Sunday, February 28, 2010

Marx and Walking-Around Money

When I read Roger’s remarks of Feb. 25 on the piece ‘Wages’ by Marx, I wanted to comment immediately. But by the time I had outlined my response, it far exceeded any reasonable length for a comment box. I have reservations about the approach Roger has taken. His interpretation selects a single sentence from the text and draws from it implications that presume it conveys a scientific claim of universal scope. I read this sentence very differently. I believe we will find it has a very different force and scope if we consider in some detail the generic texture of ‘Wages.’

Four aspects of this texture indicate that the force of the text and of that one sentence follow from an immediate practical goal and that the scope of any claim it establishes are correspondingly limited. We need first to consider what kind of text ‘Wages’ is and how that status determines the logic that governs its argumentative construction. To specify the force of the sentence itself within this argument, we need to trace the topic of wages and their allocation fully. To understand the formulation of this topic in the crucial sentence, we need to consider how the text engaged its auditors. To grasp this engagement as concretely as we can, we need to connect the topic of wages and their use by the wage-earner to the political project Marx was embarked on.

The editors of the Marx-Engels Werke propose that Marx drafted ‘Wages’ in preparation for a talk he presented to the Deutscher Arbeiterverein (German Workers’ Club) in Brussels. This talk was the next to last or last talk in a series. I believe this ascription to be correct and that we must accordingly look at the constitution of this text as a ‘lecture’ if we are going to appreciate what Marx was saying and why he said it the way he did.

The lecture notes opens with a summary of the conclusions drawn in passages of the draft which have not survived. These conclusions establishes a ‘logic arc’ within which the statement functions. Now just as it is erroneous to retrospectively project the Marx of the future into his earlier works, it is equally erroneous to ignore the Marx of the past in reading the present Marx. At the time of ‘Wages,’ Marx’ work still retained much of the form and substance of Hegel. In keeping with Hegel’s style of dialectical argument, Marx has initially defined a fundamental relationship, then proceeds to elaborate the contradictions that unfold within this relationship. The first point of the summary establishes that capitalism treats human activity as a commodity and for workers this relationship reduces their life activities to a mere means.

The following points elaborate the processes implicit within this relationship which determine the rate of wages, such as supply and demand or the profit motive. Marx abstracts the logical properties capitalism, a logic in which life activities have already been completely permeated and transformed. After this abstraction what remains to discuss are the internal dynamics of that transformed instrumental life. When Marx concludes the lecture with a statement of the positive aspect of wages, he introduces a twinkle of starlight in this vast darkness. In Hegelian terms, after treating at length ‘necessity,’ that which capital must do in and of itself, he finds in it ‘possibility,’ that aspect of the relationship which can in its turn generate an new system of relationships out of the old.

The draft continues with notes on eight bourgeois economists pertinent to the second point of the summary. After these notes, the draft has three fully written sections in which Marx discusses his own insights into the system-internal determination of the level of wages. These sections correspond to points three through seven of the summary.

In the last two sections before the conclusion, Marx discusses measures which ameliorate the dismal rigors of wages. To appreciate the significance of these sections to the lecture’s conclusion, we now have to pay closer attention to the formulation of the test. We will see that the logic of the argument transforms dramatically and prepares the force of the conclusion.

In the first, lengthy section titled “Suggestions for Relief,” Marx mentions and criticizes three popular bourgeois proposals to insulate wage earners against fluctuating income or to generate higher wages. He then criticizes these measures because they cannot counteract the entire range of systemic pressures to reduce wages. In the second, much briefer section ‘Workers’ Associations’ Marx addresses the organizing undertaken by the workers themselves to obtain and maintain better wages. First he points out two objections to workers’ association advanced by bourgeois economists. Then he defends the formation of such associations.

