Friday, February 25, 2022

Expressions that pass from hand to hand like sealed containers...

In Herbert Marcuse and Planned Obsolescence I undertook to develop a theoretical foundation for 'planned obsolescence' from Georg Simmel's analysis of the "preponderance of objective culture over subjective culture that developed during the nineteenth century." My intuition has proved to be uncannily prescient. Besides the indirect influence of Thorstein Veblen -- by way of Vance Packard and Stuart Chase -- Marcuse's argument was indirectly influenced by Simmel, through the mediation of György Lukács's History and Class Consciousness, which Marcuse regarded highly.

Marcuse deployed Lukács's concept of reification throughout One-Dimensional Man. Meanwhile, Lukács's concept of reification came largely from Simmel. In Simmel's preface to The Philosophy of Money, he evoked his intention to "construct a new storey beneath historical materialism" that would both preserve the economic effects on intellectual life while developing the reciprocal effects of psychological factors on economic life. Although not explicitly stated, Lukács's intention in "Reification and the consciousness of the proletariat" could be characterized as attempting to construct an additional Marxian storey beneath Simmel's storey. It's storeys all the way down.

In the process of transmission, reification became one of those expressions that Simmel had described:
The tremendous expansion of objective, available material of knowledge allows or even enforces the use of expressions that pass from hand to hand like sealed containers without the condensed content of thought actually enclosed within them being unfolded for the individual user.
My task here will be to unfold reification. 

In his chapter on reification, Lukács attempted to brush aside Simmel's analysis with the faint praise of his book being "a very interesting and perceptive work in matters of detail." Even that, though, was contained as a parenthesis within a two-paragraph rant against the "empty manifestations" of bourgeois thinkers who divorce their analysis "from real capitalist foundations and make them independent and permanent by regarding them as the timeless model of human relations in general." Lukács gave a much more positive assessment of Simmel's contribution in an essay originally published in 1918 -- that is, before he wrote History and Class Consciousness.

In my capacity as a non-specialist, non-philosopher, it seems to me that Simmel's section on the "concept of culture" in the last chapter of The Philosophy of Money is clearer and more compelling than either Lukács's "Reification and the consciousness of the proletariat" or Marcuse's discussions of 'reification' and 'planned obsolescence' in One-Dimensional Man.  I believe Lukács later recanted his harsh assessment of Simmel and admitted his influence but I haven't been able to find the article in translation. (see last sentence of previous paragraph for update)

Simmel used the noun 'reification' and the associated verb 'reified' sparingly in The Philosophy of Money but with surgical precision. It first appears in the subheading of the last subsection of chapter one, "Money is a reification of the general form of existence according to which things derive their significance from their relationships to each other." In this subsection, Simmel celebrated affirmed reification as "a great accomplishment of the mind," and the particular form of money as the "greatest triumph" of reification. Simmel would have none of that "original sin" and "root of all evil" lament.

In his last chapter, Simmel began section II, The Concept of Culture, on a similarly celebratory note. The general concept of culture involves the development by human action of natural materials into forms that increase their value to us. Simmel gave an inventory of examples of material culture ranging from "furniture, cultured plants, works of art, machines, tools and books" to more intangible cultural products that shape human relationships such as "language, morals, religion and law."

The picture darkens, however, when Simmel compared culture in general with the specific contemporary culture, using the course of the nineteenth century as his benchmark. During that century, material or objective culture expanded tremendously but, according to Simmel, individual or subjective culture failed to develop in proportion and perhaps even declined. "at least among the highest strata." 

This, of course, was an empirical claim for which Simmel could give only impressionistic evidence: in spite of "a large number of refinements, subtleties and individual modes of expression. Yet, if one looks at the speech and writing of individuals, they are on the whole increasingly less correct, less dignified and more trivial." Similarly, "it seems that conversation, both social as well as intimate and in the exchange of letters, is now more superficial, less interesting and less serious than at the end of the eighteenth century."

