Gordon:
>> 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.
Yoshie Furuhashi:
> 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).
It is true that "needs" can be categorized as desires, but I believe that in the analysis of contemporary capitalism it is useful to draw distinctions between some kinds of desires and others, because of the crucial role consumerism plays in sustaining present capitalist formations and in disciplining the lower classes.
1. Each successive version of slavery requires that humans be coerced or seduced into labor, that the labor produce a surplus, and that the surplus be applied to maintain and extend the system of slavery _or_ be destroyed in order to maintain the scarcity which is the necessary shadow or dark side of the surplus. In the case of capitalism, the power and repute of the bourgeoisie and their system depend on a "shortage" of capital; in order for there to be such a shortage, production must be constantly consumed, in war, imperialism, waste, and most recently by pushing the workers to work at consuming their production ever more rapidly, so that more production can take place.
Consumerism, a constant expansion of desire for and acquisition of ever newer and more expensive goods well over and above any desires which might have arisen out of the consumers' autonomous biotic or psychic processes, is obviously important in getting rid of the results of production during periods when no catastrophe or crisis is available to do the work.
2. Consumerism also disciplines the worker-consumers by surrounding them with a physical and mental context in which almost every element is defined and ordered by bourgeois power, especially in the new suburban world of housing tract - industrial park - mall, strung together by new roads bearing new vehicles. Everything appears to come from the mysteries of the corporate world and its politics instead of from intelligible labor.
If consumerism is as critical as I suppose, then resistance to the "dominion of needs" is more than a defensive gesture; if it became sufficiently widespread, and if it were accompanied by other revolutionary movements, such as the communistic distribution of basic goods, it could obviously force serious changes on the present social and political system, if not start the work of bringing it down entirely. But given the very aggressive abrogations of autonomy and freedom already in play, even defensive gestures are of considerable value.
-- Gordon