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The
Metaphysics of Capital[1]
Because Nietzsche had the
gall to declare that God was dead, he would be dismayed upon learning that he
neglected to consider that the failure to produce a dead body—that is,
absolute, technological proof of God’s death—would cause we Westerners and our
ilk, to do nothing more than file a missing persons report, since the media
inform us that when there is no body found, there is no crime committed. Because the media has not declared it so,
‘God’ has not died, but rather, has progressed, and in the way that diseases
elude death by cultivating putrescence, the metaphysical infection of the
Divine continues to cultivate the global death knell that Divinity’s continual
expansion portends. All are drawn to the spectacle of the great abyss of the
Divine—though its temporal location has changed from the timeless to the
real-time—and the praxis of eschatological prophecy has given way to the
momentous and glorious clamor of each electronic transaction. This is why fundamentalists, leavened and
unleavened, run wild throughout the mediascape, distraught like the living dead
they represent, having realized that their merciful God has transmogrified into
the abysmal and merciless Capital, with no quarter for the infidels and
unbelievers in this new manifest destiny, not that authentic fundamentalists
have any real aversion at all to this changing of the guard—it’s not the first
time in history that one Deity has been supplanted by another. Through some kind of postmodern voodoo curse,
we still hysterically prostrate and lament the ideal of God, and it seems we
will never peacefully lay those remains to rest. But we are already falling piously into the
abysmal certainty of Capital.
The vacuity of our
existential uncertainty informs the human will that will never let go of the
metaphysical dream of certainty. All of
our histories reveal our illusory loss and uncertainty, but yield no gains
other than stupefaction, a negative asset, like consumer credit; and throughout
all of our histories our metaphysical constructs, in theory, become less deific
immortalities and more like banal, yet lasting infamies we feel bovinely obliged
to entertain, reify, and represent.
After all, many continue to argue that Elvis lives, and perhaps he does,
and this is because of the dirty way in which nostalgia works, casting
trepidation, uncertainty, even with desire, upon the future, while simultaneously
manufacturing a longing for the way we never were. Intriguingly still, religious polity, a
metaphysically-inspired social construction of the most historically perpetual
kind, a most coercive and mediated mass praxis, has never faltered, has never
even missed a beat, since Nietzsche’s epochal declaration. Religions are effective polities as such, for
certain, but there is an apparently more effective one yet, one more amenable
to the new needs of a new economy, and an evolving homo economicus—the cult of
Capital.
Metaphysical constructs change in structure, while
never becoming anything. We
should note the transition from the Pantheon to the Trinity to the One
here. So we have Capital. In Capital[3], Marx laid the foundation for an understanding of
the modern human condition (i.e. its relation to commodity/capital
constructions). We should all be
familiar with the worker’s relationship to the owners of the means of
production (and communication) through the device of Capital in Marx’s
thought. We need not belabor that
foundation of Marx’s device here. But
let us proceed to Jean Baudrillard as he develops the Marxian edifice further,
showing how those principles apply in the late twentieth and twenty-first
century:
The critique of political economy, worked out by Marx
at the level of exchange value, but whose total scope implies also that of use
value, is quite precisely this resolution of the commodity and of its implicit equation—a
resolution of the commodity as the form and code of general equivalence. It is the same critical resolution that must
be extended to the field of signification, in a critique of the political
economy of the sign.[4]
In the contemporary field of signification,
Capital moves beyond the confines of Marx’s discourse, but that is not to say
that the mechanics of labor and manufacturing, or machinery and alienation, or
commodity supply and demand, no longer apply to “working conditions” and the
polarization of wealth. U.S. senators’
portfolios outperform the market by 12% on average, while the average U.S.
household portfolio underperforms it by 1.4%--an “uncanny” disparity between
the aristocracy and the peasantry with regard to the gift of stock-picking
ability—and perhaps, each demographic’s range of access to the informational
order of Capital.[5] It is a
certainty that Marxist foundations still apply to Capital in the operative
sense—as a comparison between labor employee paycheck stubs and investment
portfolios of the owners of the means of production will reveal, or a
healthcare coverage comparison between a CEO of a Fortune 500 company with that
of the typical employee of any production organization—the reader may fill in
the names.