To recognize how Marx transforms the logic of his presentation at this point, we must consider ‘Suggestions for Relief’ and ‘Workers’ Associations’ as a single rhetorical unit, despite their formal separation. Marx was widely read in the Greek and Latin classics in the original languages. Just as he had absorbed the principles and materials of Hegel’s philosophy, he had mastered the devices of Classical rhetoric. Marx has ordered the presentation of the topics in these two sections to form a single rhetorical unit through the mirror-symmetrical figure of chiasmus. Chiasmus consists of two parallel constructions in which the order of the constituents is reversed in the second construction. We could schematize this construction, A:B::B:A.

If we consider that dialectics assumes a dynamic relationship between at least two elements and that the dynamism induces a new relationship between those elements, then we can recognize in the chiasmus a rudimentary, prototypical schema of the dialectic. We can specify the schema that binds the two sections of the lecture. First there are two points of view, bourgeois and proletarian. There are two types of content, model and criticism. The chiastic structure of the two sections of the argument is bourgeois model:proletarian criticism::bourgeois criticism:proletarian model. The process begins in bourgeoisie’s conceptualization of their own practical activity and ends in the practical activity of the working class. The texture embodies rather than explicitly describing this historical and social development.

In the schema ‘::” stands in the place of the fulcrum on which the order is overturned. Let us consider the dramatic assertion which occupies this position in the argument. Marx prefaced his reprise of the bourgeois criticisms of association with the assessment, “What the economists remark about associations is correct …,” a characterization perhaps all the more surprising once we have heard that the economists claim association cannot maintain or raise wages. After completing his reprise of the objections, Marx repeats his assessment, but adds a crucial explanation, “ All these objections of the bourgeois economists are, as I said, correct, but correct only from their point of view.”

In moving through the rhetorical reversal of order, we have moved into a new logical grounds for understanding. We began with bourgeois models which characterize the reciprocal relations of the factors that determine wages in terms of mathematical ratios and which seek the optimal equilibrium within this constrained range of necessities misconceived as possibilities. At the same time, we have moved from the conceptual proletarian critique of the bourgeois model’s categorical insufficiencies to the workers' practical critique via organizing associations. Returning to the level of the lecture’s logic, as we pivot on this fulcrum, we also pass from the formal dialectic of ideas to the material dialectic of activity. Marx has refuted the bourgeois ideas not by an immanent critique, but by demonstrating that they advance the interests of capital in and within wage relationships and that they are irrelevant to solving the problems wages pose for workers.

After this assertion of the distinct and irreconcilable bourgeois and working class viewpoints, Marx completes this section with a discussion of associations. He does not analyze the inherent logic of associations in the way he analyzed capital. Marx approaches the organizing of associations as a practical activity and focuses on a single, salient aspect of that activity. In fact, the meaning and the force of the claim that workers can do whatever they want with their money follows from this topical focus. The reiterated perspectives on the topic delineate a textually specific sense for workers using their money, and the truncated paraphrase in the concluding section of the lecture must be read as a summarization of this more elaborate presentation of the topic.

Marx comments take as their point of departure the first of the two bourgeois criticisms of association, namely that the cost of creating and maintaining an association will exceed any increase in wages obtained through the association. He rejects the very pertinence of this utilitarian logic. Against it he poses claims about how workers’ consciousness of their struggle and its depth lead them beyond a utilitarian view of wages. If the apparent struggle for wages entails an ultimate struggle against wages, then the workers “rightfully laugh” at the kind of pedants who would even try to calculate “the cost in dead, wounded and money.” In fact, “Anyone who wants to beat the enemy, will not discuss with him the costs of the war.” The mere fact that workers really are forming associations refutes the economists' claim that workers are selfish self-calculators. When we look at the organizing underway, we see wages play an obvious role in the process, “the best paid factory workers form the most associations.”

