulars -- but it's at least plausible). But in a representative democracy? Hardly. The idea that President Clinton's behavior somehow made "the masses" more accepting than they previously were of adultery is laughable. Especially considering the reaction -- which ranged from scandal to shrugging.

And, yes, research is a good start. It's certainly better than what has thus far been more or less a reference to "common sense" and the perception of what you take to be obvious.

You happen to have a copy of the paper? It's going to cost me $40.

Now let's see if this changes anything - of course it doesn't - because what's happening with you is that you don't want to believe it in the first place, as it is ruinous to your political beliefs. — Agustino

Caught red-handed, Agustino. You clearly have pilloried everything I hold dear and I am just desperately scraping to save my threadbare faith in the Marquis de Sade.

:D

Okay, I disagree with that. It is well known that most people follow their leaders at least to a certain extent and seek to emulate them. — Agustino

Can you demonstrate that? I mean, suppose it were not well known. I obviously don't know it, because I don't believe it.

How do you determine who counts as "most people" and what does it mean to follow a leader? And how does that differ from following a leader "to a certain extent" -- and isn't that actually different from emulation? Is it well known that most people seek to emulate the people they follow?

I think you're taking too much for granted, and oversimplifying how people actually behave. Even (or perhaps, especially -- its more complicated) en masse.

Though I agree that "who cares?", I don't think that the offense of DT was extra-marital sexuality, but his flouting sexual assault just because he happened to have the power to do so while famous.

I think "affect" is a wider term than "encourage" -- I don't think that just because someone in power does something that "the masses" will then be more prone to follow suit. Especially with sex. People like having sex regardless of what the person in power does.

That's true. I remember back in 1998 when I was a wee one sanctimoniously holding to the rod of righteous monogamy after marriage, but when Clinton showed me that I could do so much more -- that, my friend, is when the impure thoughts began to snowball into libertine excesses.

For we can always ask what makes it the case that whatever it is, is what it is. — darthbarracuda

I just want to focus in on this bit of reasoning, because it seems to me that a good deal of your pondering comes about from this simple argument.

Why does it matter that we are able to form a question? It seems to me that we are free to form all manner of questions. But, just as a statement is not true by our ability to form a statement, a question may not have an answer just because we form the question.

So we might say everything is material, and then ask "What makes it the case that material is material?" -- but if this is our foundation, then nothing makes it the case that material is material. Or, if there be no foundations, then we should never expect some sort of self-evident termination to our line of questioning. In either case the former becomes what you end your paragraph with --

when does it stop? — darthbarracuda

Though I might offer a slight modification to "when should we stop?"

It doesn't stop, as you note, because we can always ask a question even if the question has no answer. There will never be a self-evident answer given to your question when we just say to ourselves "And now we can stop"

But we can and perhaps even should stop at some point. Especially if our previous line of argument is something which will offer no terminus (and we happen to desire a terminus)

On the latter point -- that's how I feel. I tend to think that this line of thinking is more a cultural product than anything.

On the former -- yup. It's not just for you, but evolution is about populations and not individuals :D It bottoms out at species, after all -- so even larger than populations, since a species persists over several populations.

I don't know, man. I've only ever seen people arguing over the existence/non existence of altruism use arguments that are riddled with biases and objectively inapplicable. — Weeknd

I'm not sure what you're saying with this. My closest guess is that you're saying that you can only argue about altruism from a subjective viewpoint, and so your argument is not fallacious.

But I'm just using a common standard for pointing out fallacies in informal logic -- by showing how the form of the argument can both support and refute the same conclusion. So, subjective or not, your argument would still be fallacious by that standard.

Hence why I'm not sure what you are saying.

However, in spite of how "ugly" I find the egoist position, I've seen absolutely no good counter arguments, and any example of altruism can be explained away by an egoist as a counter example. This is what forced me into my current position.

Here again --

"However beautiful I find the altruistic position I've seen absolutely no good counter arguments, and any example of egotism can be explaiend away by an altruist as a counter example. This is what forced me into my current position"

You're basically just shifting the burden of proof to the other side of the argument.

IMO a good reason for the illusion of altruism is the innate human desire for socialization and companionship, which were most definitely necessary for survival as well as satisfaction earlier but arguably are somewhat less necessary nowadays, so we now "see", due to self reliance and isolationism, that what we used to call altruism were just means of fulfillment of one's own desires, securities and moral contentment — Weeknd

A good reason for the illusion of egotism is that people perform acts of altruism. ;) But if you discount the counter-example then you won't perceive them.