We might consider how a film—John
Q (2002)—dramatically narrates how it is that the metaphysics of Capital
operate in our contemporary milieu. John
Q. Archibald (Denzel Washington) plays a factory worker whose healthcare
benefits (he’s been cut to part-time employment at the factory) won’t cover a
$250K heart transplant operation that his son requires in order to live. Consider that a social metaphysics based upon
the largely, Christian metaphysical ideal that is purveyed via Western media
might be expected to yield a compassionate society that provides for such an
unforeseen and unfortunate event in the life of each individual. But the metaphysics of Capital organize and
inform our sensibilities and our lives with regard to such events in such a way
that cost concerns inform decision-making processes in every arena without
exception, even in life and death situations, if not especially so. In the end, John Q. must change from the
mild-mannered, seemingly religiously informed family and working man he is at
the outset—to a gun-wielding societal albatross (perhaps even a postmodern
revolutionary)—in order to get healthcare for his son. Somehow this is reminiscent of how
governments and nations who will first rely on the mannered etiquette of
diplomacy (John Q politely attempted to get help from the government welfare
system, but didn’t qualify because he made too much money) to achieve their
ends, but will then turn to the institutional damming of Capital flows, if
diplomacy fails, and then ultimately, to get their way, will instinctively turn
to the technology of military violence, when other means fail to produce
desired ends. John Q. enters the
hospital emergency room with a firearm and holds patients and hospital workers
hostage, then demands that his son receive the care he needs in order to
survive (i.e. care he should have received easily under a more piously informed
metaphysical order—the virtual order Western societies purvey).
John Q. has suffered from a
financial death and loss of face; and the narrative of John Q functions
in our postmodernity as an example of something akin to the loss of Greek arête
in Homer’s epics, or the diminishment of one’s eudaimonia, that which
was so important in Aristotle’s conception. And as history has shown, when
one’s arête or eudaimonia is systematically diminished or
challenged, violence usually ensues. The
metaphysics of Capital are such that there is no order in Society, outside of
the order of the texts of Capital; John Q. is a Gospel for our metaphysical
age.
But a theorized relativity of
what might simply be a biologically mediated politics of accumulation and
defense, (after all, squirrels ‘accumulate’ and ‘defend’ as well) is not
helpful in ascertaining the deeper, even visceral, ways in which Capital has
metaphysically reified humanity in its own image. Fredric Jameson writes:
It is on the face of it
perverse not to hear the great modernist evocations of subjectivity as so much
longing for depersonalization, and very precisely for some new existence
outside the self, in a world radically transformed and worthy of ecstasy. What has so often been described as a new and
deeper, richer subjectivity is in fact this call to change which always
resonates through it: not subjectivity as such, but its transfiguration. This is then the sense in which I propose to
consider modernist subjectivity as allegorical of the transformation of the
world itself, and therefore of what is called revolution. The forms of this allegory are multiple; yet
all the anecdotal psychologies in which it finds itself dressed—in their
stylistic, cultural and characterological differences—have in common that they
evoke a momentum that cannot find resolution within the self, but that must be
completed by a Utopian and revolutionary transmutation of the world of
actuality itself. As
While there is certainly merit
to such a consideration as Jameson’s, regarding fragmentary differences seeking
resolution via a “Utopian and revolutionary transmutation of the world of
actuality”, we should be careful not to neglect contemplation of the operative
frame of our existence today, in favor of literary (psychic, allegorical, or otherwise)
considerations alone, and that is to say that the commodious cataloging,
marketing, and redistribution of “revolutionary momentums”, simultaneously
identifies and creates a variety of globalizing, biomediated markets for all
“stylistic, cultural and characterological differences” that amalgamate into
the dominant and operative ideology today—and this Adorno and Horkheimer
illustrated in their Dialectic of Enlightenment.[7] This
operative ideology (i.e. culture as an industry of Capital) has contributed to
a Reformation of Western culture’s metaphysical ideal. What that ideal was
previously is open to debate—but it now is deific Capital—and that is my
concern here, because, though Capital’s location is operative, its influence is
beyond that of the operative, and informs all other orders by being throned
metaphysically. That differences
(products) are consumed with little epistemological significance (everything
becomes information), while reverse-psychoanalytically designing an ontology of
the perpetual present and the perpetually “new” is well sketched in
Baudrillard’s The Consumer Society[8] and The
System of Objects. [9]
Modernist subjectivities (e.g.
