[lbo-talk] in which lbo-talk defends 'the sopranos'

Ted Winslow egwinslow at rogers.com
Fri Oct 8 10:04:06 PDT 2004


Here's another passage in which Marx both claims that some "subjective states" are superior to others and draws on literature, in this case Goethe and Shakespeare, for insight both into the nature of the highest "subjective states" (i.e. states that realize the "supreme good") and into the psychopathological ones that don't, insights relevant to the practice of political economy. The "highest" state elaborated here differs from the idea of human "powers" expressed in the claims that a "will to power" is the "essence of life" and "is acted out in all that happens" and that "to practice cruelty is to enjoy the highest gratification of the feeling of power."


> “What, man! confound it, hands and feet
> And head and backside, all are yours!
> And what we take while life is sweet,
> Is that to be declared not ours?
>
> Six stallions, say, I can afford,
> Is not their strength my property?
> I tear along, a sporting lord,
> As if their legs belonged to me.”
>
> Goethe: Faust (Mephistopheles)
>
>
> Shakespeare in Timon of Athens:
>
> “Gold? Yellow, glittering, precious gold?
> No, Gods, I am no idle votarist! ...
> Thus much of this will make black white, foul fair,
> Wrong right, base noble, old young, coward valiant.
> ... Why, this
> Will lug your priests and servants from your sides,
> Pluck stout men’s pillows from below their heads:
> This yellow slave
> Will knit and break religions, bless the accursed;
>
> Make the hoar leprosy adored, place thieves
> And give them title, knee and approbation
> With senators on the bench: This is it
> That makes the wappen’d widow wed again;
>
> She, whom the spital-house and ulcerous sores
> Would cast the gorge at, this embalms and spices
> To the April day again. Come, damned earth,
> Thou common whore of mankind, that put’st odds
> Among the rout of nations.”
>
> And also later:
>
> “O thou sweet king-killer, and dear divorce
> ‘Twixt natural son and sire! thou bright defiler
> Of Hymen’s purest bed! thou valiant Mars!
> Thou ever young, fresh, loved and delicate wooer,
>
> Whose blush doth thaw the consecrated snow
> That lies on Dian’s lap! Thou visible God!
> That solder’st close impossibilities,
> And makest them kiss! That speak’st with every tongue,
>
> To every purpose! O thou touch of hearts!
> Think, thy slave man rebels, and by thy virtue
> Set them into confounding odds, that beasts
> May have the world in empire!”
>
> Shakespeare excellently depicts the real nature of money. To
> understand him, let us begin, first of all, by expounding the passage
> from Goethe.
>
> That which is for me through the medium of money — that for which I
> can pay (i.e., which money can buy) — that am I myself, the possessor
> of the money. The extent of the power of money is the extent of my
> power. Money’s properties are my — the possessor’s — properties and
> essential powers. Thus, what I am and am capable of is by no means
> determined by my individuality. I am ugly, but I can buy for myself
> the most beautiful of women. Therefore I am not ugly, for the effect
> of ugliness — its deterrent power — is nullified by money. I,
> according to my individual characteristics, am lame, but money
> furnishes me with twenty-four feet. Therefore I am not lame. I am bad,
> dishonest, unscrupulous, stupid; but money is honoured, and hence its
> possessor. Money is the supreme good, therefore its possessor is good.
> Money, besides, saves me the trouble of being dishonest: I am
> therefore presumed honest. I am brainless, but money is the real brain
> of all things and how then should its possessor be brainless? Besides,
> he can buy clever people for himself, and is he who has a power over
> the clever not more clever than the clever? Do not I, who thanks to
> money am capable of all that the human heart longs for, possess all
> human capacities? Does not my money, therefore, transform all my
> incapacities into their contrary?
>
> If money is the bond binding me to human life, binding society to me,
> connecting me with nature and man, is not money the bond of all bonds?
> Can it not dissolve and bind all ties? Is it not, therefore, also the
> universal agent of separation? It is the coin that really separates as
> well as the real binding agent — the [. . .] chemical power of
> society.
>
> Shakespeare stresses especially two properties of money:
>
> 1. It is the visible divinity — the transformation of all human and
> natural properties into their contraries, the universal confounding
> and distorting of things: impossibilities are soldered together by it.
>
> 2. It is the common whore, the common procurer of people and nations.
>
> The distorting and confounding of all human and natural qualities, the
> fraternisation of impossibilities — the divine power of money — lies
> in its character as men’s estranged, alienating and self-disposing
> species-nature. Money is the alienated ability of mankind.
>
> That which I am unable to do as a man, and of which therefore all my
> individual essential powers are incapable, I am able to do by means of
> money. Money thus turns each of these powers into something which in
> itself it is not — turns it, that is, into its contrary.


> Assume man to be man and his relationship to the world to be a human
> one: then you can exchange love only for love, trust for trust, etc.
> If you want to enjoy art, you must be an artistically cultivated
> person; if you want to exercise influence over other people, you must
> be a person with a stimulating and encouraging effect on other people.
> Every one of your relations to man and to nature must be a specific
> expression, corresponding to the object of your will, of your real
> individual life. If you love without evoking love in return — that is,
> if your loving as loving does not produce reciprocal love; if through
> a living expression of yourself as a loving person you do not make
> yourself a beloved one, then your love is impotent — a misfortune.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/power.htm

Ted



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list