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<font face="Trebuchet MS">Michel,<br>
If this is what you were looking for... here it all is... <br>
Denis<br>
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<h1>Relax: alternative hedonism and a new politics of pleasure</h1>
<h4>Kate Soper on re-imagining fulfllment</h4>
<p>A predictable consequence of the current recession has been a
renewal of
interest in the politics of welfare and community values. As they
seek to patch
up a fresh consensus amidst the fallout from the latest crisis of
capitalism,
both sides of the party political divide have come up with new
narratives about
wellbeing, communal belonging and social cohesion. On the right,
in a
warmed-over, chummier version of the Thatcherite politics of
empowerment, David
Cameron is pushing the idea of the ‘big society’, with its
cost-cutting culture
of voluntarism, philanthropy and social action. To the left, Blue
Labour has
rediscovered Aristotle on the ‘good life’ as a traditional (albeit
long-neglected) component of Labour thinking, and is campaigning
for the party
to adopt the idea of a ‘good society’ based on reciprocity,
mutuality and
solidarity. Across the board, then, there is rather more
acknowledgement than
before the crash that neoliberalism is not quite the panacea it
was held out to
be, and that relentless commodification is bad for the soul both
of the
individual and of the community. </p>
<p>These moves suggest that there is now some awareness among
mainstream
politicians of the underlying contradictions between growth
economics and
social – and individual – wellbeing. But to date there has been no
attempt
seriously to challenge the definition of the ‘good life’
associated with
affluent consumer culture. When launching his new ‘happiness
index’, Cameron
told us that economic growth isn’t everything and that there are
aspects of
life that ‘can’t be measured on a balance sheet’. But since then
we have heard
a great deal from him about the need to return to growth and very
little about
the good life conceived in any other terms. </p>
<p>Maurice Glasman, a key influence on Blue Labour, is critical of
the
unfettered market. Invoking an ‘organic community’ as the agent of
opposition
to commodification, he wants a return to skilled labour,
co-operatives, mutual
societies, local banks and the like. There is much to welcome in
this. But he,
too, appears still to see the nation state as locked in
competition with others
for economic advancement through ongoing production, and says
rather little
about the wider social and environmental consequences of national
success
conceived in those terms. </p>
<p>An alternative good life </p>
<p>This global dimension needs to be more widely acknowledged by
those
seriously committed to an alternative politics of community and
the ‘good
life’. For in the end there can be no successful promotion of
happiness at home
without attending to the misery caused elsewhere by our current
consumerist
lifestyle. This includes the millions injured or made homeless in
recent
decades through disasters triggered by global warming for which
they are
largely not responsible; the many more condemned to what Mike
Davis has called
‘informal survivalism’ in the ever-expanding slums of the new
mega-cities; the
near slave conditions of workers locked overnight in Bangladeshi
factories to
meet the timelines of the fashion industry; the quasi-apartheid
between those
who enjoy and those who service the global playgrounds of the
wealth-makers –
and this is to name but a few examples. </p>
<p>It is, then, only by means of an altogether more equitable
distribution of
both resources and the burden of pollution that we can accommodate
future
ecological constraints and thus lay the foundations for an
alternative
‘politics of prosperity’. This in turn means accepting the need to
move beyond
the ‘work and spend’ dynamic of a profit-oriented global economy
and the time
scarcity it generates for so many people. Just when we need it
least from the
point of view of human or environmental wellbeing, we are
committed to an
economic system that can only flourish if people keep spending –
which means
they must keep working, which means they have less time to do
things for
themselves, which means they have to buy more goods and services
to make up for
the time deficit. </p>
<p>Instead of making use of enhanced productive efficiency to
shorten the
working week, so that we could enjoy growing and preparing more
food for
ourselves, companies profit from selling us ‘fast food’,
ready-cooked meals,
pre-washed salads and the like. Instead of giving us the leisure
and facilities
to walk or go by bike, we are co-opted into buying short, sharp
exercise
sessions in the gym. Instead of longer holidays in which we could
travel more
slowly and experience more genuine relaxation, the tourist and
therapy
industries profit hugely from their provision for mini‑breaks and
stress-relieving services. </p>
<p>Now more than ever, the consumer society is dependent on a
collective
preparedness to spend the money we earn by working too hard and
too long on
provision to compensate for the more diverse, enriching and
lasting
satisfactions we have sacrificed through overwork and
overproduction. Yet it is
far from clear that this reflects some innate desire of people
constantly to
work and consume more. If it did, the billions spent on
advertising, and on
grooming children for a life of consumption, would hardly be
necessary. Nor
would the government pressure us to keep spending: the injunctions
to
‘patriotic shopping’ in the aftermath of 9/11; the car scrappage
schemes to
keep the motor industry on track; the anxieties lest increased VAT
reduces
sales in the malls. </p>
<p>Opportunity in crisis </p>
<p>Everyone knows, in some sense, that the system is ultimately
unsustainable.