advertising media and the conglomerates they purvey), similar to religions,
models of industry and other shapers of culture—aestheticize the Real and hence
the ontological; but there is no imperious demand for Jameson’s “whole new
kinds of human beings” because we have openly embraced the metaphysics of
Capital, and the seat of the ontological location we linguify, at its core, is
animal, hormonal and metagenetic, meaning that we as beasts, have gathered,
constructed and manufactured the virtual cage we then seek to aestheticize--via
a perverse dialectic of the biomediated Code and its milieu. The reason for this need to aestheticize is
unknown. We have simply exchanged forms
over time, like styles or fashions, but never content—the content remains the
same dialectical struggle of the colonized and the colonizer, the dominated and
the dominator, the undercapitalized and the overcapitalized, etc. As Foucault’s “docile bodies”, those bodies
that are economically virile, while politically impotent, we render unto
ourselves the ontological checkmate wherein which we negotiate our stylistic
failure to materialize the politically and socioeconomically rhetorical
optimisms of our virtual cage. Our
organic chemistry instead produces the psychical Utopian completion in Deific
terms, because we seem incapable thus far (or at this evolutionary stage, if
you prefer), at least on a mass scale, of being fully vested in our own
futures; the infamous “opiate of the masses” still registers in the minds of
many and while its traditional domain diminishes, Capital’s purview increases
on the scale of the Deific; many refer to this as globalization. Like the technology bubble of the late
nineties, the metaphysical bubble of the latter few millennia seems set to
burst.
Where Saussurean sign theory
would posit Capital as sign— signifying the utility of the owners of the means
of production and communication (i.e. corporate capital—the apostles of
Capital)—this represents merely one facet of Capital. Barthes’ theory of myth would maintain that
we live in the shadow of the Myth of Capital, which is a more evolved theory of
sign that we might apply to Capital. But
I would argue that we need theorize Capital further still, as myth for Barthes
was always limited by its form as a method of communication, and while
metaphysical ideals communicate, they also maintain an active rationale and
mode of being and operation. The extraordinary explosion of the sign as Myth
means that we now live in the Shadow of the sign, and have done so since the
construction of mass media and fiber-optic cable, satellite transmission, and
their precursory technologies. This is
an important Barthesian/Baudrillardian transition—but we have moved further
still.[10]
Capital is not merely a
mythical sign of value; it is the Logos that we refuse to acknowledge as the
arbiter of metaphysical being, which in turn informs our operative
being—socially, politically, economically, and otherwise. Every decision that is made, regarding the
spirit or the flesh, by every individual and every institution, is made in
reference and with reverence to Capital.