I think this is a confused bundle, in truth though. For one, you're assuming that our desires today are the same as what they were, and that our desires today are related to the desires of some unknown biological past as well as to our ability to survive as a species.

But even for traits which are straightforwardly understood to be biological, such as hair color, don't fit this model. Not every trait that an individual animal has is even related to evolution, and traits which a species have are often vestigial or simply "tag-along" with other traits that were selected for.

Then what is this "we now see"? What is self reliance and isolationism that makes us see?

I would say these latter are more related to society than either psychology (desire) or biology (reproduction).

3. Even though we see acts of altruism and sacrifice, one can argue that it's ultimately for one's own contentment/ satisfaction or ego. They're still doing these things for their own self, in a way. So I'd say psychological egoism is trivially true . Note that this tendency does NOT imply all acts of kindness are worthless. — Weeknd

I think this is a fallacious form of reasoning. I say that it's fallacious because when you perform the same sort of argument, but for opposing conclusions, it works just as well.

Consider:

"even though we are self-interested and seek pleasure and avoid pain for ourselves, one can argue that it's ultimately for altruistic motives. They are still doing these things for the good of the species, in a way. So I'd say that psychological altruism is trivially true. Note that this tendency does NOT imply that all acts of selfishness are praiseworthy"

Where is the argument in there? Aren't you just restating the case throughout by reinterpreting the counter-example as, at bottom, in support of your idea?

8. From (7), it follows that organisms have had this tendency to pursue pleasurable activities and minimise pain even before these activities gave them evolutionary advantages. — Weeknd

I don't think this follows from 7. I would say that you're adding a dimension of time, for one, and that activities were pleasurable prior to them influencing fitness, for two. While it is true that pleasure does not lead to evolutionary fitness, per se, and that those individuals who pursue self-interest along the lines of pleasure will seek out pleasure regardless of its impact on the species ability to survive, that does not then imply that the activities which we find pleasurable now -- and lets say, for the sake of argument, that these activities now do contribute to evolutionary fitness -- were activities which contributed to evolutionary fitness prior to them being pleasurable.

One could see, in light of the belief that our psychologies are a product of our biology, the belief following that as soon as an activity makes the species evolutionarily fit then our psychologies will follow along and make said activity pleasurable.



I'd note here that I don't believe biology implies psychology. There's an influence, but the inference from biological fact to psychological fact is a poor one in all the cases I've seen so far.

I tend to think along with Levinas, in this respect. While the problem of other minds wasn't his focus, if you accept that philosophy begins with the face-to-face encounter, then there just isn't really much of a question of other minds in the sense that we might wonder if this human is human like I am human. In the first respect, there is no question of their humanity, and in the second, you don't have access to the Other -- the Other is always other. There is no deduction that will prove some other's humanity is the same as yours, but you don't need it to be in order for you to recognize their humanity due to your encounter with the face-to-face.

Intersubjectivity is a curious beast to a particular line of thinking. But what I'm trying to get at here is that it's this line of thinking which is more fruitful to suspend and question -- the thinking where:

"

Mustn’t logical concepts be isomorphic to the structure of empirical observations to have sense and use value? — sime

is a question which makes sense to ask.

It's an understandable sentiment, and no you're not bringing me down. I do that to myself enough already :P :D.

I still wouldn't defend utopianism myself. I don't consider my way of approaching politics utopian. But it was interesting to see a defense that seemed reasonable to me.

Then you simply fail to see a key element of capitalism and why it's preferable over other systems. Financial incentivization is very effective. Robots are being created to do more work not to give humans an easier life, but to make the builders of them more wealthy. — Hanover

I think you overstate your own knowledge of human motivation, here. Financial incentivization is very effective at motivating people, I won't deny. But it's not really effective at motivating people to be innovative in the sense of novelty. People are already creative. There is pleasure in creativity.

What it is effective at is dulling people's sympathy, or assuaging people's pain.

I'm not suggesting that labor is not sacred, Puritan work ethic and all. What I'm saying is that your comment that labor is not sacred is a meaningless concept when uttered by you because you don't hold anything to be sacred. If I'm incorrect here, then give me a specific example of what you hold to be sacred. — Hanover

The working class. ;)

Art, knowledge, relationships with people, human needs, love, compassion. These aren't things that are up for negotiation. No argument could persuade me that these are not valuable. They are beyond reproach -- like God.

