Carrol Cox wrote:
>
>
> The phrase, "torment of choice," represents the complete triumph of
> capitalist ideology. Nothing is more crucial to the continued existence
> of capitalism than the superstitious belief that "choice" is good in
> itself. The great Epic of Capitalism, Paradise Lost, is built upon this
> rock: Choice makes us human. To deny choice is to fail in one's
> humanity.
Cf. the following:
Milton consistently introduces his characters from nowhere, in isolation from all social relations. By the choices they make they then create new social relations within which their action can take on meaning not inherent in the action itself. The characters, rather, create that meaning through grounding their motive in a principle which operates in abstraction from the visible actuality which it explains or controls. This freedom of characters from prior social relations is the material content of the freedom to choose which the poem endlessly reiterates. This separation (freedom) of an act's meaning from its visible consequences is the precondition for such freedom, and whenever in Paradise Lost characters ascribe meaning (including analogical meaning) to an act's visible consequences or to the act itself, they fall, cutting themselves off from all possible social relations. But when they base their choice on correct principle, in abstraction from all visible or analogical meaning, then their free choice enacts a society in which the coherence of motive and act and of act and result is guaranteed by the Providence to which they have freely submitted themselves.
The compulsion here lies not in the submission of the will to Providence (which is the condition of their freedom) but in the total freedom of choice itself, in the freedom inherent in the separation of action from result which compels the individual to choose freely the action which will embody her motive. In Paradise Lost we can see this compulsory freedom most simply in the episode of Uriel and the cherub, particularly if we view the latter (as Uriel must) as a cherub rather than as Satan in disguise, for the whole dialogue makes clear that there was nothing in the direct "cherubic" experience of the cherub or in his hierarchical place to initiate his action. This cherub has received from most critics the cruelest possible treatment, that of ignoring his very existence. Seeing him only as Satan in the guise of a cherub, they seldom explore the fact that for Uriel he is only a cherub. Milton is as explicit as possible on this point:
So spake the false dissembler unperceived; For neither man nor angel can discern Hypocrisy . . .
(III. 681-83)
If Satan's hypocrisy is perceivable only to God, then the overt narrative, a meeting of two angels, merits consideration in its own right, uncolored by the knowledge that it is Satan who speaks. So considered the scene introduces us to social relations in Milton's heaven, the poem's one example of the everyday life of the unfallen angels. The premise of Satan's ruse, the possibility that all might be as it seems to be, reveals the most radical distinction between Milton's heaven and Dante's to be that in Milton's anything can happen, including an angel on a solitary sight-seeing tour. Both Uriel and the cherub exhibit what Marx called the "dot-like isolation" of the agent in capitalist society, and no sooner does Uriel appear than he is confronted with an imposed free choice under conditions which, in themselves, give no indication of the meaning of that choice. [_Milton Studies_ (1987), pp. 168-69]
One can't buy a can of string beans anymore without having to choose (within the same brand) among four or five slightly different versions. This sort of compulsory free choice is _the_ ultimate tyranny of capitalism. And incidentally, fundamentalists who really believe are probably faced with more tormenting choices in a day than most of us are in a week.
Carrol