by Ali Shariati
In the old times, for example, in Lancashire, England, all the factories used to be built in industrial areas. Thus, an industrial town would be created with its employees living close to the factories and also to each other. Moreover, they used to have a common workers club, common swimming pool, common life, common village, common cinemas and common beach, etc.
While today this is no more the case. Efforts are towards having all workers live quite a distance from their place of work. Instead of building one single living conglomerate for all workers, they now build several scattered conglomerates.
In most industrial towns, there are workers and villages two or three km. from each other, which are separated by means of a Sahara, a desert, or unnecessary parks and open spaces. That is to say that in a vast area there are three, four, five or six living conglomerates which have no contact with each other. Each village uses its own cinema and clubs and shop within their own conglomerate. The distance to the next conglomerate is great and they have no contacts with other conglomerates unless cousins or uncles or so desire to visit each other. This is how capitalism is destroying workers concentration and tenacity.
The major factor which would expediate a determined dialectic revolution of the proletariat is the self awareness of that class. As I have mentioned before, it is the feeling of poverty which starts a movement. The necessary factor that would persuade a social class to arise is the feeling and awareness of being exploited rather than the mere fact of being exploited.
It is the dialectic that is moving. We have witnessed the fact that unlike frozen dialectics, thesis and antithesis have been living together happily and peacefully for 1000 or 2000 years. The reasons were mostly tribal, a sort of tranquilizer and divergent religion, etc. Class self awareness is the factor which hastens the revolution. It is a factor of the dialectic movement. How could one blind class find self awareness? Or divert it? Or postpone it? If one understands class self awareness, one can stop it. It is very clear. It is just like a doctor who knows all the symptoms of the illness and can then fight it.
One of the major factors in bringing about the exploited classes3 awareness of self is from what they possess or do not possess that is deprivation.
Thus, it is natural that the more I feel deprived, the more I will become aware of my class. Now, what factors will make me feel deprived? Through experiences in your own society, you may notice that is not enough to be hungry in order to feel that you yourself are hungry. It has been observed that not only did some people who have been hungry not feel it but they even thanked God that they are leading a good life. Their stomachs are feeling hungry but their conscience is not aware. Or, they are aware of their hunger but they are not aware of their unnatural deprivation. They feel natural.
There are many factors through which one can either fool oneself or be fooled by others. What is that factor through which a deprived person may realize that he is deprived? To conceive and to lead a natural life and to know what a normal person must have in a normal life is a big problem. But one must realize all of those things which one does not have, while one is not aware of this.
Contradiction
What makes a person realize that he is deprived in life? It is neither low income nor no income, nor low production, nor even small ownership nor little capital. The answer is under consumption. When one feels that he has a very low share of consumption in whatever is produced, he feels he is being exploited. Consumption could be basic, such as that relating to food and clothes or it could be luxurious like carpets, a car, etc.
You can realize the feeling of being exploited through under consumption. How? Through class antagonisms. The symptoms of class differences are neither capital nor production but consumption. How? In other words, a social class will not realize how backward it is even if it possessed a capital a million times more than another social class. When the backward class actually conceives of the differences existing between the basic and luxurious consumption of the other class with itself, then it will really feel deprived.
Therefore, it is through comparisons and contradictions that man basically realizes and conceives a reality. Because in a closed environment a normal person may claim to be the glibbest savant on earth, thus having no complex of education. It is only when he finds himself in a situation where he meets with other more knowledgeable persons that he finds out how little he knows.
Eventually ‘I do not know’ is the phrase I would feel when I would meet others who know a lot. The time I would feel deprived, exploited, poor and hungry is when I would become aware and see how my antagonistic class eats, the clothes it wears, the things it enjoys and the life it leads.
Consequently, it is consumption that creates complexity and deprivation. What makes me realize my under consumption is the consumption of others. This could also be noticed in our own traditional bazaar which is a traditional classical bourgeoisie. Although they have justified it through ethics and religion, it is one kind of capitalistic nationalization which has nothing to do with religion.
For example, a certain big businessman, who is able to buy half the city, sits in a very tiny office, wearing cheap clothes, looking quite poor in a dirty room with an extremely cheap desk. At noon time he eats soup or bread and yoghurt. Life is worthless. Why? Because his employee who sits close to him sees that usually his clothes are nicer than those of his boss. He also sees that his appearance, his face, his child and wife are better than the businessman’s. He even takes his family to the restaurants and goes strolling while his boss does not even like to do this.
As the employee sees that his boss is even more deprived than himself, he does not feel complexed or exploited at all. We notice that our own capitalism rationalized itself before Europe did. The external facade of the old village houses does not differ very much from each other in the classical towns of Kashan and Yazd. All doors look alike in the houses of the classical merchants of the bazaar unless those houses belong to the big landowners and feudal lords. Usually all the walls are made of mud and straw and look so much alike that aside from their different sizes, all houses seem as if they belonged to one family in the town. You do not notice a large class difference.
