Ethics is the realm of the immaterial

So here is an article based on an interesting conversation with my bro-in-law, which turned into an attack from my sister to me. The theme of the conversation was the illegal download of music unto my computer, which I was calmly enjoying in my room. My bro-in-law being an intellectual property lawyer, he saw it as an infringement of the rule of law, which I am not denying, but that it was a behavior closer to Greek anarchism as imagined by the English than a behavior ought to be normal. As for my sister, as an economist, it was just another example of the fact that I am a bourgeois who has no respect for a hard-working class, which I am only partly denying.

Can I go anywhere with this? I think it is largely possible to show that though I am in the wrong, it is only relative to how we accept the world we live in today, and how we would like it to be. And again, if we can't dream of a better world, I still wonder if we can take any moral high-ground, as there is nothing morally constructive otherwise. I don't know now if I should start by taking a position of the particular to then go to the universal, or start with the universal and go unto the particular of the arguments.

To start on my position, I was stating that the music industry nowadays, does not represent any opportunity for music players, when it has all the potential to. Indeed, music players get only 3 cents per song on a CD or 6 cents per song on Iplayer, so they do make a lot of their living in concerts. Now production companies do make a lot of money, and the reason to make this money to hire lawyers and lobbyist so they can keep on there business. Or to spend money on videoclips and advertising to promote one or the other untalented crappy son-of-producer to teenagers. This is the industry we are financing when we buy a CD and all of it to satisfy a property fetishism ( which I suffer from sometimes myself, but I didn't dare to tell my opponents that, because it does ruin a little bit my argument against that industry).

Now, we have to understand that most music players until the rise of the reproduction industry, where rarely professional musicians, but where part-time musician. It is therefore a funny thing to think of an artist as something that has to be done full-time. A composer of classical music could pretend to that, but they are a dying breed, and it is still something that is enjoy almost only in big concert halls or operas ( I went to “Yvonne, la princesse de Bourgogne”, by Philippe Buysmans, among other operas and concert this year). And that's where it has to be understood that Walter Benjamin was right, reproduction does kill the art. Reproduction transforms a performance into an information. And information should be free, otherwise there won't be anything shared by humanity.

A small paragraph on information. Information is any stimuli that is shared, and therefore can be used as a sign – a shared tool of communication. Education for example is information – we teach each other signs, ways to interpret the world – so we can better understand how each other thinks. Now music reproduced is solely information, as it is the reproduction of information we can all understand and correlate to, but further more, it is the name of the artist and the song which are important. If we wouldn't share that, then only people with money could exchange these informations, therefore excluding people who have not access to it. Let's take another example, if Leonardo da Vinci was still alive, and did not want the Mona Lisa to be digitalized or even printed, only people who can afford holydays in Paris and time to go to the Louvre would know what it is. Is that fair? But now, is seeing a print of the painting the same as the real stuff? No, just like listening music from my computer not the same as going to a concert.

Now, back to the artist. Artist are people allowed to do what they like, because they have found owner of means of production ready to invest in them and what they produce to make a profit out of it. The investment is first cultural, in the sense that they manipulate information to make it somehow worthy, so there is an economical return afterward. Of course, the manipulation of the cultural is never too easy for there are people who have an education of the history of art, so can compare it with more data. Hence it is easy to create worth for teenagers as they do not have any standard to value cultural worthiness. So is it fair that some are lucky to find a patron when others are not recognized as doing anything worthy of recognition, as money generates worthiness and not personal appreciation. As a Houellebecq wrote in his latest book, we can see Damien Hirst and Jeff Koon discussing how they will share the art market ( well how russian oligopolist, arab princes and Saatchi brothers are getting along if we want a wider picture), create unequality. But hey, it is alright, it is the rule of law as it is and as it should be accepted.

So my point, that I didn't get to pass, was that as hours of work should be reduced as the amount of work to produce a sustainable market has diminished ( it has, that is why we have systemic unemployment), it leaves more time for everybody to be an artist. No, everybody should not be an artist, and yes artist are essential for the world to make it a beautiful place. But everybody should contribute also a little bit towards working ( in french, the word 'travailler (working)' comes from trepalium, meaning an instrument of torture) for the whole society. If you go to a pub in Ireland, chances are that you will hear a band there, who does that for there own pleasure, and not for money. Isn't how art should be provided? Otherwise, as my sister pointed out, artist have more chances to come from people like me, who have parents who can provide for them. And a lot of musicians comes from such backgrounds ( no generalization here though).

