by Higgenbotham » Sat Aug 09, 2025 4:38 pm
"Want" Creation
MAN: But you could say that "to truck and barter" is human nature-that
people are fundamentally materialist, and will always want to accumulate
more and more under any social structure.
You could say it, but there's no reason to believe it. You look at peasant
societies, they go on for thousands of years without it-do those people have
a different human nature? Or just look inside a family: do people "truck and
barter" over how much you're going to eat for dinner? Well, certainly a
family is a normal social structure, and you don't see people accumulating
more and more for themselves regardless of the needs of the other people.
In fact, just take a look at the history of "trucking and bartering" itself:
look at the history of modern capitalism, about which we know a lot. The
first thing you'll notice is, peasants had to be driven by force and violence
into a wage-labor system they did not want; then major efforts were under-
taken-conscious efforts-to create wants. In fact, if you look back, there's a
whole interesting literature of conscious discussion of the need to manu-
facture wants in the general population. It's happened over the whole long
stretch of capitalism of course, but one place where you can see it very
nicely encapsulated is around the time when slavery was terminated. It's
very dramatic to look at cases like these.
For example, in 1831 there was a big slave revolt in Jamaica-which was
one of the things that led the British to decide to give up slavery in their
colonies: after some slave revolts, they basically said, "It's not paying any-
more." So within a couple years the British wanted to move from a slave
economy to a so-called "free" economy, but they still wanted the basic
structure to remain exactly the same-and if you take a look back at the
parliamentary debates in England at the time, they were talking very con-
sciously about all this. They were saying: look, we've got to keep it the way
it is, the masters have to become the owners, the slaves have to become the
happy workers-somehow we've got to work it all out.
Well, there was a little problem in Jamaica: since there was a lot of open
land there, when the British let the slaves go free they just wanted to move
out onto the land and be perfectly happy, they didn't want to work for the
British sugar plantations anymore. So what everyone was asking in Parlia-
ment in London was, "How can we force them to keep working for us, even
when they're no longer enslaved into it?" Alright, two things were decided
upon: first, they would use state force to close off the open land and prevent
people from going and surviving on their own. And secondly, they realized
that since all these workers didn't really want a lot of things-they just
wanted to satisfy their basic needs, which they could easily do in that trop-
ical climate-the British capitalists would have to start creating a whole set
of wants for them, and make them start desiring things they didn't then de-
sire, so then the only way they'd be able to satisfy their new material desires
would be by working for wages in the British sugar plantations.2o
There was very conscious discussion of the need to create wants-and in
fact, extensive efforts were then undertaken to do exactly what they do on
T.V. today: to create wants, to make you want the latest pair of sneakers
you don't really need, so then people will be driven into a wage-labor soci-
ety. And that pattern has been repeated over and over again through the
whole entire history of capitalism.21 In fact, what the whole history of cap-
italism shows is that people have had to be driven into situations which are
then claimed to be their nature. But if the history of capitalism shows any-
thing, it shows it's not their nature, that they've had to be forced into it, and
that that effort has had to be maintained right until this day.
Understanding Power by Noam Chomsky, page 203.
[quote]"Want" Creation
MAN: But you could say that "to truck and barter" is human nature-that
people are fundamentally materialist, and will always want to accumulate
more and more under any social structure.
You could say it, but there's no reason to believe it. You look at peasant
societies, they go on for thousands of years without it-do those people have
a different human nature? Or just look inside a family: do people "truck and
barter" over how much you're going to eat for dinner? Well, certainly a
family is a normal social structure, and you don't see people accumulating
more and more for themselves regardless of the needs of the other people.
In fact, just take a look at the history of "trucking and bartering" itself:
look at the history of modern capitalism, about which we know a lot. The
first thing you'll notice is, peasants had to be driven by force and violence
into a wage-labor system they did not want; then major efforts were under-
taken-conscious efforts-to create wants. In fact, if you look back, there's a
whole interesting literature of conscious discussion of the need to manu-
facture wants in the general population. It's happened over the whole long
stretch of capitalism of course, but one place where you can see it very
nicely encapsulated is around the time when slavery was terminated. It's
very dramatic to look at cases like these.
For example, in 1831 there was a big slave revolt in Jamaica-which was
one of the things that led the British to decide to give up slavery in their
colonies: after some slave revolts, they basically said, "It's not paying any-
more." So within a couple years the British wanted to move from a slave
economy to a so-called "free" economy, but they still wanted the basic
structure to remain exactly the same-and if you take a look back at the
parliamentary debates in England at the time, they were talking very con-
sciously about all this. They were saying: look, we've got to keep it the way
it is, the masters have to become the owners, the slaves have to become the
happy workers-somehow we've got to work it all out.
Well, there was a little problem in Jamaica: since there was a lot of open
land there, when the British let the slaves go free they just wanted to move
out onto the land and be perfectly happy, they didn't want to work for the
British sugar plantations anymore. So what everyone was asking in Parlia-
ment in London was, "How can we force them to keep working for us, even
when they're no longer enslaved into it?" Alright, two things were decided
upon: first, they would use state force to close off the open land and prevent
people from going and surviving on their own. And secondly, they realized
that since all these workers didn't really want a lot of things-they just
wanted to satisfy their basic needs, which they could easily do in that trop-
ical climate-the British capitalists would have to start creating a whole set
of wants for them, and make them start desiring things they didn't then de-
sire, so then the only way they'd be able to satisfy their new material desires
would be by working for wages in the British sugar plantations.2o
There was very conscious discussion of the need to create wants-and in
fact, extensive efforts were then undertaken to do exactly what they do on
T.V. today: to create wants, to make you want the latest pair of sneakers
you don't really need, so then people will be driven into a wage-labor soci-
ety. And that pattern has been repeated over and over again through the
whole entire history of capitalism.21 In fact, what the whole history of cap-
italism shows is that people have had to be driven into situations which are
then claimed to be their nature. But if the history of capitalism shows any-
thing, it shows it's not their nature, that they've had to be forced into it, and
that that effort has had to be maintained right until this day.[/quote]
Understanding Power by Noam Chomsky, page 203.