(Why and How These Theories thrive within Post-Industrial Post-Modern Bourgeois-State-Capitalism)
The theory of conceptual-commodity-value-management is the theory that prices, values and wages are based on what an individual, an entity and/or an enterprising alliance can get away with. That is, the arbitrary price, value and wage that these controlling individuals, entities and/or enterprising alliances are able to command and realize on the open market through various network exclusionary and collusionary practices. In fact, a market by definition is the product of an enclosure or privatization of a commodity, service and/or profession in the hands of a select few so as to manufacture an artificial demand in order to manufacture a profit; i.e., surplus value. Once a market-enclosure has been established, price, value and wage is increasingly contingent on a theory of conceptual-commodity-value-management; i.e., the arbitrary whims of the enterprising alliance, which has fashioned the specific market-enclosure, and now set its own prices, values and wages, based on its own arbitrary determinations. These enterprising alliances determine the cost for anyone wishing to enter the specific market and they determine the range of prices, values and wages that can be commanded within their specific enclosed markets. It is theories of conceptual-commodity-value-management that manufacture and reside behind the increasing financial inequality within post-industrial post-modern bourgeois-state-capitalism.
Theories of conceptual-commodity-value-management are the methods and theories by which prices, values and wages are established when rational labor theories of value and the modern notion of labor as the foundation for determining price, value and wage have been jettisoned. Theories of conceptual-commodity-value-management are post-modern, post-industrial theories of value, price and wage, in the sense that they are products of the “post-modern…incredulity toward meta-narratives”. These theories come to fruition when a workforce is well-subjugated and pacified, both materially and mentally, through surveillance, discipline, indoctrination and punishment. These theories develop from the premise of a subjugated docile workforce and the notion that there is no such thing as universal truth and/or any meta-narratives of emancipation, other than the meta-narrative of bourgeois-state-capitalism. To put this in Nietzschean terms, these theories are outgrowths of “the destruction of [our] ideals” and “the belief in absolute… meaninglessness”.
These types of theories are products of the rampant incredulity toward meta-narratives that permeate contemporary post-modern society in the sense that the delegitimation of grand-narratives, such as Marxism etc., means that everything is now a matter of perspective, including such things as price, value and wage etc. With the delegitimation of universal truth and meta-narratives, which began with the Nietzschean notion of the death of God, everything universally accepted as valid and legitimate was put into question, including rational labor theories of value etc. According to Jean-Francois Lyotard, when all foundational precepts and meta-narratives were subject to “a process of de-legitimation…signs of which have been accumulating since the end of the nineteenth century…an internal erosion of principle[s]…[took place, where]…frontiers…[were now] in constant flux”.
Socio-economically, this delegitimation process meant that wholly new principles and theoretical perspectives could be established across the financial and economic spheres, devoid of rational basis since belief in the emancipatory powers of rationality were increasingly suspect and in doubt, due to the fact that, according to Max Weber, instrumental-rationalism has a tendency to become an “iron cage”. This meta-narrative incredulity stimulates and stimulated the advent of theories of conceptual-commodity-value-management in the economic sphere, which are grounded in subjectivity and relativism, the belief that if there is no universal truth or ultimate grounding basis for price, value and wages, then everything is based on what an individual, entity and/or enterprising alliance can get away with in the marketplace. Devoid of universally shared principles, everything is subject to whim, self-interest, self-delusion and what can be machinated in the marketplace; hence, one of the primary reasons for increasing financial inequality.
As Nietzsche states:
When there is no…universal…[and] at bottom, man has lost the faith in his own value when no infinitely valuable whole works…Nihilism [presents itself, where]…underneath all…there is no grand unity.[Nonetheless] an escape remains: to pass sentence on this whole world of…deception, and invent a world, a true world…a world…fabricated…solely from psychological needs.
This is exactly what theories of conceptual-commodity-value-management are. They are fictional socio-economic worlds fabricated from the arbitrariness of psychological needs of inflated self-esteems and delusional notions of grandeur, which have been able to be coalesced together in the marketplace, due to the gravitational force of oligarchical enterprising alliances. Theories of conceptual-commodity-value-management express and develop from the inherent nihilism; i.e., the belief according to Nietzsche that “everything is…subjective”, which underpins post-modern post-industrial bourgeois-state-capitalism. These theories and their arbitrary methods of price, value and wage determinations are symptomatic of “the penetrating feeling of nothingness” that the capitalist mode of production and consumption manufactures within our everyday lives.
