Thoughts on capitalism, community, and pederasty

Laudate Agno's recent post contained a lot of tiresome nonsense that I chose to ignore in order to make what I hoped was a more constructive point about why circumcision is objectionable. LA's defence of circumcision as some sort of affirmation of maleness – as though cutting and mutilating male genitals with a scalpel at a time when the male is helpless to resist is somehow affirming the infant's masculinity! – is completely absurd and unintelligible to me. But I want to return to one thing: Laudate Agno framed the issue in terms of his opposition to the “ruination of tradition” caused by “accommodation to the logic of market, capital, and sheer volunteerism”. Insofar as LA opposes the “logic of [the] market” I am entirely with him. We should care for each other; we should live in communities of mutual aid. This is opposed to the selfish individualism that is promoted by capitalism. What I find baffling is that Laudate Agno thinks that the political Right, who clearly represent the interests of the capitalists and oligarchs, could possibly transcend the logic of capitalism and oligarchy! In capitalist societies we are continually bombarded with propaganda, but we don't think of it as propaganda because it comes from businesses rather than from the state or political groups: but propaganda is what it is. We are encouraged to think about the ways we can improve our own lives through working to consume more goods rather than the ways we can improve everyone's lives through collective action. Advertising seems to propagate so many messages, and yet it all comes down to the same message – in the words of the L’Oréal slogan: Because you're worth it. This is the promotion of selfish individualism. And as a result of capitalism the capacity of the biosphere to sustain flourishing life is being consumed at a rapid rate, and society is pursuing a course that will make our descendents demonstrably worse off, destroying the solidarity between generations. Now, transforming society to end competition between workers, to end the daily grind, is essential if we are to save the ecosphere. People are worn out and exploited. How can we tell people not to exploit the Earth's limited resources when they are already running to stand still? This is why we must get rid of the whole capitalist system in order to save the Earth. Half measures simply won't cut it anymore. Ecosocialism is the only credible solution to the multiple crises we currently face, precisely because it ties together improving people's material conditions with transforming our economies so that they nurture the planet's ecological systems rather than destroying them. By contrast, consumer capitalism has been found out. Whilst corporations are marketing the latest goods and fashions, youngsters cannot even afford a home, and families are crushed by bills. And the only way to break capitalism is through solidarity between all those adversely affected by it, such as we are beginning to see across Europe. When I see my government deciding to burn more fossil fuels, it drives me to despair. When I see people all over Europe rebelling against the logic of the marketplace that sees old ladies evicted from their homes because of the greed of landlords, it gives me hope. Social and ecological reconstruction, the building of a society based on community rather than the selfish individualism that has reigned for nearly all of our lives, is a matter of shaking off a repressive system that is being imposed on society from above, by those who financially benefit. And the only way to overthrow this system is through solidarity between all those, primarily the working class and the young, who are oppressed by this system. In order to overthrow the system, therefore, we need the very solidarity and community that the new society will be based on. And I believe that we must extend our sense of empathy even further, and liberate our brother and sister animals from oppression as well. It is because the Immortal Science of Marxism identifies the fundamental conflict in society as an economic one, and the fundamental divides as arising through class understood as a relation to the means of production, that it will always be of central importance to anyone who is serious about understanding social dynamics. Transcending capitalism means transcending a system which actively promotes selfish individualism; but does that mean transcending freedom? Surely not. For freedom is not the same thing as freedom under capitalism, in which the sole freedom is the freedom to buy and sell, an arrangement that benefits the owners of the means of production at the expense of those who own nothing. Under capitalism the capitalist freedom of the owners is opposed to the right of the non-owners to live in material decency and to flourish. By contrast, what we want is a society in which these antagonisms are overcome, in which “the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.” The point I want to make is this: LA identifies the logic of capitalism with selfish individualism, and in this he is right. But we must not throw out the baby with the bathwater. We must not identify “freedom” with the capitalist definition of freedom, when in fact “freedom” can mean all sorts of things, and until we know what kind of freedom we are dealing with, we cannot say whether it is good or bad. And the ultimate test for any notion of freedom as to whether it is good or bad is its utility. So, in the case of pederasty, the freedom to form Greek love relationships is to be defended not on the ground of some absolute right but rather on the ground of the utility of these relationships. I believe that institutionalised pederasty could and would be functional to society. Even without its institutionalisation, Greek love relationships arise spontaneously and are valuable to their participants, whilst in no way harming others. It is for this reason that the suppression of pederasty constitutes an outrageous interference in our liberty. To insist on this freedom is not to succumb to selfish individualism, but rather to defend a practice that has utility to the body politic. Freedom, then, is not the same as selfish individualism or the “logic of the market”, and should by no means be denigrated by a misguided association with these things.