Workers assume the expense of self-organization even though it requires sacrifice, “the workers use everything they can scrimp together from their pay to form political and industrial associations and to cover the costs of this movement.” Accordingly, the employers and economists, who award minimal wage increases thinking they will be absorbed in modest luxuries like tea, rum, sugar and meat, are outraged when the workers “include in their calculation of these raises a little of the costs of the war against the bourgeoisie.” The section climaxes with the pithy contrast between the bourgeois view of wages as a means to participate in markets and the workers view of money as a means to meaningful life activity, “they even make out of their revolutionary activity the maximum of their pleasure in life.” In four, sometimes lengthy sentences, Marx crams in seven instances of the use of the meager disposable income provided by wages for the purposes of self-organized political and industrial organizing and motivated by class-consciousness.

The entire brunt of the argument is that any wage that allows more than the bare necessities can also provide a resource for the struggle to end the wage relationship altogether. When Marx concludes his lecture with the claim that wages have the “Advantage: that the worker can do whatever he wants with his money,” he summarizes the more extensive argument of the preceding section with a brevity comparable to the condensed conclusions with which the draft for the lecture began. The brevity should not mislead us. Marx does not argue that workers can spend whatever money they have on whatever commodities they want. He never once says “spend” or “buy.” He says, “use” and “do.” Within money he sees possibilities outside capitalist production and circulation. He advocates uses of money as an instrument of non-instrumentalized life activity.

So much for today and so much for the conventional, internal verbal factors in the analysis and understanding of genre. Structure and diction contribute essential components in the constitution of genres, but we still have to consider the articulated text as an active element in the dynamic relationship between Marx the lecturer and the workers in his audience. Those elements will allow us to reflect not just on what Marx said, but on the force of his talk, why he said what he said and to what end. What is the situated, pragmatic sense of “the worker can do whatever he wants with his money”? I’ll be back in a day or two with more of the story.

20 comments:

  1. Qlipoth, that sounds about right to me - and your contextualization draws out the meanings of that final sketch. Surely it would be a mistake to think that Marx thinks the at the workers of the world should unite in order to enrich themselves.

    On the other hand, that sketch, which is echoed in the Manifesto, definitely celebrates the erasure of traditional ties, on deeper and deeper levels, by a capitalist economy. And one has to ask about what the workers 'uniting' would mean, if all human associations lose any ties but those that are fungible. There is, as you know, an element on the left who definitely went off in that direction, decreeing that privacy itself was either feudal or bourgeois. So I am not drawing out a moment that cast no historical shadow.

    I actually heartily agree with your idea that Marx is working with points of view win this text, and will continue to do so up through Capital. Thus, to say that Marx inhabits this point of view distorts the context - but not to see how he is thinking through the historical result of the revolution in everyday life effected by capitalism, even to momentarily embracing this dark pole, as I call it, also distorts Marx. He returns to this notion with greater force in the section of Grundrisse in which he considers an epoch in which the exchangeability of all objects is correlate with an epoch of universal prostitution. [Die generelle Prostitution erscheint als eine notwendige Phase der Entwicklung des gesellschaftlichen Charakters der persönlichen Anlagen, Vermögen, Fähigkeiten, Tätigkeiten.] Here, however, he goes beyond the litany, as I am calling it, and points to the fact that individuals at this point seem independent from each other, but it is an illusion - they really ahve all be reduced to the same value [die Individuen scheinen unabhängig (diese Unabhängigkeit, die überhaupt bloß eine Illusion ist und richtiger Gleichgültigkeit – im Sinn der Indifferenz].

    Anyway, I'm glad you replied. I'll put a link to this in a ps.

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  2. Prinz Eugen10:54 PM

    A racist is just an unpopular realist, Qlipoth.

    For the spirit of our fathers
    For the glory of our sons
    - Laibach, 'Slovenia'

    +http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbB1s7TZUQkra

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  3. Thanks comrade Qlipoth, for that really edifying post.

