2.12.2004
ivan illich, _toward a history of need_
-thesis: 'use values are inevitably destroyed when the industrial mode of production achieves the predominance [of] radical monopoly.'
-creation of needs... requirement of all activity to be official, sanctioned, within the sphere of commodity production... 'overwhelming reliance' on consumer goods: 'market dependence'... creation of 'need-satisfaction relationships' [cf _anti-oedipus_]... subjects defined by, ones perception of ones own rights and needs derived from, 'professional hegemony'...
-use-values destroyed... autonomy lost... impossibility of satisfying need outside 'radical monopolies' that control modern markets [anti-markets--delanda]... standardization of culture... 'rigid interdependence of needs and market'... what were once everyday functions able to be accomplished 'autonomously' now are experienced as situations of LACK, requiring the intervention of need-producing specialists, fillable only with consumer goods and services. e.g., everyone defined as sick and in constant need of medical attention... passage from democracy to oligarchy
-counterproductivity [cf _anti-oedipus_: systems depend on their own poor functioning]--'beyond a certain level of intensity, medicine engenders helplessness and disease', b/c people don't [desire doesn't--deleuze] fit the 'calculus of needs'... derives from 'congestion' (e.g. traffic snarls, the inevitable result of more and faster cars that thwarts the supposed goal of those cars: getting somewhere faster) and from 'paralysis' (dependence on commodities yields greater congestion)... [anti-market capitalism ensures its own continuation by its own disfunctionality. that is, foundational principles like efficiency and productivity prove impossible to live up to--commodities (goods/services) become ever-more efficient and yet this efficiency counteracts itself, meaning the demand for efficiency can never be met. efficiency as a goal can never be met, greater productivity is (will be) always required.]
-liberty (protecting use-value) vs. right (protecting access to commodity).. rights end up 'smothering' liberties (b/c needs that destroy use-values produce rights which are then sanctioned and legitimated leaving liberties to fend for themselves having no measurable market value)
-illich calls for: 'convivial austerity', i.e. limiting concentration of power [similar to delanda when he argues for regional markets--both speak of a certain threshold--for delanda beyond that threshold power (the ability to control market flows) becomes too heavily concentrated--for illich, 'radical monopoly'... also: "new rational cynical competence' among citizens [contrast with _anti-oedipus_: schizophrenia]
-thesis: 'use values are inevitably destroyed when the industrial mode of production achieves the predominance [of] radical monopoly.'
-creation of needs... requirement of all activity to be official, sanctioned, within the sphere of commodity production... 'overwhelming reliance' on consumer goods: 'market dependence'... creation of 'need-satisfaction relationships' [cf _anti-oedipus_]... subjects defined by, ones perception of ones own rights and needs derived from, 'professional hegemony'...
-use-values destroyed... autonomy lost... impossibility of satisfying need outside 'radical monopolies' that control modern markets [anti-markets--delanda]... standardization of culture... 'rigid interdependence of needs and market'... what were once everyday functions able to be accomplished 'autonomously' now are experienced as situations of LACK, requiring the intervention of need-producing specialists, fillable only with consumer goods and services. e.g., everyone defined as sick and in constant need of medical attention... passage from democracy to oligarchy
-counterproductivity [cf _anti-oedipus_: systems depend on their own poor functioning]--'beyond a certain level of intensity, medicine engenders helplessness and disease', b/c people don't [desire doesn't--deleuze] fit the 'calculus of needs'... derives from 'congestion' (e.g. traffic snarls, the inevitable result of more and faster cars that thwarts the supposed goal of those cars: getting somewhere faster) and from 'paralysis' (dependence on commodities yields greater congestion)... [anti-market capitalism ensures its own continuation by its own disfunctionality. that is, foundational principles like efficiency and productivity prove impossible to live up to--commodities (goods/services) become ever-more efficient and yet this efficiency counteracts itself, meaning the demand for efficiency can never be met. efficiency as a goal can never be met, greater productivity is (will be) always required.]
-liberty (protecting use-value) vs. right (protecting access to commodity).. rights end up 'smothering' liberties (b/c needs that destroy use-values produce rights which are then sanctioned and legitimated leaving liberties to fend for themselves having no measurable market value)
-illich calls for: 'convivial austerity', i.e. limiting concentration of power [similar to delanda when he argues for regional markets--both speak of a certain threshold--for delanda beyond that threshold power (the ability to control market flows) becomes too heavily concentrated--for illich, 'radical monopoly'... also: "new rational cynical competence' among citizens [contrast with _anti-oedipus_: schizophrenia]
