Difference between revisions of "Book/Culture of value"
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So even if the myth of the universality of taste is debunked, one can at least be tempted to argue that one’s taste is “more objective.” For example, someone could try to back up the claim by proving that his taste is consistent with the results of the predictive algorithm. But the algorithm is programmed to reflect the tastes of the UK in the last 50 years. The claim to one’s objectivity thus becomes the even bolder claim that UK consumers were “more objective” in their taste during the last 50 years. So although one’s tastes may '''objectively correlate more''' to commercial success than other tastes, saying they are '''more objective than''' others is the same fallacious claim to be absolute that it has always been. | So even if the myth of the universality of taste is debunked, one can at least be tempted to argue that one’s taste is “more objective.” For example, someone could try to back up the claim by proving that his taste is consistent with the results of the predictive algorithm. But the algorithm is programmed to reflect the tastes of the UK in the last 50 years. The claim to one’s objectivity thus becomes the even bolder claim that UK consumers were “more objective” in their taste during the last 50 years. So although one’s tastes may '''objectively correlate more''' to commercial success than other tastes, saying they are '''more objective than''' others is the same fallacious claim to be absolute that it has always been. | ||
====“This | ====“This work’s greatness is timeless:” the myth of the “classics” and ageing-well as a criterion==== | ||
The usual belief is that only great works survive. If one still talks about it decades later, then the work must be great. Of course, one can always “relax” the criterion to fit one’s needs. For example, if an album that you feel sucks is still being talked about decades later, you can always claim that the real test is when it still matters centuries later. Of course, by then it becomes an irrefutable argument that can be used by both you and your contradictors. | The usual belief is that only great works survive. If one still talks about it decades later, then the work must be great. Of course, one can always “relax” the criterion to fit one’s needs. For example, if an album that you feel sucks is still being talked about decades later, you can always claim that the real test is when it still matters centuries later. Of course, by then it becomes an irrefutable argument that can be used by both you and your contradictors. | ||
Revision as of 22:43, 12 June 2016
The society and culture built upon the interpretation of the average value
Popular beliefs from the interpretation of the average value
Value judgments in art are so abstract, that even with respect to its most reasonable goals—establishing a frame of reference for taste—it may be too abstract for its own good. All value judgments are a variation of the statement “This work is great.” This commonplace condenses the various beliefs that society at large takes for granted but must regularly pay with reality conflicts.
“This work is great and there are great reasons for that:” myth of the objectivity of the mathematical average value
The mosaic of the average value is structured like a tech review, albeit less formally. A video game review is typically broken down into sub-reviews for graphics, sound, gameplay, controls, replay value, etc. But just as a video game’s overall rating has a loose correlation to its sub-ratings, the average value in art is, as the saying goes, “more than the sum of its parts.” Obviously, a good overall rating for a video game is hardly compatible with very low sub-ratings, especially in this day and age, but high sub-ratings are absolutely compatible with low overall ratings, and different reviewers in perfect agreement over the sub-ratings can very well disagree on the overall rating.
So the overall rating has an arbitrary quality irreducible to the mathematical averaging of all sub-ratings, and yet most think as if it were objective or at least is presumed to be so. According to this belief, it would only suffice to average sub-ratings of carefully chosen criteria in order to obtain an objective overall value. If each criterion is objective, it must follow that the mathematical average is objective, right? So, for a music review, I could choose album variety and musicianship over fuzzier criteria like lyrical expressiveness or originality. But the selection process itself is not objective. Not everyone seeks album variety, and not every kind of music gains from great musicianship—in fact, musicianship can sometimes be perceived as a sign of the artist “selling out.”
Of course, reviewers don’t necessarily show all their cards and may reserve more “detailed” explanations of their ratings. Because of this, they generally get the benefit of the doubt—or rather, we don’t even think of demanding more, perhaps because we already know deep down that objectivity of value is a mirage.
“This work is more or less okay:” faith in value judgments that seem all the more objective the more precise they sound
The average value looks objective because of its mathematical foundation, and this can only be reinforced with a hint of precision in the language.
“It is truly great.”
