While the final validation of cause that eventuates in ‘the modern’ in every sense is not only a function of objectivity, but also its essentially grounding instance or act, the fact that it is a volitional seed produces its pandemic misrepresentation. Cause is volition. But it is volition as seen in the mirror. Objectivity is the immediacy of the mirror in the moment of reflection. But we only have objectivity if the mirroring act itself is somehow immediately experienced in the reflective cognition as well. Without this immediacy, we may perceive ‘cause’, but the cause itself remains elementally remote. But because cause and volition are essentially the same at their source, the modern ‘heresy’ of cause tacitly identifies cause with any moment of focused volition, that is, with any moment of subjectivity or desire. In other words, we preempt cause to our momentary desires, to our idea of ‘self’, and not to the actuality of value in the moment, the true nature of the moment as ‘self’. The history of this misappropriation of ‘cause’ can only be defined as greed.

          Greed, of course, is as old as human history and prehistory, that is, as old as self-awareness and its developmental process; for it is self-awareness which posits that other ‘self’, the self which subsists as an idea, apart from this present moment of witness and experience which is the only legitimate basis for ‘self’. But until the emergence of cause with its peculiar validation in objectivity, greed could only be rationalized by a groundless, deflective hypocrisy, by a denial structure that wraps the greed in ostensibly altruistic motives, or simply hides the greed altogether from the enacting subject. This, of course, demonstrates the addictive basis of greed. Viewed as ‘the self’, greed is the source addiction. But, of course, hypocrisy is neither new nor old. The goat-foot dance persists. In a sense, it has always involved the displacement of ‘cause’, a disjunctive function of motive, distorted by the inherent differential created by the mirroring act of reflection.

          The emotional core of greed remains essentially the same : the displacement of desire. But the cultural fact of objectivity, its generally available nature as cultural experience within the frame of the culture, means that the tangible link between cause and volition now also subsists as a cultural fact. While hypocrisy continues to play its role in the ‘presentation’ of greed, present day culture has now grounded greed in this peculiar new footing, a footing that allows for the pretensions of hypocrisy, for the illusionary veneer, as an acceptable condition of greed. Greed becomes essentially self-justifying.

greed, cause & bourgeois culture

          I have said that Marx was wrong, since the ‘classless’ terminus is bourgeois rather than proletarian. And a simple equation bears this out. Accepting that money is credit value rather than labor value – that cash is a function of commerce – we only need look at the standard markup for commercial transaction, which is usually one hundred per cent, recognize that at least one cycle of middleman stands between manufacturer and retailer – and commonly several – and recognize that manufacturer, middleman and retailer all apply the markup, to realize that the cash value of commerce far outweighs the cash value of industry.

          Marx was right, however, to recognize the universal commercialization of culture in the offing, that, as modern production and distribution become universal or worldwide, the raw economic basis of imperialism begins to disintegrate.

          What Marx failed to recognize, because of his insistent ‘materialism’, is that the problem this entails is essentially psychological and cultural and not strictly a function of economic and social history. What makes Marx so difficult to deal with, however, is that his methodology is grounded in dialectic, which is in fact precisely cultural and psychological. While dialectic is intimate with objectivity, this intimacy is a function of the psychological basis of objectivity, and not the pseudo-objectivity, philosophically, of ‘materialism’.

          If the ‘new’ culture is based in cash value rather than manufacture per se, this relatively ‘empty’ transaction now dovetails with the equally ‘new’ psychology and ‘philosophy’ of objectivity as cause, that is, with the pseudo-philosophy – misappropriated from legitimate philosophy – that now acts as an automatic justification for greed.

          In other words, the present day justification for greed, which has become a pandemic psychological position in our emerging universal bourgeois culture, is ‘cause’ as a putative universal necessity. While the phrase ‘enlightened self-interest’ has lost much of its gloss, culturally – at least among the legitimately educated – its premise has moved from the abstract to the personal.

          That is, the subversion of Marx is more or less complete: dialectic validates greed.

          Naturally, this is an unspoken, a non-articulated creed. But it is the actuality of our motives.

          The correction may be is obvious: the redefinition of dialectic in terms of its legitimate psychology. But, since it involves the conundrum and paradox of reflective awareness – the true ground of dialectic – as well as the confrontation of the core addiction to the self, with its necessary resort to Spirit and religion – the access of ‘the mysteries’ – one cannot predicate its immediate pervasive success.