Devoid of rational mooring, these arbitrary price, value and wage determinations, derived from the arbitrary whims of the captains of industry and/or enterprising alliances, are only given force, influence and realism via the gravitational force of enterprising alliances or captains of industry, who have been able to corner a specific market or economic branch. Despite lacking any underlying universal verity, these arbitrary prices, values and wages are, nonetheless, accepted and financially legitimate, because these enterprising alliances and/or captains of industry have been able to enclose a specific market and thus control price range, value standards and wage range.
Controlling these specific markets and/or branches of industry, these alliances and captains of industry are able to arbitrarily set prices, values and wages, according to their own self-perceived psychological needs. They are able to command a set price, a set value and a set wage based on their own imaginations, desires and their own personal notions of self-worth, which is almost always over-evaluated and inflated. For example, increasing insurance rates, banking fees, bogus price hikes, sports salaries, CEO salaries etc. are all subject to the influences of theories of conceptual-commodity-value-management. As a result, this inevitably leads to increasing financial inequality, which it has, as over-evaluations outstrip wages and small wage increases, resulting in a greater portion of the capital pie going to a select few stationed at the top of the financial pyramid of corporate-capitalist feudalism.
These arbitrary price, value and wage determinations, which are, in essence, figments of over-inflated egos and the unquenchable thirst for profit, are now given free-rein because, as Nietzsche argues, devoid of “unity, or the concept of truth…existence has no goal or end” other than what an entity or entities fashion for themselves. And, the logic of capitalism is always a convenient substitute for “the feeling of valuelessness”, that the delegitimation of grand-narratives engenders when “the principle of a universal meta-language [i.e. truth] is replaced by the principle of…plurality”. The logic of capitalism; i.e., the logic that stipulates “the maximization of profit by any means necessary at the lowest financial cost as soon as possible while only satisfying the minimum logical requirements of…[people]”, comes to fill the void that the universal nihilism of post-industrial, post-modern bourgeois-state-capitalism manufactures.
In fact, in many instances, the logic of capitalism becomes the new moral/amoral imperative, that is, the underlying de facto transcendental truth, when nihilism and delegitimation destroys the possibility of universal values and foundational truths.
When the death of God ushered in emptiness and meaninglessness in socio-economic life, the Money-God readily took God’s place, where today, money is the supreme good…Money…is the real mind of all things. Money … is the bond binding me to human life, binding society to me…[Today,] money is the bond of all bonds … Money…[is] the universal power of society…the invisible divinity…[capable of] the transformation of all human and natural properties into their contraries.
What Nietzsche saw as the on-set of nihilism and the death of God with the advent of modernity and modern civilizations, was according to Marx the product of the devastating effects of the capitalist mode of production. For Marx, nihilism, the death of God, the devaluation of grand-narratives etc. are consequences of the capitalist mode of production. The capitalist mode of production overturned and continues to overturn age old beliefs and values, where “all that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and [where] man is …[now] compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life…[namely] the need of a constantly expanding market”.
For Marx, the advent of nihilism and the devaluation of meta-narratives can be seen as the product of the capitalist mode of production, which continues to erode values, truths and communities in the name of profit and financial relationships:
Commodities are the heavy artillery with which [capitalism] batters down all Chinese walls…[and] compels [us]…on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production… [Values, beliefs and old communities]…so many fetters… had to be burst asunder [and] they were burst asunder…[so] into their place [could] step free competition.
It is in this regard, that with the devaluation of universal truth, God and/or meta-narratives, the logic of capitalism comes to be viewed as the meta-narrative itself, as the global engine for the creation of a global bourgeois-state-capitalist utopia; i.e., the global village, capable in due time of satisfying all human needs and wants across the globe through the adoption of the capitalist mode of production and consumption etc.
Notwithstanding, this is not to say that the death of God, the devaluation of religion and the advent of pluralism was not a good thing, as the capitalist mode of production did wash away many conservative provincial narrow-minded notions and bigotry, which existed prior to the revolutionary effect of capitalism. However, capitalism only replaced these many conservative provincial narrow-minded notions and bigotry, with its own, which all revolve around money, the production of surplus value and the devaluation of everything contradictory to capitalism.
The capitalist mode of production and consumption expands the effects and underlying sense of universal nihilism by destroying stable communities and belief systems through its own imperialism, mass surveillance, financial inequality, war, etc. The goal is that within the emptiness and devastation it creates its own God; i.e., money and profit etc. will take root. Where its carnage exists and permeates, belief in the power of money must alleviate. In a certain sense, mass shootings, terrorism etc. are created and fueled by the meaninglessness and emptiness, that is, the universal nihilism, that the capitalist mode of production and consumption manufactures, both globally and locally, in order the establish money and profit as the only universal values acceptable within post-industrial post-modern global society. These tragic events can be viewed as the product of bourgeois-state-capitalist production and consumption itself, as bourgeois-state-capitalism increasing becomes a meta-narrative and exercises itself as a meta-narrative, wherever the capitalist mode of production and consumption dominates, permeates and concentrates.
