Wednesday, May 31, 2006
(3:03 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
The American Dream: On the Necessity of Rejecting It
At some point in an Unfogged discussion -- but this logic is replicated elsewhere -- I was presented with the truism that we can't run a political campaign based on the message "Stick it to the rich." I asked, "Well, why the hell not?" The answer was obvious (and indeed I already knew it): it wouldn't work. People wouldn't go for it.(N.B.: Keep in mind in all that follows that I have no power to influence the actual direction of political campaigns and/or events. None whatsoever. My words here are doomed to irrelevance, whether or not they turn out to be somehow "realistic." [Matt Christie has been doing much to remind all of us bloggers of this very simple fact, which so many seem to forget or willfully ignore: we are powerless spectators.] So let's just consider my words in the abstract -- if it were possible for me to create a world such as I describe [and who knows what is really possible or not -- does some person sitting behind some desk writing into some low-traffic web site really have a very rigorous grasp of what is possible? If you wanted to know what was possible, is that the kind of person you would ask -- a blogger? By no means!], would it be a desirable one?)
The reason people wouldn't go for it is that they don't resent the rich. They want to join the rich. All of us Americans -- even me -- have some degree of hope that we will someday be rich. And so naturally we identify with the rich, sympathizing with their heavy tax burden (which will be our burden as well, some sweet day...), etc. How could we want to do anything to harm the rich when they have pulled off the best possible human achievement? How would happiness be possible in a world without rich people, without the hope of becoming rich oneself?
This is a banal observation, a truism. We all know this. I think we even all know that we buy into it -- a life of no work, of nothing but consumption? That's the life! Even just "admitting" this is banal, accomplishes nothing at all. Simply saying that this is bullshit also accomplishes nothing -- the rejection of "consumerism" in itself is a purely reactionary gesture, producing nothing but a brief moral narcotic. ("Yeah, fine, we're all consumerists -- get over yourself.")
What, then, is the kind of life that I want to want? That's fairly simple: a life in which I was not burdened, in either direction, by material possessions. That is, I would want a life in which I would not have to worry about the material conditions of my continued existence and also a world in which I would not have to spend a lot of time worrying about securing my continued possession of material things in excess of those conditions. I'm not against provisionally "having" things as required by particular projects -- even "having" things on an indefinite basis because no one else has a use for them (this is my loophole to allow for the stockpiling of books, perhaps). But it seems that the ideal of ownership -- still less of an "ownership society"! -- is an unnecessary excess, something that distracts our attention.
Why not an "economy" whose basis is sharing rather than ownership? Not even collective ownership or state ownership -- simply sharing. Sharing out, of course -- it makes no sense for me and my friend to "share" a meal without each taking a particular portion. But why not embrace the principle of "contribute according to ability, take according to need"? It doesn't seem like this would have to be sheer chaos -- it's possible to imagine an "economy" (if we can use this word still) that would be in some sense regulated, in which the claim of justice could still be respected.
So I guess what I'm saying is: communism, or whatever we need to say now that the experience of Real Socialism has rendered that word useless to us. Surely if we were to try something answering to the hope of communism again, we could do better than centralized state ownership and unlimited exploitation of both workers and the environment, right? I mean, we would almost have to.
But I don't know. After all, I have no power to do anything at all. Just: words, words, words.
