Among the many things I find fascinating about Lewis Hyde's analysis is the suggestion that the modern world has taken a dangerous turn in reducing all exchange to commerce, thereby devaluing the many sorts of human activity, including perhaps the most important (arts, nurture...), that cannot survive such reduction.
Unlike Marx, Hyde does not envision a revolutionary future in which bourgeois property is abolished and all resources are shared freely according to need. More modestly, he hopes to carve out an economic sphere parallel the commercial one in which precisely those activities and goods which we value most highly, but which are not economically viable according to monetary cost-benefit analysis, have space to flourish.
This is an appealing image, though I need more detail about how it works in practice, and what progress it has made in the third of a century since Hyde wrote this. Also of interest, however, is whether once we construct such an alternative economy we would be able to stop there. Perhaps, once we seriously consider what is most valuable, we could no longer allow the commercial economy free reign to ravage the planet and our souls in pursuit of shareholder profit. Perhaps a National Institute of Arts, Letters, Motherhood, and the Creative Commons would have to regulate and democratize the commercial economy to ensure that it stopped fomenting war and served, rather than undermine, genuine need -- and something akin to Marx's revolution would have taken place after all. I wouldn't expect Exxon, Microsoft, Archer Daniels Midland et al. to cooperate quietly, however, so Marx might also have been correct about the process not being pretty.
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Inspiring suggestions all around I think, especially a National Institute of Motherhood. I wonder too if we (our selves) can survive this reduction to commodity.
Of course, the commodification of everything, including humanity itself, is one of the things Marx warned about.
“Prescribing monetary value to everything”-- I think is not so easy to break away from once established. Some people have realized the “ridiculousness” of such a venture, but the majority of Americans anyway seem to identify quite comfortably with the idea that everything has a price. I think that to recognize the “intangible value of the “gift””, we need to see things for what they are, not what we want them to be. And, it is clear that our obsession with consumption and money has created an almost impenetrable fortress around a thing’s intrinsic nature. I think it takes less effort to “tame” or “conquer” the land, the beast, and fellow humanity, then it does to understand truly the nature of things. And, as Matt said, I don’t think the big corporations are ready to surrender their billion dollar bonuses and exclaim, ‘Here, give this money to the people; it was earned from the exploitation of the land, the animals, and the people.’ And, even if they did (as a gift) I might argue that any benefits these corporations receive rightfully belong to the people. The resources of the earth, oil, coal, etc. are in my mind no different than air or water; and for a select few to claim these as private property does not make sense.
Why would a "National Institute of Arts, Letters, Motherhood, and the Creative Commons" be the body used to regulate the commercial economy? I'm not quite sure what democratizing the economy would entail either.
I was not aware that the commercial economy was currently fomenting war either. Are you suggesting that the economy is a conspirative entity with a coordinated goal of instigating conflict? Or that the nature of the economy fosters a war-oriented society? Or perhaps something else?
The proposal for a National Institute of Arts, Letters, Motherhood, and the Creative Commons was flippant, of course, the idea being that if we were serious about broadening our collective conception of property we would want something akin to a cabinet-level position for those things that matter most, and need protection from commerce.
The notion of democratizing the economy stems from the observation that, while we organize ourselves politically in terms of citizen participation (somewhat), most of our workplaces -- and even our investments -- employ the opposite form of organization. Most of us think of ourselves as anti-monarchist, but corporations are run like fiefdoms, their workers (us) too much like serfs. Call me naive, but I sort of expected to have a say in what my retirement investments were and were not supporting. I don't.
Your latter guess is correct: I would contend that the nature of the modern world economy (competitive rather than cooperative, enforced growth, unresponsive to democratic control) strongly favors war in several different ways. As Edward Abby put it, unlimited growth for its own sake is the ideology of the cancer cell.
we didn't go as far as to say "culture is not your friend" in class, but terence mckenna has some legitimate out of the box views for us... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYB0VW5x8fI
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