"It is a major accomplishment and redefines the genre.”
“It might just be one of his best work to date.”
“It’s almost great, but it distinctively lacks something to get into the upper echelon.”
“It easily belongs to the top 3 most impressive works of the last decade.”
“This album manages to be dark, yet gleeful. This proves how great of an artist she is.”
All these commonplace subtleties have in common that they hardly address the content. Instead, they hint at a subjective frame of reference with its own language. It is as if in order to make up for the lack of objective communication about the content, one had invoked ex nihilo an empty language to fill up the void. In fact, the more technical the language, the more convinced the reader in the objective correlation between the content and the reviewer’s language subtleties.
At level zero of precision, the reviewer says a work is great or bad. When someone issues such a judgment, you seem to understand completely. It means that the work is in the short list of items he’d take to a deserted island with him. But sometimes it is not that simple. You see, this work is great, but it is not truly great in the sense of this particular person, so it doesn’t make the short list. In fact, any kind of greatness can be misleading, for a work can always be “greater than great,” “beyond great,” or quite simply, “there’s no word to describe it.” It’s the same as advertizing, where washing powder can “wash whiter than white.” In the field of quiet computing, we had “silent computer fans,” then “extreme silent fans,” “virtually silent fans,” “real silent fans,” “noiseless fans,” etc. No nuance is too subtle to pad the void of content. Something can be so good it is too good!
“Top 3 most impressive works of all time” has more often than not been more hyperbole than ranking. Do you seriously think all the people that say their top X list took the time to compare all the works they know before arriving at this statement? You can bet that a guy who comments “it is in my top 3” could have been tricked to say the same for more than 3 things. Or that his tastes change every year. Or that he hasn’t really pondered what the other 2 works in the top 3 might precisely be, and that if he actually did the ranking, there may very well be quite too many works to fit into a top 3. You can bet there are guys who would say of Cristiano Ronaldo: “Oh, judging by his talent alone, he should have already won the Ballon d’Or 5 times.” Lionel Messi? “7-8 times.” It is totally irrevelevant that there can only be 10 Ballon d’Or per decade.
We already saw how these subtleties of language translate to “expert” reviews. In the Cézanne review, one can read: “at once subtle and strong,” “a little meticulous and stiff,” “The idea of the work, its method and devices, are more tangible than in Cézanne’s later art; but this absorbing seriousness and frankness are part of the charm of the work.” This balancing act reads like wine tasting: “Richly fruited flavour and lively acidity. Lots of plummy fruit and firm but well integrated tannins.” Or try: “Particularly dry style, although the concentration and maturity stop it from being overly austere. Pastry shop and toast characteristics add depth and complexity. Exotic fruit, patisserie, roasted nuts, spring flowers.” Now one can try to put price tags on the corresponding wines, knowing that one costs 10 times as much as the other. It shouldn’t be much harder than to deduce from Schapiro’s review the “magnificency” of Cézanne’s “masterpiece.”
Of course, one has to take judgments for what they’re worth:
Scientific research has long demonstrated the power of suggestion in perception as well as the strong effects of expectancies. For example, people expect more expensive wine to have more desirable characteristics than less expensive wine. When given wine that they are falsely told is expensive they virtually always report it as tasting better than the very same wine when they are told that it is inexpensive. French researcher Frédéric Brochet “submitted a mid-range Bordeaux in two different bottles, one labeled as a cheap table wine, the other bearing a grand cru etiquette.” Tasters described the supposed grand cru as “woody, complex, and round” and the supposed cheap wine as “short, light, and faulty.”
❞By all accounts, such exercices in deduction are the human limit in “expert” analysis, whether it’s for a Jackson Pollock painting, a mosaic of independent features, or—a favorite subject of mine—sports, where one can say one thing and then the opposite in the same breath while appearing sufficiently competent not to get fired:
Can Novak Djokovic win all 4 Grand Slams next year?
Tennistically, yes. Also, one can say that the more time passes, the greater his dominance, that is, the firmer his mental edge over his opponents. However, his exceptional win streak cannot last. If he manages to stay focused, he will succeed. His success this year owes a large part to his daily mental work. He won all year long. That’s the key to his success. But this is also what is difficult to maintain.
