Certain bourgeois writers (now joined by Karl Kautsky, who has completely abandoned the Marxist position he had held, for example, in 1909) have expressed the opinion that international cartels, being one of the most striking expressions of the internationalisation of capital, give the hope of peace among nations under capitalism. Theoretically, this opinion is absolutely absurd, while in practice it is sophistry and a dishonest defence of the worst opportunism. International cartels show to what point capitalist monopolies have developed, and the object of the struggle between the various capitalist associations. This last circumstance is the most important; it alone shows us the historico-economic meaning of what is taking place; for the forms of the struggle may and do constantly change in accordance with varying, relatively specific and temporary causes, but the substance of the struggle, its class content, positively cannot change while classes exist.Carles likely had this passage in mind when his muse was captured by a news item about cultural industry impresarios Steve Aoki and Mark Hunter, who recently toured Africa in pursuit of underexploited markets to saturate with their product. The "T-shirts, records, CDs, tons of ‘kewl shit’ that Californian kids with expendable income can purchase," as Carles points out, may readily be adopted in developing countries as well as the trend-manufacturing media outlets begin to come online in these remoter areas. As Lenin noted, such industrialists -- in this case a veritable "alt" cartel -- pretend to come in peace but in fact come to establish a beach head. They seek market share, and will develop the markets by force if need be, no matter how much "merch" they distribute freely in their initial foray. Though the focus of the moguls' trip seems to be on the village in which they were photographed, Carles argues that the "Dim Mak brand is transcending this shanty town / the entire continent of Africa." Indeed it is like a specter haunting the continent with the looming imperatives and machinations of the meme-producing industries, that seek to blanket the African nations in the hegemonic discourse of commercial cultural product. The threat of identity consciousness hovers over this village; soon the children that innocuous wear T-shirts whose symbols they can hardly understand will suffer the cutting awareness of their own global irrelevance exposed by such déclassé handouts.
As Carles points out, "It seems like in an act of ‘good will’" when Aoki distributes advertisements for his brand and inculcates defenseless children in "how to DJ / how to install a twitter app on their smart phone", but in fact these efforts merely serve to introject subject populations into preexisting media empires as the raw audience material to be processed and demograph-ied. Alas, "That’s what life is all about," Carles ruefully notes.
He proceeds to mock the cultural insensitivities of the invaders, one of whom callously wears a T-shirt with a profane slogan about cosmic irresponsiblity: "The Cobrsnake bro’s “Shit Happens” t-shirt is commentary on how you are born into a life, and even if ur stuck in Africa, you can still rise above and become President of the United States." Of course, Carles is expressing himself with exquisite irony. He means to suggest that the T-shirt exemplifies the injustice of uneven developments under the global capitalistic order that has doomed these children to a life of exploitation and cruel awareness of their cultural disadvantages. Life has indeed "happened" to them, rather than serving as something they can autonomously determine, and yes, it is in the schema of international socioeconomic relations, "shit."
He does.
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