Of course, Simmel's perspective could be seen as one of those "kids these days" refrains that recur with each generation. His analysis, however, is more substantive than his evidence. To some extent, the preponderance of objective culture over subjective culture that developed over the nineteenth century can be attributed simply to change in scale accompanying urbanization. Simmel gave the counterexample of a small community with limited cultural resources in which, "the objective cultural possibilities will not extend much beyond the subjective cultural reality." A larger group and increased cultural level "will favour a discrepancy between both." But size does not offer a complete explanation. For a fuller, causal explanation, Simmel turned to the division of labour. Simmel's account is broadly congruent with Marx's:
Where the worker works with his own materials, his labour remains within the sphere of his own personality, and only by selling the finished products is it separated from him. Where there is no possibility for utilizing his labour in this way, the worker places his labour at the disposal of another person for a market price and thus separates himself from his labour from the moment it leaves its source. The fact that labour now shares the same character, mode of valuation and fate with all other commodities signifies that work has become something objectively separate from the worker, something that he not only no longer is, but also no longer has. For as soon as his potential labour power is transposed into actual work, only its money equivalent belongs to him whereas the work itself belongs to someone else or, more accurately, to an objective organization of labour.
Moreover, a similar degree of specialization and objectification of the product of work also becomes the standard for intellectual labour. 

Consumption follows a similar pattern to production:
Since the division of labour destroys custom production — if only because the consumer can contact a producer but not a dozen different workers — the subjective aura of the product also disappears in relation to the consumer because the commodity is now produced independently of him. It becomes an objective given entity which the consumer approaches externally and whose specific existence and quality is autonomous of him.
Two of the consequences of this depersonalization of consumption that Simmel noted are the estrangement between individuals and the products they produce and consume and the acceleration of fashion cycles. With regard to the first, Simmel gave the example of the younger generation viewing older people's attachment to furniture they have had for a long time as an eccentricity. Simmel's view on fashion, briefly outlined in The Philosophy of Money and subsequently expanded into an essay, dwells on the tension between conflicting drives to differentiation and imitation. Social class is determinate in fashion, which, "always indicates a social stratum which uses similarity of appearance to assert both its own inner unity and its outward differentiation from other social strata." For the upper classes, it is not so much a matter of "keeping up with the Joneses," as keeping away from them:
Wherever fashions have existed they have sought to express social differences. Yet the social changes of the last hundred years have accelerated the pace of changes in fashion, on the one hand through the weakening of class barriers and frequent upward social mobility of individuals and sometimes even of whole groups to a higher stratum, and on the other through the predominance of the third estate. The first factor makes very frequent changes of fashion necessary on the part of leading strata because imitation by the lower strata rapidly robs fashions of their meaning and attraction.
Simmel's analysis of fashion offers an illuminating contrast with Thorstein Veblen's 'conspicuous consumption,' 'conspicuous waste,' and 'invidious comparison.' Simmel's remarks on fashion are embedded within his discussion of the division of labour and the major historical change over the nineteenth century in separating subjective culture from objective culture. Veblen's terms addressed residual features retained from "the higher stages of the barbarian culture." 

Since Marcuse's references to 'planned obsolescence' derive ultimately from Veblen, by way of Vance Packard and, particularly, Stuart Chase, it will be prudent to next give  attention to Chase's use of Veblen in his analysis.

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

Forgive me, but I am trying to understand or find a central theme here and I have read carefully with referrals but I am lost so far. How do I get inside this essay? I will keep trying, but I am lost so far.

Sandwichman said...

This is only part 2 of an ongoing investigation. The central theme here is "reification," a term used by Marcuse, Lukacs, and Simmel. In my view, Simmel gives the clearest explanation of reification. He begins from the premise that reification is, fundamentally, a profound intellectual achievement but then progresses to the observation that the reifications of objective culture in modern life overwhelm the individual's capacity to comprehend them and make them part of a subjective culture.

