Anarchist Writers

Andre Previn: "But... But... You're playing... You're playing all the wrong notes."
Eric Morecambe: [Grabs Previn by the lapels] "I'm playing all the right notes. But not necessarily in the right order"

This post is about the immaterial product, using the concept of use-shape, the occasional translation of Marx's Gebrauchgestalt, to explore this sometimes confusing concept. We explore the concept of the pattern form, a type of non-subjective, i.e. "really-existing", yet immaterial shape, which is the concrete form of the immaterial product.

Given that the accepted definition of the commodity is an artefact that is at the same time an exchange value and a use value, the notion that the commodity is in some manner defined by its uselessness seems, at first sight, a contradiction. This apparent contradiction is an effect of a mistaken perspective that perceives use value as being a property of an object - the commodity. In fact, both use value and exchange value are relational concepts and their coincidence in a given artefact does not imply that they appear equally to all parties that they enter into a relation with. What is a use value to one person may be entirely useless to another. The aspect of the commodity we are exploring here is that of a use value that is useless to its possessor.

Like Judaism, Islam is not only a community of faith but a system of law and jurisprudence. Islamic jurisprudence is based upon the interpretation of the texts of the Qur'an, the Hadith and Sunnah. Various schools or madhabs of past interpretations have built up over time such that coming to a ruling can come through two main routes - the imitation (taqlid) of past scholars and the traditional schools, or original interpretation of the source texts. This is ijtihad, a word derived from the same 3-letter root (j-h-d, jahada - "struggle") as jihad, meaning "struggle with yourself". It contains the idea that original interpretation is a product of struggle, arduous and potentially a mortal danger to body and soul.

This piece is a sequel to the previous "What is Orthodoxy" post below and should ideally be read after that. Here we are looking at how the objectivist notions of class talked about in the first piece in the series, relates to a particular notion of time - the Epoch.

[This is another re-homed post, from October 2008.]

This is again a re-posting of an old text in an attempt to consilidate my online texts in one place. This particular text is in fact nearly 20 years old. It is, like the vast majority of my written work, fragmentary and unfinished. Unlike the mass of fragmentary texts I keep around, however, this one I did publish, many years ago, back in the days of free geocities sites. I include it here unchanged for reference, although some of my views on these matters have since evolved. The "Four Levels of Use Value Production" post below represents more recent reflections on this topic, but it does not follow up all the ideas contained in this original.

This is a re-posting of a piece from my previous blog, originally put up in October 2006.

I include the following quote from Felix Guattari from "A New Alliance is Possible" from "Soft Subversions" because for me it sums up perfectly the only possible response to daft questions like "are you a marxist?"

As an example of the aporiai of political action I mean things like the deadly embrace between sectarianism and opportunism. Rather than being simply solitary dead-ends, these aporiai achieve their impasse effect as being binary systems of paired dead ends, the escape from one leading directly into the heart of the other and vice versa.

A spectre is haunting the Left, the spectre of orthodox Marxism. In order to fully exorcise this pernicious spirit it is necessary to first understand it's true nature. The orthodox interpretation of Marxism arose after Marx's death through the work of Engels and the founders of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD), most significantly, Karl Kautsky

Of course, it's not exactly as simple as it first appears. In the wake of the crash the ISDA started chivvying CDS dealers to try and net out their deals. As CDS are fixed term contracts and normally non-tradeable, the common practice for getting out of a CDS deal before the fixed term (usually 5 years) expires is to create a second, opposite contract. The end result is double the notional outstanding, though the deal has been effectively cancelled