The power of the capitalist dollar.

I wanted to blog about an idea I found particularly interesting in this week’s reading. It is an idea presented in the 1944 manuscripts section titled, “The Power of Money in Bourgeois Society”. In the begging of this section Marx uses examples of Shakespeare to describe the nature of money. Marx then goes onto talk about the nature of money in capitalist society, and its power.

In the next paragraph, Marx expounds upon the role of money in society as basically encompassing all that is seen as positive. Marx has asserted earlier that the individual’s worth is driven down as the worth of money rises. Now we see from this section that not only does this exchange take place, but also that money seems to inherit value. For example Money is seen to contain those positive attributes of man and deposits them onto whoever has money. Marx says that now it is no longer the man that is powerful, honorable, beautiful, but it is his money. Mans power is not the extent of “his” power in fact but the extent of his moneys power. Marx says, “I am bad, dishonest, unscrupulous, stupid; but money is honored, and therefore so is its possessor. Money is the supreme good, therefore its possessor is good.”

Now what I find interesting here is that Marx doesn’t restrain money to simply buying objects. But moneys power bleeds into the realm of human virtue, and can even put a price on honor, beauty, etc. According to Marx, In the capitalist market place literally anything can be bought and sold. Thinking about this, at first I wanted to reject the idea. I was resistant to it initially, but then I started to think about it a little more. After thinking Marx’s idea doesn’t seem all that farfetched. I think of these examples and find that I have witnessed these invaluable things be bought and sold. I have seen men with money that are dishonest buy credibility with the presence of their money.

I hate to think that this is actually the way the world works, and though I can see through it, I don’t know that a lot of people do. I don’t want to live in a world where money is the ultimate power, and the value of a person’s actual virtues is nil. I don’t know if the world is this way, I have seen examples that could support both sides, but at the same time, it is still troubling to me.

Does Marx overlook the Complete Human in his ideology?

According to Hegel, Consciousness goes out in search of resistance to its will within the world. When it finally finds this resistance, it demands recognition, and assuming it gets that recognition, it discovers itself as an 'us'. Then, my understanding is, that through finding the differences between Consciousness A, and the newly found and recognized Consciousness B, both may realize their individuality from one another. THIS is the end of the search. I am unsure as to what Marx would say about this moment, but I feel that he sweeps it under the rug in many ways. Marx would rather Consciousness stop this process at the discovery of itself belonging to an 'us' rather than continuing to reflect upon the implications of that 'us' and the uniqueness it brings with it. This uniqueness, or individuality, I would propose is the source of what Marx would claim as one of the "man made illusions"- Competitiveness.

I would argue that this is not an illusion but rather an primitive thought, and an animalistic based reality. The first claim, of it being reality based in primitive thought, is shown by Hegel in the Phenomenology at the very beginning, when Consciousness strove to individualize everything. I would argue that this desire expressed by Consciousness is derived from a innate sense of its own individuality. Thus, once it realizes that it is indeed its own individual, it in turn realizes within others its own faults and shortcomings, much as we saw within the chapter on morality, when Acting Conscious saw its own hypocrisy within the hypocrisy of the Judging Conscious. After realizing such shortcomings, Consciousness A then attempts to better itself in order to be saved from further critique. When Consciousness B sees what is happening, an interesting problem begins to unfold. Although Consciousness B wants Consciousness A to better itself and hold itself to the same standard that others hold themselves to, there is another force within Consciousness B that rears its ugly head; the Animal.

If we were dealing with beings of Pure Consciousness, I would believe Marx's idea to be a stroke of genius, and lacking little to nothing as a blueprint to Utopia, however that is not the case. As humans we exist as creatures of a dualistic nature; Consciousness and Animal. Mind and Body. As a Consciousness we are able to overcome the animal in many instances, but to demand such of the body full time is something that we cannot expect from the masses. The most basic, and thus most innate, of these instincts is man's aversion to pain/death [self preservation]. Once Consciousness B realizes Consciousness A is outdoing it, then it will, under the same instinct of self preservation, attempt to combat this new threat to its position in the world. Although there are those who are able to overcome such instincts, the idea that we could expect such behavior from people on a universal scale rather than individually is presenting a large problem to Marx's ideology.

