Page:Michael Velli - Manual For Revolutionary Leaders - 2nd Ed.djvu/22

 What the individual can no longer do, money can do. And what the individual can no longer do includes everything that has become the prerogative of a special office: a profession, a specialized field, a discipline, a qualification, a license. With money, the individual is able to do what he is unable to do: he is able to buy the powers of an office, to engage an official. Through the paradox that constitutes capitalism's greatness, the individual is able to recover alienated self-powers in a strangely ambiguous form: he is able to build houses without exerting himself; to publish books without writing, editing or printing them, and even to enjoy himself without having any sensations. All this is made possible by the productive power lodged in money. To build a house, publish a book, or entertain himself, the individual only needs to spend given sums of money. The ambiguity of the accomplishment resides in the fact that the individual has done these things only objectively, but not subjectively, so to speak. This ambiguity can be seen more clearly with an illustration. Let us take the case of a man who "built his own house." In pre-capitalist times (and in pre-capitalist situations that survive in modern times) this statement is unambiguous. However, under modern conditions, the man who "built his own house" in reality merely paid sums of money to officers who personified the special powers required to build a house: an architect, a contractor, an electrician, a plumber, a mason, a carpenter, a decorator, a painter, a locksmith. The man who spends the money does not in fact build the house. However, the plumber, the electrician, and the other specialists merely spend some time earning money by wielding the special powers of their offices; it is not the intention of these individuals to build a house; furthermore, the experience of these individuals before, during and after the event is an experience of having spent time earning money, not the experience of having built a house. If the subjective experience of all individuals who lived this event were taken as the criterion for what happened, no house was built. However, since the material consequence of the event is a more solid criterion, the house exists; if the man who spent the money had not spent it, the house would not exist. Therefore it was the activity of spending the money that built the house.

As a result of a high level of accumulated Capital, the powers of the individual take two forms: the individual is able to buy the powers of one or several offices, or wield the special powers of an office. It has already been shown that the purchased powers are not in a literal and strict sense the individual's own powers; they are lodged in the money. However, the powers lodged in an office are not an individual's own powers either, in a literal and strict sense, whether the office is that of a politician, a physician or an electrician.

Strictly speaking, the self-powers of a human being who confronts material instruments are limited by the power of the instruments and the richness of the individual's imagination; the outcome is the unique result of the particular encounter of a specific individual with given instruments.