Constant capital, the means of production, considered from the standpoint of the creation of surplus-value, only exist to absorb labour... The prolongation of the working-day beyond the limits of the natural day, into the night, only acts as a palliative. It quenches only in a slight degree the vampire thirst for the living blood of labour.
- Karl Marx
I just read an article by the economist Robert Skidelsky on some of the misapprehensions of modern economics. He describes how students of economics are more calculating than those who study other subjects - a fact I can sadly vouch for. I have found, at this small and parochial university, some of the most Machiavellian and frankly subhuman behaviour emanates from students of this damnable subject (including, to my own horror, myself at times).
This is a mode of study which encourages the economic expedience of personal relations, the futility of kindness, the idiocy of charity, and much more besides. I have found, from all but a limited few, acquaintances for whom my existence is a mere means to an end. I have found a kind of callousness which cares not for all it tramples on, and elevates itself to a deific magnificence. I have found friendship which endures precisely as long as the affair is mutually beneficial. The entire thing oozes greed and avarice.
It is difficult to entirely assay the noxious effects of regarding the world in purely monetary terms - and this is precisely what economics strives to do. In humanity we see only labour, in natural beauty we see only potential production, and in the human heart we see something to suppress, lest it impede our ability to generate money - this fantastic paper! The first thing they graft to the soul of the student of economics is the Midas touch - all such a student gazes upon is rendered in heaps of green paper. People talk to me and it is not words but reams of money which pour from their mouths. Tears roll from faces and glister in a shower of pound coins - shattering upon the ground in the most wasteful fashion.
Then it is unsurprising that I feel with every breath during my lectures an assault upon the soul itself. This is not exaggeration - the purpose of this subject is not to inform but to destroy humanity, to reave from the heart the weak, economically fruitless instincts such as kindness and empathy. It is to render the world in its own black image, to ravage the beauty to which it cannot ascend. It is purely spiteful and wholly misinformed. Its basic precepts are all delusive, based on the assumption of the primacy of paper. In its bleak, solitary philosophy it creates an artificial wound, an ache for validation in the mundane. In its impersonal insouciance to life, its neglect of the soul, it creates perverse individuals whose desires are entirely irrational. Its currency is anguish and its product is neurosis.
I must quote The Communist Manifesto here, because it is quite perfect in its summary of this phenomenon. The work employs surprisingly abstract allegories and metaphors for such an ostensibly materialist piece of writing (though I do not, in sooth, think this a contradiction); there is something wholly poetic about it. Marx and Engels write:
And so is the case with economics itself. To allow oneself to become so deluded by hideous lucre is a renunciation of natural instinct. It is to happily graft a dead accretion to the heart - entirely useless, arbitrary, composed of dust. I feel I have repulsed this poisoned chalice thus far, but I cannot say this has been possible without a cost, a cost which may perhaps have been even more injurious to the spirit, for it has required an almost galvanic rejection of expectations, company, and humankind. Yet I would sooner suffer this than be deluded by paper.
I must quote The Communist Manifesto here, because it is quite perfect in its summary of this phenomenon. The work employs surprisingly abstract allegories and metaphors for such an ostensibly materialist piece of writing (though I do not, in sooth, think this a contradiction); there is something wholly poetic about it. Marx and Engels write:
The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his 'natural superiors', and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous 'cash payment'. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation.
And so is the case with economics itself. To allow oneself to become so deluded by hideous lucre is a renunciation of natural instinct. It is to happily graft a dead accretion to the heart - entirely useless, arbitrary, composed of dust. I feel I have repulsed this poisoned chalice thus far, but I cannot say this has been possible without a cost, a cost which may perhaps have been even more injurious to the spirit, for it has required an almost galvanic rejection of expectations, company, and humankind. Yet I would sooner suffer this than be deluded by paper.
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