    At roger's (always intriguing) blog, the comments to some of the recent marx posts are well worth reading too. I think DuncanLaw defends especially forcefully and well the position that it is necessary always to read Marx' texts as aspects of an actual concrete practise, designed to serve a revolutionary struggle and not, like philosophers and theoriests of today, to be simply objects for the admiration and intellectual enrichment of nonrevolutionary learned readers. This case of Wages, because a speech, a form more unmistakeably actively embedded in the political actvitiy of organisation, education, exortation, makes this very plain, but it fundamentally the same case with Capital as well. People often approach Marx texts now in some kind of academic environment, read between hegel and Weber or Nietzsche, or sometimes alongside Dostoevsky and Kierkegaard, Disraeli and Carlyle. And there is the assumption that Marx was composing what he hoped would be a challenging text for a rich intellectual experience of bourgeois readers. But Marx was trying to write something simple, to make something clear, in order to be helpful to a revolutionary masses, not baffling and endlessly entertaining to leisured elites. When Capital is at times a little challenging (people exaggerated it, but there are also problems the language, and older translations, pose to young readers today) it is mainly because something complicated is being explained, but Marx is never trying to wallow in the complication but always to clarify and blow the fog away. The topicality of the references alone should convey how much Marx was concerned with writing something helpful for his moment and the near future: he did not writ Capital in the hope that over a century later it would be a text pored over by academic critics in a system of global capitalism with a triumphant capital ruling class inflicting such destructing and suffering - which would have been unimaginable to him - on relentlessly immiserated, terrorised, propertlyless, superexploited humanity. We should not assume there are little biuts of what are supposed to be transhistorical wisdom and universal truths embedded for posterity in Marx finished texts or fragments.

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  4. Anonymous3:18 PM

    Oh, I'm not done yet. The second half attempts interpret the lecture in a very specific practical, historical context.

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  5. Looking forward to it

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  6. The Complete Repletist9:35 AM

    This was predictable enough to belong under the new post. Okay, case closed. Deal with your own text-message obscenities (if you do get them). Even if he always lies, he was surely telling the truth about that. Some Nazi trap, eh ole girl? Ho ho, enough about the Pierre and Gabriel's till 'Next Year at West Ham' (Islamophobes, anyone? Yes, that's what the Nezi Trap meant to correct. It didn't. 'Islamophobie, ordinarily replete with racism, was found to not necessarily be the same, such that Anglo-Chinese media hacks tried to make an about-face and bought Arpege a slinky 20s dress replete with gold cocktail shoes when the going got rough, meaning that the entries were now replete with defenses of Owen Hatherley, who had been falsely accused of being replete with Islamophobia. He probably was, but why should I care?

    Your 'fear of harassment' was amusing, though. Much less to worry about than Jodi had with lustmolch this time. Anyway, the Anglo-Chinese was probably right that you deleted Owen's remarks. That's what happens when you wake up replete with bad temper. To wit:

    "ARPEGE! Where did Owen use 'replete' wrongly?' "

    Oh was it this?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guggenheim_Abu_Dhabi

    "...we must draw the reader's eye to the building replete with a sign that says The Guggenheim...named for Solomon A. Guggenheim, a Jewish capitalist. Aside from being a major buyer of modern art and the owner of museums in NY, Venice and Bilbao, the Guggenheim's portfolio includes shares in "evil Orient enterprises" and devotes itself to constructing handsome buildings and pleasureable spaces not only where the population deserves them, as in North America and Europe, but where they do not belong, where Arabs live, when everyone knows the proper tabula rasa the West arranges for its Arab wards is a landscape of radioactive rubble, and that only those who make museums in the Arab world which look like this


    http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_oEn2IoOE3Pc/R-O-uhDppYI/AAAAAAAAAW0/r7BvOgfQY5U/s400/bagdad_museum_1%5B1%5D.jpg

    deserve modernism, modernity, post-modernity and beauty in their cities and lives.

    or

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Central_Television_Headquarters_building

    "An expensive new structure, replete with running water, electricity, and superfluous design elements, is to be wasted on robotic, submissive Chinese media workers who should toil away in squalor until they learn a proper respect for the value of civilisation and the idea of communism."

