it's all about the way we define our society's priorities

The Gap has gone into full PR-damage control mode after it was revealed that one of their vendors was selling them clothing made by literal child slaves.

They have plausible deniability of course, because they buy from vendors who hired subcontractors to make their clothing. And they probably are actually appalled by the problem itself, not just by the criticism they're facing. They never told anyone to purchase children as slaves... they just gave their business to whoever could come up with clothing at the lowest price.

The Marxian term for the process at work here is commodity fetishism, which is a distortion in social priorities brought about by putting price tags on things. It's a distortion which blinkers us to the causal effects of our decision-making, the long-range or distant ethical ramifications of continuous cost-cutting and profit-maximization.

One aspect of this distortion is the devaluation, and subsequent discarding, of children.

In the agricultural and pastoral economy, children are a boon and blessing; in the urbanized economic model, they are (economically speaking) a burden. It is not a simple matter of children working on farms and ranches but not working in markets or factories - throughout most of history (including the present), children have occupied a place in the urban division of labor. No, the real issue is that in an urban economy people are separated from the wealth they create. They make things or perform services, for which they receive a wage which is not - which is never - equal to the average revenue product of their labor. What that means, in plain language, is that a person is never paid a wage equal to the value their labor creates.

That extra value is sucked up by the upper class. This is how it is that the gap between rich and poor tends to grow, and this is part of what i have, for two years now, referred to as slow-motion cannibalism.

Simply by virtue of existing in an urbanized society, an individual wage earner can statistically expect their net value to decrease over time. Some people manage to improve their lot; for every one who does, there are two or three who sink further into the whole. This is reflected in our financial life by perpetual debt; unless one owns property and capital, one is in debt forever to landlords and to banks. And to a poor family which has little of worth to give a child upon their birth, a child is an economic drain from the instant she or he is born.

It is a drain that people are willing to bear because of love. But being in debt makes you vulnerable. And a family that starts out with a margin of zero is on very thin ice indeed. Any kind of mishap - an illness, a drought, an inopportune death, and suddenly the unthinkable becomes the inevitable.

There are certain realities that are not altered by economic or political philosophy, and one of these realities is that the survival and caretaking of an individual human child represents a tremendous investment, of time, energy... even of love.

However, because of the way commodity fetishism works, this investment is not recognized as such. It is not recognized as an undertaking which creates value, even though it does. Viewed through dollar-sign-colored-glasses, the investment of raising a child is invisible, contrasted with the investment of buying a new piece of factory equipment.

When bankers run into problems, other capitalists and the government rush to prop them up. But when parents run into problems, they are on their own, a problem exacerbated by the urban breakdown of the extended family. On their own, with no prospects of aid or rescue, a desperate family will turn to horrific measures to survive - selling a child into slavery, or prostituting them, or killing them.

As an alternate vision, imagine a society that does recognize and give value to the investment of child-raising. Imagine a society where parents who run into difficulty are able to draw upon assistance based on the capital of their investment in the future. This would have to be a society where people ask, "How does this benefit us?" instead of, "How does this benefit me?"

We are only a state of mind away from it.

for consideration, a meta-neo-marxian semiotic principle

A while back, someone on my friend's list linked to an essay about art as misappropriation. I don't think it was linked approvingly, but the concept has stuck in the back of my mind, something to digest.

Then not long ago i read about the iconic image of Che Guevara as now appears on tee-shirts and numerous other commercial products. I don't know as much as i should about Che, but i think i have already well expounded on my views that anyone who uses violence is no revolutionary at all but is a part of the system. Anyway, this bit stood out in my mind, a quote from Trisha Ziff, who has organized an exhibition on the Che icon.

"There is a theory that an image can only exist for a certain amount of time before capitalism appropriates it. But capitalism only wants to appropriate images if they retain some sense of danger."

Hmm, i have to back up a little. I call my views "meta-neo-Marxian." "Neo" because we have progressed quite a bit in the last 150 years, in understanding the sociology of oppression and the intricacies of economics, and "meta" because i am not a subscriber to a philosophy, but merely a critic whose views are inspired by the trajectory which Marx played a role in laying out.

I view our situation as less a matter of "capitalism vs. socialism" and more a matter of me-centered world-parsing vs. us-centered world-parsing. I take this view because (a) the same problems preceded capitalism and have also tended to plague socialist societies and (b) i believe a truly just and merciful society could function compassionately with almost any economic or political arrangement.

So let me re-write that quote into a version that more closely matches my current views:

"There is a theory that a subversive image can only exist for a certain amount of time before the power paradigm strips it of meaning and makes it a commodity."

For the political-socialist, the image of Che is a commodity in that it is a valuable emotional push-button; and for the political-capitalist, the image of Che is a commodity because it sells tee-shirts. Neither point of view is really interested in exploring the meaning of Che's life, words, and actions.

Now, for the principle i promised in the title of this post. To wit:

Images and text will lose their meaning over time, in part because meaning is anathema to the power paradigm.

The surest way to strip an image of meaning is to give it a dollar value or to use it as an emblem of demagoguery. But the principle works in other ways. Part of this is because each generation tends to create its own kinds of meaning, and so young people do not react in the same way to a creative work as earlier generations of people did.

I thought about this while reading recently about a Monet painting which was vandalized. Frankly, i found i could care less; some old painting who's time has come and gone was damaged. But i realize that the painting meant something to its creator; it meant something to the creator's contemporaries; and it means various things to various people today. Do those meanings resemble one another?

Who could do such a thing as vandalize a Monet? Someone to whom the work of art had little or no meaning. (Or, alternately, someone to whom the act of destruction meant more than the painting itself -- but... well, i have to reign in the scope of this somehow.)

But what is the meaning of a work of art? What is meaning? Without waxing too philosophical - i want to intentionally leave this a little fuzzy - i think of meaning as the reaction one has when contemplating something. But, additionally, the genuine meaning of a creative work is primarily that reaction which is intended to be provoked by the work's creator. I emphasized that because there are theories of criticism which argue the opposite - that meaning is supplied by the observer of a creative work. Such theories can, in my opinion, be demonstrated to be apologetics for the power paradigm.

One way to reduce the meaning of an object is to directly misappropriate it - to use the phrase or image to advance a different agenda and then to use your superior numbers or budget to simply drown out all incidence of the original usage. A radical movement of any import can expect to see this happen to their language, and as a result the dissenters of each generation are pretty much on their own. Another way to reduce the meaning of an object is to surround it with approved, dissent-sanitized replicas: the culture industry.

However, it is not just subversive meaning which is distrusted by the power paradigm - ultimately, it is all meaning that is unreliable. Meaning is capricious, meaning is unquantifiable, meaning is unmarketable and unprofitable. Even meaning which has nothing to do with politics can inspire someone to question the status quo. This includes faith. "Spirituality," as i mean it when i use it in my journal, is a process of misappropriation by which the words used by people of faith and conscience to describe their experience is sanitized of any politically radical content in ways that turn it into icon-worship. In other words, "spirituality" (as defined by me) is the attempt to destroy meaning and faith and replace it with a religion industry.

(no subject)

"Dog bites man" may not be news, but "dog shoots man," well, that's news. (I guess.)