With this fundamental difference between Marx's vision for the world and the base of our existence, is it possible then for his ideas to ever truly be realized? If so, how can we as humans combat our very nature and the evils that arise with it [greed, lust, envy, etc.] through the process of recognizing ourselves and others as individuals?

On the Autonomy of Bourgeois Art and the Avant-Garde Reaction Against it

On Tuesday, we spent a good bit of time grappling with the proletariat/bourgeoisie distinction, with Dr. J warning us to avoid trying to defend ourselves in our exploration of the class struggle that Marx describes. This, of course, is understandable; it's much easier to learn something when you're not implicated in what you're learning. Here's the thing: whether we like it or not, we're part of class struggle. As Dr. J put it, pretty much everything about how we operate in our day-to-day lives is at least partially determined by our situatedness in a capitalistic culture. The food you eat in the Rat? Provided by a corporation (one with more than a few issues with labor). Your iPhone? Though Designed by Apple in Cupertino, CA, actually manufactured in China. I don't mean to get up on a pedestal here; I eat at the Rat and have an iPhone, too. Let's face it: we're bourgeois subjects.

The bourgeoisie extends beyond big, faceless corporations, though. Think of any dead artist whose work you like: Warhol, Picasso, Monet, whatever. Guess what? Their work is bourgeois. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, just an inescapable one. Peter Bürger wrote an essay called "On the Problem of the Autonomy of Art in Bourgeois Society" that explains all this. It's not an easy piece to get through, but I’m pretty sure that it’s brilliant (and worth a read if you're interested). Here, Bürger is arguing two things: first, that the autonomy of art is a contradictory idea, and second, that avant-gardistes attempt to negate this view of autonomy by subverting the processes of production and reception. Moreover, he situates both the contradiction and its negation as a result of and reaction against bourgeois society.

The idea of “the autonomy of art,” as far as I understand it, is that art is “free” insofar as it doesn’t have any purpose. Bürger aptly refers to Kant’s aesthetic work in The Critique of Judgement, in which Kant characterizes the aesthetic as “purposive without purpose,” which simply means that the appropriate objects of aesthetic judgement give the appearance of purpose without actually having one. For Kant (if I’m remembering correctly), this mostly refers to nature, though it’s easy to see how it applies to art as well. Bürger then points to Schiller’s extension of these ideas, which suggest that it is exactly this purposelessness that makes art useful in a way—for what Bürger calls “the furtherance of humanity.”

The contradiction of autonomy lies in the belief that such autonomy is the result of historical process; that is, art is autonomous at this point due to a historical progression. Bürger illustrates this progression by dividing art into three general stages: of function, production, and reception. These pertain to sacral art, courtly art, and bourgeois art, respectively. We designate art as “bourgeois” when both its production and reception lose their functionality and give way to individualization. By contrast, sacral art is artwork that is produced and received for a very specific function: group ritual; courtly art is created by the individual, but its function and reception are specialized: to glorify court life, for courtly people. Bourgeois art is created by an individual for an "anonymous audience"—that is, it serves no particular function, nor is intended for any particular person. We all approach bourgeois art as individuals. Avant-gardistes, according to Bürger, negate this individualization; he points to Duchamp’s Readymades as a prime example, in which the individualization of production is called into question by putting a signature on a mass-produced object. By the same token, the individualization of reception is subverted by the sheer controversiality of the object’s placement among other artworks.

The problem with avant-garde art is that, though it may successfully undermine the autonomy of bourgeois art, it eventually becomes accepted as normal. A general rule of thumb is that, when a movement becomes institutionalized, it can no longer claim to attack an institution. The most significant takeaway here, for me, is the problem that avant-garde art faces in bourgeois society: by presenting “something better” in contrast to the prevailing order, art runs the risk of idealizing—and so fictionalizing, or positioning as unattainable—the very thing it seeks to espouse. This propagates a “grass is always greener” sort of mentality, in which the bourgeois make themselves content with fictions, resigned to the stasis of their actual situation. It seems that, if we want to create work that provides some sort of impetus for change and progress, we have to be wary of idealizing that which I think is possible. Art is hard.

Redefining Asceticism

While I was reading Marx’s Economic and Political Manuscripts of 1844, my attention was drawn to a particular passage in the section entitled “The Meaning of Human Requirements.” In this section starting on page 95, Marx draws certain similarities in the lifestyle of the worker and that of an ascetic. I become more and more convinced with every reading of this passage that Marx meant it this comparison as a sort of satirical criticism, but yet, I still believe the comparison is worth examining to see what Marx truly meant.

