A Modest Proposal for The Empire

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Thu Dec 27 22:13:14 PST 2001



>Yoshie Furuhashi:
>> Since when have you become an ascetic, though, Doug? :-0 The image
>> of "the future life of communist militancy" in _Empire_ is that of
>> "Saint Francis of Assisi":
>>
>> ***** Consider his work. To denounce the poverty of the multitude
>> he adopted that common condition and discovered there the ontological
>> power of a new society. The communist militant does the same,
>> identifying in the common condition of the multitude its enormous
>> wealth. (p. 413) *****
>>
>> If that's attractive, why not Dorothy Day & the Catholic Worker?
>
>One of the characteristics of contemporary capitalism, at
>least as it's practiced in the United States, which makes it
>importantly different from that criticized by Marx, is the
>predominance of created as opposed to natural or traditional
>"needs". These are necessary to create the ever-increasing
>demand which in turn creates the "need" for ever-increasing
>production and thus the expert leaders and rulers of production,
>the bourgoisie, and their system, capitalism. This production
>produces the surpluses which, as ever, fuel and drive imperial
>rule. A politics which broke this cycle to any large extent
>would be revolutionary because it would deprive the ruling
>class of its raison d'etre as well as the actual material
>goods it needs to project its power. The formation of communal
>and cooperative groups based on mutual aid or even less radical
>arrangements would be one way for people to begin implement
>such a revolution: they could begin to withdraw their
>support from the ruling class.
>
>That is, I think Dorothy Day was onto something, which is
>unfortunately masked by the religious particularism of her
>movement.
>
>-- Gordon

I differ with you and think that it doesn't make political sense (for leftists) to create a dichotomy between "natural" and "artificial" needs, but it is probably true that a large number of people -- not just the devoutly religious and pacifist -- feel the way you do, whether or not they actually take a voluntary vow of poverty. Rousseau, for one, did:

***** The simplicity and solitude of man's life..., the paucity of his wants, and the implements he had invented to satisfy them, left him a great deal of leisure, which he employed to furnish himself with many conveniences unknown to his fathers; and this was the first yoke he inadvertently imposed on himself, and the first source of the evils he prepared for his descendants. For, besides continuing thus to enervate both body and' mind, these conveniences lost with use almost all their power to please, and even degenerated into real needs until the want of them became far more disagreeable than the possession of them had been pleasant. Men would not have been unhappy at the loss of them, though the possession did not make them happy.... <http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/Rousseau-inequality2.html> *****

Non-Marxist critics of capitalism -- be they republican, communist, or reactionary, secular or religious -- often thought like Rousseau and resisted what they thought of as enslavement to an ever increasing dominion of needs. While Marx and Engels themselves didn't think of needs as Rousseau did, many Marxists since them have adopted Rousseau's attitude.

Rousseau-like resistance to an ever increasing dominion of needs, however, is in the end merely a defensive gesture, and a futile one at that in the capitalist world of anarchically planned obsolescence (e.g., it's often cheaper to buy a new model of X than have an old broken one repaired) and of constant innovations imposed by market competition; even cooperatives, unless they are _fully_ self-sufficient, cannot exist totally outside of the capitalist mode of production (that is why the U.S. embargo has hurt Cuba, for instance). Instead, we might aim for the world in which creation and satisfaction of new needs are democratically governed (in contrast to the capitalist world in which we have no control over them). -- Yoshie

* Calendar of Anti-War Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Anti-War Activist Resources: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osu.edu/students/CJP/>



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list