❞In order to churn out this kind of “analysis,” our brave tennis consultant just has to look up Djokovic’s wins column in Wikipedia. He doesn’t need to actually watch tennis games or know tennis at all. Only a precision language can make it look like something has been said. However, the unfortunate side of it is that the more precise and subtle the language, the more it has to be tautological (“winning all year long” being “the key to success” is quite the revelation, if you ask me), or the harder it is for it to stay compatible with other statements or even itself, e.g., when the win streak “cannot last” but then “will succeed if…”
“This work is great for everybody:” the myth of universality. Superficial debates and consensus.
No amount of reality check is going to validate this assertion, which is usually implied in the falsely more humble-looking statement that “this work is great.” But this is far from stopping the reflex belief in the universality of one’s tastes, otherwise we wouldn’t be buried under the billions of Youtube comments about how much some unknown dude likes an album and the proof is that it saved their life when they were ill or depressed or whatever. The only way such comments make sense, is when you know the author of the comment and can put some context on what he says, and maybe put the comment to good use. But make no mistake, most authors of such comments certainly don’t post these comments only for their acquaintances. They really believe that greatness emanates from the work, or they would finally realize that statements like “my top 10 of all time” mean nothing for essentially all of mankind. For all we know, the commentator could be an 8 year-old (increasingly common these days) who has listened to like 8 albums total in his lifetime, or there could 5 Justin Bieber albums in that top 10. When one says “album of the year,” do you really think he’s taken into account that most people don’t give a shit about the opinion of one of innumerable social geek who, for all we know, spent the year listening to emo-core?
A correlate to the belief of universal opinions is reviewers sticking to one rating for all. For example, tablet reviewers keep comparing the reviewed tablet to Apple’s iPad. This works to a certain extent, except when the reviewed product actually targets a different demographics, e.g., tablets embarking a Wacom stylus that target graphic designers and note-takers rather than media consumers. It is very hard for them to let the review at “for creative types, we recommend this tablet; for media consumption types, prefer the iPad.” They are compelled to stick to judgments such as “the iPad is better than this tablet” and bring up pixel density. But even if the iPad does fare better in this department, it is absolutely no use to stylus users.
Another correlate is people’s incredulity when confronted with adverse opinions:
“I don’t understand how you can find this terrible work great.”
This statement contains two variations of the “value is always relative to someone” truism. On the one hand, “you find this work great” means this is “great for you.” On the other hand, the expression “this terrible work” is a prejudiced way to say “I, contrary to you, find this work terrible.” It is only after demystifying the language that the statement reveals the prejudice: “Since I find this work terrible and given the noted belief in the universality of opinions, I don’t understand how you can find it great.” As an aside, this kind of asymmetry in the expression of subjectivity is exactly what undermines Marx’s value theory (which will be discussed shortly).
The same language mystification animates debates on humor. In Uncyclopedia, the parody of Wikipedia, contributors regularly enter into arguments based on the misunderstanding of this mystification. They say:
“I don’t understand how you can find this terrible article hilarious.”
In the best case, the arguments linger until the parties agree to disagree.
But even when opinions match, experience teaches us that the agreement is only on the surface.
Guy 3 may agree with Master of Puppets being Metallica’s best, and even acquiesce guy 1’s attempt at a technical analysis of the Master of Puppets riffs. It would seem that finally we have an objective take on taste here! But then, guy 1 goes on to discover that guy 3 also likes Sepultura’s Roots album over Morbid Visions. Too bad.
“This work is truly great:” the myth of better objectivity
Certainly, there are trained ears in the entertainment industry that are paid to find out if a work has all the makings of a big hit, and they are paid according to the accuracy of their predictions. So scientists have been trying to steal their job:
With an accuracy of 60%, the Bristolian formula can predict whether a song will be a smash hit and make it to the top five of the UK Top 40 Singles chart, or flop and never make it above position 30. To do this, a combination of computer hearing and machine learning; computer hearing to analyze a song’s loudness, danceability, duration, and 20 other features that might predict a hit or flop, and machine learning to integrate the findings from a huge corpus of tunes that span five decades into some kind of magic formula that actually works.