In consequence, the logic of capitalism readily fills the emptiness of nihilism, an emptiness manufactured by the logic of capitalism itself, through its specific mode of production and consumption. Indeed, the logic of capitalism readily bolsters and exaggerates self-worth, self-esteem, self-image, and self-interest for those individuals that adopt its materialist conception of social status and its materialist imperatives for accumulation. Bound to the logic of capitalism, he or she that accumulates the most material, and he or she that achieves the most bourgeois social status is the most revered, the most honored, the most exemplary of accolades and merit, and the most worthy of emulation within the bias meritocracy of post-industrial post-modern bourgeois-state-capitalism.
Contrary to the logic of capitalism and its manufactured proponents, everything else and everyone else is nonsensical, naïve, empty, false, illogical and lacking any verity. Plurality is the mechanism by which the meta-narrative of bourgeois-state-capitalism fends off all criticisms, critiques and/or challenges to its all-encompassing mode of production and consumption. It accepts plurality in all cultural domains; but hypocritically and fiercely, denies all financial socio-economic pluralities in economics and the economy, where its dominion reigns. Other logics and other modes of production and consumption such as socialism or anarchism, are not allowed to exist or to be tested. Under the meta-narrative of post-industrial post-modern bourgeois-state-capitalism, cultural plurality is championed due to its profitability, and economic plurality is denigrated and vehemently suppressed with totalitarian force. For according to Marx:
The capitalist process of production…[must be] seen as a total, connected process; i.e., a process of reproduction, [which] produces not only commodities, not only surplus value, but also produces and reproduces the capital-relation itself; on the one hand the capitalist, on the other the wage-laborer.
Bourgeois-state-capitalism stands and falls with the capital-relation. The capital-relation is the lynch-pin of bourgeois-state-capitalism. It is this exploitative-relation by which bourgeois-state-capitalism sustains and reproduces its dominion over the population, and over time and space. As a result, socio-economic-plurality; i.e., alternative-socio-economic-formations etc., are antithetic to the fundamental capital-relation at the heart of bourgeois-state-capitalism and thus must be destroyed, denied and/or marginalized by any means necessary and at any cost. Bourgeois-state-capitalism can tolerate plurality in all spheres; i.e., the gender sphere, the racial sphere, the age-sphere, the religious sphere etc., but it cannot tolerate plurality in the socio-economic sphere, where its central logic; i.e., the logic that enshrines the capital-relation and which seeks to expand this relation, functions, operates and resides. In this regard, plurality, which is constantly utilized by neo-liberals everywhere, is, in essence, a means to fend-off and short-circuit all socio-economic alternatives to the totalitarian meta-narrative of bourgeois-state-capitalism.
The proponents of bourgeois-state-capitalism readily acknowledge and propagate the delegitimization of meta-narratives in the name of plurality when it serves their own mercenary goals, yet they continually refuse and suppress plurality across the economy and in the socio-economic sphere because these alternatives are antithetical to the basic logic of bourgeois-state-capitalism, namely profit and surplus value. Furthermore, the proponents of bourgeois-state-capitalism even refuse to acknowledge that bourgeois-state-capitalism is a meta-narrative, a meta-narrative of emancipation, lacking universal and foundational verity in Nietzschean terms, other than the fact that for the logic of capitalism, might always equals right and the just. According to Nietzsche, when universal truth is lacking, the will to power decides as “every specific body strives to become master over all space and to extend its force, its will to power, and to thrust back all that resists its extension”. The logic of capitalism is the current context of the will to power, which attempts through the logic of capitalism to extend its dominion over the whole world through force, coercion, swindle, manipulation, expropriation, dispossession, displacement and war etc. The aim is to transform and subjugate all differences and all pluralities into commodities, surplus value and capital-relations; i.e., the exact logical specifications and necessities of the logic of capitalism. Pluralism is only accepted and tolerated for the extraction and accumulation of surplus value. In the end, the logic of capitalism will stifle and obliterate all pluralities if those pluralities are antithetical to its basic grounding relation, namely the profitable capital-relation.