Most of my discussion here is a summary of part II, "The concept of culture," of chapter 6, "The style of life," of Simmel's The Philosophy of Money

Anonymous said...

Simmel gives the clearest explanation of reification. He begins from the premise that reification is, fundamentally, a profound intellectual achievement but then progresses to the observation that the reifications of objective culture in modern life overwhelm the individual's capacity to comprehend them and make them part of a subjective culture....

[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reification_(Marxism)

"In Marxism, reification is the process by which social relations are perceived as inherent attributes of the people involved in them, or attributes of some product of the relation, such as a traded commodity."

Still trying and very appreciative of your explanation, but still lost. ]

Anonymous said...

Darn, I just do not understand and do not think the problem is my inability. I need help, and am sure other readers will.

Sandwichman said...

I am often lost when trying to understand something that is new to me. What I do is suspend my feeling that I need master the discourse as I am reading it. Sometimes the understanding comes to me later, when I am not reading or thinking about the difficult text.

I did a presentation on The Philosophy of Money 35 years ago in a graduate seminar. Obviously, I remember little of what I said then. But I have the book with passages underlined that at the time I thought were significant. A random series of events brought me back to it as I was trying to "unpack" Marcuse's lack of theorization of planned obsolescence. These are the events:

I recalled Walter Benjamin's addendum to "The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire," which contains a section on taste. "As a consequence of the manufacture of products as commodities..." (as distinct from the craft manufacture of a particular item for a particular customer) people become less and less aware of the conditions of their production..." I am quoting only a bit of what Benjamin wrote about this topic. All of it has some relevance but if I quoted everything, I would be doing nothing but quoting.

After going back to Benjamin's text on taste, I thought it would be useful to look at his folder on "fashion" in his Arcades Project. It was there that I noticed he quoted Simmel frequently. So I went back to my copy of The Philosophy of Money to see the context of the brief excerpts that Benjamin quoted. Here, my underlining from 35 years ago helped guide me.

Reading Simmel again, I was astonished to realize that Benjamin's remarks on taste were, in part, a paraphrase of Simmel's comments on consumption. "Oh, a fragment of text I have long admired for its insight turns out to refer to ANOTHER text that I read before but have long forgotten specifics of!"

And then reading Simmel again and reading about Simmel in various journal articles made me aware of Simmel's importance for Lukacs and, subsequently, of Lukacs's importance for Marcuse and it occurred to me that maybe things would be a little clearer if we set Lukacs aside and went back to his source. And here we are.

I can't guarantee that even I completely understand what I'm talking about. These blog posts are meant as think pieces that are subject to revision.

It seems to me that often in Marxism reification is talked about as if it is an unredeemed evil. As if the reified thing or concept was false and concealed some hidden truth. I think Simmel's position is much more defensible. Reification is a great mental achievement. But it doesn't stop there. Like all achievements, reification contains the seeds of hubris. For example, instead of being a means to an end, technology is looked upon to define our ends.

Sandwichman said...

On the (very difficult) concept of reification, Ryan Gunderson has a new paper out titled "Things Are the Way They Are: A Typology of Reification" Sociological Perspectives 2021, Vol. 64(1) 127–150. I am currently reading it.

Robert Vienneau said...

I did not read the post with attention, but perhaps it would help anonymous if he read the section towards the start of volume 1 of Marx's Capital on commodity fetishism.

See https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#S4

Anonymous said...

What I do is suspend my feeling that I need master the discourse as I am reading it. Sometimes the understanding comes to me later, when I am not reading or thinking about the difficult text....

[ Superb, along with the rest of the comment. ]

Anonymous said...

Robert Vienneau, I will be taking your kind suggestion today:

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#S4

Anonymous said...

So, then I will read reification as alienation of or separation of workers from what workers produce. A sense that what I use has no relation to what I or people like me have produced.

Got it!

Anonymous said...

