| William Blake's 1795 painting of Isaac Newton. Newton is focused upon diagrams he is drawing with a compass. Upon the scroll we can see the order that arises from the precision of geometry. But Newton has his back to the beauty of the natural world, his sole interest is in his scroll and compasses. The brightly colored flora and fauna and the complexity of the natural world is of no interest to Newton. He is stuck in the circle that he drew with his compass. the fact that Blake placed Newton at the bottom of the ocean speaks a lot about how he felt towards him. Surrounded by no one, Blake conveyed that Newton was alone. |
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"People steeped in the culture of monopoly capitalism do not want what they need and do not need what they want." -- Paul Baran The Pursuit of Pointless Consumerism |
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The busiest streets of London are crowded with shops whose show cases display all the riches of the world, Indian shawls, American revolvers, Chinese porcelain, Parisian corsets, furs from Russia and spices from the tropics, but all of these worldly things bear odious, white paper labels with Arabic numerals and then laconic symbols £ s. d. This is how commodities are presented in circulation. --Karl Marx: Critique of Political Economy, 1859 |
| Exchange has a history of its own. It has passed through different
phases. There was a time, as in the Middle Ages, when only the superfluous,
the excess of production over consumption, was exchanged.
There was again a time, when not only the superfluous, but all products, all industrial existence, had passed into commerce, when the whole of production depended on exchange. ... Finally, there came a time when everything that men had considered as inalienable became an object of exchange, of traffic and could be alienated. This is the time when the very things which till then had been communicated, but never exchanged; given, but never sold; acquired, but never bought — virtue, love, conviction, knowledge, conscience, etc. — when everything, in short, passed into commerce. It is the time of general corruption, of universal venality, or, to speak in terms of political economy, the time when everything, moral or physical, having become a marketable value, is brought to the market to be assessed at its truest value. The Poverty of Philosophy, 1847 |
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Congradulations to the
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