What needs to be philosophically explained are the numerous car accidents that occurred during the ice storm that Seattle experienced last week. You can make sense of pedestrians who have slipped, slid, and tumbled onto icy sidewalks. These accidents, which often put pedestrians on all fours, were more comical than scary. But the same cannot be said for a car that has lost all control to gravity (4,094 pounds of metal, plastic, and other engineered materials). These accidents pose a serious danger to anyone in or near the spinning machine. Why were these drivers unable to make the impression they needed and why so many warnings? Is our love for cars overwhelming? Or do cars just make us stupid?
I think the answer lies in the fact that cars, like the market systems that govern our society, aren't really about humans. They are only about cars.
To understand this peculiar way of thinking, one must go back to the key idea proposed at the end of the 19th century by the Ukrainian neo-Kantian economist Mikhail Tugan Baranovsky. his book, Modern British Industrial Crisiswas first published in Russian in 1894 and in German in 1901, causing a great scandal. This work introduced the concept (backed up by data collected at the British Museum) of the business cycle (boom, recession, boom again, recession), but again) the concept of economics (left, center and right). In attacking Marx's declining-margin theory and the underconsumption hypothesis, capitalism can grow indefinitely if properly managed. He got this colossal conclusion from the second of Marx's reproduction schemes in the second volume. Das Capital, An incomplete and messy work edited and published after his death by Friedrich Engels. The first scheme concerns an economy without growth (or net investment), i.e. "simple reproduction". The second scheme described a capitalist economy with growth, 'extended reproduction'. What Tugan Baranovsky judged from Marx's model of expansion is that capitalism did not need consumer growth. It can do it on its own by producing machines that produce capital rather than consumer goods, i.e. machines that produce more and more machines in the production sector (or sector 1, productive consumption). I can do it. Tugan Baranovsky:One car tried to pass my hill and Queen Anne, tried to ram all the parked cars going down the hill… insane. don't drive #Seattle pic.twitter.com/wJsor6byDa
— Kaybergz (@kay0kayla) December 23, 2022
If all but one worker disappeared and was replaced by machines, this one worker would run an entire mass of machines, with the help of which new machines would be produced, and the capitalist of consumer goods. The working class would disappear, but it would in no way hinder the process of self-expansion of capital. are realized and used.This conclusion was almost universally panned by Marxists. The idea that a capitalist economy is about machines (capital investment) rather than consumption and workers was simply wild. But these critics were all wrong, which is why their predictions of the eventual (and scientific) demise of revolution and capitalism became moot. Capitalism is not about workers and consumers. It's about capital, its duplication and expansion. 300 years ago, humans established an economic system that, perhaps for the first time in history, wasn't about humans. This understanding explains much of the anxiety and fear expressed in his science fiction films such as: of matrix When Terminator. These machines of the future world have reached the perfect state of capitalist growth described by Marx and elaborated by Tugan-Baranowski. What didn't the astute Tugan Baranovsky see from his place at the turn of the last century? The rise of such machines also occurs in the second sector, the consumer market. In 1900, he had only 8,000 automobiles in the United States. Currently, it is 2.275 billion people. Tugan-Baranowski believed that consumer goods were not so capital intensive as to be inhumane or to be completely decoupled from their use value. Bread must be eaten, bicycles are practical, and most clothes are inexpensive to make or buy. These and other similar items are locked in human circles, useful circles. A car's value is found almost entirely in its value, in other words, the capital it absorbs. In short, cars don't need people, which is why there's a big push towards automating cars. Seen this way, it's not hard to imagine a city of cars without drivers and passengers. Empty car. A machine that moves for another machine. The ice storm car crash made this future a vivid visualization. Humans would have stayed home and avoided dangerous ice, but they would have avoided cars. Those who drove last Friday gave in to the technical will of the machine.