“Economics are the method; the object is to change the heart and soul.” (Margaret Thatcher)
(www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104475)
Introduction. So we are discussing the person as such – the “heart and soul”; and the central value of the human being, from a humanist perspective. (Meant as theistic here, but with the individual’s central worth and social role as the main issue.) In particular, how this central value and social role are damaged or defeated in specific ways by the radical self-interest (model) of capitalism – as with the spurious humanism of Thatcher’s “absolute” market system.
Thus the actual discussion area is not the technical side of economics, or the technical-economic aspects of politics. The following focusses on the person and their treatment of others: (1) the type of person socially formed, their human image or “anthropology”; and (2) especially: the basic acts of living, the ethical quality of these interactions for the type of person a total market social system develops and clearly favors. Both Einstein and Michéa discuss and emphasize this area: fundamental questions of character and ethical social behavior. Their ideas are taken as supporting the person and their central social worth – not their utility as mere market system agents.
There are two main source texts:
- Jean-Claude Michéa’s book « L’enseignement de l’ignorance et ses conditions modernes » , also available online in a different version: “The school of ignorance and its modern conditions.” (source link: libcom.org – school of ignorance and modern conditions)
- Albert Einstein’s article “Why socialism?” from 1949. (source link: monthlyreview.org – why socialism)
Two excerpts from “Why Socialism?”, by Albert Einstein.
“… nowhere have we really overcome what Thorstein Veblen called ‘the predatory phase’ of human development.” (Einstein)
First, our basic context, and the control of knowledge in the US – a central area of concern and problems for public libraries. Internet monopolies, for example, have only made the noted problems more acute.
“Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of smaller ones. The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature. The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population. Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.”
Next, on the individual, and the social pressure for them to reflect radical self-interest or egoism, as system agents; to simply join and accept the conditions just given:
“I have now reached the point where I may indicate briefly what to me constitutes the essence of the crisis of our time. It concerns the relationship of the individual to society. The individual has become more conscious than ever of his dependence upon society. But he does not experience this dependence as a positive asset, as an organic tie, as a protective force, but rather as a threat to his natural rights, or even to his economic existence. Moreover, his position in society is such that the egotistical drives of his make-up are constantly being accentuated, while his social drives, which are by nature weaker, progressively deteriorate. All human beings, whatever their position in society, are suffering from this process of deterioration. Unknowingly prisoners of their own egotism, they feel insecure, lonely, and deprived of the naive, simple, and unsophisticated enjoyment of life. Man can find meaning in life, short and perilous as it is, only through devoting himself to society.”
Quoted by Michéa in “The school of ignorance and its modern conditions.”
“It was a fundamental principle of the Gradgrind philosophy that everything was to be paid for. Nobody was ever on any account to give anybody anything, or render anybody help without purchase…. And if we didn’t get to Heaven that way, it was not a politico-economical place, and we had no business there.” Charles Dickens, Hard Times (1845).
Jean-Claude Michéa. [Section D]: “The ambiguity of market exchange.” From his essay “The school of ignorance and its modern conditions”.
(Translation by Edward Eggleston. Original footnote numbers are in place. One can consult the actual notes in the version on libcom.org.)
“There is a hidden relation between these two words: liberty and commerce”. (Tocqueville)
There is a historical link between the advent of modernity – in other words, societies consciously designed and self-instituted – and market exchange; (17) of which one of the results is always to produce liberty, which means, put differently, a certain degree of dissolution of what Alain Caillé called the primary social forms (la socialité primaire). The fundamental human characteristics (fondements anthropologiques) of these forms, indeed, are defined by the triple obligation of giving, receiving, and “return”: action in light of responsibility. (18) In other words, what links subjects personally (as forming a common history, creating relations over time) is always, finally, a symbolic debt – and thus a form of fidelity to observe.
The magic of money – in the sense of a general equivalent – resides therefore in the possibility it offers to the subject to be free of all debt toward a “donateur”, or benefactor, from the moment the rendered service has been paid for in this context. (19) This shows that market exchange is not simply organized as the economic circulation of goods. It defines as well a new metaphysics of human relations. In my release in this field from what I owe, what I am (also) buying, is the time implied in a traditional obligation to attend to responsibilities; and so, in the same occasion, the right to not have a history with those who have rendered a service to me. (20) The market exchange therefore permits one to take liberties with others.
The structural effect of this economic logic is unquestionably positive for individuals, because a world where the symbolic debt is the only basis for social connection does not leave, by definition, much room for a personal, set-aside space. That is to say, a possibility to know solitude or separation, and to have intimacy (notably sexual and amorous); which is probably the most valuable contribution of modernity to human history.
There is, however, the fundamental possibility Descartes emphasized when he justified his move to Amsterdam. He writes: “In this great city, where there is no one, except me, who is not acting as a merchant, each is so attentive to his profit that I could stay here all my life, without ever being seen by anyone [ … ]. What other country allows one to enjoy such complete liberty?” (21) The problem, then, is that such liberty remains exposed – if not self-limiting – to the paradox of Kant’s dove, “who in free flight divides the air, sensing resistance, and imagines herself flying even better in a void.”
In fact, there is something unsettling – for those of us experiencing the contemporary destruction of the cities [social collapse in the cities of France] – in the unhesitant remark added by Descartes, citing further advantages of Amsterdam: noting the possibility to consider other people as nothing more than “trees encountering other trees in a forest, or the animals grazing there.”
The second merit of Western modernity, therefore, is not only to have realized very early the humanly destructive possibilities of market logic (which is, after Theognis, knowledge common to all societies), but to have the intelligence to oppose this logic. This opposition, along with the traditional counterweight based on the principle of a “donation” (22) [or giving as a benefactor], concerns the whole series of modern inventions, as with ethical dispositions, civic-mindedness, and in a general sense, all the forms of “urbanité”: that is, of obligation without expectation of equal exchange, without conditions, practiced toward all others.(23) Following Orwell, this can be called “common decency”; and it is, in sum, a mixture of historically constituted forms of traditional civility and modern dispositions, which until now helped to neutralize a great part of “l’horreur économique” – the severely anti-social side of market logic.
In part, one should conclude from this analysis that Western modernity cannot be characterized only by the reign of the economy. Modernity’s definition must include, with clarity and emphasis, the practical features that constitute a critical response to this reign.(24) Another part is that modernism – as the religion of capital – necessarily tends, from a certain beginning, to deconstruct not only the human foundations of social life, as with the invariable act of unconditional giving (“don”); but equally and increasingly, all of the compensating forms of civility or criticism that modernity itself had the wisdom to invent.
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