>
>It just seemed like he'd talked a lot about the cultivation of
>absolute need as a means of control.
>
>--
>Andy
He did. He called it the algebra of need and used the business of drug distribution as a metaphor for exploitation. This is from Naked Lunch:
>'Junk is the ideal product . . . the ultimate merchandise. No sales
>talk necessary. The client will crawl through a sewer and beg to
>buy. . . . The junk merchant does not sell his product to the
>consumer, he sells the consumer to the product. He does not improve
>and simplify his merchandise. He degrades and simplifies his client.
>He pays his staff in junk"
When he wrote things like this passage it was drug warriors, beginning with Anslinger, and high level dealers-- who never use their own product-- that Burroughs had in his sights. And he had them stand in for all those who live off others and are incapable of minding their own business. But he believed if you didn't have to crawl through the sewer it's possible to live a perfectly contented life addicted to opiates. In a book of collected essays from not long before he died (The Adding Machine) he talked about long lived addicts--- himself, Herbert Huncke and others.