Confused Shaman Accidentally Revives Marx · 2 February 2007

The marginal mystics of any era turn me on—Heraclitus, Jeremiah, forest monks, Hildegaard, Wittgenstein, Carlton Pearson. Which is my excuse for reading Andrew Cohen. But oh did he disappoint me this month by publishing talk radio shrink/NYU scholar Howard Bloom’s jayvee defense of consumerism. 

Though I’m ambivalent (if listing leftward) about what consumerism is doing to us, Bloom’s article “Reinventing Capitalism: Putting the Soul Back in the Machine” is sophistry, and dangerous because many well-meaning people will read it. New agers and shrink-talk listeners are open-minded, yet not tough-minded. Receptivity’s a virtue, yes; when the instrument can hold up. 

Not to be confused with the intellectually brawny if also right-wing Harold Bloom, Howard has promoted himself nicely with savvy arbitrage, enthusiasm for ideas, and sometimes telling people what they want to hear. An example of the latter is the project he tags: “In praise of consumerism: the spiritual fruits of materialism.“ 

Sophistry has its place. It’s decent exercise to play with ideas and provoke others with counterintuitive arguments. In this sense, Howard’s aptly calling out the liberal assumption that consumerism hurts the planet, which is largely a projection of an individual’s vague guilt when she buys herself a ton of crap. 

Howard’s essay is a loaf of overwrought, content-lite phrases about capitalism’s messianic potential, for example (paragraph 18): “We have to peel back the lumpy outer skin of capitalism and show the beating heart within…. A capitalism propelled by the troika of empathy, passion, and reason….” 

These images of lumpy bodies and chariots are actually the closest he comes to defining the phenomenon. I’m sorry Howard, but capitalism is the continuous extraction of surplus value for the creation of profit. It relies on some people owning capital, and some people selling them their labor, and on the distribution of the stuff and services they create through markets. It’s a way of organizing human energy, not an “idea.” 

Dipping into his trusty gym-bag of logical fallacies, Bloom claims that, historically, capitalism has “elevated the downtrodden.” Evidence: cultivation of cotton for comfy clothes (so, the Old South was capitalism? wow.), proliferation of soap, and rapid transit (actually a creation of modern nation-states and taxes). He posits no causal process by which consumer capitalism might save us, no examples of what it can do for us, and no refutation for any arguments against capitalism. And beyond this claim that cotton cultivation elevated the downtrodden, he says nothing about poor people. Nothing. There are consumers in his vision, but no producers. None. 

In lieu of arguing against a thesis, Howard Bloom argues against a person, portraying Karl Marx as a “hate”-ful crusader against the middle class. I am glad he has read the manifesto. It’s written at a fourth grade level because it’s a commissioned political tract meant to promote some politician-activists. It’s not social theory. 

But if Howard went to Marx with a little sincere receptivity, he would find exactly the transformative, holistic, spirit-infused architecture of economic life he longs for but lacks the historical understanding, clarity, and the vision to work out. Howard would like that Marx is funny, and learn from him because he’s devastatingly direct and doesn’t play around.

What I loved about this essay, then, is that in its selfish confusion it revealed to me the vitality, the epochal brilliance and enduring revolutionary potential of Marxist thought. (Reminds me it’s been a year since I read The 18^th Brumaire, too.) Howard showed me that the rich world doesn’t need to be told that everything is fine and getting better. If anything, tell them that everything is connected. Let them pursue that propsotion to the limit.

That everything is connected is Marx’s message. He too was a marginal mystic (just an extremely concrete one). He took every chance to challenge acceptance of given reality as “just the way it is,” stood western philosophy on its head, argued that consciousness is linked to mode of production, and said the deep and organic nature of humans is sensuous creativity and togetherness. He also said it is only by loss of consciousness that we come to believe in commodities as mere objects, alienated from the human evergy and relationships they embody. He encapsulated with honesty and beauty the play of free will and determinism: Yes we make our own history, but not under conditions of our own choosing!

If everything is connected, you don’t get to pretend that the world is constituted by the top 30% of the social strata. It’s not that Nigerian oil workers and Salvadoran seamstresses and rugmakers in Bangalore are getting benignly left out of consumer capitalism. How we live depends on how they live. They’re giving us this. This is where the surplus—the difference between what work is worth on the market and what the worker’s paid for it—is coming from. Surplus is the condition of capitalism’s endless and often brilliant innovations. But consumers are not, in turn, “uplifting” these people with these innovations; we’re demanding (via our brands and their buyers) cheaper prices this year than last. Every year. And whose energy truly drives the system? The dedicated consumer's... or the backbroke producer's?

This is consumer capitalism. So harness up your “soul” to that chariot of yours and go forth to take a look, Howard.

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Categories: integration , morality , self-deception , social theory

Comment

1. great post. marx the mystic always gets short shrift. (and I want a gym bag of logical fallacies, too!)

   Posted by: r · Feb 3, 02:37 AM · #

2. It would be hard to argue that capitalism has not had some benefits, but of course we are its products and evaluate from this side of capitalist transformations. Marx paid it homage when he recognized the revolutionary character of the bourgeoisie, including what sounds suspiciously like an account of how nation-states and a global political system emerged. I’m not sure that the integrative power and “benefits” of roads, railways, schools, and military conscription can be separated from the unfolding of capitalism. It seems to me that what your comments bring out nicely and what escapes Bloom is Marx’s brilliant grasp on capitalism’s contradictions. A central one being that while a few may gain the world – with some residual benefit to the many – all will lose in humanity. As the ancient Hebrew prophets who inspired the notion of gaining the world only to lose one’s soul knew full well, you cannot build an equitable community for the privileged few on the backs of the many poor. Bloom, as you well point out, does not address this problem at all. He doesn’t even give any concrete notions of the supposed spiritual reservoir of capitalism. This leads me to conclude that he is simply – and dangerously – legitimating capitalism by dint of repetition. “There’s no place like home…There’s no place like home…” His “bio” note only confirms this by placing him in material relations of production.

   Posted by: Tadeo Cruz · Feb 5, 02:22 AM · #

3. The linked Bloom bio is good, by the way. From it I learned that Harold Bloom—not Kornhauser (1959), nor Rudé (also 1959); nor Durkheim (1912) for that matter—“founded” the field of Mass Behavior Studies. Pretty good for someone also busy working with “such media giants as…” and advising John (“Cougar”) Mellencamp, among many illustrious others, on career strategy. (“The Coug’s” new album, Freedom’s Road, just debuted at #5 on Billboard’s “Hot/Pop” 200; so Harold must be doing something right when it comes to putting the soul back in consumption.)

   Posted by: r · Feb 5, 04:43 AM · #

4. Yes! Could it be that the “Cougar” affectation itself, about which JCM’s so embarrassed, was Harold’s doing?

   Posted by: owl · Feb 5, 11:38 AM · #

5. Tadeo’s right about the unfolding of infrastructure and building-out of the nation-state being fairly inseparable from the history of capitalism. Thank you for keeping me honest, like a good comparative-historical colleague. And for making the Hebrew prophet connection explicit in this sense. I often feel that Marx spent good time in Job and Ecclesiastes specifically (maybe just because those are the texts I still love best)... but isn’t that specific “gain the world and lose your soul” language from (horrors) Matthew?

   No matter though: I love the way you characterize Bloom’s legitimation racket as the dream-within-a-dream of a child.

   Posted by: owl · Feb 5, 11:41 AM · #

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