The politics of desire
In The Accursed Share (Zone Books, 1988), Georges Bataille set out the premises of what was to become the politics of desire. Bataille takes as his starting point the creation of a surplus and its disruptive impact on the social order. In the first volume Bataille derives a general economic law that all societies produce a surplus (‘Laws of General Economy’):
"That as a rule an organism has at its disposal greater energy resources than are necessary for the operations that sustain like is evident from functions like growth and reproduction. Neither growth nor reproduction would be possible if plants and animals did not normally dispose of an excess. The very principle of living matter requires that the chemical operations of life, which demand an expenditure of energy, be gainful, productive of surpluses (27)."
Bataille goes on to argue that the surplus is potentially disruptive, calling the status quo into question. Gathering together examples from capitalist, pre-capitalist and Stalinist societies he seeks to show that all societies engage in the destruction of the surplus through war, government expenditure, potlatch or the creation of monasteries. This universal law is presented as evidence of the destructive power of the accursed share - the naturally occurring surplus of production.
In the second and third volumes, Bataille concentrates on the modern form of the unproductive consumption of the surplus: the creation of the realm of the erotic. In the realm of the erotic, Bataille argues, the surplus is consumed in the ever-extending life of the consumers, because, unlike sexual procreation, the erotic is wholly useless. He warns if we do not make consumption the sovereign principle of activity, we cannot help but succumb to those monstrous disorders without which we do not know how to consume the energy we have at our disposal (1993: 16).
Bataille’s attention to the surplus seemed to distill the character of the boom years of the 1960s (though it was written in the forties). The success of the industrialised economies of the West suggested to many radicals critics that there were no limits to growth in capitalist societies. Their criticisms of capitalist societies concentrated not on the material limitations of capitalist production, but on the dehumanising effects of consumer society.
The assumption that the surplus was a natural given was an adaptation to the peculiar conditions of post-war growth made by many. Radical economists Baran and Sweezy made it the starting point of their celebrated Monopoly Capital. Like Bataille, the Monthly Review contributors transformed the production of a surplus into an ahistorical economic law.
"The economic surplus, in the briefest possible definition, is the difference between what a society produces and the costs of producing it. The size of the surplus is an index of productivity and wealth, of how much freedom a society has to accomplish the goals it may set for itself (1966: 9)."
In presenting the surplus produced as a trend in all social formations, Baran and Sweezy were abstracting from the specific form of the surplus in a capitalist society. Under capitalism the surplus product takes the form of a surplus value. Surplus value is the value that labour creates over and above the value it receives in the form of wages. But as they say, ‘we prefer the concept "surplus" to the traditional Marxist concept "surplus value"’ (ibid.: 10). In preferring the concept surplus, Baran and Sweezy avoid the origin of that surplus in a given social relation: the relation of exploitation within production. ( ‘Capital is productive of value only as a relation, in so far as it is a coercive force on wage labour, compelling it to perform surplus labour, or spurring on the productive power of labour to produce relative surplus value’ Karl Marx, 1969: 93). What arises out of the age labour/capital relationship is naturalised as a general law of productivity.
...
Despite the self-conscious insistence that all human relations are social in character, and not naturally given, identity theory is blind to the one defining social relation of capitalist society: the exchange between capital and labour, and the creation of a surplus through exploitation. Identity theory is revolutionary as far as cultural relations are concerned. No traditional cultural patterns, whether of family life, gender, sexuality, or racial hierarchy are sacrosanct. All such cultural constants are held to be ripe for overthrowing. But the one relation that is absolutely closed to debate is the relation of exploitation.
Rather, identity theory assumes the creation of a surplus to be a natural given and beyond question, quite literally taking it for granted. The fact of a surplus is not seen as an outcome of social struggle, but an ever-present condition of human society.
This blind spot in identity theory is an unavoidable necessity or the outlook it represents. The argument of this pamphlet is that the creation of a surplus is the basis of identity theory. The surplus makes possible the cultural experimentation that identity theory thrives upon. No surplus, no endless play of difference.
Consequently the revolutionising rhetoric of identity theory must stop short at the realm of production. To call into question the exploitative social relation that lays the basis for cultural identity would be to call into question the whole project of identity theory. There can be no deconstruction of exploitation. Instead the creation of a surplus - and therefore the social relation that gives rise to it - must be assumed as a natural given.
-- Jim heartfield