Counter-Culture Capital

Based on my earlier correlation between Kerouac's Ray Smith and Maxine Hong Kingston's Wittman Ah Sing, I would propose that both characters (as well as their creators) are part of a running counter-culture opposing the traditional cultural values of mainstream society—including the wealth and industry of capitalism. This counter-culture opposition has the power to alter society through dispersing transformative ideas and calls to action in various forms of artwork. Both Kerouac and Kingston use literature to reach and transform their audiences presenting anti-capitalistic ideas against thoughtless consumerism in the forms of their main characters whose simple desires and needs are glorified. This glorification of leading a simple life greatly contrasts mainstream culture’s urging towards desires of “the bigger, the more expansive, the better.” As consumers, Americans are encouraged to buy and buy and buy, with special emphasis on expensive status symbols of wealth.

In his essay, “The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism,” Daniel Bell supports his argument for the development of this cultural consumerism from the beginnings of mechanized industry to our capitalistic insatiable desires for wealth and status. He proposes that avant-garde and counter-cultural creations and actions were originally created in order to expel the judgmental purity, rationalism, and sobriety of “the bourgeois,” and because these social revolutions have since occurred, further work of those who claim to be counter-cultural revolutionaries do so in vain (Bell 12-13). Bell states:

The commonplace observation that today there is no longer a significant avant- garde - that there is no longer a radical tension between a new art which shocks and a society that is shocked- merely signifies that the avant-garde has won its victory. A society given over entirely to innovation, in the joyful acceptance of change... (Bell 13)

This however cannot and does not appear to be true. First off, cultures and counter-cultures both being extremely complex systems include a lot more than simply art. Societal transformation occurs on all levels through all ages, in both shocking and invisible ways. Although society cannot rely and wait on art alone for necessary change, art is a great mode of communication and connection throughout a society. I believe that there is still and always will be a variety of forms of "radical tension between...art" and "shocked" society. This tension grant the space for the art of counter-culture to transform society through the dispersion of new ideas and ways of thinking about and engaging with the world.

Bell finds that the current system of capitalism has lost it's footing in cultural developments which have occurred since it's first implementation in America—in the shift away from what he calls the "Protestant Ethic...which was based on a moral system of reward, rooted in a Protestant sanctification of work (Bell 38). In losing this grounding factor of religious morality, according to Bell, our societal rewards became glutinous and insatiable. Additionally, this loss of value in the reward of work for the sake of work itself also creates a shift in our values concerning wealth and excess as Bell states, "Equally important, if not more so, was the change in the motivations and rewards of the system itself. The rising wealth of the plutocracy...meant that work and accumulation were no longer ends in themselves (though they were still critical to a John D. Rockefeller or an Andrew Carnegie) but means to consumption and display. Status and its badges, not work and the election of God, became the mark of success" (Bell 32). Despite the fact that this loss of Protestant Ethic would, and according to Bell did, strongly shift mainstream's social values from work being an end in itself, to being a selfish means of not only status, but also luxury and ostentatious displays of wealth. The meaning and reward behind work itself has dissipated leaving a society filled with only greedy consumers. I do agree with Bell that society has come to place far too great a value on symbols of wealth and various methods of consuming. In order to socialize with one another people go out to eat at a restaurant, shop at the mall or marketplace, pay to see a movie, etc... but all are different methods of consuming. Entertainment through consumption.

Not only is the value of work as an end lost, but with this loss we've experienced a loss of all values of real one on one time and human connections. As Wittman declares, "I think that it is fucked to make contacts rather than to make friends" (Kingston 116). As a society, we must work to shift our society back to valuing all forms of morals ends—work, people, animals, plants, life. Until we do, this tension between societal values and the requirements of human self-actualization while remain an emergent fault line. This divide is not simply political, social, moral, or economical—it lies deep within each of us. And I would like to propose that the work of the beats and other counter-culture art movements lies in making each person aware of this ideological fault line and realize the disconnect between our true needs and our selfish desires.

All of Kerouac’s Dharma Bums present different ways in which to lead a simple life and value all other forms of life in doing so by following an Eastern enlightened way of existing and living. Ray works to practice ahimsa by producing the least amount of harm he can on the world around him throughout the novel. The tension of the previous mentioned disconnect or fault line also exists in the conflict regarding the freedom of Bob the dog with his brother-in-law. Ray views the dog as an end in his own right, while his brother-in-law views him as property. This disconnect reveals the contradiction in capitalism—in viewing life as a means to an end, the sanctified and priceless value of life is commodified as well.

This divide can be considered to be generational, with regards to the idiom that “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” Parents seeks to instill in their children the values which they grew up with and deem proper, while children seek to stray from these obsolete values and find values which better fit them and the times. The parent generation’s values pervade mainstream, while the youth’s values transform and develop mainstream. Thus, historically in American, the youth has been a counter-culture of its own. As Bell recognizes, "Today, each new generation, starting off at the benchmarks attained by the adversary culture of their cultural parents, declares in sweeping fashion that the status quo represents a state of absolute repression, so that, in a widening gyre, new and fresh assaults on the social structure are mounted" (Bell 18). The society which we have grown up in (that of our “cultural parents”) is that which has shaped us, but we in turn can alter and shape society itself.

Art is society’s most pervasive method of increasing awareness and allowing a space for transformative action. The art of all counter-cultural movements is the true capital of society. Our worth currently lies in our ability to recognize the need for change and turn that recognition into a praxis of our own.


Works Cited
“The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism.”
Daniel Bell Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 6, No. 1/2, Special Double Issue: Capitalism, Culture, and Education (Jan. - Apr., 1972), pp. 11-38 Published by: University of Illinois Press

link to pdf: http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/3331409.pdf