I’m told that Nietzsche says that life is best or only justifiable in aesthetic terms. I don’t know if that’s true - that Nietzsche said that - as I’ve not read much of his writing. I’m sympathetic to the idea, though ‘aesthetic’ isn’t quite the word I’d use. In any case, that’s not what I want to post about.
By ‘aesthetic objections to capitalism’ I don’t mean anything complicated. I mean things like “damn, that’s ugly.” This might be better called ‘objection based on taste’. In any case here are some such objections:
- strip malls and how ugly they are
- muzak and much manufactured pop music
- Thomas Kincaid, Painter of Light
The one that’s on my mind most at present is heirloom tomatoes. I’ve started shopping more often at the local co-0p grocery store. I’d avoided it because certain items are ridiculously high priced, but mainly because I don’t like what feels to me like the hippie and yuppie customer mix. That combo is particularly noisome. But the bulk goods are cheap and they sell some decent vegetarian stuff. And the tomatoes…! I first had an heirloom tomato a year ago when I was in Oakland for union stuff, staying with a friend who had an apartment with a backyard and a garden. We were sitting out back I think drinking beer, and chatting. He was like “want a tomato?” I was like “uhh… okay,” thinking that was a bit odd. He gave me one. It was kind of dark so it was hard to see. The tomato was delicious! The next day I had another in the sunlight, it was this crazy tomato that was all purple. The co-op sells them often in all kinds of colors and mixes of colors (like striped or speckled), and they’re delicious. Various tastes and textures too. (I also got some purple potatoes, which taste the same but have a great color especially when mashed.) That’s an objection to capitalized farming. So called ‘gas green’ tomatoes just don’t compare. (We had avocadoes and mangoes on our trip to Mexico last summer which are another argument along these lines, it was like shockingly good food.)
As far as I’m concerned, though, these are objections to actually existing capitalism, not capitalism as such. My access to all these goods was thoroughly capitalized. Just not the hegemonic form of capitalized food production and distribution, at least for my income bracket. As a hypothesis I want to contend that all objections based on taste (except “waged labor and surplus labor time are distasteful”) are demands capital could accommodate for. At least in theory. Actually existing capitalism may not be able to do so, if there’s not enough elasticity in the system at present to respond to a widely held demand which was pushed hard such that these demands create crisis - like say, the push for greener technologies, that push threatens this or that sector - but these could still could be produced in a capitalist fashion eventually, and could become part of hegemonic capital.
Well, I’m not so sure about the analysis. Seems to me that your first engagement with the heirloom tomato came from a gift economy and garden, not a capitalist system. As for your other purchases, they could continue in a collectivist situation, though not a communist one. More productively, if you’re saving your heirloom seeds, wanna get together and make seedballs for next year?
E
Comment by Errico — August 21, 2007 @ 8:38 pm
hey chief,
I’m more committed to the heirloom tomato than I am to the analysis of my encounter with them. I’d say the one in Jefferson’s backyard is as you describe. I’m not convinced the Wedge is non-capitalist. Consumer co-ops are well and good, but the place has employees, a management team, and access to goods requires paying for them. I’d bet though that the tomato growers were small scale capitalist farmers, with employees who produce surplus value alongside proprietors who work as well.
On the more important note, I hadn’t thought of saving the seeds. How do I do that? I’m interested in the seedball making, though I know nothing about that so I’ll need much direction.
This reminds me, I’ve been meaning to mention this - have you read Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale? It’s by Maria Mies. I keep thinking of you as I read it.
take care,
Nate
Comment by Nate — August 21, 2007 @ 10:34 pm
Nate, you may be interested in Mike Davis’s recent turn to Capitalism’s utopic urbanism(s), typified by Dubai.
“After Shanghai (current population: 15 million), Dubai (current population: 1.5 million) is the world’s biggest building site: an emerging dreamworld of conspicuous consumption and what locals dub “supreme lifestyles.”
Dozens of outlandish mega-projects — including “The World” (an artificial archipelago), Burj Dubai (the Earth’s tallest building), the Hydropolis (that underwater luxury hotel, the Restless Planet theme park, a domed ski resort perpetually maintained in 40C heat, and The Mall of Arabia, a hyper-mall — are actually under construction or will soon leave the drawing boards.
