<nettime> In Praise of Cash (or just another luddite nationalist death spell)

[Alexander Bard <bardissimo@gmail.com>]

Dear Morlock & Co

Totally agreed.

Which explains Occupy's failure (yes, it was a failure). In the current
techno-ideological environment, Occupy was doomed to become nothing but a
cool t-shirt and a few Insta photos within days and then to be over within
weeks. The Wall Street guys had the last laugh (especially as they are
hardly not even located in Wall Street anymore). As if they didn't know
from the very beginning that this is where "the naive Occupy" would end up
anyway. After all, they live in the same techno-ideological world where
"stamina" is the quality in constant lack.

Furthermore, I'm not in any way denying that there have been many attempts
at globalising or at least internationalising The Left. Thanks M.P., for
providing links, but I already said that from Kant via Marx to Habermas
there has always been a Cosmopolitan Left. But it is laregly dead and gone
today. While Capital went global (and digital) over the last 30-40 years,
unions went asleep and nationalist, and if you haven't noticed The Left is
today the possibly worst enemy of open borders and free migration in Europe
and North America. The Left has become The Right simply by sticking to the
failing and doomed nation-state model, even to the point where we face
discussions on this forum taking the view of "perhaps there is something to
Donald Trump's message after all" as its starting point. So when did The
Left betray its cosmopolitan heritage and turn to the luddite model for
taking on the future? That is today's Left of closed borders and
protectionism.

The best such a Left can achieve is the occasional Syriza election victory
following a crisis where even the populist right has failed. But what does
such a Left become once in power? Nothing but another isolationist populist
nationalist failure. Is this all we can aim for? Corbynism? Seriously?
In a globalised and digitalised world, The Left has to become globalised
and digitalised, and certainly so if the enemy has bothered to change.
Because otherwise the Left will not and does not deserve to become that
Node in the dark chaos that constitutes that overwhelming principle of the
network age: nodalisation. For The Left to act as The Phallus in the
current and forthcoming chaos, it must provide a spiritual and cosmopolitan
answer to the questions of our time. And with crypto-cuurencies et al
killing nation-state high taxation as we know it, global redistribution
must become a pragmatic and not a moral issue.

Otherwise The Left is dead, leaving politics to a struggle between liberals
and conservatives. Perhaps we have already arrived there? Does anybody even
care about a "Left" today in say France? Or Germany? Or India?
I certainly doubt it.

Best intentions
Alexander Bard

2017-03-04 3:56 GMT+01:00 Morlock Elloi <morlockelloi@gmail.com>:

> There are many different issues here, and I am not sure that it makes
> sense to conflate them into one or few trends.
>
> Bitcoin: Bitcoin, OK, *is* a testament of how much gold is missed, and
> government currencies are hated (Bit*coin* - in the US gold ceased to be
> legal tender in 1933), to the point where any exchange medium not obviously
> controlled by the government is elevated to the "cash" status. The basic
> premise of Bitcoin failed when fully distributed minting proved
> economically unfeasible. Very few noticed this failure. But the original
> battle lost was the removal of gold as practical exchange medium, and that
> is the battle that has to be re-fought, as Bitcoin is going to have exactly
> the same fate if it ever becomes anything close to untraceable practical
> exchange medium. Burning kilowatts into hashes instead of extracting gold
> from dirt makes no difference (product note to self: consumer electric
> heater that mints.)
>
>
> The sad Luddite fate of the left: agree.


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