[Buddha-l] Society

[Curt Steinmetz]

It's a great little novel - basically a well-controlled but withering 
tirade against "bourgeois" society. The protagonist is based on Orwell, 
more or less how he feared he could have turned out had he not been 
successful, that is, commercially successful, as a writer. The result is 
someone brilliantly creative, but also embittered and paranoid, and at 
the same time totally and accurately aware of the truth of the society 
he lived in, if a bit melodramatic in his darker moments.

Curt

jkirk wrote:
> Yes it's true that Marx was indeed deluded by the myth of
> progress. 
> He also did not foresee the madness that would be caused by
> industrialization, which he thought was a good thing.  Commodity
> festishism was already established by the time of the
> Renaissance, it just had to be encouraged and extrapolated by the
> invention of the assembly line.  He however was the first to call
> it what it was and is.
>
> Your mention of that old book by Orwell reminded me of when my
> uncle, after he arrived home from being in WW2, read it and kept
> talking about it, mostly to our reactionary parents, so I never
> caught on to what it was about. (I'm sure dad was worried that we
> might start asking questions.)
>
> Still haven't read it. So many books, so little time.........
>
> Joanna
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: buddha-l-bounces at mailman.swcp.com
> [mailto:buddha-l-bounces at mailman.swcp.com] On Behalf Of Curt
> Steinmetz
> Sent: Wednesday, May 20, 2009 3:53 PM
> To: Buddhist discussion forum
> Subject: Re: [Buddha-l] Society
>
> Marx foresaw what he called "commodity fetishism", which in very
> crude (but obtuse) terms means that all use value is replaced (in
> our minds) by exchange value. George Orwell summed this
> phenomenon up very nicely in the preamble to his novel depicting
> one artist's struggle with alienation and despair under
> capitalism, "Keep the Aspidistras Flying":
>
> "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have
> not money, I am become as a sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.
> And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all
> mysteries,  and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so
> that I could  remove mountains, and have not money, I am nothing.
> And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I
> give my body to  be burned, and have not money, it profiteth me
> nothing. Money suffereth long, and is kind; money envieth not;
> money vaunteth not  itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave
> unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh
> no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;
> beareth all things, believeth  all things, hopeth all things,
> endureth all things. . . . And now abideth faith, hope, money,
> these three; but the greatest of these is money. "
>
> But as a slavish devotee at the altar of Progress, Marx could not
> understand the inherent problems of industrialism qua
> industrialism, and thought that everything could be fixed up just
> right by instituting the dictatorship of the proletariat.
>
> Curt
>
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