Ping Pong 30: Future’s Battle
For Britain, the French Revolution posed a very strange problem. Britain, alone in Europe appeared to be able to resist both revolution and Napoleon. At the time it appeared to take on all the rest of Europe and not lose (if not win). And it did this in spite of the fact that it had a fraction of the landmass or people. True, it had the better Navy, but that hardly explained it. Indeed it merely begged further questions about why the British Navy was so very good. Many assumed that they could only resist France so effectively because something deep within the nature of Britain had changed. Maybe, they wondered, there was something odd, something peculiarly industrial about Britain; or maybe, they wondered, whether there was something peculiarly sagacious about the way that Britain organized its capital. Perhaps then its (Britain’s) organization was itself the philosopher’s stone. - Whilst others denied that the Revolution or any reaction to it, really could change anything. Britain might have superior morals, but not superior economic might. I will return to the theme of industrialization in another Rant, and will for now concentrate on the debate between organization and resource, that these two latter points represent.
This debate was carried out at create length right at the start of the nineteenth century, by two friends, Ricardo and Malthus. At the heart of this debate was the deep problem of how one organized for, and expected the future to be. And more particularly, was there anything about the way that humans organized their time in the present, that could aid or relate to what will come. On the one side, Ricardo argued that capitalism rested on the pricing out of futures; whilst Malthus painted a far darker picture of what could and should be possible. Each of these cases will be considered in turn.
Perhaps at the heart of Ricardo, lies a very important and classic observation; that Capitalism switches around the production process. The capitalist produces to make money, and not to make goods. For the capitalist therefore, the exchange value matters far more than any use value (the terms are Ricardo’s). This exchange value is then set by the cost of production. This very simple move was surprisingly radical (although Ricardo, who was also an apologist for Rent did not see this radicalism). The radicalism centres on how this rather simple equation warps one’s understanding of time. A producer is caught up in having to trust towards the future. That is, given that they are only manufacturing goods for others, they have to trust that those others are there, and that they will want, and be able to buy whatever goods the capitalist is providing. This problem becomes even more finely nuanced when those goods are partially new or unseen. The Capitalist in setting up the production process, takes a leap of faith: that is, has faith that their understanding of the nature of what people were, was enough to guarantee a certain type of future will emerge.
The Ricardo system effectively blends into the notions of collectivity, a subtle new tincture of time. The sense in which the public react to things in the future, becomes a thought in the present, and something to build a system upon. This last fact then leads to two others. On the one hand it is very clear that the nature of this future is elusive and problematic. The Capitalist and their consumers are clearly caught up in a game of exchange (or bluff). The consumers might not want what the capitalist has to offer, or the capitalist might not sell it. On the other hand, what appears to be rewarded in this process is not the production process itself but rather the confidence to gamble on futures. This confidence itself might have a market. Each of these topics will then be tackled in turn.
Ricardo therefore drafted the language which plagues our everyday life: A language that has two aspects of it own. On the one hand it is a language whose sole propose or nature lies in ensuring that we all sign up to the same basic (and rather predictable) future. We all are encouraged to think of ourselves as consumers and to talk a language of finance, and to do so repeatedly and constantly. Within this constant babble we create and keep hold of a notion of a future that we feel we must have a right to. Money with its interest and its mortgagees gives Us (and then everyone else) some right to some future. The obvious fact that money is clearly gold or paper or figures is rendered otiose in this great act of confidence. Our Belief as a collective group is enough to ground money, and give us all a right to a future.
So great of course is this belief that the bottom might well drop out of the market, and money be technically rather problematic (as its custodians the Banks hit heavy water), but we will not care or notice. Or rather, we rest in the blind confidence of money. Or perhaps better still, the idea of a world without any opens up an abyss, where any right to any future is lost in the screaming void. The future itself becomes unthinkable without money to fill that future. This thought is then itself so terrifying, that we cling to the gold, paper and figures, and do so almost come what may. Money must not collapse becomes our mantra, for if it does, it might take us all with it.
On the other hand, capitalism did not become the system it is by allowing other pretenders to its throne. The oxymoronic ‘Money Markets’ need to ensure that they are and remain at the hub of the global world. Perhaps in a sense, this is what is behind the current turmoil. The language of money has slipped a little in its claims to be the Only language in which we are allowed to talk about the global world (terrorism and the environment were usurping its place), and is merely having the economic equivalent of a hissy fit; as it ensures its rights and privileges to be the only way to understand everyone and everything. That is, by threatening to pull the plug on all our global dreams, money ensures in the blind panic which it produces, that we cannot think (or cost) those dreams in any other way, other than through it alone: No one comes to be saved except through me, appears its battle cry.
