From: "Chris McMahon" <pharmakeus-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: Deleuze and Bataille
Date: Sat, 22 Jun 2002 02:14:20 +0000


Dear Hans,

Fine, if you want to downplay the influence of B on D&G and fav. Spinoza, 
fine.

Now as to why D&G, insofar as they promote, um the "schitzo", is a betrayal 
of the Marxist materialist tradition, let us confornt an e.g.?

Kids on Nintendo: Kids start playing Nintendo.
- Parents say Nintendo is a "waste of time" (and money, etc.). Nintendo as 
"expenditure".
- Parents say that Nintendo improves hand-eye coordination, computer skills, 
etc. The expenditure of Nintendo coopted as Utility.
So is Nintendo expenidture or utility? Rather Nintendo is:

Expenditure        vs.        Utility
-----------                   -----------
Utility                       Expenditure

And D&G would say that eattempting to coopt Nintendo for the sake of your 
kid's future career as waged labour is rotten. I concur. So I habe no 
problem with that, except that Nintendo is, whatever we might say, Luxury, 
and therefore parasitic on third world waged labour (or a kind of fiscal 
slavery), otherwise Nintendo is even more of a luxury since made in America, 
it would cost quintuple. And I remember what bejamin said about every work 
of "civilization" (e.g. fine art) being built on the back of degradadtion 
[sic]. Now, Marx, as I read *Capital* and *Gundrisse*, is concerned with 
Utility. The question is how to provide generalized utility in something 
like the Millsian sense? Only Utility can free us all up for Luxury. 
Thinking systems means thinking smart and building a world where there is no 
hunger, where everyone is capable of relatimng to everyone else as an 
autonomous subject, etc. Because, it is not just a language construct, 
people have to eat, stay worm, get medicated. So what would marx have to say 
about the liberation of this luxurious expenditure from utility, I really 
think he would have been a bit appalled at our unconscionable consumption 
for the sake of our war-machine affects. In any case, its agin Lenin, Stalin 
and Mao (who i do not confute with Marx); ditto no confutation between Marx 
and "Marxism" or "Communism". Another e.g., I get my kicks playing music; 
and it is a luxury. I get my expenditure, all those skin tribes moving, when 
the cillia of my ear triggers the seratonins and endorphins and the 
dopamines and the heart goes clickety click, but me playing music does not 
assist the formation of a gobal communism or "city of Earth" (to quote Hardt 
& Negri) where we all have a guaranteed income, freedom of movement, and 
live in a global community of love in which we are all - at the horizon of 
this - autonomous, sovereign, subjects. Transvaluation is not enough. 
Semiotic valorizations might be requisite, but without radical material and 
juridical change, whithout reforming the modes of production and 
distribution, as Marx shows, it will not escape cooption by the capitalist 
motifs. To say that my music does contribute to the revolution, in any case, 
is to give it a utility (which I say I refuse to give it). In so doing I 
steal my music from capitalism, but also from the revolution. No history (in 
the marxist sense) comes of pure expenditure. Pure expenditure is capital 
escaping from history. History is the cooption of expenditure by utility, 
also known as the *perfection* (in the sense of "completion" or "ending") of 
the State; city of Earth - when everyone is good without having to be told 
to be good.

:) Chris



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