The Present State: As “Unnatural”

The Present State: As “Unnatural”

Ylli Përmeti

Abstract

The aftermath of the present system, that is, a system of growing economy or grow or die ― has in practice and especially to human consciousness too many implications. If someone wants to “uncover” these implications would be of a good purpose first to start with a question: How could an ancient society respond to such politics or to such establishment? Although, the growing economy started with the rise of the banks and especially in England when it established a fiat currency system, in 1694, abolishing the tally stick economies, the growing economy evolved during the eighteenth and nineteenth century [1]. This is the epoch where monetary economy reversed social relations: From natural to unnatural; i.e. it started to embed social relations into the economy and to disembed the economy from social relations or instead of economy being embedded in social relations (as in the past), social relations are embedded in the economic system [2].

It is upon this period where the marketization of labour and land started. But the most important element of this period is the rise of the state, which gave rise to theories such as Marxist theory of labour, land and social classes. For Marx’s theory of commodities, labour and land was profoundly wrong: First, it was wrong because Marx produced a theory which as I have argued elsewhere [3] is not possible to be realised in the social domain; this is so, because it has to do with human power, and human power is expressed always with bodily properties [4] and not with fixed pre-determined actions or activities by the mentioned theory. And second, Marx’s theory was not based on power and rationality which reflect in the context of an affair but according to Marx in its untenable context ― that is, pure abstraction. And third, Marx was not a scholar of discovering naturalistic events but he was an “unnaturalist” coverer. Thus, it is important to distinguish these two domains when someone wants to apprehend in the social affairs the various problems that a society will unfold. Moreover, Marx’s theory excluded from being its concomitant and ex-concomitant parts:

The concomitant parts are those parts which in a law or in a theory cannot re-act or cannot be transcribed into pieces as being the parts of the whole in order to put them in a set of rules so that to satisfy the requirement of a theory; whereas, the ex-concomitant parts are those parts which constitute or transform our being into being; or being and otherness are part of the whole and part of the part the same time.

Consequently, we must start our investigation from the parts; which are predicates of the state. To suppose therefore, that the present state is natural and therefore sustainable one must indicate its un-naturalistic parts. Thus, as said above, the state in its essential form came because of an important event ― that is, the appearance of fiat money. Money thus, as we have said elsewhere [5] is not natural. In its general form money has been accepted by the state as being part of it; without such a thing the state would not exist. In time, such a subject started to be considered as natural. But to be natural something must fulfil the requirement of human’s wants. For wants of humans are many and they are first needs and secondly desires. Thus, human in order to satisfy its wants will look for what has been pre-determined by nature: Food. Once such a requirement has been satisfied human will start to look for desires. Both these domains, i.e. wants and desires are part of physical power and of the physical economy of human being. This is the point of departure where humans started to invent and to build houses. From this point of view we may infer that the state or the city-state came into being. Hence the question: Is the state natural? Or is the city as we have envisaged and realised it natural?

To say that a city is natural we must go back to our wants and desires; this is so, because our life starts with these requirements. If a city came into being associated with our wants then we must consider it natural. On the other hand, if a city came into existence prior to our wants then we must assume that we first desire and second we need something in order to survive. But desires are unlimited whereas wants are limited by nature. Had it been otherwise then we would have neglected our substances of our nature. For there is for sure a limit in substances. This is why our medicine has established a pyramid of primary and secondary wants. For primary wants are sure water, food and air; for secondary wants are sure their mixture which belong to the domain of the art. Such an art is unlimited and limited the same time, depending on humans’ capacity to invent and on nature’s provisions. But desires are for sure unlimited and they belong to the world of unrealisable. They belong to that world because desires are part processes of the mind and part processes of our body. Again, they could be realised in part not complete. This is why desires are unlimited and unrealisable in some respects. For our wants are individual’ wants and they usually know the end of an action. Hence, the appearance of the state: Thus the state must know the end of its existence. Had it been otherwise then it would be contrary to human’s wants. Are wants then pre-determined by nature to grow as in the case of our present economy? To assume then, that our wants are pre-determined to grow then we can equally infer that our householding has to grow in order to survive. But this is not the case: Householding is an art with an aim to some wants and such wants are limited be nature; this is why our growing economy in unnatural and is pre-determined to fail.

Thus, we must be satisfied with the following conclusions:

1. Our present economies have established the power of money in order to produce commodities; and, such power in unnatural; and
2. The growing economy is contrary to our wants, householding and limitations provisioned by nature; and, is not natural. Both these economies are pre-determined by nature to fail.