The second feature of classic Ricardo is the proliferation of forms of capital. Once the system revolves around money and the confidence it demands, then there is no reason why one might not expand the system sideways. That is, one might gamble on the future of a certain future gamble. One might support that gamble or undermine it. One might want (or want to sell) stocks and shares in that future. The future becomes then caught up in endless second order gambles of the money market. Each prediction leads to other predictions that that prediction might be right or might be wrong in an ever-expanding series of moves. Of course just so long as the future gambles remains unresolved (or only partially resolved) the gambles can be endless. The future becomes endlessly put off and so endlessly lucrative.
Except of course that the entire system rests on a deeper dimension of confidence than even the general public enjoys in their money. The game of trading the future’s future (a million times removed), is a game played by people who all have to believe in the efficacy of that endless removal, and its power. The entire game therefore uses a belief to populate what could be said to be the deep vacuum of time. Only as the future is endlessly delayed, or better, only as it is realized (as it almost always is) in part, can the game be played at all. Moreover the game is only possible for small groups, who really have to feel that the world resolves around them, and their ability to predict and play with the future’s right to a future.
Ricardo was of course aware (and the city proponents of the game would certainly agree) that the game of the future’s future is vital to the entire system. This is because the entire game of predicting a future is of course configured ultimately on an abyss. That is the future may never be. The city with its endless sliding values and problematic practices is the perfect model or rather, container to the risk of that never. It holds the risk within its shifting grasp; and the endless and deep risk that any future gamble will not pay off, is delimited and rendered allowable and acceptable (one can insure for it and contain its failure within the other gambles). Our deep problem in the current situation is of course that this game of future’s future has collapsed in a reckless demand to know what that future is. The result is of course the entire system realizes the abyss which it stands on, and promptly panics. There is no value in money or the future’s future after all.
The oddity of the current situation, is that the two dimensions to Ricardo, the belief of the general public and the belief of the city, are at odds with one another. The public cannot bear to lose their money easily, while the city has lost faith in it. The game of government is to ensure that the demands of the people for money with value, are strong enough to force the city back into its weary game of speculation. Hence the bribes given or the rules bent to encourage (or cajole) the city back into its future futuring practices.
Malthus has at the heart of his theory, an utterly different account of the nature of the future. He argues in effect, for a double take on time. On the one hand there is an absolute time of the cosmos itself. This time is ineluctable and irreducible. All the games of future’s future cannot therefore undo a single word recorded by this hand. And yet within this realm there are numerous ‘sub times’, each with their own certain rhythms and rules. His great examples for two of these are the rate of population expansion, and the rate of resource expansion. The former, he argues is necessarily geometric (the series runs: 2 4 8 16 32 etc, as humans breed like Flopsy). The ability for maximising resources is, he suggests, rather different. These can only be increased at best arithmetically (1, 2,3,4). The result is of course that the population always outstrips the resources. The result of this hard Malthusian fact is, he suggests, endless war and famine, unless of course humans reform and somehow out evolve their Flopsy tendencies.
Malthus here presents then a perfect vignette for that other great way to understand globalization. It is about the collision of streams of time (be they religious or consumer led). Each such stream is perfect in itself; So that by itself, it would be adequate and unproblematic. The trouble is though, that it is held within a single over-arching axis. This axis blends together differing streams, and endlessly perplexes them.
This basic system, of time within a greater time, lies at the heart of Deleuzian thought, as much as Malthusian. Both thinkers understand its importance in the same way. It is only this system of times inside duration, that provides an alternative take on the capitalism of Ricardo. Hence the environmental movement is yet another incarnation of this theory. The problem of time has now expanded beyond humanity, and become truly global. Within that globe sit various perplexing threads, which include humanity and their pollutants. The worry is, that these latter threads are unpicking many of the others. The solution urged on the global community is once again that classic Malthusian (but also Deleuzian) equation of personal morality and elaborate care. We will only improve if we all take individual responsibility for what we are or what we might become…
At the heart of this debate lie two very different understandings of what it means to be collective. On the one hand, one might understand that collectivity as a something, some future which humanity comes to build. Individuals therefore aspire to a future, and act in the manner to ensure the futuring of that future. It is this futuring that then embodies the nature of our collective life, an embodiment which is apparent for ill or good, and given in our apparent adherence to a classical form of capitalism. The alternative approach postulates a far earlier connection between individuals. Everything, the argument runs, was initially already collective, and this is the problem. The problem is that each individual does not understand or relate to the nature of this collectivity. They ignore it. The result is that it exists less as an active force and more as a passive perturbing power. A power that must be recognised, and yet cannot be directly confronted or even allowed for. One changes the world not through elaborate takes on the future, but rather through changing one’s participation in the collective world that one already was a part of.
Here is a deep conflict, whose legacy is the future caught up in all of us, because it is something that we build together, or something we are altogether stuck in (and must allow for). Should we relate to the future with humility or as a gamble? A real problem - unless one might understand these two strands as a part of a single picture. Perhaps Hegel thought they could be themselves bought together at the end of history. An argument I will return to next week.