What is best for the Church is certainly what is best for its ledger
balance, that is, what is best for communion and access to its true
Deity—Capital. What is best for the
nuclear family is the same, and that is why child-care centers have waiting
lists (demand) for enrollment, while paradoxically, child-care workers (supply)
are among the most poorly paid individuals in America—all relationships are
determined by the divinity of Capital, meaning that, if the supply of
child-care workers (a morally virtuous occupation, one might argue) exceeds the
demand of child-care services, child-care center owners need not pay more than
the very least of wages, and indeed, that is the case. The international and domestic affairs of
most nations are handled in a similar fashion, in that most events occur in
terms of Capital’s divine logic. For
example, is healthcare distribution—a notably moral and ethical enterprise in
theory, determined by need, and the moral, ethical and compassionate will to
fulfill that need? No, not operatively. In actuality, it is determined by cost. There are exceptions, but they are few. What
nations or peoples are immune to this Deific contagion? The AIDS pandemic, as characterized and
experienced, particularly in the poorest of nations, is a most poignant example
of the metaphysics of Capital.
Ironically, Capital is the
materialization of the voracity of the living organism we call human, and is
hence pseudo-biological—yet is also spiritual because of the divinity of
purpose it brings to each singular life, while it also cannibalizes the very
essence of what we have for millennia idealized as virtuous. We are prescribed to have a new faith in its
Shadow—that is, one must have ‘faith in the market’ to sort out the
discrepancies, inefficiencies, inequalities and the like that it (like God
before it) inevitably challenges us with.
We cannot question the market, without accusations of heresy. It is the material manifestation and
codification of the organic avarice Gordon Gekko in the film Wall Street
(1987) reified as the “lust for life”, that has “marked the upward surge of
mankind”, out of the proverbial cosmic soup and caves of antiquity. Capital forecasts the winds of change; we
need only follow its logic, to receive its prophecies. We currently call its missionary work and
endeavors: globalization and international affairs.
Wall Street analysts,
economists, and billionaires also prophesize, but have dubious reputations
unless they are ordained by Capital (e.g. Gates, Buffett, etc.). These prophets come and go because their
accuracies are less than scientific, and only slightly better than prophets of
antiquity (e.g. Jesus)—and because Capital (like most other deities) is
fickle. Absurdly, the psycho-technologies
of the prophet, though perhaps to a limit, are manifestly more powerful by
virtue of their inconsistencies. As in
marketing, sales and promotion, the allure of the event is the selling
point—not the presence of the event in itself (e.g. Armageddon). Should the event occur, no further sales
could be made. And where religions and
deities have coded the allure of the Future Event in the cultural discourses of
the past, Capital now codes all of these things. No other construct has enjoyed such universal
reverence and appeal. What construct
has, in reality, ever been so intimately related to the actual and operational
survival of every man, women, and child on the entire planet, other than
Capital? From cowry shells and plantains
to futures contracts and credit swaps—Capital is the divinity we seek today.
Capital has supplanted the
Deity as our metaphysical ideal. What is
fascinating is that we do not understand Capital’s formative role in our
metaphysical lives, and that we continue to pay homage to religions and Gods we
do not follow in practice. How so? Consider that Christianity has long been a
consumer religion, if we agree that paying lip service to pious codes and
ideals, and attending ecclesiastical functions in of themselves do not
constitute anything more than mere pastimes, akin to activities that are
considered entertainment such as sports, vacations, and the perhaps even the
evening news (e.g. infotainment). Specifically, it is the pervasive modality of
Capital accumulation as praxis that by default makes Christianity as a doxa and
means to an ethical, moral or spiritual end untenable, at least not without
creating a state of confusion, let alone hypocrisy. The Jesus Christ of the Gospels purveyed
fairly clear ideas, to put it mildly, about the gathering of worldly affects,
material and immaterial, and describes a code of behavior that is antithetical
to the very nature of living in postmodernity, particularly with regard to the
ways in which Capital must be wielded in order to survive today.
Whereas God manifested himself
in the world as religion and in the heavens as Logos, Capital too, manifests
itself in the world, its most vivid form being currencies and the banking
institutions that have become our places of worship; and from the throne of
that metaphysical location, Capital as the divine architect, informs the Logos
that divines human rationale everyday.
