Benevolent Irreverence towards Capitalism

 

 

I suppose one of the differences that might separate me from some members of the left is that, by and large, I don't feel seething hatred for the capitalist class, capitalist institutions, capital, capitalism, or its commodities.  I certainly can understand why people might feel that kind of hatred, of course.  I remember when 9/11 happened.  I was surprised I didn't see more people expressing happiness that the twin towers of the World Trade Center had been destroyed - after all, the twin towers, in the popular imagination, represented, as Daniel C. Dennett put it, "Mammon and Plutocrats and Globalization".  I had, myself, been fairly active in the counter-globalization protests before then, such as the protests in Quebec City against the proposed "Free Trade Area of the Americas".  And I'm still a fan of the hip-hop group, The Coup, whose 2001 album "Party Music" was originally planned to feature an image of two members of The Coup, DJ Pam the Funktress and Boots Riley, proudly and defiantly blowing up the World Trade Center.  (When the WTC was actually destroyed, the album was pulled, and later released with a different, blander cover.)  I thought that The Coup, with their original cover, had said what we all were thinking - some of us, unconsciously, anyway - that at least some part of us wanted the WTC to be destroyed.  But after 9/11, such thoughts were unthinkable and so no one would admit to them.

But anyway, no, I don't feel any hatred or even anger towards capitalism.  I would describe my feeling towards capitalism to be benevolent irreverence.  If you're not a Mormon or if you're not a Scientologist, think about your feelings towards Mormonism or Scientology.  Or just think about someone with a gambling addiction or someone who is a fanatical fan of a rock band that you find boring or someone who is way too into, say, collecting Funkopops or other plastic doodads.  It's probably a feeling of at most mild annoyance, mixed with some humor, partly of the "laughing with" and partly of the "laughing at" variety, with a huge dollop of something like pity for those poor, deluded fools.  

I don't resent the kind of people who would have been inside the World Trade Center, and I certainly don't hate them.  I think that it's sad that they died, and that they didn't deserve it.  At the same time, when all of the pious people were so achingly earnest about 9/11, I couldn't help being as irreverent as I could possibly be about it.  Sorry, I was born this way - maybe it's because I'm Generation X?  I'm jaded and sarcastic and I love the music of Anal Cunt, and I love shock value.  Pious people want to be offended and they deserve to be offended.  

I don't hate capitalists.  I regard them with some bemusement as people who are way too interested in something that just doesn't seem that interesting to me.  In fact, it seems boring.  It seems like a colossal waste of time and resources.  Their loss.  

Economists whose brains have been infected with the capitalist ideology - and non-economists, who think they are economists (there are a lot of those!) - become fanatical religious zealots, who, starting from their questionable first principles, derive all kinds of monstrous theorems which they cling to with monomaniacal dogmatism (I'm thinking of, for instance, the so-called "Non-Aggression Principle").  As victims of what the French call idée fixe (fixed, rigid ideas) they thus become completely divorced from reality.  I can't help imagining how our paleolithic ancestors would regard them.  I feel sure they would shake their heads in sad incomprehension, perhaps chuckling to themselves.  How could humans mess up so badly, and become so disconnected from the way of life that humans practiced for at least tens of thousands of years, adapting to their living environment?  I'm not saying that we should go back to being hunter/gatherers - I doubt very much that that's even possible - but I am saying that we can gain some perspective that will allow us to see outside of the rigid capitalist worldview encapsulated in Margaret Thatcher's famous phrase that "There is no alternative."


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