Though, I'd wager that "sacred" is not meaningless as a concept regardless if I am a sacrilegious person in general. In fact, if I hold nothing to be sacred, then it would follow, logically, that labor is included in that, as a part of everything.


As to the rest -- uh, it's like denying there's a computer I'm writing on. OK, cool.

It's handled efficiently as is evidenced by the never ending innovation and increased productivity. In fact, it is this very system that is producing the robots that you believe will lead to our salvation, yet for some reason you condemn it — Hanover

I don't see innovation as a feature of capitalism. People innovate regardless of the private ownership over the workplace.

You're speaking gibberish. The term "sacred" means nothing to you. It's a hollow concept that fools insert into sentences to create meaning where there is none. Unless you can tell me what is sacred, it seems a waste for me to explain why labor might be sacred. — Hanover

You have an odd habit of telling me what I believe.

Sacred is deserving of religious veneration. It's not so hard to draw out that labor is considered sacred when it is both part of existence and created by God. Did you not bring in the allusion of the Garden of Eden?

I don't think I'm being unfair in using the word. You'd be far from alone in thinking that labor is sacred.

These leisurely folks work much longer hours than the guys on the assembly line — Hanover

Perhaps when we consider white men living in the United States within unionized jobs with unions which are strong that is the case.

But even in the U.S. that's quite false. The 80 hour work week is far from unknown to the working class. The compensation which these people who somehow consider chairing meetings and delegating tasks as work, however, is quite unknown.

Our thirst for more things doesn't end when one task is completed, but we produce more things. — Hanover

Here we might have some agreement, actually. But I don't think that the unboundedness of human desire explains why people would work themselves to death.

And I've seen things that don't suck. That is to say, I'm dismissive of your anecdotes. — Hanover

I'd say that there is no science of this stuff. People try, but inevitably the metrics are just ways of restating the assumptions and positions which are based on anecdotes anyways, but hiding that fact.

Experience is not measurable in the same way mass is. But I assure you that my anecdotes are far from singular. You may not believe me, or find them to be of minor consequence from your experiences -- but dismissal is the sin I've been calling out this entire time, no?

To be frank I think the word 'capitalism' has become too broad a word to be as useful as it was. It disguises tremendous differences in institutional arrangements because they all superficially share certain features.

I realise these are rather stray observations. Broadly the ideas feel to me like an extrapolation from what seem like existing trends which I doubt will continue (nor, sadly, do I agree with swstephe that 'capitalism' or business/finance is weakening). Some of them were 60s dreams too - the reduced working week, cleaner work - and events did not fulfil those dreams. — mcdoodle

Whoops! missed that. haha.

Perhaps so. I still use it, though, because I don't have any other words to describe the social relationship which results in x, y, and z -- as detailed by Karl Marx. (Though I am not Marxist, his critical project is pretty spot on and useful for understanding power relations at work). The particulars -- or, to use Marx's term, the "concrete conditions" -- will differ considerably, and are important to any actual project. But the social relationship bears a causal property that explains power at work.

Your final point is something that I do think the book addresses, too -- they are trying to revive this notion of utopia and dreams because they feel they should continue, that they give something to work towards and push for. That's why they named the book "Inventing the Future": the left's home is in the future, and in painting a better future (according to them).

Heck, some of these dreams go back to the dawn of the labor movement at the birth of widespread industrial capital. Peasants were forced off of lands and proletarianized by the fact that they owned nothing but their labor, and could survive only by selling their labor which gave owners coercive power over their lives by being able to say who gets to eat and who doesn't. Hence the demand for the reduced working week without a loss of pay. So even though 60's dreamers may have participated in that tradition, I'd be hesitant to accept that designation because generally people think it means "impossible" -- when the fight for a shorter working week has actually been won before (and since gone in decline) by people fighting for those very dreams.

Thanks for outlining the thesis, Moliere. My own response to how things are as I age has been to shift to a perspective which I know is a minority view - the Green, ecological view - which I've concluded is where I am most intellectually content. Out here on a limb :) But I think I spent many years slipping into mainstream thinking while kidding myself that I was persuading people out of the mainstream. — mcdoodle

Heh. I am discontent with it, but I still spend more time on the limb.