Some call this Spirit—“The Market”-- but the Lord has gone by many
different names over the millennia, and we can understand the folly of man and
woman, in hoping to maintain some semblance of a hold on his or her projected
feeling of centrality to the Deity. But
as we know, humans have never been the Deity’s central concern, and nothing has
changed since Capital’s purview. Only
now, we are “disengaged from all collective obligations of a magical or
religious order, liberated from the archaic, symbolic, or personal ties”[11], and ‘free’ to pursue our divinity out in the open.
Currencies signify a
relationship to Capital and these significations are analogous to religions as
signifiers of Deity. But beyond the
realm of signification, which is always social—religion and currencies, foster
the illusion of singularity (consider the ‘freedom’ of being well financed, or
the individual ‘love’ of Jesus for his followers—in that ‘Jesus loves every
hair on one’s head’). On some
metaphysical plateau, currencies are succeeding in gratifying the need for
singular meaning, possibly because their pleasures are ‘current’, and that is to
say, applicable to the present, whereas it could be argued that religion has
failed to deliver any of its promises and some are tired of waiting for the
salvation they are now suspicious will never come.
This shift in Western social
consciousness (globalization and universalism are ensuring that no culture will
survive outside of this consciousness) thrusts the Deity and all of his
religions off of the throne of metaphysical hegemony—this process is still
taking place—but we have already been acting out the replacement script; the
screenplay of Capital and its priests and pastors (e.g. currencies and
financial instruments) and of course, Credit, which suffice it to say may be
analogous to the Dark One, (i.e. Satan, Beelzebub, and the like) in a world
like ours where we must always attempt to quantify the dark and the light—we
are still nowhere beyond the good and the evil.
Milan Kundera reminds of this “unbearable” state—this “lightness of
being” which we abhor and cultivate all at once.[12]
In earlier times, Capital’s
currencies had been specific in structure to each cultural region, but
generalized in societal function, culturally homogenizing only the locality of
exchange that participants in each respective culture functioned within.
Unlike God and Capital,
currencies and religions act in ways that can be measured. Distinct from religions, which posit a Deific
referent, currencies need no referent (they refer to each other—in America, we
discarded the precious metal standard in favor of the ‘floating currency’ in
1971) because they are electric signifiers--ultimate signs, and in this way are
metadeific, and that is to say beyond Deity, and they must be, for
globalization and liberal universalism is their project. We cannot all unite and exchange under the
sign of a religion and its deific referent, whichever Deity it may be. History has shown us all how very messy that
has been (and continues to be). We
cannot say if this is good or bad for our future, only that it is different
from the past.
Currencies alone seem capable
of total homogenization, in the name of Capital as Logos, Deity, etc. Untethered in this manner they are free to
usurp and replace all meaning in their proximity in the name of Capital and
also a concept deemed ‘Progress’.
Baudrillard has described that our civilization is apt to change, yet it
is not necessarily destined to become:
It was an opposition put forth
by Nietzsche, he spoke about the era of chameleons. We are in a chameleonesque
era, able to change but not able to become. This is our challenge. By an excess
of potential changing, any possibility is there, but becoming is not a choice,
becoming someone is another fatal strategy. For Nietzsche it would be the
sovereign hypothesis. He speaks of four hypotheses. The first one would be
inertia, motionless, and so on. The second would be changing, the third one
would be history, and the last one is the sovereign one, it is becoming. We are
far away from becoming as a symbolic metamorphosis, as the symbolic return of
things.[13]
And for that reason,
‘Progress’, as such an ideal is always a mysterious term; perhaps that is why
politicians revel in the use of it in their speeches. But this kind of change, that of ‘Progress’,
is a change of image, a change of face, a change in political party—not a
becoming. Yes, we progress into a
“global village”, whatever the costs; we might change everything, whatever the
consequences; yet may well become nothing.
