Re: planet's bullet points. Now we're really getting somewhere. I think that's a helpful summary, and illuminates a lot of the core issues. Such as:
Originally Posted by planet news
1) Capitalism always tends towards a standardization of our living space.
1) i. Whenever something is standardized or "boxed off", people are no longer fully free to move about in the ways that they please; only through the channels that are set out for them.
Assuming this is true, is it a problem if the channels are a direct reflection of what people want to begin with? It's rather like an election: people are only free to move around within the laws that are "set out for them," but they're the ones who choose the people who set the laws to begin with.
Any set of laws or rules will create contours that society is encouraged to flow into. Only anarchy avoids this. The solution is not to try to tear down even the slightest semblance of a social framework, though, but to make sure we get to collectively decide what it should look like. And that's what we have.
Originally Posted by planet news
3) i. An obvious example is being an artist. The artist wants to be able to create whatever he sees fit. However, he is forced to consider how his work will be consumed, since this is what Capitalism stresses is the ultimate purpose of his work.
A very important part of this idea is being left out. It should read "he is forced to consider how his work will be consumed...
if he desires to make a living from it." He could just have a day job, use that to sustain himself, and then create whatever art he wants. He has the freedom to create his art, just not the freedom to have society feed and clothe him return.
This sort of thing always seems to get left out of discussions about how capitalism and art. They operate with the unstated assumption that there's no difference between the freedom to create (which we should have, and do) and the right to have your creative process subsidized by everyone else (which we shouldn't, and don't).
Originally Posted by planet news
3) ii. His work---a mural meant to inspire others and produce memes and original, creative notions within others---is standardized by the system into mass-produced postcards. These postcards are bought and used and discarded---in other words, consumed.
At this point it may be helpful to define what you mean by "consumed," because you can't really "consume" a mural the way you can a postcard. Is consumption only good when it's abstract, like looking at a painting, and bad whenever it involves something more tangible? How many times does something have to be repurposed before it avoids this negative label? Many things are repurposed and re-used, after all, even the t-shirts you mention later.
Originally Posted by planet news
4) Capitalism must hunt down and repackage every produced thing into destructable, consumable items---this is its structure.
What a difference phrasing makes. You could just as easily say that capitalism must find and eradicate every need and discomfort that people have, because there's always money in it.
Originally Posted by planet news
5) Freedom is being able to create freely without concern for its utilitarian use; to think a thought freed from Capital concerns. Most importantly, it is to BE GIVEN THE OPTION to do this in mainstream society.
I was mostly with you up until that semicolon. I don't think freedom means being able to think a thought that has nothing to do with capital. No matter what laws we choose (or even if we have none), people will not be free from having to think about their situation, whatever it may be.
Originally Posted by planet news
6) Capitalism is fluid because of how it is able to envelope everything inside its standardized boxes without fail. It diffuses outwards, seeps through the cracks, and HUNTS for creativity in order to USE IT to move more capital.
Capitalism can't be both "fluid" and "standardized." If capitalism is so flexible that it can bend to fit anything, as you say, then how can we say that it constrains or envelopes at all? If it isn't rigid, then it can't really restrict.
Let's extend the liquid analogy: when you put something in water, does the water
surround it, or
make room for it?
Originally Posted by planet news
7) To bring my example full circle and show that it is a real world phenomenon: the artist I described was Shepard Fairey. He began as a renegade street artist working outside of the system. Now he has a line of T-shirt which can be bought, worn and discarded.
Take it up with Fairey; people can't do that unless he agrees to let them.