The accursed share 4

The Accursed Share is thought-provoking. Towards the end of volume 1 (there are 3) Bataille really gets going about the two superpowers at the time of his writing: America and Russia. He first analyses Russia's contribution to energy in the world, noting that Russia in fact controlled far more than may have been supposed, purely by the incredibly tension it held and forced others (including the US) to react to.

Unlike the US, already industrialised and on its way to spend much of its considerable surplus energy, the Soviet Union was harnessing energy in the most rigorous way imagineable, focusing attention within its borders to be productive and become truly industrial.

What I find fascinating is his observation that Stalin, whose legacy is full of terror and atrocity, may have been the one who suceeded in making Russia industrial. I.e., without his rigorous method Russia would not have ascended as it did. That's what a philosopher - Bataille - can do: look at the unspeakable and stand beyond it, extracting an unpleasant but interesting truth. He enthuses about Russia at first, almost in the sense of something novel, unusual, not without promise to the world, and breathtaking in its fearsome production. Eventually he moves on to the US, drawing attention to the difference in workers' movements: in Russia, geared towards production; elsewhere towards increasing the objects of consumption.

Finally, he gives considerable attention to the Marshall Plan. My knowledge of it is insufficient to add much, but at any rate Bataille sees two options. On the one hand, the plan could be a true gift giving. The US gives away because it needs to find an outlet for its surpluses, so giving to the general economy, i.e. to the world. On the other hand, which is what he sort of suspects, it may well be that America will simply find a way to make it work in its own interests once more (he annotates Francois Perroux's argument in this section, so it appears not to have been entirely his insight first): "The plan may be an 'investment in the world's interest', but it may also be an investment 'in America's interest'" (p. 183).

As I have been reading Noam Chomsky's Hegemony or Survival around the same period it's tempting to see how they differ. Of course, their focus is different. But a similarity arises in Chomsky's description of a hegemon so powerful, so capable, that its boundaries are no longer national - nor its ability to control. Chomsky's descriptions of military and financial support of other leaders (often dictators), would constitute the sort of spending Bataille sees as necessary to get rid of surpluses. Yet, as he suspected, much of this tends to come around later to work in the US' favour. In a phrase, "America's interest" is precisely what its foreign spending (financing of military leaders) and energy expenditure (war, eg. in Iraq) seem to be about.

Chomsky's words on the same Marshall Plan that Bataille wrote about indicate pretty much what Bataille suspected, but Bataille could hardly have foreseen it in so much detail back when he wrote his work (1940s). In Hegemony or Survival, quoting Howard Wachtel in Business Week (1975), Chomsky writes: "Reagan's Commerce Department observed that the Marshall Plan 'set the stage for large amounts of private U.S. direct investment in Europe,' laying the groundwork for multinational corporations (MNCs)" (p. 149-150) The rest of the paragraph describes the Marshall Plan as a facilitator of U.S. economic imperialism.

Looking at this through Bataille's eyes once more I do feel though that the considerable energy that is still being created, and streaming into all avenues and countries, from the U.S., is not antithetical to the notion of surplus consumption. Nevertheless, the form it takes is still aimed at increasing production, and where this will eventually lead to is unclear. When the world becomes too small something will have to give. Using one of Bataille's favourite images, a dam wall will burst - and what of humanity then? It is interesting that Bataille's framework allows me to predict very simply that a global catastrophic war is one possibility - at some point in the future - if not an inevitable possibility; if production increases at this rate. I.e., the general economy is in a sense totally disinterested in individual, even national, interests. And perhaps the U.S. keeps controlling and producing, not because it needs it, but because it is feeding on its own fear: the fear of catastrophe.

So maybe the continuing U.S. capitalist imperialist endeavour is something of a compulsive disorder ...