0494 In the last section of the second lecture, Santner grapples with the implications.
0495 Did Marx isolate the alchemy of mercantilism?
The political theory of mercantilism magically transforms into an impossible righteousness, capitalism.
To me, capitalism is Marx’s projection of the society tier onto the organization tier.
The industrial economy becomes an icon of the religion of mercantilism.
0496 Santner uses the mercantilist fixation, gold, as an example.
Money flows upwards. Gold flows downwards.
0497 This example easily fits Marx’s projection of the society tier onto the organization tier.
0498 The general labor value of gold produces something that money can buy. The transactions produce surplus value. Surplus value actualizes the potential for continuing gold production.
0499 The institutional mission that ‘gold is wealth’ virtually contextualizes the abstract material that informs price of gold.
Anyone familiar with current gold markets finds this abstract material quite tangible. It reifies the fear that fiat currencies are being printed without collateral.
Since gold is wealth, gold is collateral.
The buyer is purchasing what the fiat currency lacks.
0500 Collateral flows downwards from an institutional mission, through the abstract material emerging from the potentials of shape and money, into the peace of mind of the gold buyer.
0501 This is not an -ism. This is not “capital”-ism.
No, these diagrams describe the machinations of the organization tier as an icon of the society tier.
-Isms belong to the society tier.
Mercantilism belongs to the society tier.
Mercantilism solved one problem in the organization tier.
Here is the issue: The abstract material that informs price should not also weigh a changing value of money, in addition to the potential of shape and the buyer’s accounts.
So mercantilism fixed the value of money.
Money was defined as a certain weight of pure gold.
0502 However, the mercantilist religion produced a host of other problems within the society tier.
In particular, it degraded the Protestant Ethic, where the virtue of industriousness served to glorify God.
Mercantilism glorified… something other than the One True God.
0503 Marx’s specter of communism rose to contest the political theology of mercantilism.
0504 To me, Marx projected something transcendent onto the immanence of the organization tier.
0505 The term “capitalism” labels the projection of a mercantilist political theology onto the organization tier.
0506 To the extent that the projection is manifest, the organization tier is unrighteous compared to the righteousness of Marxist ideologies.
0507 The role of the Marxist in our contemporary world is to regulate perceived manifestations of mercantilist political theology in the organization tier.
Soviet communism was an experiment. It failed.
But, could the schema still be correct?
Welcome to big government (il)liberalism, where the political economy is freighted with a subject matter weighing all flesh.
0508 Speaking of flesh, is global mercantilism a form of prostitution?
0509 Here is how prostitution looks as an icon of mercantilism.
How unrighteous is global mercantilism?
0510 In the organization tier, paper money flows up into surplus value.
A purpose-filled abstract material flows down into what the buyer lacks.
0511 What does the buyer lack?
0512 In the society tier, the flesh is the industrious body, contiguous with an inoperative active soul.
An objectorg is supposed to fill in for the active soul.
The objectorg-inoperative active soul situates the fact that the passive soul cannot work on its own accord.
0513 This is shown in the following diagram:
0514 What does this imply?
The buyer in the organization tier lacks a quality that allows the passive soul do what it is supposed to do.
0515 That quality is righteousness.
But, it can also be unrighteousness.
Righteousness and unrighteousness are the potentials underlying good and evil.