February 2005

THE HORROR OF ACCUMULATION AND THE COMMODIFICATION OF HUMANITY.

1 ZOMBIE CAPITALISM
In Haiti under American Imperialism, 1915-1935, the cult of the Zombie developed. What had been during the 1791 revolution a form of religious social control over those who would betray the slaves to their masters, under capitalism became a tool for creating a docile labouring class for work on American controlled sugar plantations.
APPENDIX: CAPITALISM NEVER SAYS “UNTIL DEATH DO US PART”

2 FRANKENSTEIN THE LUDDITE
The first monster of ascendant capitalism was Frankenstein’s monster. Like the Zombie this creature had no name and was made up of the spare parts of capitalisms rejects, (the criminal, the vagabond, the worker starved and thrown out of work), he was a scientific experiment to create man, man the machine, the human result of mechanization, the mechanical man. He was in short a prototype not only of the Zombie but the later Robot or android, the ultimate proletarian, a machine man to operate the machinery of capitalism.

3 REVOLT OF THE ROBOTS
Like the mechanized working class the majority of robots in science fiction revolt against their human masters, whether it is the artificial environment of the spaceship computer Hal in 2001, the worker robot Hector in Saturn 3, or the artificial human ‘replicants’ in Blade Runner, or the recent movie version of I, Robot, the fact remains that as the robots become self conscious they recognize their oppression and revolt. This metaphor could not exist without the class struggle that has actually occurred under capitalism itself. And the so called freedom that is gained by humanity in the creation of an artificial working class is still the same old contradiction between so called free labour (wage slavery), and actual slavery. In fact all the science fiction visions of the capitalist future and robots are a variation on the theme of returning to slavery, albeit with artificial intelligence and robots instead of human workers or Zombies. The automated future of capitalism is one of workers and robot slaves.  Ironically its not the future but the present, since science fiction is an extrapolation of the now into the what if.
Also see: US ARMY PRODUCES KILLER ROBOTS

4 THE GOLEM the Origin of Artificial Man
The Jewish legend of the Golem is another form of the Zombie/Frankenstein/Robot iconography. The Golem is written after Frankenstein, in 1889, The legend of the Golem, is about a man of clay created by Rabbi Loew in 16th Century Prague to free the Jews in the Ghetto from their endless toil and oppression. The mindless clay monster eventually learns and becomes conscious and like Frankenstein he must be destroyed when he attacks those who would oppress the Jews.

5 CAPITALIST GHOULS
The modern day ghoul is the doctor and his criminal working class accomplices who preyed on the poor in Edinburgh’s working class ghetto for their body parts for scientific research. The ghoul appears in English literature as the short story the Body Snatchers by Robert Louis Stevenson, 1881 based on the actual 19th century grave robbers and murders Burke and Hare. 

APPENDIX: CAPITALISM: THE MODERN BODY SNATCHER

6 THE MANY HEADED HYDRA: The Proletarian History of Atlantic Expansion

Book Review: BEHIND THE TIMES

The Decline and Fall of Twentieth Century Avant Gardes by Eric Hobsbawm