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  7. Nazi Trap Escapee9:57 AM

    I can't find the name of the cobra in 'Monsieur' from the Avignon Quintet to save my life. That Gnostic girl who was a Socialite (Cairo or Alexandria or maybe even other Levatinisms) half the year, slob the other half when she wore unwashed Gnostic garments, was able to hold 'Pthilis' or whatever the Cobra's name was, she had great affection for his/her evil, and they were soulmates. This is why I am such an expert snake-handler--started out with rattlesnakes in the Deep South, Jewish Capitalists (similar to Guggenheim of the bialies) once ensconced in Wall Street.

    So Dejan good on 'cobra imagery', although indian men can, of course, be divided into those who resemble cobras and those who resemble mongooses. The downside for the general populace is that the cobras don't always lose, but fortunately I just dispensed quietly with a mongoose, without fanfair nor publicity, and this made one of the DVD glory hole owners who is more cobraic start cruising me, to my surprise and delight. The mongoose was allowed to remain extant, however.

    Big deal about Borat. I've never even seen her. Ha ha Nazi Trap.

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  8. Complaisant Person10:05 AM

    Thanks, kenoma.

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  9. Annals of Brownsville10:28 AM

    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/03/nyregion/03gowanus.html?hp

    There might be something racist about the way it's funded in a way that Bloomberg doesn't like. I always tried to get close to the Gowanus Canal, famous for its exquisite aromas, but something always deflected me, and I'd just have to settle for Nevins Street. I mean, what next? Clean up the Gowanus? Surely, there goes the neighborhood, and we'll have nothing but Rite-Aid, J.C. Penney's, and Starbucks. Ho Ho Ho.

    "Last Year at Gowanus". Somehow that just doens't play, even if Spike Lee was still working his 'joints'.

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  10. Breaking Racist Propaganda News10:47 AM

    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/03/nyregion/03recession.html?hp=&pagewanted=print

    Mayor Bloomberg, eating a bagel with cream cheese, saig that the recession would cost the city 100,000 fewer jobs than originally predicted! He said the Wall Street Bailout would benefit primarily the rich and their finery.

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  11. I'm not worried about harrassment and why are you angry?

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  12. does the canal still stink? at those property prices? That doesn't seem right.

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  13. Glatt Meat District Tourist4:03 PM

    I'm not angry atll, don't be silly, you were teasing mea little too hard, but that's normal. I'm the type alwayts gets played with, so I get a little touchy when I get tired, although that Anodyne is a cool customer, now isn't she? Lying to me about 'not in Manhattan, dear', just to give me the brushoff, 'cause she knows I like to party...

    Yeah, the canal does still stink, and has done because they've worked on it some but not enough. Actually, though, in my more 'boroughs tourism days', did go through Gowanus on the way to see Red Hook (birthplace of Al Capone) and kept wondering why it didn't stink, but maybe it's the wind. My good friend, Tracey of Flatbush, said it does stink though. She now can always be found at Jeffereson Market Library and Rite-Aid looking for the sale items, she is ridiculous. Other day told me to 'be careful when I was walking through the snow'. I said 'Darling, I'm the bar mitzvah boy you never had....' Speaking of Jewish, you can tell from my moniker I just got back from the King's Highway Section just beyond Avenue P. They DO have a good slice of Sicilian pizza there, though. This is the kind of place Ben Katchor so great at. I'm a big fan of his 'Julius Knipl Real Estate Investor', and also he's done some musicals at the Kitchen that are supposed to be first-rate, but 'The Beauty Supply Industry' is the only comic book I've ever loved, and he's the only cartoonist I've ever loved. I remember in the 90s when there was a strip every week in the Voice, couldn't believe they cancelled him. That rag is almost sub-dead, they started firing all the good ones around 2004, like Richard Goldstein, then a bunch of others.

