Re: <nettime> Technopolitics of the future

[mp <mp@aktivix.org>]

On 07/11/2022 18:59, Felix Stalder wrote:
> In the 20th century, in the West, there have been, as far as I can see, 
> three ways of reacting to such 'total crises'. Fascism, Keynesian and 
> 'war efforts'.

For 6-7000 years the same approach to the basic social metabolism (i.e. 
food systems) has been in place in what is generally called states: 
extractivism instantiated on simple principles:

Central command and control of territories for the production of grain, 
based on the most destructive technology ever invented, the plough, and 
enslavement (increasingly combined with wage slavery or human resources, 
if you want), as well as taxation and debt.

When the soil communities finally fully collapse, as a consequence 
erosion and loss of structural complexity, then the human societies 
collapse. It has taken about 250 years, more or less, every time, as 
David Montgomery has shown.

So, for argument's sake, let's say modern European state-based 
civilisation began with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. Add to that 
250 years and you get to 1898. It would all have been over by then, if 
not petrochemical fertilizers had been invented and, more or less, 
perfected by the end of that period.

In other words, oil saved modernity from collapse. It has been 
petrochemically borrowed time since.

With extractivism at the heart of operations, the rest is incidental: 
class society, colonialism and so on. Discussing the finer details 
within any given civilisation is merely a distraction, a brain candy 
look on specificities, which hides the logic at play - although it might 
pay for a career as an intellectual, expounding sophisticated views on 
the colours and cuts of the emperor's clothes.

Plough produced grains are at the heart of it all: relatively 
non-perishable, countable and therefore easily taxable and functional as 
a currency. The original currency.

Money is merely virtual grain. Which can be taken to further levels of 
abstraction in financial systems.

...
..
.


Yes, a broken record.

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