A long time ago, I admit I read Hayek's The Fatal Conceit and thought, hmm, perhaps this poster-boy of neoliberalism does have a point about the the left's pastoral fantasies of a pre-market society, which I believe he terms as atavistic. I too was often disappointed by this indolent belief that all of man's problems can be solved by a return to an Ovidian Aetas Aurea along the lines of the Fleet Foxes lyric - if I had an orchard, I'd work till I'm sore. My family have owned orchards and though the work is hard and rewarding, I doubt there are enough orchards for us all to work till we're sore and then alcoholize our bodies in tired happiness. While a pre-market, pre-capitalist, pre-industrial society may present itself as tempting alternative, this is only really viable for a privileged group of kids - the world has been changed and icons such as the Pruitt-Igoe estate pictured here have won; ironic considering the demolition of said estate has been termed as a 'victory against modernism'.
Hayek would of course retort that the sort of brutal spatial planning, the rationalising gaze which has exploded time and harnessed space, is in itself a child of the socialist mind. As such, the neoliberal victory over the excesses of etatist high-modernism is to be welcomed as a liberating force. At best, this sort of victory over the deficiencies of planning can be compared to the neoliberal victory against bigotry, which now has us all enslaved in the same consumerist galley regardless of race, gender, religion or sexual orientation. A modernity which, at least in the case of gay subculture, has transformed dingy, illicit loci of sexuality into clean, modern facilities where cards are accepted and where there is to be absolutely no masturbation in the jacuzzi.
A modernity therefore, with a kinder face, a modernity of a more insipid kind. To argue that this modernity is anything but a product of our current mode of production, that of late-capitalism, is impossible. Though high-modernism certainly has been a central thought in societies of planned state-capitalism (such as the USSR), it has just as much been a hallmark of thinking in the so-called free world, as well as the third world. Rationality in planning human society is no more opposed to capitalism than a truly free market is part of it. (For a good example of a truly free market, liberated from the constrains of the state and its rationalising, socialist tendencies, I suggest a stroll through the bustling streets of Mogadishu.)
Hayek remains in my thoughts with his further elaboration on his surprise, feigned no doubt, at the number of educated, intelligent men and women who persist (!!) in their belief in socialism and, by implication, a high-modernist project guided by rational thought. If one then takes this initial outlook and combines it perhaps with a critique of high-modernism such as that of James C. Scott (Seeing like a State, 1998), a neat and comprehensive critique of the rationally planned arises, proposing in its stead an 'organic', self-regulating, 'natural' state. And while Scott's criticism remains an important tool in seeing through state-sponsored fantasies of progress and reform, well-meaning as though they may have been, Hayek's call towards a natural state remains on the other hand, corollary to a different fatal conceit, that of the free market.
Surely, the quest for a natural or organic state is the truly atavistic, and perhaps more worryingly offers a base of legitimacy which is as succinct as it is flawed - the mark of the best sort of political argument. By establishing the link between nature and capitalism (or, the 'free market' as it is called), by extrapolating the history of capitalism beyond even early humanoid societies of give and take into an organic state, a formula is created; capitalism is organic and natural, hence all alternatives are not only unnatural, but will fail with great cost to human life and dignity.
(A good popular-science documentary on this sort of topic is All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace by Adam Curtis - for the visual types among you)
It is, I am just realising, difficult to avoid the devalued and inflated language of charities and part-time revolutionaries when talking about the 'cost' of capitalism; what more can be said of the human and environmental costs, what eloquence and which language or font can elevate and spell out more clearly the path dependency that holds us from realising our potential? None I'm afraid, because apart from a few hundred brave and freezing bodies occupying (quasi)public spaces in New York, London and elsewhere, we are all at home, all content, all disappointed, nowhere near starving, but stuck in temporary jobs, or jobs we hate, under neon lights that strip away the soul, tadpoles in a big lake.
So really, what should surprise us more is that this great number of perfectly healthy, intelligent and respectable individuals still believe that free market capitalism is the best and most 'natural' option we have.
Ι read it twice, tough language there for me man,and I could say that I almost agree although there is some anti-intellectuelism which can't seriously for an argument. Being there in the cold occupying places,although it takes nerve,both physical and mental, doesn't necessarily mean that the rest are all part-time revolutionaries and charity workers.With this article for example yourself trying to use your intellectual powers to unravel the complexity of our consuming life. That's revolutionary in the sense that when somebody manage to follow your line of thought can see himself in the framework of the bigger picture and probably do something about it. We cannot all be Sartes or Chomskies although we should give it a try anyway. But we should all be Communists :)
ReplyDeleteI don't think of it as necessarily anti-intellectualist; rather, it is about the need for a physical aspect to resistance. So I'm not saying that our thought output should not be ambitious, or that it makes no difference at all. It does, but there is actually no real reason why I could not be writing this while maintaining a physical presence in a contested space, thus actually giving my intellectual output an added value.
ReplyDeleteSo it's really an indictment of my own inability to do that, and the inability of many others like me, which also makes the Occupy sites demographically limited - and that's a great shame. So it's not about abandoning writing in favour of 'doing', it's just realising that reading the Guardian and nodding to opinions will not make a difference, unless it is backed up with our bodies. And this is very relevant, because in the coming years, it's really the middle class that will be the potential vanguard class, not the co-opted majority of the proletariat, which is readily bought off with trinkets and a semblance of influence. But we should all be Communists, I agree.