(Does anyone really believe the growth economy can continue for
another
hundred, let alone thousand, years?) It is in this context that I
have argued
that the present crisis, for all the pain it is causing, also
provides an
opportunity to question a way of living that is not just
environmentally
disastrous but in many respects unpleasurable and self-denying. </p>
<p>Our so-called good life is a major cause of stress and obesity.
It subjects
us to high levels of noise and stench, and generates vast amounts
of junk. Its
work routines and modes of commerce mean that many people, for
most of their
lives, begin their days in traffic jams or overcrowded trains and
buses, and
then spend much of the rest of them glued to the computer screen,
often engaged
in mind‑numbing tasks. A good part of its productive activity
locks time into
the creation of a material culture of ever-faster production
turnovers and
built-in obsolescence, which pre-empts more worthy, enduring or
entrancing
forms of human fulfilment. </p>
<p>Anyone who has spent hours trapped in motorway traffic, or who
regularly
commutes, or who lives in noisy and polluted and heavily
industrialised
environments will be well aware already of the dystopian aspects
of modern
life. As I have argued in various writings around the concept of
‘alternative
hedonism’, many people, even in the more affluent areas, are now
beginning to
regret what has been sacrificed in the pursuit of the dominant
model of the
good life. Implicit in contemporary laments over lost spaces and
communities,
the commercial battening on children, the vocational dumbing-down
of education,
the ravages of ‘development’, the cloning of our cities, and so
forth, is a
hankering for a society no longer subordinate to the imperatives
of growth and
consumerist expansion. Diffuse and politically unfocused though
this may be, it
speaks to a widely felt sense of the opportunities squandered in
recent decades
to create a fairer, less harassed, less environmentally
destructive and more
enjoyable way of life. </p>
<p>To defend the progressive dimension of this kind of yearning (I
have
elsewhere termed it ‘avant-garde nostalgia’ ) against the
exigencies of
‘progress’ is not to recommend a more ascetic existence. On the
contrary, it is
to highlight the puritanical, disquieting, and irrational aspects
of
contemporary consumer culture. It is to speak for the forms of
pleasure and
happiness that people might be able to enjoy were they to opt for
an
alternative economic order. It is to open up a new ‘political
imaginary’: a
seductive vision of alternatives to resource-intensive
consumption, centred on
a reduction of the working week and a slower pace of living. </p>
<p>By working and producing less we could improve health and
wellbeing, and
provide for forms of conviviality that our harried and insulated
travel and
work routines make impossible. A cultural revolution along these
lines would
challenge the advertisers’ monopoly on the depiction of prosperity
and the good
life. It would make the stuff that is now seriously messing up the
planet –
more cars, more planes, more roads, more throwaway commodities –
look ugly
because of the energy it squanders and the environmental damage it
causes. </p>
<p>Such reconfiguring of the good life could alter conceptions of
self-interest
in affluent societies, highlighting the downsides of
over-development and
inviting reappraisal. If we have a cosmopolitan care for the
wellbeing of the
deprived people of the world and a concern about the quality of
life of future
generations, then we need to campaign for new attitudes to work,
consumption,
pleasure and self-realisation in the more affluent nations. Such a
campaign
would envisage forms of social transformation and personal
epiphany analogous
to those brought about through the feminist, anti-racist and
anti-colonialist
movements of recent history. </p>
<p>Hedonism and the left </p>
<p>Needless to say, the mainstream parties have offered no
encouragement to
think in such terms. In the case of the Conservatives, this is
hardly
surprising. They have traditionally represented those who depend
for their
power and wealth on maintaining the status quo – which today means
keeping
consumer culture on course. The parliamentary left, however, might
have done
more to advance alternative conceptions of the good life and
provide a more
hedonist frame in support of a new political agenda. </p>
<p>The Marxist left has always been associated with a critique of
commodification.
Yet despite Marx’s own insistence on the free time that socialism
could
release, its main concern has not been with the ways the market
has pre-empted
other structures and forms of consumption, but with the
constraints it has
placed on fairer access to an already existing range of goods.
Production was
seen as the sole site of mobilisation against the capitalist
order. Resistance,
it was argued, was a matter of worker militancy prompted by the
exploitations
of the workplace. Consumption was problematic only because it
tended to
reconcile people to the existing order rather than firing them to
oppose it. </p>
<p>In its dominant and orthodox form, this politics was directed
primarily at
transforming the relationships of ownership and control of
industrial production
rather than at the content and nature of production as such. It
was about
equalising access to consumption, rather than questioning the
consumer society.
In this situation, trade union activity in the west became
confined to
protection of employees’ income and rights within the existing
structures of
globalised capital, and did little to challenge, let alone
transform, the ‘work
and spend’ dynamic of affluent cultures. Communist regimes in the
USSR and
eastern Europe, meanwhile, aspired to ‘catch up and overtake’ the
form of
industrial development associated with capitalism rather than
promote a
different kind of prosperity. </p>
<p>Even when the left has in the past addressed issues of need and
consumption
more directly, it has often veered towards asceticism and
paternalism
(suggesting baldly that people are ideologically manipulated into
thinking they
need more than they really do), or proved divided and confused on
issues of
consumer autonomy and accountability (both endorsing popular
choice and
exposing its false forms of construction by the market). Too often
the
discourse of the left on consumption has confined itself to an
argument on
needs, defining those as rather minimal and fixed by a statically
conceived
human nature. In its critique of consumerism, attention has been
paid to the
‘excesses’ of the market rather than to the forms of indulgence,
sensual
pleasure and spiritual enhancement that could come from escaping
its control. </p>
<p>In other words, reductive and ‘simple life’ versions of human
need and fulfilment
have tended to preclude more complex imaginative reflection on the
potentialities of human pleasure, and the rich and subtle forms of
their
possible realisation in a post-capitalist society. The left has
also found it
hard to openly acknowledge the complexities of a social formation
in which
consumers are neither complete dupes of the system nor able
readily to escape
its forms of conditioning or to extricate themselves from
dependency on what it
provides. </p>
<p>Today, however, there is every reason for the left to reconsider
its
reluctance to address the politics of pleasure, and to associate
itself with
the promotion of a steady state economy and ‘alternative hedonist’
political
imaginary. This would be consistent with the Blue Labour critique
of commodification
and allow it to connect with and give voice to the political
desires implicit
in the forms of disaffection with consumerism outlined above. It
would also be
consistent with much recent empirical research, which has
undermined the
presumption that increased wealth leads to increased happiness and
indicated
that there is something inherently self-defeating in the pursuit
of ever more
consumption. </p>
<p>Estimating happiness </p>
<p>It is true that the lack of a simple correlation between higher
income and
increased reported life satisfaction does not in itself indicate
that increased
consumption has not improved wellbeing. The standards used by
people in
assessing their level of satisfaction may themselves become more
stringent as
their life experience changes with increased income. Nor are
feelings of
satisfaction always the best guide to how well people may be
faring. Education
has often exposed alienation and served the cause of personal
emancipation
precisely by generating discontent. The learning of skills may
lead to
increased dissatisfaction and demands on the self as one makes
progress in
their acquisition. </p>
<p>All this indicates that happiness is an elusive concept, and it
is difficult
to pronounce on its quality or the extent to which it (and its
associated
states of pleasure, wellbeing or satisfaction), has been achieved.
What should
count in the estimation of the ‘good life’? The intensity of its
isolated
moments of pleasure, or its overall level of contentment ? The
avoidance of
pain and difficulty or their successful overcoming? And who,
finally, is best
placed to decide on whether personal wellbeing has increased: is
this entirely
a matter of subjective report, or is it open to objective
appraisal? </p>
<p>Questions of this kind, about what counts as the good life, how
it can be
measured, and who is best placed to do the measuring, have long
been at the
centre of debates between utilitarianism and Aristotelianism.
Where the former
has looked to a ‘hedonic calculus’ of subjectively experienced
pleasure or avoidance
of pain in assessing life satisfaction, the more objectively
oriented
Aristotelian focus has been on capacities, functions and
achievements (with
what one has been enabled to do with one’s life) rather than with
its more
immediate feelings of gratification. Where the utilitarians
calculate a
person’s happiness as an aggregate of pleasurable sensations (or
avoidance of
pain), the Aristotelian concern is with the overall fulfilment and
happiness
(what Aristotle called eudaimonia) of a life taken as a whole. </p>
<p>In defence of this stance, Aristotelians will argue that if we
disallow any
objective knowledge of another person’s wellbeing or of what makes
for a life
well spent, we shall also be deprived of grounds to criticise
personally
self-destructive or selfish and environmentally vandalising forms
of
pleasure-seeking. It has also been claimed, relatedly, that a
‘happiness’
conceived or measured in terms of subjective feeling discourages
the
development of the republican sentiment and inter-generational
solidarity
essential to social and environmental wellbeing. </p>
<p>On the other hand, the ‘hedonic calculus’ for its part need not
rule out the
more civically oriented forms of felt pleasure, or the subjective
gratifications of consuming in socially and environmentally
responsible ways.
The pleasure of many activities, after all – riding a bike, for
example –
includes both immediately personal sensual enjoyments and those
which come from
not contributing to social harms – in this case, the danger and
damage of car driving.
Moreover, it is difficult in the last analysis to legitimate
claims about
wellbeing without some element of subjective endorsement on the
part of those
about whom they are being made. </p>
<p>There is, then, a tension in discussions of hedonism and the good
life
between the utilitarian privileging of experienced pleasure and
the objective
bias of the eudaimonic tradition (objective because more sceptical
about
accepting people’s self-reporting on their level of happiness).
The focus on
good feelings risks overlooking the more objective constituents of
the good
life and the good society; the Aristotelian emphasis does justice
to those
constituents but runs the risk of patronage and condoning the
superior
knowingness of experts over individuals themselves. </p>
<p>But to accept the complexity involved in gauging claims about the
quality of
life and personal satisfaction is one thing. To deny that there is
any evidence
of the self-defeating nature of ever-expanding consumption would
be quite
another. Both sides to the hedonist debate are in fact in general
agreement
that happiness does not lie in the endless accumulation of more
stuff. And
although it cannot – and does not – aspire finally to resolve the
philosophical
issues in this area, the alternative hedonist perspective, by
highlighting the
narratives about pleasure and wellbeing that are implicit in the
emerging forms
of disaffection with affluent culture, seeks to open up a
post-consumerist
optic on the good life while still respecting felt experience. </p>
<p>Another way of living </p>
<p>‘Alternative hedonism’ is not a theory about what ought to be
needed, or
desired, or actually consumed. It is a theory about what some
consumers, in
their experience of the stress, overwork, ill-health, congestion,
noise and
pollution that accompany affluence, are themselves beginning to
discover about
the ‘anti’ or ‘counter’ consumerist aspects of their own needs and
preferences.
Its main interest is thus in an emerging ‘structure of feeling’,
to invoke
Raymond Williams’ concept, that is at once troubled by forms of
consumption
(such as car use or air flight) that were previously taken much
more for
granted, aware of former pleasures gone missing and sensing for
the first time
the summons of another way of living. </p>
<p>The alternative hedonist argument thus moves from an experienced
ambivalence
regarding existing patterns of consumption towards the alternative
structure of
satisfactions that are arguably latent within it, rather than
presupposing the
existence of needs for which there is no evidence in the conscious
responses of
people. </p>
<p>Nor does it presume that the ‘excesses’ of modern consumption can
be
corrected through a return to a simpler, objectively knowable, and
supposedly
more ‘natural’ or traditional way of being. It does not deny the
sophistication
of human desires, nor the need to accommodate the distinctively
human quests
for novelty, excitement, distraction, self-expression and the
gratifications of
what Rousseau termed amour propre – the need to be esteemed by
others. It can even
allow that the ‘fureur de se distinguer’ – the zeal for
self-distinction which
Rousseau associated with amour propre – is most easily supplied
through
material acquisition (at least if you have the money for it). </p>
<p>But what comes easiest, of course, is not necessarily the most
rewarding or
fulfilling, and the alternative hedonist case is that in
deflecting more
‘spiritual’ demands on to materialist forms of display and
competition,
consumerism offers a reductive, limited and partial rein to
desire. It offers
too little rather than too much, reconciliation rather than
transcendence. To
invoke Adorno’s metaphor, it offers a society in which ‘everyone
lives in
aeroplanes’ but remains obedient to the edict ‘Thou shalt not
fly.’</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<br>
<br>
On 12/09/2011 10:25, Michel Bauwens wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid:CAK_2xiLXGQ_geDvt2OHWmtdE2=QHQsVRM8cag6T34DwVm=zXcA@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite"><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.redpepper.org.uk/relax-alternative-hedonism/">http://www.redpepper.org.uk/relax-alternative-hedonism/</a><br>
<br>
<br>
Dear Franco,<br>
<br>
it seems red pepper only allows one paragraph copy-pasting, which
is too cumbersome for my kind of curating,<br>
<br>
do you know what can be done?<br>
<br>
Michel<br clear="all">
<br>
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