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| Thorstein Veblen's Web |
Veblen Definition and Origin of "Ownership" Thorstein Bunde Veblen's anthropological discourse is linear and vertically evolutionary. His biological conceptions, although embedded in the "network" of his thought, do not affect the economic ideas which constitute the heart of the present essay. Therefore, I have tried to avoid, whenever possible, Veblen's restrictive terminology, so as to give Veblen, the economist, a more prominent role and a more vivid, actualized look to his work. I have marginalized Veblen the anthropologist-sociologist, in order to expose him and his outrageous, fascinatingly "cruel" economic thought under the light of the no less controversial economic thought of French thinker Georges Bataille. Veblen uses terms such as savages or barbarians whenever referring to ancient cultures, whether he reflects on less technologically developed groups, societies with different customs or peoples with more or less "primitive" economic structures. The use of these notions not only stem from an overly-illustrated prejudice, but also reveal a spirit at pains to acknowledge "difference" in its difference. They are XIX century anthropological, one-sided concepts which have been long since successfully overthrown. Therefore, here I will speak in terms of ancient and of antiquity any time I feel that such a description might provide the subject of our text with a broader and more accurate perspective, unless by so doing the context of Veblen's thinking is distorted. Veblen's philosophy rests upon the fundamental distinction between what can be considered as two principal economic classes: namely, that conformed by those who work (productive class) and that integrated by those who don't work (non-productive class: warriors [our armies and police], athletes, religious authorities...). Veblen demonstrates that the notion of ownership originates purely from the activities, and their consequences, carried out by the latter class. Ownership does not originate as a result of production, but it rather is the outcome of non-productive expenditure, war being at the forefront. Production requires a communal effort and usually serves a communal purpose, and, as noted by Veblen, ancient social groups did not recognize this "all-together" effort (and its product) as property. That which is shared by the community and essential to its survival is unanimously and unquestionably written off as anyone's property, whether it is an artifact made by one individual or an animal hunted by another. Not unlike Friedrich Nietzsche, Veblen gives to the working (productive) class their place at the basis of the social pyramid; it supports the entire social building. Its objective is to preserve and consolidate, by means of their effort, the community's unity (and in time, the subsistence of the non-productive class as well). Ownership is a cultural affair instituted through habituation after achieving legitimacy via usage. The notion of ownership is present from the very beginning and contact of our lives with the world. I must specify, however, that this kind of original appearance of ownership has not yet the status of "ownership" in the proper economic sense. But if one is to discuss the origin of this notion one would of necessity need to go as far back as to find it in its instinctual form. For ownership is not a result of a Rousseaunian-like social contract, but rather it manifests itself naturally, instinctively, and irrationally as a defining characteristic of our very being. This first form of ownership would be the starting point for the further development implied in every economic-exchange. As Veblen puts it, this basic sense of ownership originates with and within the individual. That is, the individual conceives his individuality beyond the limits that modern biological science would be willing to accept, "covering a pretty wide fringe of facts and objects that pertain to him more or less immediately". The "primitive" individual does not separate the body from the actions it exerts on the "external" world. In other words, he conceives the world in such a way that he believes the actions he carries out on it are part of his own individuality. The external world as danger becomes a structure of events which can be (and are) appropriated in order to overcome its might. In this sense, egocentrism means the assimilation of reality by abandoning one's self to the flux (Henri Bergson's dureé). Thus the world is animated by virtue of our "appropriation" of its substance through our bodies and the ulterior symbolical metamorphosis of its powers into all sorts of totems, "shamanic" cures and miracles, sacrifices, charms, relics, sorcery, the worship of images, the "proper" name.... This kind of egocentrism develops into a restricted "ownership" of the world we must live in at the same time that it dissolves world and subjectivity in the flux. The individual is born, in Gilles Deleuze's words, as a "body-without-organs". Only intuitively we understand the uninterrupted flow. Veblen's "quasi-personal fringe" (appropriation of reality) is to be the childhood of ownership. We own reality, we become reality through haeccity. We fuck, we eat, we shit, we suck! This first form of appearance of "ownership" leads to a second, more developed, form of the notion. As we suggested above, this second type of "ownership" rises from the actions of the non-productive class, therefore being the result of a more sophisticated net of social relations. The "psychological" effects endured in the employment of force to subdue his prey, constitutes a violent and dominant character in the hunter that will eventually mirror onto any other interaction he may have with reality. The hunter will relate to other groups in the same manner in which he relates to his animal victim: the birth of the warrior and the origin of war. Hunting creates the psychological structures necessary to wage war, and it is here where that first sense of ownership widens and enlarges the individual's fringe to a more extensive range of objects and people—the objects and people seized by the victorious individual of war. I must add, however, that those objects which fall into the category of commonwealth are absorbed by the community, whereas those irrelevant to the group's subsistence remain in the possession of their captors. And, as Veblen points out, if one considers that most objects acquired by the victor are the enemy's own individuality which—in a sort of symbolic cannibalism—have come to "belong" to the victor's own personal fringe, one is forced upon the conclusion (along with Veblen) that there is only one kind of acquisition which can legitimately be considered at the origin of ownership. Veblen informs us that ownership proper originates with the seizure of women. Women by the very reality of their capture are the living testimony of their captor's prowess. Consequently it becomes customary not to be permissible for anyone other than the captor to take liberties with them. Alongside this custom—which will later develop into marriage by law—grows that of "private property." Ultimately, ownership will extend to all the goods produced by the wife-slave. Slavery is the cause and origin of private property: henceforth history is well known. The rise of capitalism (one with the ideological notion of the "free and independent individual") is a good example of accumulation of capital by the leisure class via the production of the working class. Capitalism flourishes in America, as well observed by Karl Marx, thanks to a great deal of blood spilled in Europe. However "late" capitalism—a schizophrenized extension of ownership through mass-media—is about to erase ownership, and Veblen's "leisure class" about to become a pleasure in cyberspace. For Capitalism produces, and profits, from desire. It is a gigantic desiring- machine. And desire does not produce anything other than more desire. Capitalism means the dissolution of the personal fringe and the death of subjectivity. It is a desiring system that replicates desire at an ever-increasing speed. It signifies the acceleration toward the end of property as we know it. This does not imply a return to a primal communist anarchy but the chaotic advance toward the full body of the earth. That is to say, the universe becomes our personal fringe as bodies-without-organs. Harrison Mujica-Jenkins |
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