Prisons and Capitalism

05/27/2021

Recently I’ve been reading Against Architecture by Denis Hollier and it has some interesting words on Georges Bataille.

For Bataille, architecture is nothing more than a prison. “How is it a prison?” you may ask. The answer is quite simple: man is a prison. Now Hollier calls this prison ‘the human form’ but I prefer to use my term ‘the anthro-form’.

There is a question of if humans can expend (express) themselves in (through) labor. This is not a possibility. Labor is the opposite of expenditure. Labor cannot express man for a single moment. Now, it is not wrong to view labor-power as an expenditure of energy, but this is a productive form of energy-consumption. Labor, or work, is a prison for humanity. If we view all things which are products of labor (e.g., the commodity) as congealed labor then we can claim that all things which are products of labor are nothing more than the prison of humanity “in stable form”. Thus, architecture, which is the product of labor, is nothing more than the erection of the prison of congealed labor. The obelisk stands erect as architecture’s most oppressive structure.

In other words, architecture is the projection of humanity’s servility through work (which is one of the starting points of its servitude).

This also demonstrates another issue with the idea that Bataille is a capitalist. Since commodities are congealed labor, they are nothing other than humanity’s prison in “stable form”. No wonder consumerism makes us slaves! Consumerism’s very object, the commodity, is nothing other than purchasable servitude.

When one realizes that capitalism, as a system of commodities, has labor as the reducible unit,*[1] they realize that capitalism is a system of work, of labor. It is restricted economy par excellence, not to mention its dependence on the restricted state. Thus, capitalism is nothing more than the antipodes to Bataille’s general economy. Critics of Bataille can not have it one way. They cannot say that capitalism is a system of consumption, as Jean-Joseph Goux does, and then not mention the fact that the objects which are consumed, commodities, necessitate that capitalism is first a system of production. Remember the classic circuit of capital: M-C…P…C’-M’. Production is required for capitalism to exist, consumption, in the way Bataille speaks of it, is not. What I mean by this is that, looking at the circuit of capital, the first C(ommodity) is nothing other than the objects used in the production process to produce C’(ommodity with surplus value). The first C is not unproductively “consumed,” but rather productively put to use. Every commodity that is bought in present-day capitalism is an object of utility, not waste-for Christ’s sake, use-value is, according to Marx, one of the constituting characteristics of the commodity. These commodities are either A.) tools for utility, e.g., a hammer, a computer, car, etc. or B.) an object which is of utility in that it serves a teleological end (usually pleasure), e.g., food, TVs, sex toys,**[2] etc.

“But what about the waste of present-day capitalism?” you may ask. What about it? Present-day capitalism functions just like all other restricted economies. Firstly, it needs to be noted that this waste of capitalism is PRODUCED by capitalism. Secondly, we need to differentiate between the two “central” types of waste within capitalism: the first, surplus-value and the second, the waste that is killing the environment (e.g., carbon-dioxide emissions from gas consumption, mass/over-production and its products like plastic in the ocean, etc.). The first “excess,” surplus-value is the pure heterogeneity of capitalism. It is the imperative element which keeps the homogeneous body of capitalism alive. It is analogous to the right-pole of the sacred. Surplus value is that excess which is utilized and allows capitalism to expand via the accumulation of money by way of profit which has its origin in surplus-value. Capitalism is a restricted economy because it undergoes stages of growth and accumulation. The second “excess,” is therefore impure heterogeneity, that excess which disrupts the restricted economy.

Present-day capitalism’s ecological crisis was predicted by Georges Bataille in the 1930s and (19)40s. I say this because the waste and excess which has caused our current ecological crisis is nothing more than a “catastrophic expenditure”. When one reads what I have just said they should keep the words “if the system can no longer grow, or if the excess cannot be completely absorbed in its growth, it must necessarily be lost without profit; it must be spent, willingly or not, gloriously or catastrophically” on their mind.[3] Capitalism follows the laws of general economy like all restricted economies do. The very FACT that the majority of people view the ecological crisis that is currently happening as a catastrophe ESTABLISHES THE FACT THAT CAPITALISM IS A RESTRICTED ECONOMY!

Because we are all in the prison of our individual selves, we are criminals. Being criminals, our individual existence is fundamentally guilty.

Bibliography

Bataille, Georges. The Accursed Share: An Essay on General Economy, Volume I: Consumption. Translated by Robert Hurley. New York, NY: Zone Books, 1991.

References

[1]: *(Marx held that commodities were the smallest unit of the capitalist mode of production, but as we know, commodities can be further reduced to labor.)

[2]: **(Capitalism has idealized the erotic through commodifying sex. This destroys taboo and limits to be transgressed. Truly anyone who believes Bataille’s system has any complicity with capitalism leaves me dumbfounded.)

[3]: Georges Bataille, The Accursed Share: An Essay on General Economy, Volume I: Consumption, trans. Robert Hurley (New York, NY: Zone Books, 1991), 21.