❞So even if the myth of the universality of taste is debunked, one can at least be tempted to argue that one’s taste is “more objective.” For example, someone could try to back up the claim by proving that his taste is consistent with the results of the predictive algorithm. But the algorithm is programmed to reflect the tastes of the UK in the last 50 years. The claim to one’s objectivity thus becomes the even bolder claim that UK consumers were “more objective” in their taste during the last 50 years. So although one’s tastes may objectively correlate more to commercial success than other tastes, saying they are more objective than others is the same fallacious claim to be absolute that it has always been.
“This work’s greatness is timeless:” the myth of the “classics” and ageing-well as a criterion
The usual belief is that only great works survive. If one still talks about it decades later, then the work must be great. Of course, one can always “relax” the criterion to fit one’s needs. For example, if an album that you feel sucks is still being talked about decades later, you can always claim that the real test is when it still matters centuries later. Of course, by then it becomes an irrefutable argument that can be used by both you and your contradictors.
First there was At the Gates, who made The Red in the Sky is Ours, and blew us all away. Then came black metal. Then came Dissection. Then someone wondered what would happen if you took Dissection and dumbed it down, made it a little more like regular rock ’n’ roll, and claimed it was new and exciting. I guess that person was a genius because people still take In Flames seriously, although at the time their first CD came out metalheads universally viewed them as clueless, wimpy and latecoming carpetbaggers. These guys are ripping off Iron Maiden on every album. They get away with it because their fans want to think they're new and fresh and evil, not warmed-over 1978 heavy metal. These retreads from the mid-1990s keep puking out the crap and for some reason, people still discuss them.
[…]
There you have it: a catalogue of fail. Or rather, fail that is highly praised by those who know not much of anything. Naturally, products designed for idiots that make idiots feel like geniuses are big sellers, so you’ll have to suffer seeing these bands around for a while yet. But as time goes on, it’s amazing how the crap gets filtered out and the really powerful stuff endures.
❞What’s even more amazing is how the author relies on this “crap gets filtered out and the really powerful stuff endures” argument when “people still take In Flames seriously.” He can still come out of this self-dug hole by playing either the “should be judged over centuries” card—the unfortunate side-effect being that this would also preclude the praising of any metal band—or the “as far as metalheads are concerned” card, which is an argument from authority, wildly assuming we can ever agree on who’s a “metalhead” or not—a debate that can only end with a recursive argument çrom authority, or, more likely with an ad hoc definition of “metalhead” that nicely wraps up the debate—e.g., “is a metalhead any metal fan and intellectual who thinks In Flames is crap.”
“This work is great in every aspect:” the myth of perfection as the pinnacle of refinement
This myth is the ability to recognize perfection when we see it, measure the distance to it, foresee it, rate it. In this line of thinking progress is refinement, and the “best” art is the pinnacle of refinement. A great song is a song with great production, great vocals (preferrably something that shows off the singer’s capabilities), great lyrics, great emotional depth, great chorus, etc. It is assumed that if one improved the song piecemeal, one would arrive at perfection. A perfect song is the same previous song with perfect production, perfect vocals, etc. An “artist coach”—think of a coach mandated by a talent show like The Voice—just needs to ask of his protégé “better vocals, more emotional depth, etc.” If nothing works, he can always ask—like most clueless coaches—to “work harder.” What would become of art if we weren’t wowed by the hard labour put into works (i.e., the materialistic fetishism mentioned by Marx)? The value of grand realizations, say the Eiffel Tower, would be the value of their plastic miniature—that is, not much. Portraits that required years of subtle touches just to be photo-realistic, would not be worth more than a cheap selfie on a smartphone.
