Nietzsche's opposition to capitalism and his loathing of modern bourgeois society is present throughout his writings. In an early essay entitled 'The Greek State', for example, he argues that self-seeking, money-loving entrepreneurs and stateless corporate executives should be regarded as the enemy within, threatening as they do the stability and welfare of the community.
Like Marx, Nietzsche is concerned by the manner in which the market determines the value of everything; including the value of all other values. The consequence of this is not only that all things become commodified and given price tags, bar codes, and registered trade marks, but that everything becomes permissible - providing, of course, that it's economically viable and can generate profit. Thus it is that, within liberal society, all types of commercial exchange and all modes of conduct are discreetly sanctioned; including those that many advocates of free trade like to publicly condemn and make illegal, but do nothing to actually prevent.
Like Marx, Nietzsche is concerned by the prospect of a world in which there is no connection between people other than shared greed and a desire to succeed at any cost. Such a world would be one suspended in a state of systematic anarchy and nihilism; a world in which an aggressive philistinism would effectively cancel out the possibility of culture as he conceives of it in a classical sense.
The permanent substratum of money under everything in the modern world causes Nietzsche to experience a feeling of ugly disillusion; he rejects liberalism and democracy as forms of political degeneracy. As for the equality of opportunity that is said to be opened up by capitalism, he dismisses this as merely the freedom to buy and sell one another in a universal slave market.
As an alternative, Nietzsche advocates a strong model of volksgemeinschaft that rests upon a bond of trust formed between rulers and ruled and an agreed series of duties and obligations. If this fails to guarantee the rights of the private individual, it will, he says, at least ensure the production of a small number of sovereign men and women and allow for cultural greatness (which is something other than material and scientific progress).
Of course there are problems with Nietzsche's thinking here as elsewhere; his views on politics, culture and society are never fully developed and often in need of radical revision and recontextualization. But one thing is surely clear: Zarathustra hates shopkeepers and there is nothing - neither property rights nor human rights - given to us by liberalism which fully compensates for what Deleuze and Guattari describe as the "meanness and vulgarity of existence that haunts democracies ... The ignominy of the possibilities of life that we are offered".
Of course there are problems with Nietzsche's thinking here as elsewhere; his views on politics, culture and society are never fully developed and often in need of radical revision and recontextualization. But one thing is surely clear: Zarathustra hates shopkeepers and there is nothing - neither property rights nor human rights - given to us by liberalism which fully compensates for what Deleuze and Guattari describe as the "meanness and vulgarity of existence that haunts democracies ... The ignominy of the possibilities of life that we are offered".
See Deleuze and Guattari, What Is Philosophy?, trans. Graham Burchell and Hugh Tomlinson, (Verso, 1996), pp. 107-08.
In the exposition above of his ideas, Nietzsche has constructed a straw man, which he calls ‘capitalism’, easier to destroy with its contradictions and incoherence than the real thing. There are many aspects of any society we don’t like. Petits-bourgeois, their crass materialism and narrow mindedness, would be one. But is capitalism reducible to only that lot? Has not a liberal society allowed the Dadaists, Surrealists, and all other progressive groups up to the Punks and later to flourish (and sell their works), who would have been censored (and were) under any other regime?
ReplyDeleteIn a liberal society “all types of commercial exchange and all modes of conduct are discreetly sanctioned; including those that many advocates of free trade like to publicly condemn and make illegal, but do nothing to actually prevent.” This is the virtue, the beauty, the attraction of a liberal society. Publicly or not I condemn certain transactions and lifestyles (bigotry, fundamentalism, addictions, a few others), but I cannot prevent them, and nobody can – it is a contradiction in terms to say that I can make these behaviour “illegal” in a liberal/capitalist society. In such a society, people adopt them, whilst not being able to impose them on others.
Who nourishes a desire to succeed at any cost? Very few people in our world, when success is measured in monetary terms, if I judge by the great number who become teachers, nurses, civil servants, and enter these innumerable other occupations that will never make their practitioners rich. Seeking success generally, whether in love, the arts or science, is not a bad idea, methinks, certainly better for the individual and society than seeking failure.
The model of 'volksgemeinschaft' is, of course, perfectly compatible, and should even be encouraged under capitalism/liberalism. Many people need strong communities, where they can develop their language, culture, religion, traditions… Other people are more individualistic. All can live side by side, exchanging ideas, goods and services, if and when needed, through the market.
Is that crass or wrong?
Christian