What's a commodity? (I don't know)

[kenneth.mackendrick]

> Ken writes:
> 
> >... The commodity functions 
> >dynamically as a source of potential revolutionary activity and as a source of 
> >domination.
> 
> Huh?  I think you're confusing a commodity, its use-value, and its actual
> use in a particular context when you say this.

You're right here - the point i am trying to make is that technological gains both 
increase and decrease our opportunities simultaneously in different ways.  The 
movie, for Benjamin, may have been revolutionary in its mass appeal but it also 
possesses a magical element in this levelling appeal.

> >In a very real way the music industry and its detractors, whether 
> >independent artists, media critics etc., retain an ambiguous character.
> 
> Whoa!  The music _industry_ has an ambiguous character?  That's like
> saying the banking industry has an ambiguous character.

I was using the term the music industry to encompass the widest possible 
character of musicians, promoters, advertisers, distributors, etc.  Some indie 
bands do their own stuff.  Some performers only do live shows....  My comment 
only makes sense within the idea that the industry includes elements of resistance 
to the industry itself (which, i do no think, it could avoid).  And yes - even the god 
damn banking system is ambiguous.  Imagine a world without banking.  No pay 
cheques, no loans, no records, files, transactions, exchange of goods, distribution, 
production, etc.  The economy is DEPENDENT upon the banking system - and to 
some extent all us folks are dependent on it for our survival.  Sure - an individual 
can survive without a bank account - but the apparatus around every individual 
depends, unfortunately, upon that evil and diabolical system.  Its ambiguity lies in 
the negation that it feeds - what life would be like without banking.

> 
> >It seems to me that what has been found so offensive in music is 
> >precisely the point at which the music sparks brightest and is in its most 
> >revolutionary constellation (until, soonhereafter, it itself becomes cliche
> - the 
> >broken record).
> >
> 
> What's this point?  Who's found it offensive?  In what sense is this point
> the apex of its revolutionary constellation?  In sum, what are the situations
> where the use-values of these things are revolutionary?  Don't misunderstand
> me -- it isn't that I don't believe these opportunities exist, but that I want 
> to know what they are -- but you're not telling me!

I think i'm wrong about offensive and revolutionary being tied.  My immediate 
reaction ran like this - the stuff that offends people gets then out of their armchairs 
and onto the streets.  Something is to be said about that but i'm not sure what.  
perhaps extremes help bring into focus the horizon beyond and the history within.

please nix the nonsense,
ken