A scrap from a 1996 notebook, it was sent to the aut-op-sy listserve:
In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels formulated a paragraph that can be read in many contexts, but deserves certain emphasis here immensely facilitated means of communications:
The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all the instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communications, draws all, even the most barbarian nations into civilisation. The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In a word, it creates a world after its own image (Marx and Engels 1847/1952: 47)
Interestingly, the ‘immensely facilitated’ means of communications of the English translation might also be rendered with a stronger affirmation when translated as ‘infinite release’ – the ‘unendlich erleichterten’ (Marx and Engels 1847/1970: 47) suggests also the release of a never-ending opening of communications that already anticipates the continually developing communications environment character of the information order today [1996]
Trinketization 