[ExI] Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit

[Stefano Vaj]

On 19 June 2012 00:39, Giovanni Santostasi <gsantostasi at gmail.com> wrote:

> Why microtechnology should preclude the development of macrotechnology?
> Maybe because macrotechnology is less marketable and it takes much more
> time to develop.


How would biotech be defined as "macrotechnology" when it deals with DNA,
enzymes, proteins, gametes and microbes? Yet, much of the bio-revolution
anticipated by the end-of-nineties sources I mention in my book about
Biopolitics <http://www.biopolitica.it> (much of the bibliography linked
therein is in English) blatantly failed to materialise.

Was it just hype? Or rather it suffered the consequences of lack of funds,
lack of vision, adverse cultural and legal frameworks, declining
educational systems, inability of societies dominated by next-week
stock-exchange levels to embark in civilisational, long-term projects? When
one is a biologist only because he is too stupid to become a broker or a
merchant banker, not too much can be expected...


> Corporatism is fascism incarnated as Mussolini aptly said.


In fact, the Italian word corporazioni is best translated as "(vertical)
unions" (the word for private corporations is "società"). In Italian, the
language employed by Mussolini, corporatism therefore refers to the
control, and eventually the ownership, of means of production by trade
unions exercising public powers under the aegis of the State. This of
course was just the theory, because fascism failed to a large extent to
impose its power on capitalist circles.

In contemporary western countries, I suspect that we find ourselves closer
to the Marxist and reversed definition of the (capitalist) State and of its
governement as the "board of directors of the bourgeosie". Only, such
"bourgeoisie" has by now only the vaguest resemblence to a class of
industrialists and entrepreneurs, the essential control of wealth having
been taken over since by financial institutions that of course can
parasitically thrive for a long time even in imploding economies where the
material wealth created is not increasing, or is even declining.

 The only solution I can imagine that doesn't require widespread riots and
> social revolution is redistributing and equalizing wealth.
>

What's wrong with social revolution? :-)

-- 
Stefano Vaj
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