This is consistent with the contemporary taste for artistic performance and the glorification of the performer rather than the composer. The performer is supposed to perform according to an idea of perfection. But the composer himself has no necessary perfection to look up to. The composer can decide to work outside the accepted ideals, by defining his composition as the perfection the performer must look up to. Somebody criticizing this composer would preach another perfection. One cannot neutrally favor one perfection over the other, especially when there is no interest in being popular or selling well. But in our value-based culture, we always seem to put ourselves in a position to do so, and that is the myth.
In music, ears are automatically tuned to the “right” key. Should the artist sing off-key, most listeners will spot it. They are so absurdly trained that they can even declare off-key new original songs whose off-key singing would be part of the artistic design. But then, if off-key and on-key singing are equal, shouldn’t the losers of talent shows demand compensation? There is truth in that argument, but the contestants of talent shows have bought into the idea of perfect singing, and losing contestants just lose to the rules of the game to which they willingly submitted, so it is only fair and productive for them to be criticized and rejected. But in the general context of song composition, the rules are made by the composer, not Simon Cowell, which is a fact routinely overlooked.
In video gaming, players want better textures, better camera angles, better water effects when swimming, better jiggle effects for the big-breasted heroine, more intuitive “kinetic” controls, etc. From a stage where gaming concepts had to be invented, we have arrived at a stage where the completely linear evolution of the games is all but figured out. Modern video gaming has witnessed the emergence of an industry of interactive movies with portions of button-mashing and so-called Quick Time Events where the player is told by the game which buttons to press. In role-playing games, a huge part of the game is spent “levelling up,” the process of buffing up one’s character stats during increasingly repetitive fights in order to stand up to the next boss, repeating what is essentially a variation of the “attack, heal, attack, heal” pattern. The rest is made up of various actions that trigger unplayable story sequences which advance the main plot. The cinematographic orientation obviously puts the accent on refinements such as increased realism, better-rounded plots (usually another dreesed-up love or friendship story), and the mandatory plot twists (bad guy becomes good guy, one good guy dies, catastrophe that the player worked his ass off to prevent happens, etc.).
Speaking of plots, we know so well what we like or what perfect is, that we could dictate it to the script writer.
Though unconfirmed by Spielberg, another recent change to subsequent prints adds weight to the theory. When released in 2002, PreCrime was dismantled and the precogs allowed to live in peace, a final epilogue declared that, upon the end of PreCrime, murders had returned to Washington, D.C. In subsequent releases, this tag was removed and with it, the sole negative consequence to Anderton’s choices. For some, this solidifies the idea of a “perfect,” dream-like ending—and ultimately a false one. As one critic theorized, “…[r]ather than end this Brazilian sci-fi dystopia with the equivalent of that film’s shot of its lobotomized hero, which puts the lie to the immediately previous scene of his imagined liberation, Spielberg tries to pass off the exact same ending but without the rimshot, just to see if the audience is paying attention.” Film scholars Nigel Morris and Jason P. Vest point to a line in the film as possible evidence of this. After Anderton is captured, Gideon tells him that, “It’s actually kind of a rush. They say you have visions. That your life flashes before your eyes. That all your dreams come true.” While Vest considers the blissful dream ending a possibility, he questions why Anderton did not imagine his son as having returned.
Buckland expressed disappointment in the ending, but blamed Frank. He felt that given the water theme, and closely tied together tragic parent-child theme, Anderton should have ended the film by taking Agatha in his care if Spielberg wanted a happy ending. Especially since “Anderton kidnaps Agatha from the precog pool just as his son was kidnapped from a swimming pool” and because Anderton could act as a “substitute parent for Agatha, and Agatha… a substitute child for Anderton.” This opportunity is missed however, when the precogs are sent to the remote island, and Anderton reunites with his wife; an ending which Buckland finds more “forced” than the “more authentic” path he feels he noticed.