On this limb the medium-term looks like that economically most countries will have to adjust from fossil-fuel energy to renewable energy, and that there will be considerable conflict over basic resources, including water, with wars including civil wars a likely continuing consequence. Meanwhile a belief in the rightness of inequality of reward seems embedded in Western thinking, more embedded than it was fifty years ago when I was Hanover's teenage dreamer. In that 50-year period class-based unions have weakened considerably, though gender/race-based organisations have grown much stronger. But coalitions of identity-politics-believers seem flimsy to me.

My worry about the agenda proposed is that it doesn't seem to be taking these very considerable issues into account. Automation is energy- and resource-hungry: is it really inevitable that it will grow and grow? I think it will recede when energy costs become too great, or workers begin to demand the right to work, or the powerful begin to demand that the proleteriat works in return for its basic income. (I am a strong advocate of the universal basic income, and don't think it's necessarily a capitalistic adjustment as swsteph does) — mcdoodle

I agree with you that the particular outline doesn't address environmental issues (ones which I also agree with you are important). My thought on that is that a socialism is better suited to handle environmental problems than a capitalism is. When you have privately owned firms the most you can do is either regulate and enforce (and that last part is often lacking), or make ecological choices through the market -- which still allows firms to produce non-ecologically.

But if you have social control over the economy then people can argue over what should be produced and not produced, and the ecological problem is one that's very important to people with few means (after all, the such-and-such part per million oil:water will be cheaper than the purified water of the future. Similar things will hold for all manner of ecological damage -- the rich will buy their way out of any problem, while the rest of us get to live with higher cancer rates.)

It's in this way that I tend to see labor and green politics as having similar interests, though it's hard to tell the leaders of these respective positions that -- who historically have been at odds, and whose leaders seem content on continuing that conflict.


I see UBI as an adjustment because private ownership over firms would still be in place, and people would still work for a wage -- people desire more than food on the table and a place to live, so they'd easily be persuaded to work, as long as the conditions were right, and there would still be bosses and owners in place. The working class would just have an easier time in-between jobs is all.

The derail is fine :).

But. . . I mean, I just don't agree I guess. Socialism is an economic system where workplaces are publicly owned rather than privately owned. So just because you didn't have to buy something at work that doesn't mean that it's socialist. The workplace is a privately owned entity, where the rules are written and enforced by those who own it (or delegate that out to managers, as is often the case).

Caring is important, I wouldn't disagree. But the household is more of a benevolent dictatorship -- which some believe is how socialism must run, but I don't think that's true. It doesn't seem to me to be set in stone.

So though we might choose to share, and not turn a profit with every individual action we take, or view school (and push for schools) which are more than jobs training, I don't see any of that as taking away from the capitalist project where there are owners who write the rules, and workers who follow them.

This is why it seems to me that you are just being dismissive -- didn't I just agree with you that robots cannot entirely replace work?

Yet, though labor is part of human existence, how it is organized is indeed coercive because of how ownership is handled. Further, that it is part of existence differs from thinking that labor is somehow sacred -- which it is not. Another basic fact, from the perspective of a working class, is that work sucks. You can make peace with it, but it sucks all the same.

As you note, though, the work week has not shortened (it has actually re-lengthened). What's more, exploitative conditions like that found in 1800's have been exported to other countries. And there is a leisure class of owners responsible for these decisions -- yet you call that a diatribe.

These are just facts. The most obvious conclusion to draw from those facts, from my perspective, is that the problem is not technology, but rather the political power of labor. Automation has not resulted in more free time, but rather a reduction in well-payed jobs and an increase in efficiency of production. If the job gets done faster, yet we have no more leisure, what reason would you attribute to that?


That is not a diatribe, a pre-pubescent fantasy, an infantile yearning. It's a desire to not suffer. I've known people who have been worked so hard they are disabled to provide stupid services for entitled rich people. I've seen bosses use their authority to inflict all manner of cruelties that they were able, through their power over access to basic goods (like food and housing) which forces people to do things they wouldn't otherwise do (such as put up with abuse, such as work until they are disabled, such as take drugs to stay awake for three jobs to have enough money for children). These are facts, not propaganda. And the adult position is to care about suffering, and do something about it, rather than dismiss it as the responsibility of lazy, pubescent, ignorant, deluded etc. etc. implications that you seem to draw.

