Date: Sun, 8 Feb 1998 14:55:05 -0800
From: evan-AT-steammedia.com (Evan Leeson)
Subject: Re: Capitalism and Will to Power


Steven Wrote:
>
>What I'm trying to get at is Nietzsche's attempt to hypothesize will to
>power as correlating in some fashion to the authentic core of the self, as
>only secondarily relating to the self in relation to others, but rather
>primarily relating to the self in relation to itself, if you will. In this
>sense, the character of a particular will to power cannot be evaluated
>primarily in terms of its external effect on others, but must be grasped in
>terms of its own integral state of self-relation. What comes into play here
>especially, I think, is the notion of a "_pathos_ of distance" ("distance of
>rank," above), whereby the sovereign individual stands apart from the
>"herd." The _member_ of the herd, in this sense, would be an incomplete
>self, an identity attached to the group of which it is a member, or a
>fragment. The herd members would be alienated from their own whole
>potentials as selves, from their own potential autonomy. Nietzsche, in other
>words, would seem to be struggling to establish or form an evaluative system
>of sorts based on the notions of authenticity and autonomy (as opposed to
>group identity, etc.). (That this feeds straight into Heidegger is also, I
>think, quite interesting, although dyed-in-the-wool Heideggerians for whom
>Nietzsche can say no right might not exactly hanker to the notion,
>especially if we consider that Nietzsche would seem to ground the notion of
>authenticity in the synthetic and integrative character of will to power.)

The perspective you describe is definitely in Nietzsche's writing. For
example (and the reference eludes me at the moment though I believe it to
be from the Gay Science):

"The first distinction to be made regarding works of art. - All thought,
poetry, painting, compositions, even buildings and sculptures, belong
either to monological art or to art before witnesses. In the second class
we must include even the apparently monological art that involves faith in
a God, the whole lyricism of prayer. For the pious, there is as yet no
solitude;  this invention was made only by us, the godless. I do not know
of any more profound difference in the whole orientation of an artist than
this, whether he looks at his work in progress (at "himself") from the
point of view of the witness, or whether he "has forgotten the world,"
which is the essential feature of all monological art;  it is based on
forgetting, it is the music of forgetting. "

This is but one example of a theme that runs through nietzsche's work from
"The Use and Abuse of History" onward: forgetting. My question regards the
temporal status of "The Artist" or "the soveriegn individual". I suspect
there is evidence in Nietzsche's writing to support the waxing and waning
of this "phenome" at it relates to particular body or aggregate
consciousness. A moment of sovereignty is precisely that, after which or
before which another voice is heard rising above. Ressentiment can drown
out the yes-saying only to be replaced later with the affirmative voice. A
great individual would then be one in whom this voice predominates most
frequently or consistently. An artist, Picasso for example, who would go
through great periods of relentless and oblivious creativity. Joseph
Campbell wandering off to the woods to read and not coming home for 7
years. Nonetheless, they do come back. My argument is that, for Nietzsche,
the multivocal "consciousness" is not the same as the great and sovereign
individual who may reside in many if not all of us, and his writing speaks
to that side of us, knowing full well the din of the "others" may be
drowning him out.

Is this clear?

>
>This interests me in relation to the question of capitalism in the sense
>that captitalism, and especially modern industrial (and post-industrial?)
>capitalism enforces the fragmentation, and atomization, of the individual as
>only having value and meaning (and status) within and in relation to the
>mass market. The individual only has value and meaning, in other words, in
>capitalistic terms, as being either a buyer or a seller, etc., relative to
>which the individual (as labor, skill, etc.) is simply another commodity or
>package. Nietzsche would seem to be attempting to establish basis for
>valuation that is outside, beyond, and above this frame of reference (the
>"market").

Isn't this where the whole post-structuralist critique of structuralism,
structural functionalism, behaviouralism, etc. comes from? Nietzsche? Look
at Baudrillard"s "The System of Objects" for example, or Deleuze and
Guatari's Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia". There are a lot of
other examples. But more importantly, I think, is that it doesn't take
capitalism to do this. I believe Nietzsche's writing describes this
fragmentation as the normal state of the "individual" out of which great or
sovereign individuals climb to be heard, maybe later, by those with ears
for it. Greatly exascerbated under capitalist mass media society, perhaps.

My point regarding economy would be to say that your description above
holds for any economic system, provided there is in place a ubiquitous mass
medium whose purpose it is to reinforce and alienate meaning out into the
objects. An individual is no more free under capitalism than communism if
predominant collective meaning is located in an operationalized, simulated
environment of material goods. The medium is the message? Remember how
Nietzsche railed against the newspapers? Orwell's 1984 is instructive as
well.

>
>Nietzsche's thinking here, I think, is not something that can simply be
>deconstructed, as much as it must first be reconstructed. That is, of
>course, part of the fun of reading Nietzsche, that is, trying to reconstruct
>what he might have said if he had felt free to stop and take the time, or
>had not, ultimately, run out of time.

I believe the material is there, though I would argue for an interpretation
that focussed on "productionist" society. Capitalism and communism are not
all that different in that they share a common metaphysics of fullfillment
(or at least the conditions for) through common, produced environments.
Capitalism has an additional Myth - that of self-expression through fashion
- but that is equally fictitious for most being simply a set af
pre-determined categories or styles.

evan




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