No longer contingent on grand-narratives except that the grand narrative of bourgeois-state-capitalism, price, value and wage determinations are now based on theories of conceptual-commodity-value-management, in the sense that whatever one can get away with, is acceptable and valid, whatever price, value and wage can be thought of, sustained and solidified in the marketplace is legitimate and valid. In the context of the meta-narrative of post-industrial post-modern bourgeois-state-capitalism, theories of conceptual-commodity-value-management come to be viewed as the necessary methodology for maximizing profit by any means necessary at the lowest financial cost as soon as possible. Due to the fact that these theories, permit an individual to leave behind, according to Nietzsche, “the naiveté of our ideals”, ideal notions such as fairness, equality, unity, justice, democracy, reason, rational labor theories of value etc., in favor self-interest and the arbitrary whims of whatever one can get away with.
Theories of conceptual-commodity-value-management permit the extension of the capital-relation without recourse to rationality or rational explanation. These theories give voice, expression and definition to the will to power, by basing price, value and wage on arbitrary whims and the insatiable desires of those who rule in the name of bourgeois-state-capitalism. As Marx states, in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, under unfettered capitalism, “the life of the worker depends on the whim of the rich and the capitalist”. And this is true in contemporary society more than ever, as the rich and the capitalist embrace the relativism of post-modernity and the arbitrariness of theories of conceptual-commodity-value-management to machinate prices, values and wages in their favor in order to meet the demands of the logic of capitalism and most importantly, their own personal mercenary desires. This explains the increasing financial inequality within post-modern post-industrial bourgeois-state-capitalism as the 1% increasingly extort greater and greater portions of money, capital and private property across the globe at the expense of the 99%.
More importantly, theories of conceptual-commodity-value-management explain the continual rise of prices even as costs of production in general continue to decrease and/or are at an all-time low within contemporary bourgeois-state-capitalism. For example, according to Marx, prices should drop when the cost of production drops, although prices do not drop to the extent that the cost of production drops.
As Marx states:
With competition among capitalists…[a] capitalist can drive the other[s] from the field and carry off his capital only by selling more cheaply. In order to sell more cheaply without ruining himself, he [the capitalist] must produce more cheaply…Moreover he attains the object he is aiming at if he prices his goods only a small percentage lower than his competitors. He drives them off the field, he wrests from them at least a part of their market, by underselling them.
However, this is not the case within contemporary bourgeois-state-capitalism, even as cost of production decreases, by moving factory production overseas, for example, which should lower prices in general, the inverse is happening with prices as prices continue to rise in general. For example, the automotive-industry, in the last 40 years, has introduced robotic-technology within its production process, which according to Marx, they did in order to lower their cost of production. As he states “the productive power of labor is increased above all by…. the constant improvement of machinery”.
However, according to Marx, this lowering of the cost of production should have resulted in lower car prices in general, but it did not. In fact, the opposite is the case. In fact, the technology utilized to mechanize the assembly-line process which was designed to render a great portion of the manufacturing sector obsolete and out of work in order to lower production-costs and make automotive companies more competitive on the international auto-market etc., instead of creating lower auto-prices as Marx predicted, robotic-technology produced the opposite, higher and higher auto-prices. Contrary to Marx’s prediction that when “competing capitalists introduce the same machines, the same division of labor etc…price is lowered”, in contrast, within contemporary bourgeois-state-capitalism, prices remain stable and/or continue to rise. Prices remain stable and/or continue to rise, even as cost of production continue to drop, because the automotive industry today functions and operates according to a different theory of value and surplus value, that is, a theory of conceptual-commodity-value-management.
Only theories of conceptual-commodity-value-management stationed at the heart of an industry, which has jettisoned all modern rational labor theories of value and surplus value, are capable of driving cost of production down simultaneously as they are driving profits and prices up. Theories of conceptual-commodity-value-management are post-modern value theories that are solely based on conceptual-perception and the will to power, the will to machinate prices, values and wages, both conceptually through the influence of public perception and practically through various collusionary practices that exclude competition and enable artificial price fixing. According to the theory of conceptual-commodity-value-management, the determining principle of prices, values and wages is based on what an enterprising alliance and/or a captain of industry can get away with. What an enterprising alliance and/or a captain of industry can get away with is legitimate and valid, because it satisfies the requirements of the logic of capitalism, that is, the maximization of profit by any means necessary at the lowest financial cost as soon as possible.
First and foremost, theories of conceptual-commodity-value-management are able to drive cost of production down simultaneously as they drive prices/profits up by short-circuiting competition among capitalists, competition that Marx predicted would drive prices down. These theories once stationed at the heart of an industry promote networking; i.e., collusionary and exclusionary practices within an industry and among capitalists via industry-conferences, government-networking, cartel-like alliances, friendships etc., which result in specific markets being turned into oligopolies, where artificial prices, values and wages are set by enterprising alliances, who stringently control commodity-circulation, price-ranges, wage-ranges etc. within the oligarchized market.