Now, I would like to downside my argument here a little bit. It is true that there is a lot of justification here for an illegal action. There is nothing wrong with justifying actions actually, it is part of a brain process for everything that we do. Even irrational arguments will be justified in our brain, and sometimes for the wrong reasons ( split brain research have proven that) and maybe I act that way because my environment pushed me to act that way, on the other hand, because I have always pushed my reasoning to the furthest I could, my justification have changed as it would fit a wider understanding of the world and the conception of an ideal world, instead of just justifying through social convention.

Justification through social convention, such as saying that the Greeks deserve where they are now because they didn't play by the rules of our game, is actually the way that a big part of humanity has been controlled for centuries. The example of the stupidity of social convention lies in a few philosophers, since antiquity, but is in our modern days best exemplified by Bourdieu when he says that the best jokes on christianity and beliefs do come from cardinals. Indeed, when you are up in the game, it is easier to cheat. It is actually worst than that, if you are higher up in any social game, it is actually good to show in private that you support the opposition and in public you still manipulate everybody, because you see the whole game and yet know that nothing can touch you.

Hence, for example, though greek cheats, it is at all level of society and easy to identify as it is a universal behavior, on the other hand, while Greece has a shadow economy estimated at 25%, Belgium shadow economy is estimated at 20%. Not that far behind, the difference is that Belgium shadow economy is also mostly done by rich people engaging “smart-accountant” who know how to dodge all taxes. The social convention pushes us to believe that the problem comes from the everyday greek who does not make you pay for the added value on the desert he just sold you. http://www.gregpalast.com/lazy-ouzo-swilling-olive-pit-spitting-greeksor-how-goldman-sacked-greece/

Of course, the explanation on this website is not the one we need to point out, because though we ( the youth and the educated-engaged academics) do repeat it all the time, conventions tell us to go through the political process, though it is accepted that it is lobbying works only if you have money, to get it to change. So what are we left with? Well not working constantly the game of social conventions, and knowing why intelligently, and informing oneself oneself on why and how, is actually a good way for emancipation and change within a system.

Now, back to our world, which is a horrible world where lazy-ass bourgeois like my-self can spare not to have a student job and instead roam the internet to accumulate information. What we have here is an unstable and unfair environment, but like any environment it can change, through feedbacks and pressure on parts of its components. The pressure will always result on some change, for example, representative democracy has lead the youth to be partly disillusioned by our capacity for our society to be better. The pressure for growth has created a vicious-circle based on debt, and debt is only the lending of future-time, therefore neither the baby-boomers are capable of considering a better future. To change the environment, we have to therefore pressure it to change, through actions which are disruptive to its systemic working, ergo I'm doing good downloading louis armstrong's CD's and strangely, I don't feel like I'm stealing him of anything.

I can't get no ( satisfaction - from exchange-value)

I have not written for my blog for quite a while. I do not know if I should really do my own psychoanalytical observations here. I have received demands for and against. I will favour at the moment the voices in favor, as I have not yet taken any rendez-vous with a professional and I could make you, my invisible audience, my symbolic master. So now I do know if I should dwell a bit into personal explanations.

It has all to do with the self, the perception of the self, and the expectations of the self. I have recently moved back to Brussels, my hometown and it takes some time to adapt. I am indeed confront with the self-perceived self of my past, the self I have constructed for me in U.K. And this new breed of self that has not entirely found itself yet. I have though high demands and expectations, I know that I had the luck to grow up in an environment that brought me informations and a way to value informations and I have also the brain capacities to process with ease these informations, though I do have to work still on my memory.

The fact that I find myself very intelligent, and that people find it hard to disagree on that statement but agree that it is not a mark of humility to state it, I find I have to learn a lot and do a lot with this intelligence and when I do not, I beat myself to the point that I sulk into doubt. It takes me time to get back unto my feet and tell myself that I need to start again. This is though how real strength is defined though: the ability to go back to a fight. So here I am back, to my world of reflection, with a self perceived as being worthy to lay down thoughts, no expectation to be incredibly smart and innovative ( not to put to much pressure at the beginning) but with the goal of someday looking back and the roads I took with slight pride.

So now that my time with my lacanian master that you are is up, I will start to write about a very simple class on a Marxist analysis of commodities. It is mostly for myself that I will write about it and I have not yet come to a conclusion, as usual with my personal work. The first exercise will be to outline the difference between two useful concepts: the use-value and the exchange-value. The use-value is the value of a commodity as it is. It is a very hard thing to actually conceive as it is linked to the concept of necessities. Indeed, something can be truly useful only if it is necessary. And a necessity is linked to either a mean to survive, either a mean to develop oneself as its own.

