If you’re poor and the bank is coming for your home, Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur has a plan for you.

Just squat, she says.
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The second general strike in two months brought France to a standstill yesterday.
“In reality, what is necessary now has been necessary since the beginning of the proletarian revolutionary project. It’s always been a question of working-class autonomy. The struggle has always been for the abolition of wage labor, of commodity production, and of the state.” -Enragés-Situationist International Committee

Bill Brown is the editor of the pro-situationist ‘zine Not Bored and the author of the American Colossus: the Grain Elevator, 1843 to 1943which is available for purchase through Lulu.

Q: How did you arrive upon the grain elevator as a starting point for your critique of capital and the spectacle?

A: I didn’t so much arrive upon the grain elevator as work my way back to it. For the situationists (and Henri Lefebvre), the spectacle is a particular manner of organizing urban space (”cities”) so that ever-growing masses of objects and people can circulate and reproduce, atomized, separated, in isolation. Guy Debord noted that the spectacle was clearly in place in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and in Nazi Germany in the 1930s; and T.J. Clark has noted that the spectacle was clearly being prepared during the “Hausmannization” of Paris in the 1850s and 1860s. I believe the spectacle was also in preparation on the docks of “booming” port-cities on the Great Lakes such as Buffalo, Toledo and Chicago in the 1840s. Before the invention of the steam-powered grain elevator, these docks were full of crowds of workers, who were required to unload the sacks of grain and barrels of flour that were carried by in-coming and/or out-going vessels. But the grain elevator — which was the first mechanized “laboring-saving device” to be used in an urban setting (farm equipment had been steam-powered since the 1830s) — could be operated by a mere handful of highly specialized laborers, and yet worked at a rate seven times faster than “traditional” crews. And so the docks of these port cities on the Great Lakes quickly/gradually became fantastically active and yet strangely empty, a fact that was noted as early as the 1860s and became obvious in the 1880s.

Q: Did you grow up amongst these structures?

A: Yes, but I didn’t realize it until I was in my thirties. There was (and still is) a colossal grain elevator in Brooklyn, New York, where I was born in 1959. My family and I would pass by it often, because it is very close to the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, but we didn’t know what this colossal building was or that it had been closed down in 1965, the year my family moved from Brooklyn to Long Island. This grain elevator was imprinted on my memory, but I only realized it thirty years later, when my family and I were again traveling along the BQE and passed the elevator, which immediately attracted my attention. At first I thought I’d never seen it before, but then I realized that I’d seen it again and again as a child. In instance of what Reyner Banham calls “double vision.”

Q: Have you ever been trapped inside one of these concrete monsters?

A: No. I have broken into, entered, explored and even “squatted” grain elevators, but I have never been trapped inside one. I’m struck my two things in your question:

1) being trapped in a grain elevator features in my book because Chief Bromden (in Ken Kesey’s “Cuckoo’s Nest”) has a nightmare about being trapped in one; and 2) the idea that grain elevators are “monsters” is also a strong theme in my book.

Q: How is it that these hidden and ignored structures could be the first point in a history of a society that is mediated by images, by the visible?

A: Grain elevators are “hidden and ignored” precisely because of changes in the society of the spectacle. Take for the example of the Brooklyn Queens Expressway (mentioned above). It was constructed in the 1950s and 1960s upon what was once the Atlantic Docks, where grain elevators had been built and razed, built and razed, ever since the 1870s. Where it not for the spectacular shift from railroads to automobiles, several of those elevators might still be standing. This is one of the reasons that I conclude my history of the grain elevator in 1943: in the post-WWII period, grain elevators, formerly in the foreground, were pushed into the background, where they continue to operate.

Q: How could the history of the fetishized spectacular commodity start with what is thought to be an utterly utilitarian structure?

A: I’m not sure how utilitarianism figures here, but it is clear that the modern spectacle-commodity can be said to begin with the shift from sealed sacks of grain (unique products by unique people) to grain shipped in bulk (standardized products by anonymous people) — a shift that was “required” or imposed by the grain elevator, which could only process grain in bulk. As early as 1860, observers were “fetishizing” the “liquid,” “golden,” and abstract beauty of immense amounts of grain shipped in bulk.