However, the case would be different once you entered the houses. When you see all the carpets and the food that is served, you would feel the big difference between this and the very next house. They would be incomparable. This is entirely contrary to what exists in our cities today and our present class system. More contradictions are being noticed in modern towns. Modern man uses his utmost effort to beautify the outside of his house. Since he himself does not see the outside and since it has no effect on his life, he does this only for the sake of others. He wants to indicate that he belongs to an upper class. This relieves his morale. Otherwise, the style of the outside of his house does not change his real life.
This class life is a way of life that we have learned. In the old times all doors looked alike. Today, everybody’s aim is to make, paint or decorate them in such a way as to be completely different from others. Nowadays, one tries to look unique in his district. The color and model of his car must be unusual. His clothes must be exceptional. To be unique is to show that he is different and unmatched. He belongs to another class. Thus, he continues to pay attention to his appearance. He even wishes to exaggerate these contradictions and differences. Once these kinds of actions, whether real or unreal, are presented to the deprived class, it would certainly belittle them. This is the spirit of the West’s class differences which has infiltrated into our society and has influenced our so-called modern people. This is a factor which irritates and awakens the deprived class who is unable to have that kind of appearance.
The aristocratic tradition has always been more noticeable in the West. Because of the system of ownership in the Islamic economy, such aristocratic traditions have never existed in our Islamic society. Islamic ethics have always struggled and resisted such aristocratic dispositions to the point where it has extremel
y weakened the aristocratic sumptuousness with regard to richness, opulence, comfort, showing off and belittling others. This state, however, is still at its highest stage in Europe.
Two centuries after the great French Revolution which caused the disappearance of the term of aristocracy, today’s aristocrats still walk and wear clothes differently. They even frequent their own ‘closed restaurants’. That is to say that whatever amount of money you are willing to pay you may not enter those restaurants. They have their own clubs, closed entertainment and closed marriages. They are all family and aristocratic clubs which admit special persons holding membership cards. As a whole, aristocratic families have relationships with each other. Their actions, kinsmanship, relationships and their social etiquette bear a kind of rigid formality, all of which is intended to show that this group or class is superior to others. This class wishes to enforce itself upon others. It wishes to persuade other people that its superiority is basically natural; it is a quality of its blood, life, nature and temper which still exist. It tries to sell this idea even though nobody is willing to buy it. This spirit of showing off and class antagonism, with regard to consumption, has caused the following, certainly to a greater extent in Europe than in Iran. First, it has created complexes for the deprived class. It has made the said class realize how poor it is and how different it is from the upper class. Generally, 100 or 200 years ago, the difference between the capitalist and the rich class, excluding the small capitalists (the same opulent landowners and businessmen), with the middle and lower class was much more than what it seemed to be in appearance. But today, this class difference is less than its appearance. As a person’s salary today is increased by $30 or $ 40 it is soon echoed everywhere. He will belittle everybody with his car, clothes, house, gate, his appearance, his looks and also with the changing of the curtains, carpets and furniture. He will show his family, competitors, friends and all the people on his street that he is now superior to the others. He even makes false presumptions and therefore consumes in a false way. His lunch table is curtailed everyday while adding to his car. His reasoning being that people cannot see your stomach but this (my car) shows my prestige. His living room is the best place of his house, it receives the most sunshine, it is sanitary, big, and nice. This is the living room of a very rich person which is used once or twice a year. But he himself, his wife and his children are living in the worst place of the house and in the worst state of life. He curtails all possibilities regarding food conditions and natural and real needs of his children in order to pay more attention to the appearance of things which are more noticeable to outsiders. This antagonism in consumption awakens the exploited class. That is to say, that this class always seeks with his own eyes the things that others possess but he still does not have. There, day and night, he sees, hears and feels the terms ‘haves and have nots’. This awakens him and makes him aware of what to do. These things will mobilize him and cause him to hold a grudge against others.
I mentioned that rich men and the classical bourgeois tried to hide or lessen the appearance of their consumption. In general they spent little. But when capitalism awake, it changed the whole story completely, that is to say that capitalism increased the apparent consumption of the deprived and the proletariat, but it did not lower its own. How?
Suppose I were a French worker, what were all the alms and comforts belonging to the aristocrats that we did not possess? They had beaches and they would go to the sea. Going to the sea was an aristocratic and rich entertainment for those who owned cars, while the poor people had to go for a walk to the local town square. The capitalist accepts to give the proletariat the possibilities of going to the beach. This would not be very expensive while it would make his complexes disappear. The problem is going to the beach. This would not be very expensive to a capitalist. He goes to the beach for the sake of feeling relieved, sanitary problems, comfort and entertainment, while a worker goes for the sake of his prestige. Often he has no more than one day. He rushes to the beach from Tehran just to touch the water and come back. This is not only for the sake of showing others that he, too, went to such and such a place, making all complexes psychologically blow up, but it also causes the envy he feels towards them to die out. This is a personal, internal psychological problem. He is first saturated and then satisfied.