❞In cinema, critics are keen on remarking that an actor “underacts,” “overacts” or is just “self-conscious” or “bad.” Most of the time, the claimed measuring stick is reality, so that “bad” acting means “non believable” acting. But the ability actually goes beyond that. In a totally fictitious work, say The Wizard of Oz, the viewers can tell whether the Tin Man or the Cowardly Lion are believable or not. And in a biopic that pictures the life of some real person, say Diane Downs, who’s infamous for killing her 3 children, they can tell whether the portrayal is realistic or not, despite not having seen Diane Downs in real life at all. When Diane arrives at the hospital in her car, having just shot her children in it and pretending it was some “bushy-haired stranger” on the run, the viewers can judge whether her panic is believable. But first, they should ask themselves whether they have to judge the reenacting of the feigned panic of a real person who tells lies very well, or the feigned panic of a real person who’s a bad actress in real life, or the real panic of a schizophrenic woman who really believes in her made-up story, or the panic of a weird woman who doesn’t so much want to act out a conscious lie as to to sincerely believe in her made-up story, etc. Do you seriously think the movie critics know how Diane Downs is supposed to be acted before making their judgment? No, they can grade the acting performance right away. For them a panic is a panic, and it must sound certain ways. Had they attended the Downs trial, they would have been exposed to Diane’s light-hearted re-enactment of the crime scene, her weird emotional responses:
X-ray Technician Carleen Elbridge could not get over the fact that Diane, a mother of three severely wounded youngsters, complained about having to be seen in public without makeup.
❞This Crime Library quote foreshadows for us the fact that the preposterous sense of believability is more of a very general issue of prejudice than a acting issue. The same people who dismiss artistic license by implying they know how characters should be acted, look like those who fall for real life’s knack for making born actors. Should Diane Downs appear “non believable” to our critics as she did to Dr. John Macey, we would have a remarkable but not uncommon case of reality not being realistic enough. “But,” says the movie jury, “she’s a messed-up psychopath. That’s why her emotions are messed up.” Then the same movie jury must have been rubbing their eyes when Ted Bundy, the perfect groom who fielded calls in a crisis clinic, a rising youngster of the Washington State Republican Party, was first alleged to live the double life of a sex predator, one of the most prolific serial-killers of our time. They must somewhat feel like crime writer Ann Rule who went to great lengths about her friendship with Ted Bundy in her autobiographic book The Stranger Beside Me and her inability to reconcile Bundy’s Jekyll to his Hyde. In his own role, he would be “non believable” because so sick a murderer couldn’t act so normal according to the Diane Downs theory. According to the Diane Downs theory, a murderer is a “monster,” and so must be his/her behaviour. Such thinking makes me foresee a future where every person unable to put up a Meryl Streep tearful performance should start fearing for his/her legal immunity, should one of their acquaintances vanish mysteriously.
One might object that non-believability is very real: the actor playing Ted Bundy would be “non believable” if he flubbed his lines, started to speak yiddish all of a sudden, or told the camera how bad of an acting job he’s doing. I could playfully argue “Because he is a psychopath! Psychopaths constantly act! They constantly rehearse in their messed-up head what they want to say! They’re so paranoid they believe they live in front of cameras!” If this explanation is not believable enough for you, then you will have to explain how keeping your victim’s severed head in your fridge and applying make-up to it for one’s viewing pleasure is more believable.
Now, the only reason my argument is funny is because it takes its funniness from the critics’ compulsion to put realism and its clichés on a pedestal.
One might throw the towel and employ sarcasm: “I guess that all actors are Academy Award material, then!” Or it may be that conformity to this ideal of perfection is only relevant because we decide so. The film may continue to function at other levels even if the actor who plays Ted Bundy flubs his lines. Of course, flubbing can be blamed, especially when it’s the point of the sensationalistic film to win an Best Actor Academy Awards, or to be mistaken for reality. But if you take the blaming route, I take it as the admission that you bought into the naive cliché of this movie being the serious portrayal of a non-flubbing serial killer. “A serial killer never flubs his lines nor his killing sprees. He is a straightforward monster to be feared, not ridiculed.” This cliché is consistent with the popular view that Nazi jokes are to be banished as socially inappropriate under the pretense that “they banalize the Holocaust,” although it doesn’t quite match with reports of Nazi authorities banning Nazi jokes, as Rudolph Herzog recounts in his Dead Funny: Humour in Hitler’s Germany. (By the way, how can an anti-Nazi moralist banish jokes considered harmful to the Nazi regime by the Nazis themselves?)