    Okay, now I'm going to look up 'glatt meat', I have just been to a Gentleman's Club in the Glatt Meat District although the natives don't frequent it, it's usually me and some Puerto Ricans and Africans and Mob types, all the yarmulkahs are outside.

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  14. Complaisant Person8:43 PM

    http://codepoetics.com/poetix/2010/03/01/just-gaming/

    Arpege, here's more on Dominic's Assessment of the Virtue of the Castration Complex and his Secret Desire not to be a Beta, but mainly You'd Need to Feel Guilty If You Were an Alpha--so just become a nun, I guess. And somebody might find out you 'weren't really an Alpha'--oh, these fake Alphas have got to always be on the lookout, oh yes, they do (but I think the 'naturalized alphas' have more interiority, or something. Or some such ridiculous weaselry. Man, it was different in the Glatt Meat District (that is meat from animals with smooth lungs, but I still don't know what the fuck that refers to, free range kosher kibbutz chicken coops or something?) I mean, none of us gave a single thought to any of these businesses, but I guess getting over guilt about sex does only come with age and staying in good health. Everybody else might as well just analyze stuff--much less 'common', that 'sex stuff' is for the 'unrefined sensibility'.

    Also, as a result of her comment, I have decided not to meet Anodyne at the Pierre, because she is too much like Dominic, I am not interested in people who wish to 'peg people' and 'identify PUA's', etc., instead of just getting fucked or public frotteurisme, even if it is somewhat like in bad Houellebecq. Also, she wouldn't know it was appropriate for her to pay for the drinks, as had the Englishwoman... Also, when not talking about PUA's (if either of them knows what that is, I still don't, except that I don't think Dominic knows what how to 'fake being a PUA Alpha'), she might talk about being black and a female all the time, which could be trivial even under less comfortable circumstances; and I'd rather talk about architecture and property prices. The Brooklyn Navy Yard is also interesting, if largely delapidated.

    No, you and I would be a better date, because both rather terrible people, I can tell you don't hate men no matter what you say. What I really wish is that Rumpelmayer's still existed, because that is where we really ought to meet, with the stuffed animals and endless chocolates.

    http://www.katchor.com/weeklystrips.html

    Oh, this is much more up my alley. I LOVE Katchor. The one I'm so pissed for not going to is 'The Slug Bearers of Kayrol Island' from 2004 and also revived a few years later. I was just being cheap, thought it was overpriced. He also wrote a weird show about a Philadelphia rare-book dealer, 'The Rosenbach Company'. Gawd, how arcane can you get? But you had to go down to Philadelphia to see that one, and that's not something I like to do.

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  15. well i actually couldn't pay attention to dominic's post, but the first comment, a spoof of a certain feminist argument, is provoking but this -

    "In all your defense of the sexual status quo, you miss a fascinating
    aspect of PUA culture: it’s emphasis on sharing knowledge. "

    is a very funny line.

    Ishmael Reed told his students who tried provoking him with racist shit that they could be as racist as they wished in his createive writing class so long as they made it fresh and witty.

    an obligation that alas the zizzbabies and zizz himself don't accept and are probably not capable of fulfilling.

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  16. Hey Complaisant, search for "The Pick Up Artist, Vh1" clips on youtube.

    Or "PUA lingo" in google.

    There's a whole subculture of PUAs, like for realsies. It's not a made-up thing.

