Excess, meet Scarcity. Critical Response #1

Zizek writes that “Power generates its own excess which it then has to annihilate in an operation that imitates what it fights” (27). I think this paradoxical logic offers an interesting point of departure in a discursive discussion of the economic concept of “scarcity.” In “The Second Contradiction of Capitalism,” James O’Connor constructs a poignant critique around the central notion that capital “is its own barrier because of its self-destructive forms of…power… appropriation [and the] capitalization of external nature…” (159). O’Connor advances this notion by suggesting that so-called “natural barriers” are in fact capitalistically produced. In a capitalistic context, the notion of “scarcity” is conveniently translated into economic jargon, where ‘Limits to Growth’ are cast as a necessary evil, over which capital/ism must exercise brute force and declare its anthems of ‘progress,’ ‘efficiency’ and ‘expansion.’

The capitalist obsession with identifying “limits” and “barriers” to growth is, I think, an internal function of capitalism, where “barriers assume the form of economic crisis” – a mess in need of cleaning up. Seen in this way, it is tempting to suggest that the so-called “barriers” of capitalism are in fact that which structures capitalist excess. Put another way, “scarcity” is the phantom-limb of excess, which capital/power/excess is compelled to see as the Other of itself, something which must necessarily be annihilated.

What becomes dangerously problematic here is the failure to recognize “scarcity” as that which resists our immersion in daily reality. More simply stated, we fail to identify ourselves, our excesses, and our greed with the production of “scarcity.” From this perspective, it is not difficult to recognize the extent to which capitalism – as something caught up in this schizoid, annihilative pattern – is inherently crisis-ridden and crisis-dependent. What I find troubling is the potential for a supposed ‘crisis of scarcity’ to be expounded as a scientific absolute, an assertion which effectively disarms the capacity for open discussion and prevents important questions from being asked about destructive patterns of consumption.

Here, I think it is useful and compelling to reference Ivan Illich’s “The Social Construction of Energy,” where he casts the concept of scarcity into the dynamic folds of technologic and discursive history. Illich is interested in the role of words as “verbal symbols,” and focuses largely on the co-dependence and interconnected effects (and affect) of these “verbal symbols” to construct social reality. The significance of historical context in Illich’s argument is essential. The reason for this, Illich contends, is largely because he “discover[ed] in the emergence of this verbal symbol (“energy”) the means by which nature has been interpreted as a domain governed by the assumption of scarcity… Once the universe itself is placed under the regime of scarcity,” Illich continues, “homo is no longer born under the stars but under the axioms of economics” (13). By making a pointed reference to the mid-1800’s “message of spiritual awakening to a cosmos defined by the assumptions of scarcity” (16), I think Illich makes a strong case for recognizing scarcity as inherently economistic and capitalistically constructed. (It is no small coincidence that this “spiritual awakening” coincided with groundbreaking technological advances in the industrial revolution, including the steam engine, the dynamo and and the electric motor, each of which had profound effects on the division of labour and the conceptualization of “energy.”)

For O’Connor, the importance of understanding scarcity as both a political and economic conceptual instrument is advanced in the question: “where does the extra commodity demand that is required to buy the product of surplus labour originate?” Here, O’Connor cleverly and intentionally complicates the notion of “scarcity.” By reversing the base status-quo relationship between supply and demand – where human consumers are defined as “nature’s ever needy clients” (Illich 13) – O’Connor subtly undermines the faulty justifications for capitalistic excess. Simply by asking – where does surplus need come from – O’Connor makes a rhetorical jab at the entire normalized architecture of capitalistic greed and patterns of consumption. Within these patterns of greed and consumption, real needs are supplanted by desire, and the Nature of economics (see Jane Jacobs) as replaced by a libidinally driven economy.

What I have attempted to do in this brief reflection is offer a critical, alternative conceptualization of “scarcity” as the dispossessed product/ion of capitalistic excess. Though there are many important voices and implications missing from this discussion, I think it is important to exercise situating the assumed threat of the ‘crisis of scarcity’ within a larger philosophical and moral framework. In so doing, I aim to open a space in which important interrogations of capitalist consumer excess can be made.

References:

Jacobs, Jane. “The Nature of Economics.” Vintage Canada, 2001.

Illich, Ivan. “The Social Construction of Energy. ” New Geographies (vol 2).

O’Connor, James. “The Second Contradiction of Capitalism.” Natural Causes, New York and London: Guilford Press, 1998.

Zizek, Slavoj. “Welcome to the Desert of the Real.” New York: Verso, 2002.