The problem with recyclables (and now compostables) is that we are still functioning within a logic of consumption. It's okay to use and dispose of those commodities because by doing so, we are entering a perpetual movement of use and disposal that does not put a strain on the environment. Of course, what is not said is that thermodynamics forbids any form of perpetual movement.
- Get link
- Other Apps
Comments
I am tempted to corroborate your analysis using Bataille's theory of sacrificial expenditure. There is always a bio-political aspect of the worker's labor which is 'too much' - the expenditure of work is always more than the product of that labor. Bataille insisted that this surplus expenditure is often either fetishized as a gift to the Gods or turned into a potlatch and offered within the community.
This of course has profound implications in Marxist theory. The Critique of Political Economy Volume 1, for instance, shows how the surplus value of labor is sublimated in the laws of capitalist expropriation. In other words, the worker, who must spend more than he produces is paid not for the effort, not even for the product, but rather, to spread the surplus value throughout the economy, the worker must be paid the bare minimum in order to make the fetishized commodity even more profitable for the one and expensive for the all. One might understand then that the 'capitalist' is the empty center force of a system of sacrificial expenditure - the high priest, if you will, of political economy.