However, we should anticipate that where religion has failed to unite
the world and Marxism failed to unite the workers, Capital, via currencies, is
succeeding in uniting consumer-citizens of the world, as the eventual
indication of the globalized consciousness all other philosophies have failed
to produce.
Like employees that fail to
do the work required of them, traditional deities are increasingly out of work,
and more telling still, out of fashion, (and we know how important fashion is),
so they are of necessity replaceable, and in today’s jargon, we might say they
are ‘outsourceable’. So we have the
aortic pulse of Being no longer embodying the fluid dynamic of the
Spiritual. The metaphysique of the human
soul still floats, not symbolically, but rather, transactionally, not unlike
exchange-traded currencies, futures contracts, and equity issues transact;
which is to say, not relative to underlying fundamentals, and not rationally,
which is probably in accord with previous metaphysicalities anyway. That is how equities such as Yahoo!,Inc. (the
internet company--ticker symbol—YHOO) can trade at $45.40 dollars per share,
and at a price to earnings ratio of 135.12![14] And it is how
seemingly moral and ethical considerations such as healthcare distribution, CEO
and celebrity pay, and childcare worker pay and the like are, shall we say ‘so
out of whack’. Capital’s metaphysical potency rests in its transparency, and
its pataphysical concretion in markets and currencies, which bequeath to us a
metaphysicality and logic that God was never skilled enough to cultivate or
manifest, garnering instead that Nietzschean elegy with which the world is
becoming still ever more familiar.
Wittgenstein wrote that “there is not a
philosophical method, though there are indeed methods, like different
therapies”[15], and the same criticism applies to religions,
psychologies, political parties, and so forth.
All of these methods have attempted to codify order, unite difference,
and narrate meaning. Capital
expropriates all of this; and like terrorism and fascism, it enigmatizes
meaning, and subsumes the Question of life by igniting the wick of Desire—
whose slow burn perpetually teases us into a frenzy for the speed of the
moment. This is our purpose and rationale, and what fuels our march forward in
the name of a ‘Progress’ we only feign to understand. Unfortunately, progress is not meaning, which
is what we all truly seek. Meaning has
always been a gift; a gift whose weight is far greater than the buttress of
populace has historically been able to lift.
And that is why fascism and totalitarianism have not become extinct—on
the contrary, they have spawned mutants such as terrorism, and are more virulent
and insidious than ever, like other infectious agents that mutate and resist.
So the metaphysical terrain of pious meaning
rescinds, as the metaphysics of Capital markets expand, replacing the landscape
with an enigmatic chaos as praxis that is ultra-reactionary and
spectacular. In this way it compels and
enforces a capitalist raison d'être, and it achieves this in the manner of a
narcotic-- narrating and inflicting meaning as in the ilk of the junkie. Capital has become the Cause, (e.g. Pinero’s
and Aristotle’s—much to their disdain—and ours) and its iconology radiates
across the oblivion of culture via fiber-optic networks and fashion media. Capital integrates difference, by
commodifying difference and allowing its transference and exchange; it narrates
ontological meaning and imposes order.
All that is left to debate after electric Capital—deified Capital, are
rates of exchange.