The practice of religious asceticism has been around for a long, long time. Asceticism has adopted many methods to detaching from the world and has managed to transcend the boundaries of religion; ascetics can be found in Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, and many other religions. The ultimate goal of the religious ascetic is to become unattached to the material world and its desires. They give up all luxury and often many of their needs. They will live on very minimal food, just enough to survive, will spend long amounts of time in meditation, and have very little possessions, if any. They detach themselves from family and friends and many live in isolated places or wander from place to place. Some have even developed self-mutilation tactics in order to detach themselves from the world and their bodies. The Buddha even practiced extreme asceticism before his enlightenment (which he ultimately determined to be the wrong path for reaching nirvana) and legend says at his most ascetic stage he looked like this:

Marx says the worker in the capitalistic economy becomes an ascetic because he is forced to live on very minimal means. In fact, living at the lowest possible level of life, which he denotes simply as existence, has become the standard, he argues. Capitalism “changes the worker into an insensible being lacking all needs,” (95). The goal of the capitalist ascetic, he claims, is to increase capital. So in order to have more, the worker lives on less and saves. Marx says, “The less you eat, drink, and read books; the less you go to the theatre, the dance hall, the public-house; the less you think, love, theorize, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save—the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor dust will devour—you capital,” (95-96).

It became clear to me that this was probably satire at the point that Marx calls political economy “the most moral of all the sciences,” (95). This aside, I believe this comparison is a poignant one to describe the mental state of the worker. While the religious ascetic denies himself to reach god or enlightenment, the worker denies himself to increase capital. I’d suggest here that the worker comes to view his capital with such importance that it becomes like a god to him. Everything in his existence becomes second to this ultimate goal, even his own needs, not just his desires. Capital is god.

Consciousness: Gut Feeling tainted by emotions?

When Hegel speaks of conscience, he is referring to the gut feeling of the universal conscience or the moral consensus of consciousnesses as a whole. Simply, conscience is decided by our gut feeling. All consciousness’ conscience act in the same way and this is a result of the conscience’s confidence within itself. Yet this is not always true, because the conscience thinks it knows the right thing as a moral agent, yet it does not know morality. Therefore, the conscience causes the consciousness to be afraid to act because it is obsessing over good intentions. It feels it will be judged by the other consciousnesses.

In reviewing Hegel’s ideas on morality, I began to think about how emotion can affect gut feelings, and I came to conclude with Marx that Hegel did not apply his philosophy to reality and instead focused on the ideals. Otherwise, he would have seen that even the thought of being judged represents self-doubt, which is an emotion. The fear of judgment can cause the acting consciousness not to act and become the “beautiful soul.” Does Hegel underestimate the power of emotion? In his analysis of conscience, he seems to not bring up the idea of emotion as being associated with “gut-feeling”, but rather leaves gut-feeling as the defining factor of the conscience.

In my own personal accounts where I have listened to my gut feelings, a lot of the time my emotions played a large role in the deciding factor. We speak every day about how love, anger, and sadness can affect our personalities, and in return those emotions can alter how we feel about situations. Although we may not want to admit the strength of emotions, it is a difficult aspect of decision making within reality and one that I feel Hegel underestimated.

Also, by looking at emotions, we begin to see how individualized gut feeling is to people in different situations. Even within my close friend group or within my family, when we are faced with similar situations we chose different ways of acting. Some according to gut feeling and others vary from it. It made me wonder how Hegel could state gut feeling as being universal, without considering the impact of emotion. These are aspects of the morality of the conscience I feel that Hegel missed by not applying his concepts to reality. Yet, questioning these ideas of his philosophy made me wonder if I misunderstood him? Can emotion be separate of gut-feeling? Does emotion play a role in gut-feeling? Can gut-feeling be the same for everyone? And if so, how are these gut-feelings universalized?

