Damned be him who first cries “hold, enough”

“Before my body
I throw my warlike shield. Lay on, Macduff,
And damned be him that first cries “Hold! Enough!””
Macbeth, act 5 scene 8

I have written before about needs and wants in relation to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and about property, and whether it can be considered a right. I’m currently following a Philosophy Portal course on the early Marx, which has got as far as Marx’s papers on the antithesis of capital and labour and on private property and labour. The two pieces do interlock – if, as I posit in the second post, the claim that anything is mine which I am not actually using at the time is dubious (the distinction between Heidegger’s “zuhanden”, something which I am actually using, and his “forhanden”, something which is available but not actually in use), it is definitely arguable that by asserting my ownership of things I am not actually using, I am in a way (certainly according to Proudhon) stealing them from people who could be using them. Private property, in other words, is theft.

Maslow’s hierarchy works like this. There are, at the bottom, physiological needs (air, water, food, shelter, sleep, clothing and reproduction). Next come safety needs (personal security, employment, resources, health and property – OK, that last I’d suggest should only be what Marx identifies as personal property, i.e. everything within the zuhanden category and a fair amount of the forhanden, on the basis that those might well be in frequent use, just not at this moment). Then comes love and belonging, esteem and finally self-actualisation.

I would argue that physiological needs should be regarded as a basic human right, and one which a society with any claim to be civilised should ensure for all its citizens. In conscience, once those have been satisfied, one could argue that the “safety” level is contra “take no thought for the morrow” as Jesus enjoins. It’s to at least some extent “surplus”. As I outline in the first of those pieces, I spent a good deal of my life ensnared by a feeling that I needed to ensure that security not just for today, but permanently. It’s what James Clavell, in “Noble House”, refers to as having “drop dead money” – the ability to tell anyone who asks you to do something to “drop dead”, because you don’t need whatever they are offering you. You already have enough.

Now Marx paints a picture of the capitalist as someone who can never have enough. Mahatma Gandhi asserted, “the world has enough for everyone’s need, but not enough for everyone’s greed” and Marx would no doubt have agreed. Marx also, and I think much more reasonably, argues that the capitalist most fears losing his capital and becoming a worker, or possibly one of the homeless. Given that most of the people I know have the bulk of their supposed capital “invested” in the house they live in (and that certainly applies to me), the two are perhaps pretty much synonymous. In the case of the majority of people, wanting a bit more is probably more likely to be due to insecurity than to greed, which I note is a deadly sin, whether under the name of greed/avarice or gluttony (envy is part of that set as well, for a possible trifecta of sins). But the very rich are well beyond the point where that kind of insecurity is remotely logical. They could lose 99% of their wealth and still be comfortable for life.

I have a great deal of sympathy with those who suggest that once someone has reached the status of billionaire* they should be taxed the entire additional amount which they receive over, say, a million a year and be given a medal saying “I won capitalism”. I might not want to go as far as either the Marxian elimination of private property (as opposed to personal) or my musing in the second piece, but that sounds eminently reasonable to me. My own target for “drop dead money” was a million pounds, back in the 1990s. It would arguably have to be more now, were it not for the fact that I am now looking at a definitely limited number of years during which I might need any of it, and frankly, were my wife and myeslf to sell our house, we could live off the sale price for 30 years or more, assuming a lack of rampant inflation – and I don’t expect to make 100.

So I don’t really understand the mindset which already has, say, a billion pounds in assets, multiple houses and yachts and no need to do anything (other than, I’d argue, the moral obligation to plough some of the money back into good causes) but carries on trying to get more, to expand their interests and their money at the expense of everyone else (even their fellow billionaires). Is it, at least in part, due to Girardian mimetic desire (my neighbour has more than I do so I need to have more)? In that respect, I’ve written about my very wise mother’s influence on me, trying to remove mimetic desire from me (largely successfully). Is it because they are drunk on power (money is power – the ability to buy anyone who hasn’t yet got their version of “drop dead money” is incredibly damaging to society, particularly when it reaches the point of being able to buy governments)? Or is it because they are desperately and illogically fearful of not having enough?

So, to the billionaires, I say “hold, enough”. Stop what you’ve been doing and enjoy the fruits of your labours. Stop buying politicians. Stop buying up the labour of anyone who is creative (billionaires typically make money because they’ve bought the time of people who actually innovate, where the billionaire doesn’t). Let other people (or companies) compete with the thing which made you rich, rather than try to bankrupt them or buy them up so they don’t compete any more.

And yes, I suppose I’ll be damned for this argument!

*Billionaire in dollars, pounds or euros – there was a time before Italy entered the Euro when I was arguably close to being a Lire billionaire, and I was certainly a Lire millionaire. But then, in those days, new cars cost over a million Lire…