Well, first off, my point was that what you envision is some sort of teenager utopia where you reap all the benefits of labor without having to do anything. Simply replace your "full automation" premise with a money tree, a rich parent, a sugar daddy, or someone else's tax dollars and you'll arrive at the same conclusion. You're trying to eliminate the "labor" from the labor force. — Hanover

The desire to be free isn't a teenage utopia.

Labor isn't something to enshrine from now to forevermore. I rather doubt that robots can entirely replace work, but that was addressed before in previous exchanges with others -- it doesn't need to entirely replace labor in order to have an effect.

Further, the entitled ones in the world we live in now don't even work. Rather, they convince laborers to work for them through coercion.

If someone makes robots that can do everything, obviously someone has to design them, build them, operate them, and maintain them. What this does is actually the opposite of what you want. It rids our need for low level workers and the wealth flows to those more highly skilled workers who can operate the robots. Any effort to redistribute the wealth down to those who've been made obsolete will land us right back where we are today: a disproportionate amount of the wealth will be both created and controlled by a smaller and smaller percentage of the population. — Hanover

This counter-argument is addressed by the conjunction of demands.

That is to say, technology isn't kind to those whose contribution is brute force. Sure, they can lift the boxes of the robots and put them on the floor, but we've got fork lifts that can do that too. — Hanover

Seems to me that owners are the unkind ones, since they have some kind of agency -- whereas robots and technology do not.

A thought I've been favoring of late is that philosophy is the attempt to lessen human stupidity in all its forms. Since human stupidity is pervasive -- excluding no one person -- we see philosophy addressing it in many various topics. And in the usual history given in western philosophy we see that it was born not of wonder as much as a cure to superstition, to unjust political systems, to a lack of scientific knowledge, to a lack of an understanding of our human souls. . . (or, at least, these are particular ways of interpreting the ancients within this mold)

So it's not entirely unfair to characterize philosophy in this manner, either.

The consequent of this idea would be that philosophy's subject matter is actual human stupidity.

I've oscillated on that question a lot. There's a relationship of some kind, because whatever we call mind influences the body and whatever we call the body influences the mind, but I don't know what that relationship is.

But, with respect to knowledge, I'd say that knowledge is situation outside of an individual mind-body, and that mind is separate from knowledge -- I'd situation knowledge socially rather than mind-centrically. (just noting this bc of the previous question. Not sure if that's what you were after, but I thought it worth mentioning)

If you added up all the positive and negative effects, do you end up with a net positive outcome? — swstephe

That would depend on who you ask and what you want, no? I don't think there would be some kind of measure -- I'd say that we argue over what the measuring tool is, not on the calculations.

If so, was that positive outcome based on some other economic pressure? I have found in other movements, if you get past the problem and focus on the solution, you end up trying to figure out how is it going to pay for itself.

I'd say that it's easy enough to say that, yes, it was based on some other economic pressure because that's how economies work -- the buggaboo of much economic thinking is ceteris perebus. But when you look at economies not as physical systems but as historical systems it's easier to suss out how things might work in conjunction, and gives a guide to how you might proceed differently from those before you.

I'm looking at the problem as an engineer. There is a kind of conservation of motion even at economic and social levels. There are liberals because there are conservatives, they balance each other out. Automation has to balance with the opposite of automation, which would probably be alienation and dehumanization. It has happened many times through human history, and there is always some pressure to reclaim what was lost. — swstephe

Eh, I guess we don't share these beliefs. I don't think that political or economic systems behave in a manner commensurate to a conservation law, or that people on the spectrum balance one another out, or that one particular idea must be balanced out by another idea.

There's opposition to political movements in history. I agree there. But I don't see how sides balance one another out or how those who disagree rely on one another.

sd

I took some personal time off to address this kind of question. I realized that not only is post-capitalist society possible, (every society was pre-capitalist at some point), but we spend a minority of our time being capitalists. If you remove the time at work or shopping, you spend a lot of time in what is essentially a socialist household. The "state" provides services, works and nothing depends on real exchange of money. Capitalism is already shrinking. More services and social interchange are becoming less capitalist every year. — swstephe

I believe post-capitalism is a possibility, I just don't know. (where post-capitalism is understood to be not a return to pre-capitalist origins, but to something different from capitalism yet still modern). ((worth noting here that I'm uncertain that the usual examples actually accomplished their end-goal, too. Merely uncertain, though))

Also, I disagree that the household is socialist, or that capitalism is shrinking.