The Endless Labor Cycle

In his piece entitled “Estranged Labor”, Karl Marx presents an argument against the idea of labor. More specifically, the labor of the blue-collar crowd, like the factory workers. It is a fairly easy argument to follow. Marx clearly outlines his position and goes through each step of the alienation process. One thing that keeps coming to mind as I read this item is the focus on the factory workers. I understand that the work that they do is labor-intensive, does not pay all that well, and of course the workers answer to the Boss Man which supposedly leads them to feel as though the work they do does nothing for them but really only supports the Boss or the Company. Other than probably minimal financial compensation, this work is not very satisfying. More than likely it does not hold any kind of personal interest for the worker. One does not typically think of a factory worker as being particularly excited or even all that interested in his or her job. But this idea provides an interesting question. What about those rare workers who are really into these jobs? Marx might disagree, but chances are that out there somewhere is someone with a factory job who is not feeling bitter and alienated but actually alright with his or her job. Do we run the risk of generalization when applying Marx’s theory? I think we do. I understand of course that sometimes generalizations must be made, but it is really kind of a depressing outlook if we think that all those people toiling away at factory jobs are feeling estranged and alienated not only from their jobs but from other people and maybe even life itself. What a grim thought. Also, one wonders why all the focus is on the factory-type worker. Maybe I haven’t read enough Marx to know if he writes at all about this but surely people in other jobs could feel similarly estranged? What about teachers? Sure many of them enjoy their jobs and like the feeling that they are making an important impression in the life of another but surely like the factory-workers some exceptions must exist. Some teachers must not really care all that much about the students and simply teach to pay the bills. They also end up with no product of their own. It just seems to me that it is unlikely that their is any job out there which has a 100% success rate when it comes to worker happiness. One more question. Would the factory workers be happier without these factory jobs? Would the freedom from the hostile Capitalist work system but living without pay be better than suffering in a repetitive, non-self-satisfying job? It seems to me that few people would choose to get over their issues and continue to work for the money. Without work there is little room for upward financial mobility. I guess I just think that while his argument is nice and concise, Marx is being a tad overdramatic. Sure I could argue that doing my schoolwork is causing me to become hostile and lose my identity but where does that get me? Nowhere. The factory worker is getting paid. It might not be all that personally-fulfilling, but it is still something to take home. Not everyone gets to be creative and do whatever they want. Nothing would ever get done. One could dream of not being a factory worker and enjoying a life of leisure or whatever they dream of, but one must always remember that without the factory workers nothing would get done and you would not be able to live that luxurious dream lifestyle without some people somewhere in factories, making those products that you use and enjoy.

Model of the Conscious Dialectic

Man’s Last Stand: Thesis

http://www.youtube.com/dodge?bid=4255778&adid=222071399&pid=45688931&KWNM=man%27s%20last%20stand%20&KWID=93906352&channel=PS

#1 Response: Antithesis

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ou5Ens-qNRc

Synthesis

This past week in my Feminist Philosophy class, we watched three Dodge ram ads, which I have posted above. During the class, Dr. Johnson referred to the Hegelian model to the dialectic in order to better clarify the role of the three ads. (So although Dr. Johnson gave me the idea for this blog post, I felt it would be valuable to share with our class because it is a good example of the dialectic of consciousness)

Within the structure of the dialectic, the first ad represents the thesis. It is a commercial highlighting what man “puts up with” in the household. Due to all the emasculating chores, he is going to drive a car that brings out his man hood. The thesis that seems to be put forth is the idea of reverse sexism. The man is claiming to have lost a sense of himself due to all these responsibilities within his life.

In the second ad, women respond with a similar commercial yet their activities or performed duties are different. The ad seems to represent an issue of women’s oppression that is similar to mans. It is a retaliation or response to the Dodge Ad and the knowledge of the situation has not yet been transcended. It is with the third ad one can come to the new synthesis and a heightened perspective can be found. I am having an issue finding the third ad, so I am going to describe it. The third ad is the exact same as the first ad, except with doing the speaking role. The ad is suppose to show that although man feels there is a reverse sexism, the issues that he is complaining about are the exact same as women. It also stands as a model to try the opposite with the Women’s response ad #1. If man is truly oppressed then it would be safe to say their two roles would be enter changeable. Yet, if a man speaks the part of the woman in the response #1, he cannot even come close to identifying with the oppression woman undergoes. At this point a new synthesis has been constructed. The idea that both sexism and reverse sexism are mutual cannot be supposed.

The ads stand as a construct of the dialectic, and I felt many other issues could be placed in this model. Although I feel things get a little more complicated when referring to the master slave dialectic, I think this growth of consciousness represents an good illustration of how our minds actually work.