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Monade and Wertverwertung (was: Re: [ox-en] The self-unfolding of all)



Whow Benja, cool translation of this heavy stuff:-)
...being envious and learning a lot;-)

Here's my poor trial to clarify a bit two words:

B. Fallenstein wrote:

> * What exactly is a Monaden-Bürger?

Monade is monad, and Buerger is bourgois (or civilian?). Maybe
understandable this way: An isolated bourgois individual defining
themself as owner of commodities. Relationship to others are only result
of exchange acts with other owners of commodities (think of money as
special form of a commodity). Monads can only perceive other people as
owners of commodities and potential partners for exchange - not as human
beings. This means that a "commodity monad" (Warenmonade) is isolated in
the middle of the society, because "exchange contacts" are not real
social contacts but contacts of commodities owned by individuals. The
commodities seem to have a will driving their owners to exchange them
(and not other way around).

Bret Easton Ellis described this phenomenon very drastically in his
novel "American Psycho", maybe someone knows it. An other well known
example is the song "Money makes the world go around".

Well, "average person today" you choose is quite near.

> And what the hell is Wertverwertung
> (literally: "value valueization")?

This is a very special term of the Krisis-group StefanMn mentioned in
the interview. There are some english texts on their web page to get
some insight: http://www.krisis.org. For example

"Marx 2000" by Robert Kurz
http://www.giga.or.at/others/krisis/r-kurz_marx2000_englisch.html

and

"Terror of labour" by Norbert Trenkle
http://www.giga.or.at/others/krisis/n-trenkle_terror-der-arbeit-englisch.html

Heavy stuff, because this thinking is really different from the common
understanding of Marx (that of the "workers movement marxism"). The
traditional understanding is, that there are two opposite classes
(workers and capitalists) with antagonistic interests: The capitalists
exploit the workers. Therefore the workers have to gain power to get no
longer exploited. And so on. Old story.

The Krisis-story is this (IMHO more realistic): Workers and capitalists
are two distinct functional parts inside the same continuity with
different but not antagonistic interests. Workers sell their work force
and produce all (economic) values because they don't have productive
means. Capitalists organize this productive process and the process of
realization of produced values on the market. Both don't do this because
they are too stupid to do other things: they have to do it. Workers have
to sell their work force if they want to live. Capitalists have to
(successfully) organize the process of realization of produced values on
market if they want to stay capitalists. Marx said, that they are
"personified capital" (personifiziertes Kapital).

What we today observe is, that both functional parts of the continuity
move together. More and more functions of realizing produced values on
market determine the thinking of the workers. And capitalists generally
work very hard (I won't do that crazy stuff...). And we find more and
more persons who unify both funtions inside themselfs: The "single
person company" or "work force entrepreneur" (Arbeitskraftunternehmer).

This means: The whole process is not controled by someone (the bad guys,
the capitalists). The other way around is true: The process controls all
people. There are no intrinsically "bad" or "good" guys. And due to
being a complete cycle (producing shit - realizing produced values
exchanging (selling)) them - invest money as capital to produce more or
cheaper shit...) I call capitalism a "cybernetic machine" or a
"self-organizing economic value machine". And "Wertverwertung" describes
the process the cybernetic machine is doing: It brings economic value in
a process to produce and realize more economic value from that value.
Marx called this process of making value from (out of?) value
(Verwertung von Wert) boundless (masslos) and completely independed from
what is produced (from the benefit).

If I said, that the process is not controled by someone, because it
controls itself, than this does not means, that there are no controlers.
They are there, but they are "only" owners of a special function in the
whole game ruled by the cybernetic machine. So one of the worst thing we
can do (what is nevertheless "normal") is to personalize conflicts. We
all know that: The first question is not "what goes wrong and why", it
is "Who is guilty or responsable for this or that".

Last hint: Marx called this situation where a process of moving
commodities (one exchanging itself with another) result in a social
structure, where the movement of things control the acts of humans,
fetishism.

Keeping this in mind and taking your translation I would fill the
untranslated part as follows:

>Der Monaden-Bürger kann sich hingegen nur vorstellen, am Produkt des
>anderen interessiert zu sein, während das Interesse an der Person nur
>instrumentellen Charakter hat. Der Grund ist der äußere Selbstzweck
>der Wertverwertung, der sich interaktiv durchsetzt. Bei der
>Selbstentfaltung hingegen habe ich hingegen ein Interesse an der
>Selbstentfaltung des Anderen. Dies aber nicht im instrumentellen
>Sinne, damit ein gutes Produkt rauskommt, sondern ich habe ein
>Interesse an der Entfaltung als _Selbstzweck_. Denn nur die
>Selbstentfaltung als Selbstzweck ist der freie Entfaltungsmodus. Es
>geht also darum, nicht kurzfristig gute Produkte zu bekommen, sondern
>langfristig Menschen, die im eigenen Interesse für ein gutes Leben
>für alle sorgen.

The [average person today*], on the other hand, can only conceive
having an interest in the other's product, while the interest in the
other person is of instrumental nature only. The reason is the outside
end in itself of economically making value from value, which is
realized interactively by the acting people. When self-unfolding, on
the other hand, I want the selbstentfaltung of the other person to
happen, not in an instrumental sense in order to get a good product, but
rather my interest is in the unfolding as _an end in itself_. That's
because only the selbstentfaltung as an end in itself is the free mode
of unfolding. So the point is not to get good products in the short
term, but to get people in the long term who, in their own interest,
take care of a good life for everybody.

That's enough for tonight...

Ciao,
Stefan

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