On Jun 30, 2007, at 3:18 PM, Miles Jackson wrote:
> Imagine psychologists develop a machine that can accurately map any
> person's psychological characteristics (thoughts, interests, opinions,
> desires, fears). Would this knowledge allow us to understand and
> analyze the social structure of a particular society? Absolutely not!
> Sure, the machine may tell us "George over here is one greedy son of a
> bitch". However, that knowledge cannot explain social structural
> characteristics such as economic inequality in our society, because a
> greedy person cannot transform that psychological impulse into
> economic
> advantage unless there is a social structure that enables vast
> economic
> disparities. In our capitalist society, a greedy person can become
> rich
> because there are social conditions that enable economic
> inequality. In
> constrast, a greedy person in a hunting and gathering society cannot
> become rich, because the social conditions of that society do not
> enable
> or allow vast economic disparities.
Yeah, but we have a society that not only rewards, but positively encourages greed. And the means of a generalized greed - money. As Marx said in the Grundrisse (p. 222):
"Money is therefore not only an object, but is the object of greed. It is essentially auri sacra fames. Greed as such, as a particular form of the drive, i.e. as distinct from the craving for a particular kind of wealth, e.g. for clothes, weapons, jewels, women, wine etc., is possible only when general wealth, wealth as such, has become individualized in a particular thing, i.e. as soon as money is posited in its third quality. Money is therefore not ony the object but also the fountainhead of greed.... Hedonism in the abstract presupposes an object which possesses all pleasures in potentiality."
Try to find evidence of that as our ancestors sat around and skinned bison. Or evidence of commodity fetishism, either. And these features of our capitalized psyches have to retard and twist any attempt to build a better society. That, and the inhibitions against rebellion that help the system reproduce itself. Hegemony is a psychological phenomenon. How can you do radical politics without dealing with all that?
Doug