Wherever I go and ask people what is missing from their lives, the most common answer (if they are not impoverished or seriously ill) is "community." What happened to community, and why don't we have it any more? There are many reasons – the layout of suburbia, the disappearance of public space, the automobile and the television, the high mobility of people and jobs – and, if you trace the "why's" a few levels down, they all implicate the money system.
More directly posed: community is nearly impossible in a highly monetized society like our own. That is because community is woven from gifts, which is ultimately why poor people often have stronger communities than rich people. If you are financially independent, then you really don't depend on your neighbors – or indeed on any specific person – for anything. You can just pay someone to do it, or pay someone else to do it.
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by Charles Eisenstein
I believe it was Karl Marx who first pointed out that monetary exchange objectifies labor, so that commoditization results in the alienation of workers from their fruits, thereby destroying the basis of community in social interaction as impersonal markets replace interpersonal relationship.
6 comments:
Marx argued that the mode of production (capitalism) alienated workers, and that the process of exchange in markets was alienating to the participants (buyer and seller).
Nowadays some people enjoy haggling over price, there were times in history when this was deemed disgusting. Even contrary to God.
It is easier to sustain a sense of community in a neighbourhood than in a city, as what goes on in a neighbourhood can be for reasons other than economic.
Alienation basically a result of commoditization, first, and the next logical step, standardization. Crafts and trades are personal. Stuff isn't. It's all fungible, since the standardization resulting from mechanization aim for identity with fairly tolerance for deviation. Today, you either go to Wal-Mart to buy a bowl off the shelf, presuming they are all the same (substitutable), or you go to craft shows or shops and pick out a unique item. If you choose to go to a craft show, chances are you will be dealing directly with the craftsperson. Big difference. My wife was a crafter and I accompanied her to a lot of shows, so I am familiar with this scene. Of course, you make friends, especially with repeat customers.
Same with local farmers' markets wrt produce, baked goods, etc., btw. The town I live in is big on this stuff and encourages it. When the local Bijou downtown was going out of business due to competition from the new multi-theaters, the people got together and bought it instead of letting it be torn down, and it is now run as a community theater.
I don't know if you caught it Tom, but I was just saying over at Rogue's posts on the JG that one of the interesting potential outcomes of a JG would be much more community-building.
I truly believe that the greatest vulnerability our country and society has is a lack of community strength to sustain the "blows from the empire" to quote Paul Kantner.
Capitalism just simply CANNOT create communities, b/c by definition community is void of profit-motives. Profits can and usually will arise out of communities but that is an indirect result that arises "obliquely" from the process that is "community."
To be honest...it's one thing I yearn for most. One of the great things about Rome was that it was built on communities of people. No ethic separation, no religious ties, just people coming together and "working it out" from there. Now obviously the Romans were vicious, vicious people towards their "enemies" but anyone could become "Roman." This type of action creates a powerful sense community. If you read anything by Steinbeck or Hardy you'll see it all over the place there. To me it's one of their major "messages." Greek culture is similar though with more "requirements" to enter into communities.
I predict that if the economy continues "muddling through" as it is, we will see more communities coming up and getting creative.
But surely paying someone to do something is dependence?
Our current economies are globally interdependent and ridicule the idea that anyone can 'make it' (whatever 'it' is!) on their own...we can't, we all make it together albeit that some do so more than others.
@ Mario, I think one of the things that has to happen is the revival of antitrust law enforcement especially wrt the financial industry.How much of the homogenization of the landscape of urban America has been driven by Big Finance backing Big Business in mergers and leveraged buyouts concentrating economies of scale against lesser rivals. Traveling all over the country I see the same interchangeable suburbs, strip malls, franchises etc. When it comes to many communities "there is no there there. " ...And don’t fool yourself that this process of monopolization affects only America’s working classes. What’s happened to down-market retail has happened to department stores as well. Think Macy’s competes with Bloomingdale’s? Think again. Both are units of a holding company called Macy’s Inc., which, under its old name, Federated, spent the last two decades rolling up control of such department store brand names as Marshall Field’s, Hecht’s, Broadway, and Bon Marché. A generation ago, even most midsized cities in America could boast of multiple independent department stores. Today a single company controls roughly 800 outlets, in a chain that stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific..." Who Broke America’s Jobs Machine? Why creeping consolidation is crushing American livelihoods.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2010/1003.lynn-longman.html
As Michael Hudson's articles have shown to me that with the growth of the financial industry
it's more conducive for companies to grow by aquisition than by innovation. Local and regional industries have become a vast warehouse
of corporate spare parts to aquire , liquidate and increase quarterly cash flow. However it's hard to sustain local communities as this process goes on as people get transferred, laid off etc. Secondly, real estate developers push many pro-growth agendas in small-scale towns to increase returns
in what I've heard called "urban growth machines."
As it's well known now, this is done with the backing of our "shadow banking system." I've seen plenty of towns out West become unaffordable to long-time residents as these improvement projects get implemented.
Interesting that you mention ancient Greece and Rome as where culture and community flourished. Kirkpatrick Sale's work Human Scale emphasized that there is an optimum size for population in a given area for community and culture to thrive in and cited many examples from Antiquity including Greece and the Roman Republic. He contended over 30 years ago that the growth of our system of finance capitalism was not helpful towards supporting this. As Warren Mosler puts it, our financial sector is more trouble than it's worth.
right on John!!!
Corporate Parent Companies are so bubblicious it's just one more example of how "overweight" America is.
Thomas More's Utopia is right in that line of "optimal communities" and that of course leads us to our pilgrim fathers and then to 19th century America and the MANY utopian movements at that time (most of which failed btw), etc., etc. THEN industrialization and modernization and unification bitch-slapped America's psyche....we still haven't recovered from that blow...though I think a balance sheet recession might wake people up now to the way they live their lives, consume, and waste and refuse to save and grow their own business.
Thoreau interestingly believes that the greater the technology the greater the ease to which man can live a peaceful life unencumbered by toil and strife. I agree with him and I think ultimately we are on that path....the question becomes learning those skills necessary to achieve "the good life" today (and tomorrow). It seems to involve an intricate balance between computers, nature, business, and art. Fascinating to be sure!
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