To carry on therefore our corollary we must acknowledge that our present state has wrongly accepted the present politics contrary to its nature ― that is, not knowing the end of its existence; for the existence of the state must know a priory the end of its compositions otherwise it will fail. But to know the end of an action, the state must be one individual. How could we therefore conclude that a state is natural in the way it is realised? ― since the state is composed by many individuals! Thus, even in this requirement the state is unnatural, because the sate neglects the individual and expresses its end through an “invisible” person, which is of course the state. Again, prior to come together in a city, humans were in their kin community which is presumably a natural form of cohabitation. Thus, Aristotle gives us a similar definition:

[i]f the earlier forms of society are natural, so is the state, for it is the end of them, and the nature of a thing is its end .

Outlining the above conclusions one might pose the next question: Is it natural to pay human beings by another human being? Thus, as said above, to be natural somthing must fulfil part the requirement of the wants, and part of desires. When therefore someone gets paid by another one, for something that has been done ― in days like ours ― it fulfils both requirements: Wants and desires. But in esensse it is not natural, because, had it been so, then our wants would be realised through others; and human being, will loose its autonomy, which is a pre-requisite of natural development. Moreover, when someone wants something as a result of biological development and biological needs will push out him/her self to invent something for the sake of the want. At this stage, human consciousness gets activated and when accoplishing the end it ― it gets realised. This is the ultimate point where another element of our spirit gets accomplished: This is Happiness. Thus, as Fotopoulos pointed out:

[a]lmost all anthropological or sociological assumptions contained in the philosophy of economic liberalism have been refuted by social anthropology, primitive economics, the history of early civilisation and general economic history. For instance, there is no evidence on which to base the assertions that to expect payment for labour is “natural” for humans (Even in the Middle Ages payment for work for strangers is [sic] something unheard of), nor that the motive of gain is “natural”. The same applies to another crucial assumption of economic liberalism that markets, as well as money, would spontaneously arise if humans were left alone. In fact, both markets and money do not arise from within the community but from without. Trade itself does not rely on markets, and even medieval commerce developed from the beginnings under the influence of export trade rather than local trade and was inter-communal in character rather than trade between individuals. Furthermore, local markets had no tendency to grow a fact that implies that, contrary to liberal (and Marxist) received wisdom, there is nothing “inevitable” about the marketization of the economy [8].

It is precisely the pre-reqisite of the individual wants which create the pre-conditions of inner thoughts; hereafter, activate its consciousness and gets realised. This is why the marketization of commodities is unnatural. Again, it is unnatural, because the wants of a human being have been replaced by another field of trade, that is, economic liberalism applied universally throught its counter-part: Money. Both these domains are unnatural and pre-determined to fail. They are pre-determined to fail, just because, they refute their counter-part: Householding, which is the domain where inner thoughts are free to be realised; or it is the domain where springs of thoughts are not determined by another human being but by natural provisions; and natural provisions are limited by nature which must be rationalised through inner, free, not intermingled with other and completely natural thoughts. With this definition we must be satisfied. Thus, the following paragraph would sum up the end of our thoughts:

1. When someone gets paid by another person it is not natural; it kills inner thoughs and the pure consciousness of human being. Marketization also, is not natural; it replaces the autonomy of humans through usuary and dependence;
2. Replacing human autonomy in the process of the production means that coercion will start soon; and
3. Economic liberalism as part of the state must ensure the autonomy of citizens through natural provisions and wants; otherwise it will fail. Such failer would be expressed with pure passive thoughts and will aggravate human life.

Finaly, economic liberalism with its market economy, which is an economy regulated by the market prices, in the sense that the fundamental economic problems (WHAT, HOW and FOR WHOM to produce) are “solved” through the price mechanism [9], must abolish the principle of grow or die in order to ensure a healthy mind in healthy body. This definition however needs more expansion to be discussed; and such discussion will take place in the next section. Let us therefore examine further our property/capital in relation to our consciousness.


05 September 2010




1. The Nation-State and the Market, By Takis Fotopoulos.


2. Ibid.

3. Theory: The Socety of Man’s Mind Picture & Cogito as Subject. P, 23, Chapter One, by Ylli Përmeti.

4. Making Social Science Matter, by Bent Flyvbjerg: These properties include context, judgment, practice, trial and error, experience, commone sense, intuition and bodily sensation. P, 23

5. Beyond an Autonomic Democracy: Economics vs. Phronesis, by Ylli Permeti, p, 101-127

6. Politics, Aristotle, p, 962

7. The Nation-State and the Market, By Takis Fotopoulos.

8. ibid