Nature's Evil

Following Benjamin, the philosopher Hannah Arendt criticised the ‘glorification of labour’ that she found in ‘modern theory’. It was opposite to ‘the contempt for labour’ in ancient thought, which saw labour as the lot of slaves. From the eighteenth century labour became a source of property (Locke), wealth (Smith) and value (Marx). This glorification of labour went hand in hand with a disdain for nature. In her hierarchical system, Arendt made a distinction between labour and work. Labour is a cyclical exchange between man and nature; like the subsistence farmer, the labourer creates necessary but perishable products that he consumes straight away. Work, on the other hand, transforms nature, creating artefacts which keep their value for years or centuries. Taking matter out of nature, work produces ‘worldly things, whose durability will survive and withstand the devouring processes of life.’ Work, not labour, ‘guarantees the permanence and durability of our world.’ 5 And Arendt also saw a third category – human action, which partly, but never completely, liberates humanity from its dependence on nature .

Notes

1   Pocock, Barbarism and Religion , Vol. 4, p. 40. 2   Hanway, An Historical Account of the British Trade over the Caspian Sea , Vol. 1, p. 3. 3   Polanyi, Origins of Our Time: The Great Transformation , p. 112. 4   Benjamin, ‘On the Concept of History’, in Selected Writings , pp. 393–4. 5   Arendt, The Human Condition , pp. 94, 108.

SEVEN

Resources and Commodities

In his History (430 bce ), the Greek author Herodotus related that, while his native Hellas had a climate which was favourable for human beings, ‘the extremities of the inhabited world had allotted to them by nature the fairest things.’ 1 His list was very long. In India, ‘the most easterly country’, there was an incalculable quantity of gold, and her plants grew ‘tree wool’ – cotton, which was better than sheep’s wool. In Arabia, ‘the most southerly country’, there were trees bearing frankincense, but they were guarded by winged serpents. There was also cinnamon – scary birds built their nests of its sticks. Ebony trees grew in Ethiopia, with wood as dark as the people. Tin was brought to Hellas from the most westerly isles that were later called British. In the north of Europe, there was gold, as in India, but it didn’t reach Hellas, remaining as mythical as cinnamon.

The classical idea of the universe was like a map of fabulous resources which surrounded the sphere of civil life, with the storyteller at its centre. Two hostile empires, Hellas and Persia, constituted the inhabited world; the extremities furnished them with their exotic fruits, and the further away these products came from, the more precious they became. The work of the carpenter, the tailor and the blacksmith was limited and easy to understand; but the remote worlds of fishermen and lumberjacks, miners and gold prospectors, were filled with adventure, risk and profit. An anonymous multitude of spinners and weavers created the economies of world empires; but the civilised world admired those who sought the golden fleece and tamed overseas colonies. Raw materials were over there, goods were here. Production was humdrum, extraction was extraordinary. The banality of labour coexisted with the exoticisation of raw materials. The processing of commodities into goods, and of energy into services, are the chief tasks of civilisation, and they are subject to rational understanding and regulation. But real wealth comes only with trade. Distance raises the price, risks bring profits, and an image of adventure is the best decoration for a gold chest – or for a bank note. The double meaning of the English ‘fortune’ conveys this connection better than philosophical treatises.

Reworking this tradition, Karl Marx saw mystery at the very heart of trade. In his Capital , he borrowed the key concept from peoples as distant as those described by Herodotus – fetishists (for Marx, they were a religious rather than a sexual sect). Explicating ‘commodity fetishism’, he used a German word, vertrackt , which is usually applied to sick eccentrics; in English translation it sounds even stronger – queer. ‘A commodity appears, at first sight, a very trivial thing, and easily understood. Its analysis shows that it is, in reality, a very queer thing.’ 2