"Connecting" workers to what workers produce is a continual project in China, and right now is a focus of agriculture policy for the new 5-year plan. President Xi, who has roots in agricultural communities, speaks of the matter often. The Chinese media is filled with stories of the connecting that is occurring, and the effects are dynamic and broad.

For instance, pork is very important in the Chinese diet and these last 3 years there has been a profound reorganization of pork farming, attaching farmers to product increasingly closely. Similarly vegetable farming is being reorganized...

Anonymous said...

As for pork, I am a vegetarian but nonetheless pork is an important food for many, many people and I respect that. Also, pork farming in China has quickly become more animal-health focused.

Anonymous said...

Now that I am comfortable with this essay, thinking I understand the themes that can be developed, I find the essay simply superb. Again, this will really help me and I much appreciate the responses to the problem I have had in understand.

A wonderful essay by Sandwichman.

Anonymous said...

Returning to my thinking about "socialism with Chinese characteristics," the thrust of the rural efforts against poverty, which are continuing even as worker well-being has dramatically improved, involves making rural work increasingly productive and so better connecting or attaching workers to products. The examples I have collected are remarkable in showing just how alienation of workers from products in lessened.

Anonymous said...

Continually lessening alienation:

https://english.news.cn/20220227/0bbdb89d7d7c48fe96ca05c92cb70664/c.html

February 27, 2022

Forest ranger encouraged by interaction with Xi

BEIJING -- Despite being almost a year ago, a conversation with President Xi Jinping still reverberates in the mind of Zhou Yizhe, a national lawmaker from Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, north China.

"Your identity shift from a logger to a forest ranger epitomizes our country's transformation in industrial structures," Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, told Zhou during deliberations with fellow lawmakers from Inner Mongolia during the annual national legislative session in early March last year.

Ecological conservation, as Zhou recalled, was the main topic of discussion with the president.

Xi sets great store by ecological conservation. "Lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets," he has said, stressing protecting ecological environment and pushing sustainable development....

Sandwichman said...

What I would like to see in my comments section is conversation. What this requires is a certain amount of restraint from commenters. A long series of comment after comment from one person discourages participation from other people, especially if some of those comments wander away from the topic of the original post.

I had to delete two comments because they were rude replies to previous comments on pork and had nothing to do with the original post. I have so far refrained from deleting comments that have very little to do with the original post but if this one-sided commenting continues, I may find it necessary.

Sandwichman said...

"Review on Marcuse’s Theory of the Alienation of Science and Technology and Its Contemporary Values" Lu Qiuye & Ren Qiaohua

2nd International Conference on Management, Education and Social Science (2018)

"Abstract: Due to the development of the modern Enlightenment Movement, the capitalist industrial society is highly developed, and science and technology are alienated into a means of political rule. Alienated science and technology lead to the formation of a totalitarian society, which transforms the society into a unidimensional one, and makes people living in this society become unidimensional. It is Marcuse’s philosophical reflection and criticism on the influence of the alienation of science and technology on politics, economy, culture and other fields that lead him to establish his theory of the alienation of science and technology. Studying Marcuse’s theory of the alienation of science and technology will help us better understand and implement the goals set by the 19th CPC National Congress in establishing socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new era."

Anonymous said...

A long series of comment after comment from one person discourages participation from other people...

[ I am so sorry, and I will not comment or bother you again. I really value these writings and meant well, but I have failed to understand how to comment properly. I am too slow in understanding what commenting is about.

Please forgive me, there will be no more bother from me.

Thank you for the remarkable kindness. ]

Sandwichman said...

You are forgiven. A good rule of thumb is to not post more than three comments in a row without a reply.

I thought you might be interested in the article by Lu Qiuye & Ren Qiaohua. They are both from the School of Marxism, Shenyang Jianzhu University and have a couple of papers on Marcuse that I found. There is also a paper by Huiyan Gao of the School of Marxism, Northwestern Polytechnical University: 'The 'One-Dimensional' to 'Two-Dimensional' of Ideological and Political Education: Cause of the Problem, Generation and Elimination, Paradigm Innovation."