The household is based on private property, for one, though house-hold level private property is something usually thought to be part of a socialist vision. But even more than this, capitalism permeates the household by inculcating people to values which benefit capitalists -- such as the work ethic. You teach your children to do well in school, be industrious, and obey authority because we live in a society where such behavior is rewarded (especially if you are white, especially if you are straight, especially if you are male, etc. etc. ) -- that isn't to speak against these as values, mind. But they are the values which benefit capitalists, at this moment. ((though, personally, I don't agree with authoritarian values, I'm just noting here that i'm being descriptive of how capitalism is part of the household, and not holding this or that value as an obvious thing to discard -- that would take a different argument))

The household, living within a broader capitalist context, does not escape capitalism. Its goods are predicated upon participating in that larger economic system.You can't just ignore work and consumption. That's like saying if you just ignore capitalism then capitalism isn't there. But these are the primary ways the majority of us participate in the system of capitalism (of course it's a given that few of us spend time being capitalists -- the system is built on the notion that most work for few).

To say capitalism is shrinking: what? The private ownership over the workplace -- which includes so-called "publicly" traded companies -- is not in decline, nor is the subsequent result of an owning class and a working class. I don't know how you arrived at that belief, but I have a notion that the metric you're using to classify capitalism might be where we are at odds there. Capitalism is the private ownership over the workplace, where the workplace is treated as property of some owner or another (whether that owner be the manager, or that owner be a group of people who bought shares of a company with the understanding that it would be managed by a board and host of officers to make good on that promise)


I'd note here that capitalism is indeed a worldwide phenomenon, too -- cheap labor and hyper-exploitation are necessary features of allowing some people within the world enough time and energy to participate in volunteer projects such as linux and wikipedia, insofar that such an economy is organized along capitalist lines (cheap labor being preferable to more expensive machines, when you pay them little enough or just enough to create children that can then be re-exploited). I believe that working class people in the U.S. have it hard -- it's a struggle, and it's not fair to them. But capitalism gets worse within the prisons, and within countries outside of the U.S. We can't just focus on the living standards of a handful of countries. You have to look at what capitalism does across the globe, and many of the symptoms of capital which Marx describes occurring in England in the late 1800's are just recreated elsewhere when people finally push back against those conditions -- which is possible because we treat workplaces as private entities which the owners have say over what will be done with them.

A boring answer, but my thought is that Kant pretty much wrote the book on that particular distinction -- "Thoughts without intuitions are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.", where intuitions can be understood to take up the empirical side of the question of knowledge.

I would say that it's unreasonable, even, to favor one side over the other. Neither can stand in substitution or even in superiority to the other -- as far as (scientific) knowledge is concerned, they are interdependent.

One point from the video that I thought was good to make was that automation is not inevitable -- as we see now, there is extreme exploitation by use of cheap manual labor because machines would actually cost more. After a country industrializes, capital will then move to places where industry costs less.

Also, the demand puts into perspective the need for a global orientation to labor politics.

You're just being dismissive. Do you have a reason why it wouldn't work?

First, I am a bit put off when someone starts out talking about problems. — swstephe

But what if there are problems and people do not see those problems? I believe this is why he begins -- because people don't see it as a problem, so they have no reason to look at the solution. So he's making the case, here, for why the rest of his argument should be paid attention to.

I suppose you could just skip that part, though, if you're already interested.

Second, I'm wary of someone who falls back to hand-waving or vague pronouncements about how there is some technological solution to the problem. Every technology has trade-offs. — swstephe

I don't think it's quite hand-waving. It's not just "well, technology will take care of it" -- but automation has already had a large effect on the economy, and automation is already something which companies are pushing for. Automation is here, and it cuts into the number of jobs that are available (has already cut into jobs that are available). (He goes over this at minute 21 of the video -- still listening, but he starts to cover the topic there)

Whether full automation is a real possibility, I'd say there's still a point because automation has already had effects on employment, and there's no good reason to think that companies are going to somehow avoid automation when they can implement it and it costs less (isn't that the proverbial threat we hear when fast food workers organize? That they'll be replaced by machines?)

Third, currently, technology, economy and society are all tightly integrated — swstephe

I'm not following how this speaks against the authors. I would say that you and the authors are in full agreement on this statement.

In capitalist economies, money has become objectified values, so technology is our need/desires objectified. If we ever managed to automate everything, then we would no longer be relevant to the economic equation. Even political spectrum, "conservative" and "liberal" are balance each other, simplifying the negative and positive emotions of the population. — swstephe

Could you spell this out? I don't know what you're getting at here.