The metaphysics of Capital operate under the guise of
an imagined unity, and the spectacle of trade unites every television screen
and human singularity in the form of exchange rate indices and equity market
averages, from
Interestingly, this is not very different than the
notion of the culture industry, which Horkheimer and Adorno described in their
text, Dialectic of Enlightenment, which we spoke of earlier. In
that work, they offer, among other things, a telling critique of mass culture,
especially when we consider that it was published in 1944, long before the
mediaopolis was as evolved as it is today:
Culture today is infecting everything with
sameness. Films, radio and magazines (as
well as television and the Internet) make up a system, which is uniform as
a whole and in every part… No mention is made of the fact that the basis on
which technology acquires power over society is the power of those whose
economic hold over society is greatest. A technological rationale is the
rationale of domination itself. It is
the coercive nature of society alienated from itself. Automobiles, bombs, and movies keep the
totality together until their leveling element shows its strength in the very
wrong it furthered. It has made the
technology of the culture industry no more than the achievement of
standardization and mass production…[19]
Horkheimer and Adorno presaged
the mediaopolis that is at all-time highs in terms of its level of adaptation
by the masses across the globe. Their
foreshadowing analysis of culture as the industry of Capital is foundational to
a theory of Capital’s envelopment of metaphysical culture as well:
Today the culture
industry has taken over the civilizing inheritance of the entrepreneurial and
frontier democracy - whose appreciation of intellectual deviations was never
very finely attuned. All are free to dance and enjoy themselves, just as they
have been free, since the historical neutralization of religion, to join any of
the innumerable sects. But freedom to choose an ideology - since ideology
always reflects economic coercion - everywhere proves to be freedom to choose
what is always the same. The way in which a girl accepts and keeps the
obligatory date, the inflection on the telephone or in the most intimate
situation, the choice of words in conversation, and the whole inner life as
classified by the now somewhat devalued depth psychology, bear witness to man's
attempt to make himself a proficient apparatus, similar (even in emotions) to
the model served up by the culture industry.[20]
The connection to
the model of Being that is served up by one’s culture requires that one’s
“emotions” synchronize to the culture’s metaphysical system—hence the above
excerpt can be developed along the lines of the Aristotelian eudaimonia.
In order to achieve a sense of meaning in the mediaopolis, in order to flourish,
one must adapt to the needs, not of oneself, but of the political economy of
the mediaopolis itself, and this means achieving something like a
pseudo-Weberian prosperity. This
development forces an alignment to a new functional ideal of friendship, love
and society.
In the Nicomachean
Ethics, Aristotle categorizes wealth as an end in itself, but as the worst
perversion of a constitutional basis for activity a society could adopt. Of course, Aristotle felt that a monarchy was
best for the masses, and that position is difficult to reconcile with his
conception of true friendship, benevolence and eudaimonia, the possibilities of
which are suspect under the “trusted” fist of a monarch.[21]
Such are the hypocrisies of aristocratic thought.
Scott Meikle points out that
Aristotle posited two different arts of acquisitiveness for human beings; oikonomike
and chrematistike.[22] Meikle
explains that oikonomike (running a household), is natural and good in
Aristotle’s thought, whereas chrematistike (a form of wealth seeking)
can be unnatural when it is an end in itself, and not good, because it is
acquisitiveness directed toward the accumulation of money for its own
sake. For Aristotle, wealth can be true
and natural (i.e. useful in the household or polis), or spurious and banal
(e.g. Capital accumulation as a means of coercion), where “money is the
starting point and the goal”.[23] Perhaps most
important for our understanding the metaphysics of Capital is the fact that “it
is a serious matter for Aristotle that in the pursuit of wealth as money, there
is no limit of the end it seeks”.[24] Without
limits, Capital as divinity is free to hover, endlessly suggesting its own
ends, and unlike previous deific constructs, we can be absolutely certain that
this Deity has no conscience.
We can only assume that this
will be the century of Capital—global Capital, finance Capital, electric
Capital, and so on. But if speculation
is appropriate in living, and we are constantly reminded that is it virtually
imperative (e.g., 401k plans, profit sharing, investment portfolios, etc.), we
could speculatively criticize our new metaphysical location in better ways than
before, when all dissent was heresy. Of
course, we are already dogmatizing the new rhetorical power play of market
‘freedoms’ and such, and to dissent from Capital is, as I’ve stated earlier,
already heresy in many circles. Still,
our era is epochal and perhaps we should mark it. We’ve started with: B.C.E. (before common
era) and moved into C.E. (common era) and then into what—A.C. (after
Capital)? 2004 A.C.? It has a seductive ring to it. We’ll have to wait and see.
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Notes