In Paris, there are cinemas whose tickets cost 10 francs, or 100 francs. There are 3 or 4 cinemas which are off bounds to a poor and deprived person. They were a source for envy and formed, a boundary. He may not go to a cinema on the Champs Elysees. As a whole, neither could he or any of his friends, nor any member of his family or any one from his class go there. Capitalism will now admit him to these places — without really giving him anything — that is to say that he only feels he has joined the aristocratic class and has acquired its dispositions. What is capitalism really doing?
Nothing. Capitalism only removes a small constraint. The worker can now go to the very same cinema and watch the same film. He now goes to the same places that his boss and all giant industry owners go to. He also sits on the very same chair and feels relieved. The chair is still warm when, just like them, he provides himself and his wife, with sandwiches, and waits, just like the aristocrats who used to go to cinema in the past. Now he has also gone to a cinema. He also drinks a beer as his boss used to drink whisky. It makes no difference. He imitates them in the best cinemas of the world. The worker used to have a very small and insignificant constraint. The only difference is that, unlike his boss, he can go to cinemas on Thursdays only. That is to say that the same cinema ticket is only one franc on Thursdays, thus enabling the worker to go to such a cinema. Therefore he has succeeded in reaching the symbolic places and cafe’s which were always closed to the people of his class.
The opera, the Paris Opera in particular, belongs to the aristocrats, to that very intellectual class and to those who possess the highest university education. It is built by the artists who were linked to the Louis’ and Versailles. Its art belonged to them as a whole. He could neither enter nor approach such an opera with his simple clothes. The waiter, alone, is several times more luxurious than he is, which makes him feel complexed. Also, the culture of the worker class is not rich enough to watch an opera by Moliere. He will neither understand nor like it at all. Even though he likes his own songs, he goes to the opera. The day they announce that the opera ticket is, for example, 2 francs, he takes his wife, children and uncle there. This is just for the sake of overcoming his own and his grandfather’s complex, which he had for years. This is a kind of spiritual and psychological consumption.
We will give them refrigerators and cars which are the symbols of aristocracy. How? Do we give them the possibility to buy? No. If we give them purchasing power, then we would abolish class differences. The problem of self rationalization of capitalism is to make the working class feel they are not hungry and have access to everything while being exploited and remaining poor. Nothing has changed. Although you cannot afford a refrigerator, you wish to have one? Yes. You may have one without paying for it. You wish to have a T.V.? You may have one without paying a cent for it. Take it. But there is a box here that you put pennies in for every time you wish to switch it on. It is nothing. Anyway he now possesses some thing which is a symbol of aristocracy. That is to say that the biggest French capitalist does not possess more than this T.V. You have one too. But he has a small debt. What will he do? His children used to get change and spend it enjoying themselves. His wife used to save the change until it would reach $30 or $40 and then she would spend it when necessary. Then there was the small change that he would donate to the needy and spend when urgent. All these monies have to go into that box now, the T.V. box. He watches T.V. and after 15 minutes it automatically turns off.
He wants to watch the continuation. Finally he has to borrow from friends to switch the T.V. on again. When his neighbor comes over to his home, he would not ask him to turn the T.V. on, he would pay himself and watch the T.V. The capit
alist is constantly sucking the money of his neighbors, friends and relatives. The capitalist does not ask his worker for money. It is free. But what has happened? The worker possesses one of the biggest signs of aristocracy. He owns one of the best, most luxurious, most beautiful and most prestigious tools of a comfortable life in his house. Well, he thanks God that he is better off now. He could not even have dreamt of it.
He can now own a car in the same way. Credit purchasing can do miracles in life. Without increasing the standard of living or purchasing power or class difference, it gives him an pseudo, false sense of purchasing power, and aides consumption. Loan, bank credits and credits given by the Westerners to the Easterners have a dual purpose. First, these backward people should not become so poor that the list of our goods for consumption be drastically reduced. If those people were to become very poor then they would be unable to buy our goods, thus we would lose our market. On the other hand, they should not become so rich as to become able to produce. They should be in between. That is why we would give them a false sense of purchasing power. How? One way is through ‘“‘credits.” We even have to be a little lenient. For example we used to take uranium and diamonds from Tanzania at $5 a gram. Now we will increase it to $7 a gram. This means that we have shown good intentions and at the same time we have increased their purchasing power and they become satisfied.
This increase in purchasing power would create a bigger market for our goods. As we donate $2 as an increase for the price of diamonds, tomorrow we will witness that the sales curve of our capitalistic goods to the same country has increased by 30%. This would make the poor country happy because, politically, their pride is saturated as well as socially and economically. They would serve progress. At the same time their unhealthy consumption has increased because they can now buy more. This is an unauthentic feeling. All hopes given to them that they would become an advanced country and would no longer belong to the backward and exploited class are nothing but empty words. Worthless. Now this deprived class — the proletariat — can go to the best aristocratic cinema as well as to the beach even though it is lower than the aristocratic beach. But it does not make much difference. Aristocrats own a lot of commodities and they also go to the beach anyway. We will give him cars, refrigerators, T.V. and etc. which are the symbols of the bourgeoisie class, thus making him feel well-off without having changed his class status.
