capitalism: producing happiness?

Agatha

Laclau and Mouffe's observation of the commodification of human labor and experience really struck me. they say: "today it is not only as a seller of labour-power that the individual is subordinated to capital, but also through his or her incorporation into a multitude of other social relations: culture, free time, illness, education, sex and even death. there is practically no domain of individual or collective life which escapes capitalist relations" (161).

today i sit at home with my Trader Joe's earl grey tea, a dose of Dayquil liquicaps (because, significantly, i don't trust the ingredients of the generic version), and am looking longingly at my Makala ukulele, which i would so much rather play than be a) sick, and b) doing homework. i never really thought of myself as a "slave to the capitalist machine" but here i am, surrounded by products and services courtesy of capitalism. i shop at walmart, and try not to hate myself.

on a side tangent, i had always thought that musical instruments were one of the few fields that were still totally handmade, and therefore had escaped the capitalist factory. not so. my uke was actually made in a factory, and perhaps finished by a human being. many cheaper instruments are, it turns out. what a disappointment! of course, real musicians will pay thousands of dollars for quality instruments, which are, by contrast, almost always totally handmade.

but it brings up the question that Kathy raised last class about what we must pay for labor today for services and production we take for granted–the ornamentation on the buildings of CMU, for example. should we lament that such labor costs so much today, or should we see this as a positive beam in the darkness of capitalism, that the laborer who perhaps was underpaid an hundred years ago for his or her craftsmanship, is now paid more fairly today? of course the problem lies in that we don't know if the exorbitant amount we pay for the moulding or for the cherry wood violin actually goes back to the maker directly, or to some capitalist intermediary. and the other problem lies in that the factory can produce my cheap little uke at a quarter of the cost ($60 people! instead of $500!) and still produce reasonable quality. where's the justice? i just don't know. playing my little factory-made uke may not make a grand political statement, but it makes me happy, and sometimes i get so tired of questioning where happiness comes from.