I did a bit of reading into the various posts that went on to become The Third Place, which I wrote late last year to be a sort of repository of ideas and concepts which never made it to The Work-Standard. No wonder why so many of the posts felt random, zany, and even outlandish. What should have been about the eponymous “Third Place” ended up being a cutting room floor. Even so, I still managed to figure out which Third Place posts can be salvaged and what should be consigned to the “Uncategorized” category of my Blog.

That leaves me with a motley skeleton of posts from which I will be using as the nucleus of the long overdue First Edition of The Third Place. But the posts that I am going to keep will need new replacements to address the overarching subject of the treatise. What is the “Third Place,” its corresponding “Second Place” and “First Place,” and what are their shared relationship to the SSE (Socialist Student Economy)? If the lynchpin binding The Work-Standard (2^nd Ed.) was the “Death of Bretton Woods,” what should be the lynchpin for The Third Place (1^st Ed.)?   

Before it devolved into the cutting room floor that it later became, The Third Place was meant to be an in-depth discussion about the SSE and the role of its Student Government. The Council State needs a new generation of young people capable of demonstrating the statecraft required to govern the nation. Council Democracy demands real statesmen. There is to be no room whatsoever for those career politicians and special interests who all characterize Parliamentary Democracy. The training and education of tomorrow’s statesmen will take place at the SSE’s Student Government, allowing aspiring statesmen and political party leaders ample opportunities to hone their talents and acquire political-economic governance skills.

In the school life of the Student Body, the SSE is the “Second Place,” and the Household is the “First Place.” The eponymous “Third Place” is a special institution exclusive to the Student Government called the Shopping Citadel, its political-economic activities supported by a social support structure related to the school life of the Student Body. Tomorrow’s statesmen have to start somewhere, after all.

What would be the best point of origin, the lynchpin that would give the SSE and all three Places their intended roles? Look no further than the 1959 “American National Exhibition” in Moscow, an historical event whose exhibits bear instructive lessons and impactful implications for the SSE and the three Places. What began as a 1957 diplomatic ploy to open an exhibition of an American supermarket in former Yugoslavia would later go on to become a debate over, up until now, the merits of “Capitalism” (Read: Production for Profit) and “Communism” (Read: Production for Utility).

Were the Kitchen Debates really a debate over the alleged superiority of “Capitalism” (Read: Production for Profit) and “Communism” (Read: Production for Utility), as we are often told by Cold War historians?

Or, to refer back to what I wrote in “Applications of Reciprocal Theory of Value and Work Theory of Money (Pt. I of II),” were the debates instead about the merits of one National Essence and that of another National Essence? If so, would the National Essence of one nation manifest itself through its own Technologies?

Just think critically about the implications of what I am discussing here. America in the throes of the Great Depression came up with the “supermarket,” where anyone can go in, pick up foodstuffs without the direct intervention of a grocery clerk, and then buy them at sensible Prices. Is that really the product of Neoliberalism or is it in hindsight an economic manifestation of the “Figure of the American Minuteman” within the State of Total Mobilization, of “shopping at a ‘moment’s notice?’”

I mean, the qualifications for being a Minuteman in the Thirteen Colonies are pretty much spot on to what I would expect from somebody working at a supermarket. With Socialist Heroic Realism as my guide, if I were to describe the supermarket in a Hamiltonian Federalist Socialist conception of America, its economic activities would be akin to the Minutemen. It would certainly be the case in Production for Dasein.

“Minutemen were a small hand-picked elite force which were required to be highly mobile and able to assemble quickly. Minutemen were selected from militia muster rolls by their commanding officers. Typically 25 years of age or younger, they were chosen for their enthusiasm, reliability, and physical strength. Usually about one quarter of the militia served as Minutemen, performing additional duties as such. The Minutemen were the first armed militia to arrive or await a battle.”

Whichever way one feels about me ascertaining such bold questions, I now have a good idea on one of my priorities for the Blog. My goal before the end of this year is to finish The Third Place (1^st Ed.) and eventually incorporate into my future Blog post like what I have been doing with The Work-Standard (2^nd Ed.). I am expecting The Third Place to be a much shorter treatise, so it should not take me too long.

Categories: Third Place

Tags: ARPLAN, Cold War, Economics, Finance, Heroic Realism, Philosophy, Politics, Psychology, Richard Nixon, Socialist Finance, Total Educational Effort, Total Mobilization, United States, Work-Standard