Ennui (was Re: entrepreneurs)

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Sat Dec 2 10:02:29 PST 2000


Hi Rob:


>Oh, I think to imagine a system that can feed and shelter all the world's
>people is to imagine a very different world. And I wasn't comparing
>pleasures. If anything, I was trying to enumerate the conditions for
>pleasure (eg. life as the logical priority - and time to live life's
>potentials). Stuff I'd've thought was beyond dispute, yet apparently
>forgotten. No natural trajectory from there to 'small is beautiful' or
>betrayed revolutions, I'd've thought.

True -- I made a misleading, hyperbolic statement (but you know I'm fond of hyperbole -- besides I wrote it sleepily, just before going to bed). Let me have a go again & see if I can clarify myself better. There are several possibilities:

1. Marx, especially in _Capital_, Volume Three:

***** This surplus-labour appears as surplus-value, and this surplus-value exists as a surplus-product. Surplus-labour in general, as labour performed over and above the given requirements, must always remain. In the capitalist as well as in the slave system, etc., it merely assumes an antagonistic form and is supplemented by complete idleness of a stratum of society. A definite quantity of surplus-labour is required as insurance against accidents, and by the necessary and progressive expansion of the process of reproduction in keeping with the development of the needs and the growth of population, which is called accumulation from the viewpoint of the capitalist. It is one of the civilising aspects of capital that it enforces this surplus-labour in a manner and under conditions which are more advantageous to the development of the productive forces, social relations, and the creation of the elements for a new and higher form than under the preceding forms of slavery, serfdom, etc. Thus it gives rise to a stage, on the one hand, in which coercion and monopolisation of social development (including its material and intellectual advantages) by one portion of society at the expense of the other are eliminated; on the other hand, it creates the material means and embryonic conditions, making it possible in a higher form of society to combine this surplus-labour with a greater reduction of time devoted to material labour in general. For, depending on the development of labour productivity, surplus-labour may be large in a small total working-day, and relatively small in a large total working-day. If the necessary labour-time=3 and the surplus-labour=3, then the total working-day=6 and the rate of surplus-labour=100%. If the necessary labour=9 and the surplus-labour=3, then the total working-day=12 and the rate of surplus-labour only=33 1/3 %. In that case, it depends upon the labour productivity how much use-value shall be produced in a definite time, hence also in a definite surplus labour-time. The actual wealth of society, and the possibility of constantly expanding its reproduction process, therefore, do not depend upon the duration of surplus-labour, but upon its productivity and the more or less copious conditions of production under which it is performed. In fact, the realm of freedom actually begins only where labour which is determined by necessity and mundane considerations ceases; thus in the very nature of things it lies beyond the sphere of actual material production. Just as the savage must wrestle with Nature to satisfy his wants, to maintain and reproduce life, so must civilised man, and he must do so in all social formations and under all possible modes of production. With his development this realm of physical necessity expands as a result of his wants; but, at the same time, the forces of production which satisfy these wants also increase. Freedom in this field can only consist in socialised man, the associated producers, rationally regulating their interchange with Nature, bringing it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by the blind forces of Nature; and achieving this with the least expenditure of energy and under conditions most favourable to, and worthy of, their human nature. But it nonetheless still remains a realm of necessity. Beyond it begins that development of human energy which is an end in itself, the true realm of freedom, which, however, can blossom forth only with this realm of necessity as its basis. The shortening of the working-day is its basic prerequisite. <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch48.htm> *****

2. Amartya Sen & Martha Nussbaum: a neo-Aristotelian approach.

3. Andre Gorz, Alain Lipietz, etc.

4. John Zerzan, "Buy Nothing Day" (at <http://www.adbusters.org/campaigns/bnd/>), "Simply Living" (at <http://www.simplyliving.org/sl/>), etc.

5. Algeria, Afghanistan, etc.

6. _Fight Club_ (a post-materialist fascism & terrorism)

Of course, I'd urge everyone to adopt 1, but 2 & 3 have made some valuable contributions as well (though at the same time sadly leading many away from Marxism). 4 is silly, if perhaps harmless. Avoid 5 (in poor nations) & 6 (in rich nations). I think that 6 (a post-materialist fascism) is a distinctive possibility in the USA....


>A
>Communist Britain in 1848 would not, for instance, be the same thing as one
>in 2001. Democratic control over the means of production can take many
>forms, exist within many meaning systems, and follow many trajectories. So
>desires will be altered, sure, but most won't converge on any natural norm -
>having embarked from a myriad points they will take a myriad routes to a
>myriad new manifestations.

No disagreement here. I quoted the Marx passage in question to emphasize practice: "Which [of the desires] will be merely changed and [which eliminated] in a Communist [society] can [only occur in a practical] way, by [changing the real], actual [conditions of production and intercourse]". In other words, it is no good trying to solve theoretically ahead of time what can be only determined in practice, in history -- that's all.


>The thing to
>avoid is a hegemonic take of the world in which humanity's natural
>restlessness (I'm convinced of this, so argument ain't gonna work for me,
>Yoshie) is discouraged because a natural perfection is deemed to have been
>attained. That'd be to impose stasis on the naturally dynamic (mebbe even
>naturally contradictory).

I don't know if humanity is "naturally restless," but let's not overemphasize our possible difference here (for disagreement, if there is any, must be a minor affair), since we agree that the market _compulsion_ to make us restless is bad & should be abolished. If you mean that, under socialism, we should not try to stifle restless migration of love & that we should try to prevent ennui (born of political passivity imposed from above, in exchange for welfare & security paternalistically provided by the socialist State) from destroying the moral foundation of socialism (see Michael Munk's "Socialism in Czechoslovakia: What Went Wrong?" _Science & Society_ 64.2 [Summer 2000]), I cannot agree more.


> >Both bulimia & anorexia are responses to M-C-M'
>
>D'ya mean insofar as 'the market' frames an ideal for a gender ('you are
>primarily a creature of and for sex' plus 'the best of you would look like
>this') to meet its production projections? And that this leads to eating
>disorders and such? Sure! Or have we gone deeper than that? I'm not
>always very good at deep, so, apologies.

That, too, but in addition I think that moderate eating, moderate drinking, moderate smoking, etc. under capitalism are extremely difficult, for the logic of M-C-M', unless restricted by the State, tends toward boom (bulimia) & bust (anorexia), Schumpeter's creative destruction, etc. Capitalism produces & binds abstract Scarcity & abstractly Unlimited Wants to the constant self-positing & self-overcoming of limits & transgressions. At the same time, the same tendency dialectically entails its opposite: micro-physics of power operating through governmental & non-governmental regulations of individual behaviors to produce docile, healthy, & productive bodies (remember Foucault here).

BTW, anorexia of young women is not simply a result of being victimized by the sexist exaltation of slim, delicate, & fragile bodies. Anorexia, paradoxical as it may sound, is also a (futile & self-destructive) drive by young women to *resist* sexism -- esp. turning women into breeders denied the full control of reproductive capacity -- symbolically. It's akin to some enslaved African women committing suicide and/or infanticide to elude slave owners' possession of their bodies & reproductive capacity.

Yoshie



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