Reduction of work week. Well, that is a minor economic tool to fine-tune consumerism and capitalism at the lower levels. Is it even relevant in a "post-capitalist" society? There is an assumption that we will still work and won't like it. In such a big economic and social shift, that assumption may no longer be true. — swstephe

Not in a post-capitalist society, but a demand that makes sense right now in our concrete conditions. Is a post-capitalist society even possible? I don't know, but I know that what we have isn't working, and that our relationship to work is a part of that.

Basic income is nice, but it is another capitalist adjustment, and it has an obligatory part of inflation which keeps invalidating what is considered "basic". So you need to put a bunch of other controls in place, like price fixing for essential assets or forced restriction on what is considered a "need". If you need to do that, then start with that.

Sure, UBI is not luxurious techno-communism. It's a demand that makes sense today. You would be fighting similar fights as you do now with the minimum wage, but that's not to speak against the idea. Of course adjustments will need to be made. There is no solution which is just going to take care of itself -- history doesn't end.

OK cool. Sounds good.

haha. I was reading it as a reply, and so was kind of confused.

I don't think Apple, Google, McDonalds, and Uber have our best interests in mind, or that automation is a panacea. Nor do the authors. I'm not sure how I gave that impression at all.

Even if work sucks, that doesn't mean that having no work will be better. Even the suckyest work place is likely the source of many people's vital social relationships. It's often the very suckyness of work that has bound people together. — Bitter Crank

That's actually addressed too, in the section aptly titled "The Misery of Not Being Exploited"

It would definitely take a political project to make automation not-suck, as we have already seen with the effects of automation on the lives of working people. It's whose in control, though, and not automation itself which makes that bad for the working class.

They defend their project as a utopian project, actually. These demands are just the concrete, minimal-project that they envision for a proper 21'st century left. It was interesting to read their defense of utopian aims, to say the least (which isn't to say I agree with them, either -- but its not usual for people to defend utopianism).

I liked it because I've sort of felt in a rut in my political thinking, and both their critiques of some popular beliefs (which they term "folk politics") and the positive project they outline seemed both fruitful and agreeable.

That isn't to say that I endorse everything they have to say. In reading that manifesto I'm not surprised that they are accelerationists, and that actually was one of my concerns with their project.

But what it offered was something fresh, and positive. Not that anything they say is necessarily unique or even original, but it was a good exposition of these ideas from the perspective of the modern left in the U.S. and Europe, and why it should be important to a 21'st century left. So, rather than going into the ins and outs of various historical periods (not that this isn't valuable, but there's more to politics than its history, no?), it just tackled the 21'st century head-on, and did so in a direct manner that was easy to read.


Roughly the book is divided up into a critique portion and a positive project portion, followed by some concluding remarks on the pragmatic side of things. The critique is mainly of current leftist movements' beliefs -- pre-figuration, immediacy, and our relationship to both demands and the future are the main targets. Occupy Wall Street is a good example of the target they have in mind, though there are others as well.

But unlike most critiques of OWS, this book is more sympathetic. Not that they agree! Far from. But it's not dismissive, and the writers clearly understand what they are criticizing. So that, unto itself, was nice to read. (It's not that I thought OWS was perfect, but I certainly wasn't interested in criticisms from, say, an advocate of current representational democracy)

So it's like they both take the left to task, but are also sympathetic to and desire the goals of leftist politics. So it served as a good kind of mental floss.



There positive project can be boiled down (and they are the ones who do this outline) to 4 demands:

1. Full automation (meaning, robots do a lot of work)
2. The reduction of the working week
3. The provision of a basic income
4. The diminishment of the work ethic.

The only one of the demands that gives me pause is 1 -- not because work is good, but because I know that automation, in the hands of neo-liberalism, means loss of jobs. It smacks of eggs and omelet thinking. But, it goes nicely hand-in-hand with the last three, where the first creates the conditions to make the next two possible (without a reduction in material wealth), and those three would only be possible if the fourth were actually accomplished (as you note @Bitter Crank -- people do find meaning in work these days)

The chapter goes into detail on these four demands and why they are important to a radical politics sympathetic to socialism (broadly construed -- not necessarily "Socialism is everything the USSR did" but Socialism as a set of values and the collective ownership over the economy).