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  17. Complaisant Person1:13 PM

    Okay, will do. You see, I can't deal with Dominic's attitude toward sex, so i really don't know what he's even talking about. He doesn't see that he is really talking about himself: It comes across as 'I WANT to be a Closet Beta', because I should be; but surely, with my 'looks and charm which assure me of not being a second-rater' I MUST be a 'real Alpha', even though I will compensate for that by making plans for 'guilt-feeling schedules'. Actually, the babe doesn't realize that he does indeed have the looks, but quite definitely NOT the charm. Any male who is that insecure that he is always looking for the faults of other males has got serious Charm-Challenge Problems. I used to think he was the prettiest fellow in the whole blogosphere, but then I realized that his conviction that men are all sexually sick if they didn't buy Mrs. Dworkin's message was not exactly valid, although it did point to some mental illnesses that he may suffer. I mean, I just don't ask myself 'am I exploiting my fellationist?' while we're having a go. And although I might 'reciprocate' with someone else (which is not quite fair in terms of reciprocation), I just don't think I am exploiting women when I shove a man's head down. Dominic has avoided the realm of male homosexuality by deciding something of how we still exploit women sexually even when they are in distant lands and climes. And that doesn't even address the times when I just get the other one's ass involved, instead of my own (I don't know if it's the financial collapse period or what, but I have found an inordinate number of guys who want only anal empleasurment beginning with Lehman's downfall. I don't even know if I do or not, you see, because I keep finding these types who just want to be all asshole on me--which makes life a lot easier, if you must know. But you can tell me, if by pleasuring them this way, I am nevertheless exploiting women, just like Gloria Vanderbilt Jeans used to do with tight jeans posters.)

    Only once I got free of my stalker at Dejan's (who is now happy, because he's got someone who agrees that it's possible Serbia NEVER did anything 'colonial', that they were different from all other nations and that all these inferior nations are 'envious', yes, well, you know, that's the breaks, and they've even put comments moderation up there, although nobody else writes there, and anyway, the Serb-hater and the lafayetc are the same person, just use different IPS and different computeres. Dejan too stupid to figure this out, even though I spelled it out to him.)

    Anyway, I don't know what your interests are. You sound smart, but not quite as involved with some of the arts as Arpege and I are. No reason you should be interested in me just because I Houdini=ized myself out of an Evil Old Blogger's Uriah Heep of Red China Online Embraces. Of course, that was masterful, but we don't know whether that would give you personal pleasure...

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  18. Complaisant Person1:24 PM

    btw, can't say I quite go along with the birds = Mozart business either, although naturally I like both well-enough not to want to argue with you about it if you're deeply committed, but I did think it admirable that you would argue with him about it as if it were self-evident. You might want to try the Messiaen's bird-pieces = birdsong 'even more' than Robin Redbreast in Spring = The Haffner Symphony, so since she won't know about the Messiaen, you can say those are not 'the same as bird sounds', but ARE, in fact, bird sounds, and Messian was different from the birds only in that they couldn't use a pen on the mss. paper (that may be what 'chicken-scratchin' handwriting comes from, viz., birds with or without webbed feet trying to record their musical masterpieces for not only puffins and Lesser Yellowlegs posterity, but Homo Sapien PUA's as well (I just hope that the latter are gonna get some birdpieces that sound like 'Lush Life' and 'In a Mellow Tone', or they are not going to be converts to the new anti-Speciesism Programme you are devising. also, since you are relatively new, but even Arpege may not remember when I had to control mice population due to construction on the street for 5 years, and the Nina Power Syndrome thought that was just 'AW-FOOOOOl' that I annihilated them, so I hope she has some of her own as pets now, to keep the population growing at a level that will be productive for labour forces when more is needed.

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  19. I think it's just a British thing. Over there, you're not considered "with it" if you don't pretend to be terribly anxious and frightened of your own sexuality. I'm not even sure how genuine it is: it's the same way that a lot of Americans feel pressure to go on formal "dates", even though most people feel like it's all kind of a charade.

    I've never once read the work of a British blogger who isn't uptight and neurotic about sex. I kind of question whether they really exist. I mean, if it's really a culturally thing, and they're not faking it to seem holy, then you can't really blame them or credit them with anything. What's annoying is how proud they are about it, like it makes them Jesus Christ or something because they don't fuck around. Whatever. Most of them are just married middle class hets, with the same petty hangups that most married middle class hets have.