Note well that the shift from crews of stevedores/sacks of grain to grain elevators/grain in bulk took place at the same time as several other, clearly “modern” developments: the shift from stamped coins to paper money, the invention of the telegraph and “high-speed” communications, the invention of “to arrive” contracts and “grades” of
grain, and the rise of financial speculation and “cornering” the market.

Q: To what extent is understanding the history of the spectacle essential if one wants to overcome the spectacle?

A: To a very great extent. To overcome the spectacle, one must see its unity (how 2009 is similar to 1843) as well as its “stages” of development: preparation (the 19th century); perfection (the 20th century); decomposition (ever since the 1950s, but especially today).

Q: Currently the capitalist/spectacular order appears to be in a crisis that threatens its capacity to produce the compensatory consumer practices that define every day life. Do you feel that this crisis represents an opportunity for working people?

A: Your question reminds me of a song by Gang of Four called “Capital (It Fails Us Now),” which I believe was first released in 1982.

the moment I was born I opened my eyes
I reached out for my credit card
I know I never did own my own suit
capital it fails us now come and let us seize the time
on the first day of my life I opened my eyes
guess where with superstars surrounded by luxury-eagers
I need a prison I need a hot fire
no credit no goods
“come on back” I say
they say “we’re bankrupt”
capital it fails us now come and let us seize the time
capital it fails us now…
oh no! I left it in my other suit!
one day all will be living on credit
bankrupt
I’m still in credit — just!
one day old, living on credit…

Perhaps I’m being simplistic, but this crisis/opportunity you speak of has existed for over a hundred and fifty years.

Q: Chelsea Martin, your story “Dream Date” that appeared in Diet Soap was amusing and ironic. Slavoj Zizek, the Slovenian scholar and Lacanian Marxist theorizes that the supposed critical distance, irony, or critique of Stalinism found in Shostakovich’s Symphonies is an example of how ideological art must both contain a commitment to a party line and also a critical distance from the same. Zizek posits that this same ironic distance, this failure to believe, is a central element for successful adherence to today’s primary ideology of liberal multicultural capitalism. Do you feel that your little jokes may make you complicit with the capitalist system of self destruction that dominates us every day?

A: Hmm. Dominates as in ‘dominates’, or dominates as in ‘gently guides’? I think in terms of capitalism and self-destruction, Dream Date is probably a manipulation tool designed by society through me to make people feel more comfortable about the confusion they feel about interactions within sexual relationships and misconceptions about the feelings caused by those interactions. And I guess if one feels comfortable with these types of feelings then it does not feel important to overcome them, which may perpetuate feelings of awkwardness and mental retardation. But I think the ironic distance is just the twelve or fourteen inches of space that two people leave between one another even though physical contact is pleasurable. Also, yeah, ideology. Actually, I don’t know if I understand the question.

Q: What is the “Whatever” in your book’s title?

A: I forget. I think I thought of it while I was walking across the Golden Gate Bridge for leisure and casually contemplating mortality.

Q: Did you create the cool picture on the cover of your book?

A: Yep.

Q: I understand you’ll be in Portland and Seattle on April 6th and April 7th to do readings. Where and when exactly should people show up?

A: Here is the flyer. I haven’t been to either of the two places. I think just show up at the time it says and sit down in stool or whatever and look around and when you finally figure out which one is me, just sit there and look at me. I’ll be there with my thirteen-year-old brother. You can order some alcohol if someone approaches you and asks if you want something, or if you feel like getting up and finding someone who will give it to you. You can pretty much do whatever you want, actually. But remember, it’s the 7th and 8th of April, not the 6th and 7th.

Q: I notice that the girl on the cover of your book is in Neil Armstrong’s spacesuit. Do any of the stories take place in outerspace? Is one of your stories about a girl who sneaks into Neil’s house and steals his memorabilia? Do you think the USA will ever send people to the moon again? Who will we send first do you think?

A: Yeah. Well, no.

Q: Do you believe that the primary cause of today’s economic crisis should be understood to be the deregulation of the financial sector and the decades long transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to the very rich, or are you under the impression that our economic undoing is more directly connected to real resource depletion? Do you consider yourself a doomer, a neo-liberal apologist, a militant socialist, a fan of Shostakovich, or something else?

