Money, mechanization, algebra. The three monsters of contemporary civilization. Complete analogy.
Algebra and money are essentially levellers, the first intellectually, the second effectively.
About fifty years ago the life of the Provençal peasants ceased to be like that of the Greek peasants described by Hesiod. The destruction of science as conceived by the Greeks took place at about the same period. Money and algebra triumphed simultaneously.
The relation of the sign to the thing signified is being destroyed, the game of exchanges between signs is being multiplied of itself and for itself. And the increasing complication demands that there should be signs for signs… .
Among the characteristics of the modern world we must not
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forget the impossibility of thinking in concrete terms of the relationship between effort and the result of effort. There are too many intermediaries. As in the other cases, this relationship which does not lie in any thought, lies in a thing: money.
As collective thought cannot exist as thought, it passes into things (signs, machines …). Hence the paradox: it is the thing which thinks and the man who is reduced to the state of a thing.
There is no collective thought. On the other hand our science is collective like our technics. Specialization. We inherit not only results but methods which we do not understand. For the matter of that the two are inseparable, for the results of algebra provide methods for the other sciences.
To make an inventory or criticism of our civilization—what does that mean? To try to expose in precise terms the trap which has made man the slave of his own inventions. How has unconsciousness infiltrated itself into methodical thought and action? To escape by a return to the primitive state is a lazy solution. We have to rediscover the original pact between the spirit and the world in this very civilization of which we form a part. But it is a task which is beyond our power on account of the shortness of life and the impossibility of collaboration and of succession. That is no reason for not undertaking it. The situation of all of us is comparable to that of Socrates when he was awaiting death in his prison and began to learn to play the lyre… . At any rate we shall have lived… .
The spirit, overcome by the weight of quantity, has no longer any other criterion than efficiency.
Modern life is given over to immoderation. Immoderation invades everything: actions and thought, public and private life.
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The decadence of art is due to it. There is no more balance anywhere. The Catholic movement is to some extent in reaction against this; the Catholic ceremonies, at least, have remained intact. But then they are unrelated to the rest of existence.
Capitalism has brought about the emancipation of collective humanity with respect to nature. But this collective humanity has itself taken on with respect to the individual the oppressive function formerly exercised by nature.
This is true even with material things: fire, water etc. The community has taken possession of all these natural forces.
Question: can this emancipation, won by society, be transferred to the individual?
THE SOCIAL IMPRINT1
Man is a slave in so far as between action and its effect, between effort and the finished work, there is the interference of alien wills.
This is the case both with the slave and the master today. Never can man deal directly with the conditions of his own action.
Society forms a screen between nature and man.
To be in direct contact with nature and not with men is the only discipline. To be dependent on an alien will is to be a slave. This, however, is the fate of all men. The slave is dependent on the master and the master on the slave. This is a situation which makes us either servile or tyrannical or both at once ( omnia serviliter pro dominatione). On the contrary, when we are face to face with inert nature our only resource is to think.
1 The title of this chapter is La Lettre Sociale—cf. Alfred de Vigny: Si tu frémis de voir sur ton épaule
La lettre sociale écrite avec du fer …
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The notion of oppression is, in short, a stupidity: one only has to read the Iliad. And the notion of an oppressive class is even more stupid. We can only speak of an oppressive structure of society.
The difference between a slave and a citizen (Montesquieu, Rousseau …): a slave is subject to his master and a citizen to the laws. It may happen that the master is very gentle and the laws very harsh: that changes nothing. Everything lies in the distance between caprice and rule.
Why is subordination to caprice slavery? The root cause is found in the relation between the soul and time. He who is subject to the arbitrary is suspended on the thread of time; he has to wait (the most humiliating situation possible …) for what the following moment will bring him. He does not dispose of his moments; for him the present is no longer a lever by which he can bring pressure to bear on the future.
To have to deal directly with things frees the spirit. To have to deal directly with men debases us if we are dependent on them, whether this dependence be in the form of submission or of command.
Why these men between Nature and me?
Never to have to take into account an unknown thought …
(for then we are given over to chance).
Remedy: apart from the ties of brotherhood, to treat men like a spectacle and never seek for friendship; to live in the midst of men as in that crowded railway carriage between Saint-Etienne and Le Puy… . Above all never to allow oneself to dream of friendship. Everything has to be paid for. Rely only on yourself.
The powerful, if they carry oppression beyond a certain point, necessarily end by making themselves adored by their slaves. For the thought of being under absolute compulsion, the plaything of another, is unendurable for a human being. Hence, if every
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way of escape from this constraint is taken from him, there is nothing left for him to do but to persuade himself that he does the things he is forced to do willingly, that is to say, to substitute devotion for obedience. And sometimes he will even strive to do more than he is obliged and will suffer less thereby, in the same way as children when they are playing will endure with a laugh physical suffering which they would find unbearable if it were inflicted on them as a punishment. It is by this twist that slavery debases the soul: this devotion is in fact based on a lie, since the reasons for it cannot bear investigation. (In this respect the Catholic principle of obedience should be considered as a liberating principle, whereas Protestantism is based on the idea of sacrifice and devotion.) The only way of salvation is to replace the unendurable idea of compulsion, not by the illusion of devotion, but by the notion of necessity.
On the other hand revolt, if it does not immediately pass into definite and effective action, is always changed into its opposite through the feeling of utter impotence which results from it. In other words the chief support of the oppressor lies precisely in the unavailing revolt of the oppressed.
It would be possible to write the novel of a conscript of Napoleon from this point of view.
Moreover, the master is deceived too by the fallacy of devotion.
We must always consider men in power as dangerous things. We must keep out of their way as much as we can without losing our self-respect. And if one day we are driven, under pain of cowardice, to go and break ourselves against their power, we must consider ourselves as vanquished by the nature of things and not by men. One can be in a prison cell and in chains, but one can also be smitten with blindness or paralysis. There is no difference.
The only way to preserve our dignity when submission is
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forced upon us is to consider our chief as a thing. Every man is the slave of necessity, but the conscious slave is far superior.
Social problem. To limit to the minimum the proportion of the supernatural indispensable to make the atmosphere of social life possible to breathe. Everything which tends to increase it is bad (it is tempting God).
We must eliminate affliction as much as we can from social life, for affliction only serves the purposes of grace and society is not a society of the elect. There will always be enough affliction for the elect.