    But it *is* kind of funny (if tiresome at times) to hear people talking like that well into their 30s. "Oh no! The genitals and the sexuality! It's all too much for me!"

    About the birds: I kill animals everyday in lab! No problems with that here.

    My point with the birds was not that birds are *exactly* like humans, but that humans are not so unique in many of their capabilities and characteristics. Some people have a strangely warped view of just how "different" and "elevated" mankind is above other animals. Any biologist will tell you that the only thing special about us is our large cerebral cortex.

    And you know what that's good for? Convoluted discussions about how sex makes us so nervous. Or for an increased risk of all kinds of neurological problems.

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  20. Complaisant Person8:05 PM

    Anodyne--I can't sign in at your blog, it's too difficult and disallows me. Anyway, I lost half my post. here's the last half, which responds to what you said here:

    Anyway, Anodyne, since I first appear here too, must thank you for your last explanation at Qlipoth, it has TWO real benefits for me: 1) that the British bloggers across-the-board have this sexual and/or genital, in particular neurosis, not just the Dworkin specialist. Well, if dominic was talking about 'mystery' (who has none at all, he's straight out of Paramus Mall), I don't even know how y'all get up a post. Dominic, even while venomous and unenlightened and happily flaccid, is more desirable than this CREEP. 2) explain what was even more important to me: My stalker's Uriah Heep personality would include that the miserliness would extend to actually getting the pleasure through the cheapness of of online talk, which lasted as long as he could write 'hotly' enough to make me jerk off. I doubt he needed to do such things himself (too expensive), and I thought it got pretty monotonous when inspired by blog comments, but that is another part of the British 'virtue' in 'not being too overt with those genitals, you know'. Of course, I think 'what else is there?' but yes, I must add a #3) I thought this sex weirdness had departed Britain some 60 years ago minimum, in a general sense. You say none of the British bloggers you've read are comfortable with their sexuality, and their endless fucking analysis of it proves that that has to be the case. They are all also mostly homophobic, and that is where they displace all their malice toward the male: They want to continue the hardening-off of their heterosexuality from their natural bisexuality, but in penance from refusing their desire to fuck men, they blame all of the PUA attitude that they themselves share as would-be Lotharios on their OWN DESIRE TO RAPE! Whereas men like me don't even the fuck know what they're talking about. Sitting about lonely, being nostalgic for places where 'they were nostalgic for yet other places', naturally these British cases begin to go quietly dotty, guilty about the domestic Rapicide of women, and unable to open their own asses which would help them identify with the beauty of this quiet and peaceful...rape...I do imagine some of them suck cock on the side, though, and that surely accounts for their sense of 'women's rape' too, because while they are sucking cock, they probably feel raped, but would not allow their own cock to be sucked, because that would be to make their partner 'pregnant'.

    Since earliet today, watched the Mystery video, he's so fucking a creep it's unbelievable, not sexy at all, so i guess it's all something he learned in a seminar. He's like a Sales Seminar Leader, god is he dull, about 'inexpliably' being led to luggage shops, although, we are assured, he 'he has all he needs'. Lotharios of any gifts or persuasions need not worry, but it must be in the moves.

    The 'femme fatale' described by traxus is too limited. That 'man-hating lesbian' may exist in that form for this dimestore PUA (I can't believe I'm so hip as even know about this shithead), but 'femmes fatales' are what I like, so I'm relieved dominic wasn't obsessing about me anymore, hee hee. I like only femme fatales, and don't feel at all threatened by them, but while they usually experiment with Lesbianism, most are not nearly exclusively Lesbian, because they exaggerate femaleness, not the maleness of the butch dyke. But yes, this sort of PUA like 'mYstery' (who hasn't a trace of it), would surely be terrified of any smart woman, as he seems dumb as holy hell. Lord, I was NOT expecting anybody that characterless. I could only watch a total of 30 seconds, couldn't stand it, it was yeomanry on all parts who watched that start to finish. Who'd suck his dick? Not me.

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