Daily Life in Capitalist Society
 The social form of people's regular activities under capitalism is a response to a certain material and historical situation. The material and historical conditions explain the origin of the capitalist form, but do not explain why this form continues after the initial situation disappears. A concept of « cultural lag » is not an explanation of the continuity of a social form after the disappearance of the initial conditions to which it responded. This concept is merely a name for the continuity of the social form. When the concept of « cultural lag » parades as a name for a « social force » which determines human activity, it is an obfuscation which presents the outcome of people's activities as an external force beyond their control. This is not only true of a concept like « cultural lag. » Many of the terms used by Marx to describe people's activities have been raised to the status of external and even « natural » forces which determine people's activity; thus concepts like « class struggle, » « production relations » and particularly « The Dialectic, » play the same role in the theories of some « Marxists » that « Original Sin, » « Fate » and « The Hand of Destiny » played in the theories of medieval mystifiers. In the performance of their daily activities, the members of Capitalist society simultaneously carry out two processes: they reproduce the form of their activities, and they eliminate the material conditions to which this form of activity initially responded. But they do not know they carry out these processes; their own activities are not transparent to them. They are under the illusion that their activities are responses to natural conditions beyond their control, and do not see that they are themselves authors of those conditions. The task of capitalist ideology is to maintain the veil which keeps people from seeing that their own activities reproduce the form of their daily life: the task of critical theory is to unveil the activities of daily life, to render them transparent, to make the reproduction of the social form of capitalist activity visible within people's daily activities. Under capitalism, daily life consists of related activities which reproduce and expand the capitalist form of social activity. The sale of labor-time for a price (a wage), the embodiment of labor-time in commodities (salable goods, both tangible and intangible), the consumption of tangible and intangible commodities (such as consumer goods and spectacles)--these activities which characterize daily life under capitalism are not manifestations of « human nature », nor are they imposed on men by forces beyond their control. If it is held that man is « by nature » an uninventive tribesman and an inventive businessman, a submissive slave and a proud craftsman, an independent hunter and a dependent wage-worker, then either man's « nature » is an empty concept, or man's « nature » depends on material and historical conditions, and is in fact a response to those conditions. |