Filosofia Barata

In: Dust of Dreams, Malazan the book of the fallen

“[...] o destino das coisas que dizemos e fazemos está nas mãos de quem as usar depois. Comprar uma máquina sem questionar ou acreditar num fato sem duvidar tem a mesma consequência: fortalece a situação do que está sendo comprado ou acreditado, robustece-o como caixa-preta. Desacreditar ou, digamos, ‘descomprar’ uma máquina ou um fato é enfraquecer sua situação, interromper sua disseminação, transformá-lo em beco sem saída, reabrir a caixa-preta, seccioná-la e recolocar seus componentes em outro lugar. Deixados à própria mercê, uma afirmação, uma máquina, um processo se perdem. Atentando a penas para eles, para suas propriedades internas, ninguém consegue decidir se são verdadeiros ou falsos, eficientes ou ineficientes, caros ou baratos, fortes ou fracos. Essas características s´são adquiridas pela incorporação em outras afirmações, outros processos e outras máquinas. Essas incorporações são decididas por nós, individualmente, o tempo todo. Confrontados com uma caixa-preta, tomamos uma série de decisões. Pegamos? Rejeitamos? Reabrimos? Largamos-nos dela sem discutir? Ou vamos transformá-la de tal modo que deixará de ser reconhecível? É isso o que acontece com as afirmações dos outros em nossas mãos, e com as nossas afirmações nas mãos dos outros. Em suma, a construção de fatos e máquinas é um processo coletivo. (Essa é a afirmação na qual espero que você acredite; o destino dela está em suas mãos tanto como o destino de outras afirmações.) Isso é tão essencial para a continuação de nossa viagem pela tecnociência que será chamado nosso primeiro princípio: o restante desse livro justificará essa pomposa denominação.

Marx, acumulação primitiva e a crítica à justificativa das elites morais

Marx e a opressão sistêmica do capitalismo para aumentar as horas de trabalho

Marx, a origem do mais-valor na produção e a crítica aos autores que a procuravam na esfera da circulação

A famosa passagem com menção à “mão invisível” em Adam Smith

It is not, however, difficult to foresee which of the two parties must, upon all ordinary occasions, have the advantage in the dispute and force the other into a compliance with their terms. The masters, being fewer in number, can combine much more easily; and the law, besides, authorizes, or at least does not prohibit their combinations, while it prohibits those of workmen. We have no acts of parliament against combining to lower the price of work; but many against combining to raise it. In all such disputes the masters can hold out much longer. A landlord, a farmer, a master manufacturer, or merchants, though they did not employ a single workman, could generally live a year or two upon the stocks which they have already acquired. Many workmen could not subsist a week, few could subsist a month, and scarce any a year without employment. . . . Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labour. . . . We seldom, indeed, hear of this combination, because it is the usual, and one may say, the natural state of things which nobody ever hears of. Masters too sometimes enter into particular combinations to sink the wages of labour even below this rate. These are always conducted with the utmost silence and secrecy, till the moment of execution, and when the workmen yield, as they sometimes do, without resistance, though severely felt by them, they are never heard of by other people. Such combinations, however, are frequently resisted by a contrary defensive combination of the workmen. . . . But . . . their combinations . . . are always abundantly heard of. . . . They are desperate, and act with the folly and extravagance of desperate men, who must either starve, or frighten their masters into immediate compliance with their demands. The masters upon these occasions are just as clamorous upon the other side, and never cease to call aloud for the assistance of the civil magistrate, and the rigorous execution of those laws which have been enacted with so much severity against the combinations of servants, labourers, and journeymen. The . . . [workers' ] combinations . . . generally end in nothing, but the punishment or ruin of the ring-leaders.

In Engels's argument, and arguments like it, the justification for authority is no longer made by Plato's classic analogy, but rather directly with reference to technology itself. If the basic case is as compelling as Engels believed it to be, one would expect that, as a society adopted increasingly complicated technical systems as its material basis, the prospects for authoritarian ways of life would be greatly enhanced. Central control by knowledgeable people acting at the top of a rigid social hierarchy would seem increasingly prudent. In this respect, his stand in "On Authority" appears to be at variance with Karl Marx's position in Volume One of Capital. Marx tries to show that increasing mechanization will render obsolete the hierarchical division of labor and the relationships of subordination that, in his view, were necessary during the early stages of modern manufacturing. The "modern Industry", he writes, "... sweeps away by technical means the manufacturing division of labor, under which each man is bound hand and foot for life to a single detail operation. At the same time, the capitalistic form of that industry reproduces this same division of labour in a still more monstrous shape; in the factory proper, by converting the workman into a living appendage of the machine..." In Marx's view, the conditions that will eventually dissolve the capitalist division of labor and facilitate proletarian revolution are conditions latent in industrial technology itself. The differences between Marx's position in Capital and Engels's in his essay raise an important question for socialism: What, aftet all, does modern technology make possible or necessary in political life? The theoretical tension we see here mirrors many troubles in the practice of freedom and authority that have muddied the tracks of socialist revolution.

In thinking about our relationship with technology in modern contemporary life Albert Borgmann (1984) takes up the question of the possibility of a ‘free’ relation with modern technology in which everything is not already ‘framed’ (in Heidegger’s sense) as resources for our projects. He agrees with Heidegger’s analysis that modern technology is a phenomenon that tends to ‘frame’ our relation with things, and ultimately ourselves and others, in a one-dimensional manner—the world as simply available resources for our projects. He argues that modern technology frames the world for us as ‘devices’. By this he means that modern technology as devices hides the full referentiality (or contextuality) of the world—the worldhood of the world—upon which the devices depend for their ongoing functioning. Differently stated, they do not disclose the multiplicity of necessary conditions for them to be what they are. In fact, just the opposite, they try to hide the necessary effort for them to be available for use. A thermostat on the wall that we simply set at a comfortable temperature now replaces the process of chopping wood, building the fire and maintaining it. Our relationship with the environment is now reduced to, and disclosed to us as a control that we simply set to our liking. In this way devices ‘de-world’ our relationship with things by disconnecting us from the full actuality (or contextuality) of everyday life. By relieving us of the burden—of making and maintaining fires in our example—our relationship with the world becomes disclosed in a new way, as simply there, already available for us. Obviously, this is sometimes necessary otherwise the burden of everyday life might just be too much. Nevertheless, if the ‘device mood’ becomes the way in which we conduct ourselves towards the world then this will obviously have important moral and ethical implications for others who may then become disclosed as devices. Against such a disengaging relationship with things in the world Borgmann argues for the importance of focal practices based on focal things. Focal things solicit our full and engaging presence. We can think of the focal practice of preparing and enjoying a meal with friends or family as opposed to a solitary consumption of a fast food meal. If we take Borgmann’s analysis seriously we might conclude that we, as contemporary humans surrounded by devices, are doomed increasingly to relate to the world in a disengaged manner. Such a totalizing conclusion would be inappropriate since the prevailing mood does not determine our relationship with those we encounter. Nevertheless, Borgmann’s analysis does point to the possibility of the emergence of a device mood—as we increasingly depend on devices—and our moral obligation not to settle mindlessly into the convenience that devices may offer us. Otherwise we might, as Heidegger (1977) argued, become the devices of our devices.