It is easy to value the use of food, and then again, exotic food has more exchange-value than use-value. It is more difficult to value a pen or a computer, as someone might find himself working to accomplish himself when others might buy these tools just to show they can exchange a possession for social recognition – social recognition is something I will later on define when I will define the different forms of capital ( and not stop at Marx definition of capital : Any commodity which helps the accumulation of exchange-valued commodities). So two forms of use-value: the material form, as something that we need so our body survives and the spiritual form - nothing essentially religious- but just specie-centered idea that the human only has a spirit – as something that we need so we can do something of our life as we have decided to independently do.

Now exchange-value is the thing of everyday now. It is the discussions around the price of things, as we exchange money for different objects. Money has become the universal standard to establish exchange-value. We exchange anything ( almost) for money and the price actually does not reflect on anything in particular. What we pay at a restaurant for example, is only defined as what the boss of the restaurant think is the normal price for what he serves. It has nothing to do with the pay of the cook, of the waiters and waitresses, of the food or the price of the designer he chose for his menu. It is something he thinks is the price that people will pay. This price will be accepted only by a social standard established by different networks of people. Let's say the boss of our restaurant is a friend of two newspapers editors, then his price will be high, as the media can easily make a price ( an exchange-value) socially acceptable or not, no matter the fact that the value of a dinner is relative to the taste of the person going to the restaurant plus the added use-value commodities used ( mainly the food and the labour).

Now we are constantly reminded that the exchange-value is the everyday lie that we accept. No matter that televisions cost far more in a store that the added cost of their productions ( and that the value added is done through off-shore front companies so less redistribution for profit is done), we are aware of it and yet ready to buy new ones before the old ones are really broken – Brave New World accepted ideology as well – reparation is something of the past, replacement is the standard of living now. What Marx has noted though is that the exchange-value of a commodity will always rises faster than the exchange-value of labour, meaning that no matter that a company makes profits, the wage of the common worker will never rise, except to the need of necessities ( the risk of a lower production due to excessive frustration). Satisfaction of the exchange-value of labour will be also discussed later on, I want to first talk about the standard of exchange-value.

Currencies are the universal standards of exchange-value and it seems a fair one. Of course, since the 20th century, the value of currencies are themselves only exchange-values, as the price of foreign goods depends on the exchange-value of a currency to another. Meaning that somehow, a currency will have a better value or a worst value depending on a socially acceptable consensus of the people buying these currencies. The value of a currency is therefore not defined by the general population, there is nothing democratic about it – except maybe in China -, but by the people who own a high social capital.

So here I have to explain the notion of social capital. Social capital I will define as the trust accepted in a source for its information. The trust in itself is the capital. Meaning that someone with high social capital will be able to decide more or less the exchange-value of any commodity, as it is the information generated. Somehow, no surprise here, but people with high economic (material) capital have had a high social capital for a long time. That's why two of the big three rating agencies belong to the “ public”, meaning stocks can be bought on the stock exchange so you can have a more-or-less important say depending on how much money you put in, and that the last one “Finch”, belongs to one of the most connected man of France. These three make the weather in finance, even when they are proven wrong.

Now, about satisfaction, it is something personal to the extent that there is an emancipation for the power of structure around. The structures of the system are a necessary tool, in the sense that no one can promote anarchy as it does not bring forward a liberation from the necessities of life. Then again, we are not satisfied by the necessities only in life. We do need to do something out of our life to bring on an existential satisfaction. We can accept on one hand the animalistic satisfaction of procreation, in the sense that we live and do what we do so we can live on through our offspring and so one until the end of the earth, or we can do something for which we are proud to have bring something forward to humanity and all the other species that will recognize the contribution. What is not a necessity is do something we do not like for a defined amount of time just because we cannot choose something else ( or for a lesser time).

Satisfaction is relative to emancipation as I said, because it is a standard of living we accept for ourselves, and this standard is accepted because we are told is acceptable, until a certain point. This is why information is a useful tool for the emancipation for humanity, though still a difficult one to use, in the sense that the medium of information is still important to make an effect. We are satisfied by how things goes because we do not want to know more, and generally we decide to ignore what we know because how we came to learn was not enough to chose to accept it. What we have learned can possibly rise our level of dissatisfaction and because we do not do anything about, it is favorable to ignore the information.

I think I have now lost my self a bit in the meanders of political economy. Anyway, the prices do not reflect offer and demand, but by the complex relationship ordered around by exchange-values.
I will write more next week, as I have decided to take back on the goal to write an article a week as a way to prove and improve myself. That's all folks !