A sattelite photo of ‘Jebel Ali Palm Island,’ the second Palm Island to be built off the coast of Dubai. Eventually, three palm-shaped artificial islands will be built in the Dubai area. The first one, ‘Jumeira Palm’ is almost completed.
A satellite photo of ‘Jebel Ali Palm Island,’ the second Palm Island to be built off the coast of Dubai. Eventually, three palm-shaped artificial islands will be built in the Dubai area. The first one, ‘Jumeira Palm’ is almost completed. Click to enlarge.
Under the enlightened despotism of its Crown Prince and CEO, 56-year-old Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, the Rhode-Island-sized Emirate of Dubai has become the new global icon of imagineered urbanism. Although often compared to Las Vegas, Orlando, Hong Kong or Singapore, the sheikhdom is more like their collective summation: a pastiche of the big, the bad, and the ugly. It is not just a hybrid but a chimera: the offspring of the lascivious coupling of the cyclopean fantasies of Barnum, Eiffel, Disney, Spielberg, Jerde, Wynn, and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.”
http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2005/07/sinister_paradise.html
Comment by Andrew — August 23, 2007 @ 12:37 am
The claim that “only as an aesthetic phenomenon can the world be justified” appears multiple times in The Birth of Tragedy.
Comment by Collin — August 23, 2007 @ 1:03 pm
Been off writing job apps this week, no time to check comments. Seed saving not too difficult. A good tutorial on tomato seed-saving is here, and an introduction to making seedballs out of them is here. And here. I’d be thrilled to help out - maybe I can even scam a few of the balls afterwards for my own crop next year….(hint hint). See you Saturday, I hope.
Comment by Errico — August 24, 2007 @ 8:56 am
Oh yeah, and I never read the Maria Mies piece - bang - posted to CiteYouLike.
Comment by Errico — August 24, 2007 @ 9:02 am
birth of tragedy is an ambiguous text. Nietzsche wasn’t so into it later. I think he evolved towards a view of the justification of life and actions based on health, vitality, and nobility. A weird mixture of biologico-ethical categories (the aristotle connection isn’t imaginary). I dig it though, and like thinking of things in terms of life affirming or negating.
Many of the things you bring up actually are ethical and not purely aesthetic. An heirloom tomato has qualities which make it good or bad, not necessarily just beautiful or whatnot. I like ethical objections to capital based on the phenomenology of its urban space, and likewise the aesthetic experiences. balla’ shit
Comment by todd — August 25, 2007 @ 1:34 pm
hey Todd,
I’m a firm believer that criticisms of capitalism always use some kind of normative framework, ie, there’s a moral component. Part of some of the sillier parts of the marxist tradition have been about making framework explicit - and making there be one framework which is establishable in a fully worked out. I’m for a sort of morally/normatively minimalist critique a la objections to the boss at work — the framework should accomodate as wide a swath of perspectives as possible, and should mostly rely on what it takes functionally as primitive moral intuitions.
That said, the reasons that I really care about heirloom tomatoes are aesthetic (gustatory). Their other good qualities are fine and good but they don’t compel me, whereas the gustatory qualities do.
take care,
Nate
Comment by Nate — August 26, 2007 @ 11:27 am
While Nietzsche should not be taken as authoritative (in anything), the “aesthetic question” remains a real question. Sans God or Duty (including any presumed duties to a marxist State-to-come), aesthetics does seem to be sort of critical. Hume himself seems to suggest something of the sort in his comments contra-ethics (Nietzsche often seems to be re-iterating Humean sorts of ideas (such as the fact/value distinction), though in a rather more forceful manner). Which is to say, those humans who want to overcome the Humean or Nietzschean sort of subjectivity (if not potential nihilism), are faced with a rather daunting task: and merely invoking “class struggle” doesn’t really count for much (Marx in effect did his ethics (or anti-ethics) implicitly–alas).
Comment by Perezoso — September 21, 2007 @ 11:33 am