Cuture And Everyday Life
GLOBALISATION OF CULTURE - TO WHAT END?
- SUKOMAL SEN
“But original sin is at work everywhere. As capitalist production, accumulation, and wealth, became developed, the capitalist ceases to be the mere incarnation of capital. He has a fellow-feeling for his own Adam, and his education gradually enables him to smile at the rage for asceticism, as a mere prejudice of the old fashioned miser! While the capitalist of the classical type brands individual consumption as a sin against his function, and as “abstinence” from accumulation, the modernised capitalist is capable of looking upon accumulation as “abstinence from pleasure”.
‘Two souls, .alas dwell within the breast.
The one is ever parting from the other..(Goethe’s Faust)”
Marx here explains the capitalists’ ‘avarice’ for consumption as the accumulation, production and surplus value go on increasing. Marx says, ‘Luxury enters into capital’s expenses of representation’2 “Accumulate, accumulate! That is moses and the prophets!…. Therefore, save, save, i.e. reconvert the greatest possible portion of surplus value or surplus-product into capital!”3. Capitalists accumulate not for accumulation’s sake but to convert it into capital and to generate more surplus value. But what for this surplus value? Marx explains, “At the historical dawn of capitalist production - and every capitalist upstart has personally to go through this historical stage, avarice, and desire to get rich, are the ruling passions”4.
But where does this ‘ruling passion’ “to get rich” lead the capitalist system to? For constantly increasing production, the capitalists need expansion of their markets. So Marx already explained it in the Communist Manifesto,”The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexion everywhere”5.
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