1997 - Notes on Manifesto-ism - John Hutnyk

Texto

Notes On Manifesto-ism

On technology, its always already there in *the* Manifesto:

Seems to me that its worth remembering some interesting correspondences:

The Manifesto - (1847 version, refuse all imitations) - is proliferating on this auspicious anniversary. May there be 100, 1000 10,000 manifestos, but let us remember the point is not to manifest, but to change the world.

So, one hundred and fifty years ago in France Marx published 'The Poverty of Philosophy', and although this work has always been eclipsed by another text written that same year, it is worth consulting and is as much deserving of reprint as the Manifesto (which has been released again by at least six different publishers - both texts can be readily accessed via the world wide web).

[I note with some amusement another correspondence: that the typewriter was invented in the same year as that other great piece of 19th century technology 'Das Kapital' - 1867. (Gayatri Spivak made a similar point about the ticker tape machine)].

Marx and Engels did write in the COM.MANIFEST about the bourgeoisie rapidly expanding the means of communication...

'The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all the instruments of production, by the *immensely facilitated means of communications*, draws all, even the most barbarian nations into civilization. The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians' intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilization into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In a word, it creates a world after its own image' (Marx and Engels 1847/1952: 47)

Interestingly, the 'immensely facilitated' means of communications of the English translation might also be rendered with a stronger affirmation when translated as 'infinite release' - the 'unendlich erleichterten' (Marx and Engels 1847/1970: 47) suggests also the release of a never-ending opening of communications that already anticipates the continually developing communications environment characteristic of the information order today.

Whaddayareckon?

John Hutnyk

REfs (as in referee??): Marx. Karl and Engels, Fred 1847/1952 Manifesto of the Communist Party, Progress Press, Moscow.

Marx, Karl and Engels, Frederick 1847/1970 Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei, Dietz Verlag Berlin.

Marx, Karl 1847 The Poverty of Philosophy

Spivak 1997 The Spivak Reader, Routledge.

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Dr John Hutnyk

European Science Foundation Research Fellow University of Heidelberg Mail: Schiffgasse 4 69117 Heidelberg Germany

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Aparece en https://www.digitalmanifesto.net/manifestos/133/

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