But just as what one sees on screen is not a magical gateway to reality, the claim to “being the portrayal of a non-flubbing serial killer” stays a claim, maybe a part of the artistic design. It is the same as the “based on a true story” claim at the start of the movie, which the experienced cinephiles have already learned to see as the perfect warning sign that the film is a total invention, which even directors, such as the Coen brothers in Fargo, have acknowledged to abuse deliberately. It’s not the myth of acting perfection that is damaging—people do enjoy judging acting skill—, but the fact that if acting flaws don’t matter in the movie’s design, you can be sure the chorus of “bad acting” will be sung anyway and detract from the big picture. Think of a critic watching a Superman movie and criticizing the acting skills of the actor who plays Clark Kent, judging his reactions to Lois Lane’s death “non believable:” “Too flat in his emotional delivery, given that Lois Lane was the love of his life.” And, what do you know, the next scene he takes off.
In general, belief in the objectivity of value collapses under intense—and, shall we add, honest—critical scrutiny. It is not unlike the missionary’s evangelistic quest in primitive God-less tribes: when forced to explain in clearly definable—actually commnicable—terms, he can only come up with concepts such as “Master of space” which may sound utterly ridiculous to the occidental ears. But the matter of fact is that one can hardly do better without entering into definition loops such as “God is the incarnation of perfection,” “perfection is intemporality, spirituality, infinite wisdom” “spirituality is God”. Of course, such loops only convey their actual content: the actual contents of intemporality, spirituality and infinite wisdom. Too bad if “infinite wisdom” is as opaque to the primitives as “God,” in particular if the missionary’s “infinite wisdom” is human exploitation, personal enrichment, etc. Of course, one could cut short all the frillings and go at the heart of the matter: “God is what provokes spiritual awe and profession of faith,” which definition somewhat conveys the wishful character of propagandistic communication.
“I can sense that this work is great:” the myth of natural value
Sometimes, people say or imply that they can sense greatness, like a sixth or seventh sense. But theories of naturality are always pure bias. For example, someone might argue that democracy is more natural than dictatorship. But is it also natural that everybody be equally fit to vote, with equally favorable intellectual faculties, under equally favorable conditions for good judgment (education, time to follow the news, no external pressure, self-disinterest)? Another might argue that heterosexuality is more natural than homosexuality, since it favors social growth and conforms to the natural dispositions of the human organism. First, why would favoring “social growth” be “natural,” given the (natural?) tendency of masses to self-destruct. Nuclear world wars can only happen in a context of social growth where the masses provide the political leaders with the brain and manufacturing power to make planet-sized bombs. Planetary ecological catastrophes can only occur on a large scale only compatible with social growth. Second, to state that A is more natural because it conforms to B which is supposed to be natural, is just to move the problem from A to B. So if I say that the heterosexual dispositions of the human organism are natural, it may be because they favor social growth, which is more natural because…
Even the more formal attempts at defining “natural value” are fatally flawed. Take Marx’s labour theory of value. Marx’s self-called “more natural” opinion is that value is labour value. Granted, labour is a constant factor, even in art. How often has one been wowed by something because it required a lot of work? That labour be the factor, is, however, a more hazardous hypothesis, if only because Marx, in order to get his labour theory of value going, needed to “forget” that the use-value—specifically the use-value for the buyer—also had a role in exchange (cf. the section on labour value), not only labour.
Marx proposes “weight” as a metaphor of value:
One of the measures that we apply to commodities as material substances, as use values, will serve to illustrate this point. A sugar-loaf being a body, is heavy, and therefore has weight: but we can neither see nor touch this weight. We then take various pieces of iron, whose weight has been determined beforehand. The iron, as iron, is no more the form of manifestation of weight, than is the sugar-loaf. Nevertheless, in order to express the sugar-loaf as so much weight, we put it into a weight-relation with the iron. In this relation, the iron officiates as a body representing nothing but weight. A certain quantity of iron therefore serves as the measure of the weight of the sugar, and represents, in relation to the sugar-loaf, weight embodied, the form of manifestation of weight. This part is played by the iron only within this relation, into which the sugar or any other body, whose weight has to be determined, enters with the iron. Were they not both heavy, they could not enter into this relation, and the one could therefore not serve as the expression of the weight of the other. When we throw both into the scales, we see in reality, that as weight they are both the same, and that, therefore, when taken in proper proportions, they have the same weight. Just as the substance iron, as a measure of weight, represents in relation to the sugar-loaf weight alone, so, in our expression of value, the material object, coat, in relation to the linen, represents value alone.