Secondly, theories of conceptual-commodity-value-management are able to drive cost of production down simultaneously as they drive prices/profits up by short-circuiting outdated modern rational labor theories of value and surplus value, in favor of post-industrial post-modern theories of value and surplus value, that is, theories of conceptual-commodity-value-management, where prices, values and wages are, in fact, based on the arbitrary whims of capitalists; i.e., where prices, values and wages are determined by what an oligarchical enterprising alliance can get away with in the marketplace and within society in general. These post-modern theories of value and surplus value, are based on the gravitational force of a network to establish and set prices, value standards and wage-grids, whose rational foundation is subjective, relative and in many instances based on nonsense and fancy, but nonetheless is couched in legitimacy due to the controlling force of the ruling network-formation within a specific industry and market.
As a result, within post-industrial post-modern bourgeois-state-capitalism, prices, values and wages are increasingly the product of social construction; i.e., the machinations of enterprising alliances etc., who measure and set prices, values and wages according to their own agreed upon arbitrary determinations. Whether it is an epi-pen crisis, bogus price hikes, arbitrary price evaluations, reality star salaries, insurance policies, bank fees, mortgage rates etc., it is the strength of the ruling network-formation within a profession, a market, a financial institution etc. that establishes prices, values and wages based not on any legitimate rational ground, but on the whim and conceptual-perceptions of those alliances who possess oligarchical force and can use that force to establish price, value and wages over an extended period of time and space.
Of course, the power of money veils this collusion, since the power of money according to Marx, is its ability to confound and/or overturn anything into its contrary. As Marx states:
Money is the universal confounding and overturning of things…[This is] the divine power of money. That which I am unable to do as a man, and of which therefore all my individual essential powers are incapable, I am able to do by means of money…It converts my wishes from something in the realm of imagination…to life…[It is] the common medium and faculty for turning an image into reality and reality into a mere image…Money transforms…fidelity into infidelity, love into hate, hate into love, virtue into vice, vice into virtue, servant into master, master into servant, idiocy into intelligence and intelligence into idiocy. Money…[is] the world upside-down—the confounding and compounding of all qualities.
Money veils, confuses and/or overturns the hidden exclusionary and collusionary practices of enterprising alliances, captains of industry and oligarchical-networks. It transforms their sly whimsical practices into seemingly legitimate fair-minded rational outcomes, derived from level-headed decision-making. Theories of conceptual-commodity-value-management via the circulation of money appear acceptable, legitimate and rational, which are able to produce equitable financial practices that reflect democratically fair market values, prices and wages. In fact, it is the contrary. The power of money, which is derived from its centralized position both as the universal means of exchange and as the universal measurement of value, clouds the dubious financial practices stemming from theories of conceptual-commodity-value-management with an aura of legitimacy and level-headedness. Through the power of money, what is collusion and unfair is now accidental and fair, seemingly the outcome of autonomous market mechanisms which no one can truly predict, influence and/or control, thus no one is responsible or ever single-handedly at fault.
It is in this regard that every financial crisis, from the great depression to the great recession of 2008 appear as giant unplanned accidents and unexpected ill-fated calamities, where everyone, despite possessing the very best intentions and principles, are both simultaneously culpable and blameless. Hence, why the money-aristocracy and the capitalist-state always frame these financial calamities as a series unfortunate events caused by autonomous market mechanisms, whose grave costs, we, as citizens, must bare together as one. No one is truly responsible; therefore, no one should have to single-handedly bare the financial cost. The money-aristocracy and the capitalist-state, enshrined by theories of conceptual-commodity-value-management and the meta-narrative of bourgeois-state-capitalism, who readily preach the global-ethic/amorality of capitalism and the eventual overcoming of all ills and unsatisfied human needs through democratic-state-capitalism, nonetheless, hypocritically call for a suspension of self-interest, money-worship and the return of a brotherhood of men and women after all financial crises. Indeed, during such events, the world is truly turned upside-down, as the money-aristocracy itself, in an ironic twist of fate, invariably shouts, loud and clear, with earnest impatience, in an effort to alleviate their financial losses through government reprieves and bail-outs, “Working Men [and Women] Of All Countries, Unite!”
Bibliography:
Michel Luc Bellemare is the author of The Structural-Anarchism Manifesto: (The Logic of Structural-Anarchism Versus The Logic of Capitalism)
Read other articles by Michel Luc.