A: I’ve been feeling abused by the upper-management at work because they’re all, “If you lose your job you’ll never find another one, you’re pretty scared, huh? We’re decreasing your hours and hiring some new people, are you scared now? Smile harder at the customers and be scared, we have a pile of qualified and charming applicants in the back office near the hand sink that you need to go scrub immediately, do it hard and make it shiny or else.” I consider myself a Diet Soap author.

Last year during the last few days of September, just a few weeks after Treasurer Hank Paulson issued a ransom note to Congress demanding 700 billion in unmarked bills in exchange for the kidnapped global economy, I violated the rules for editing Wikipedia and committed an act of digital vandalism. Wikipedia’s entry for the term “late capitalism” read: “Late capitalism is a term sometimes used to refer to capitalism of the second half of the 20th century, generally with the implication that it is historically limited, and will eventually end. However, the notion of late capitalism is partly an ideological perspective. This is because there is no way of telling exactly when capitalism will end, or if it will simply keep evolving instead…” My edit changed the second and third lines: “However, the notion of late capitalism is a clearly historically bound term, as it is now obvious just how and when capitalism will end. It will end sometime next week when all the credit cards stop working.”

There is a tendency amongst the digiterati to side with Wikipedia over vandals, or more generally to be more concerned about being technically correct rather than with being simply honest, and more concerned with carving out a palatable position in a digital network of like minded comrades rather than being technically correct, but I stand by my act of vandalism. I would assert that while the credit and debit cards continue to at least partially function, and while capitalism has not, in fact, ended the core reality is just what my little joke indicated. The liberal democratic system of capitalism is disintegrating.

A good example of what I would deem as the ideological thinking of the leftist or socialist digerati was published at Monuments are for Pigeons in a two part series of posts entitled The End is Nigh. What is set up in these two entries is a false opposition between peak oil advocates like James Kunstler and what is really a standard socialist critique of capitalism. Rather than demonstrate how these predictions of doom in fact reinforce and illustrate a broad socialist critique, and rather than incorporate critiques of industrialism and technology into a socialist view, Victor of the Monuments delights in pointing out how various doomers are wrong, wrong, wrong.

But all along Victor has to admit that the doomers have some legitimate points:
“Is the world ending? Possibly. Peak oil is an attractive thesis because it points out the absolute limits of a carbon-based economy. But focusing on absolute limits of oil, or even water or air substitutes a technical problem for a social one. It’s not about how much we have theoretically, but who has the power to decide how those resources get used.”
Well obviously the crisis is about both the technical problem of how many resources we have and who has the power to decide how these resources get used. And as we begin to really perceive the technical problem of how much oil there is, for example, we have an opportunity to also see how the social problem of who gets to decide how this resource is used threatens our collective survival.

The primary problem with Victor’s posts on the subject of peak oil, ecocide, primitivism, and doomsters is that he doesn’t take on the strongest arguments presented by those he opposes, but exploits their weakest arguments. A prime example is his approach to Malthus. While Malthus’ ideas about overpopulation and resource depletion are troubling, and while his ideas can lead to reactionary conclusions, there are many avenues towards correcting Malthus and all of them involve actually engaging what he said and not who he was. To claim that Malthus hated poor people and thus his ideas were wrong is not a valid approach to arguing with his thesis. The challenge is to demonstrate how humans have the potential to change their social relations and control reproduction and production collectively and cooperatively, but not to claim that Malthus was a bad man and should be ignored.

There are competing strands in Victor’s long posts. On the one hand by pointing to the system of capitalism and the social relations that it engenders as being the primary problem, and by chastising those doomers who fail to raise the possibility of changing our social relations, Victor is doing good work. However, his argument veers toward a denial of solid evidence and when he employs a double standard–simultaneously chastising those who would castigate Americans for their over-consumption while accusing all first world doomers of fearing a barbarism that has already arrived in the Third World of exhibiting class privilege–Victor appears to be almost counter-revolutionary. By denying the dystopian vision of the doomers, a vision based on at the very least much more compelling arguments than the ones Victor presents, he shows an attachment to capitalism, seemingly refusing to understand that capitalism is late.

Oil production has peaked, the credit cards are maxed out, and the oceans are rising. The end of this system is Nigh. The question is who will fill the void and make the next one. Will the International working class be the human race, or are we going to let the whole thing die out?

Testing.