❞In the metaphor, one uses scales to determine the weight. But the reader is still left wanting as to what kind of “scales” would be needed to find the value. We could “weigh” weight, temperature, nutritive content, labour, use-value-for-others, supply, demand, etc. Labour is only one factor among others.
Marx claims that labour value is a “scientific discovery:”
But price—which any “scientific discovery” must necessarily start with, because it’s the one tangible fact that expresses value—is more complex than labour value. Marx actually explains away the oscillations of price as “accidental,” and defines the constant part to be the “natural price” of labour:
Classical Political Economy borrowed from every-day life the category “price of labour” without further criticism, and then simply asked the question, how is this price determined? It soon recognized that the change in the relations of demand and supply explained in regard to the price of labour, as of all other commodities, nothing except its changes i.e., the oscillations of the market-price above or below a certain mean. If demand and supply balance, the oscillation of prices ceases, all other conditions remaining the same. But then demand and supply also cease to explain anything. The price of labour, at the moment when demand and supply are in equilibrium, is its natural price, determined independently of the relation of demand and supply. And how this price is determined is just the question. Or a larger period of oscillations in the market-price is taken, e.g., a year, and they are found to cancel one the other, leaving a mean average quantity, a relatively constant magnitude. This had naturally to be determined otherwise than by its own compensating variations. This price which always finally predominates over the accidental market-prices of labour and regulates them, this “necessary price” (Physiocrats) or “natural price” of labour (Adam Smith) can, as with all other commodities, be nothing else than its value expressed in money. In this way Political Economy expected to penetrate athwart the accidental prices of labour, to the value of labour. As with other commodities, this value was determined by the cost of production. But what is the cost of production — of the labourer, i.e., the cost of producing or reproducing the labourer himself? This question unconsciously substituted itself in Political Economy for the original one; for the search after the cost of production of labour as such turned in a circle and never left the spot. What economists therefore call value of labour, is in fact the value of labour-power, as it exists in the personality of the labourer, which is as different from its function, labour, as a machine is from the work it performs.
❞The statement that “the price of labour […] is its natural price, determined independently of the relation of demand and supply” was only possible under Marx’s hypothesis that “demand and supply balance,” so that “demand and supply also cease to explain anything.” So “independently of the relation of demand and supply” is a bit misleading, it actually means “when demand and supply balance.” More importantly, later on, to be able to determine “this [natural] price which always finally predominates over the accidental market-prices of labour and regulates them,” Marx supposes that “a larger period of oscillations in the market-price is taken.” But this directly contradicts the hypothesis that “demand and supply balance,” with which he was able to declare the labour value to be “determined independently of the relation of demand and supply.”
So Marx has never been able to match this labour value to the “value expressed in money” without having to combine mutually exclusive hypotheses—but presented in such a way that they appear not to be combined, as they are separated by this passage: “And how this price is determined is just the question. Or a larger period of oscillations in the market-price is taken…” All he and Political Economy did to “scientifically discover” labour value, was to compute an average price over some arbitrary period (here again the faith in the mathematical average). But the labeling of this average as the “natural price of labour” came at the cost of giving undue credence to the “independently of the relation of demand and supply” clause, effectively writing off demand and supply.
So, in contrast to Marx’s claim that free market value is lawless—unpredictable, incomprehensible, uncontrollable—we say that value in general is lawless—at least compared to an experiment that tries to determine the law that governs the answers of people asked whether a blue painting is blue or red. In fact, even Marx’s labour value, supposedly determined by only “labour time,” hides how lawless the complexity of its determining factors is. In Marx’s own writing:
