Page 53 - Cultural Theory

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••• Chris Rojek •••

of one’s assets and therefore corrodes reciprocal trust relations or unemployment,
which eradicates the means of wherewithal upon which the conduct of subjective
life depends. Realization of these qualities accounts for the respect and even fear in
which money is held in many social circles. At the same time, money is the common
object of reverie, wishes and fantasies since it is everywhere acknowledged to be a
highly effective means of accomplishing desired ends. In both cases the tendency of
money to produce reification in subjective culture is evident. Thus, the recognition
of the interconnectedness of the money economy accentuates consciousness of the
relative insignificance of subjective power. Conversely, the desire for money to act as
the means of goal fulfilment logically carries the possibility of means–ends displace-
ment in which money loses its characteristic as the intermediary of exchange and is
transformed into the all-consuming end of subjective life.
Acknowledgement of the dualistic, reifying tendency of money produces a cloven
psychology of money. On one hand, it breeds cynicism since to study money is to learn
that value has no foundation and that it is entirely a matter of form. Simmel describes
this as ‘cynicism’ because it dissolves a distinction between the highest and lowest
social values and replaces them with a flexible attitude to form as an end in itself. On
the other hand, it breeds what he calls the blasé attitude, a concept which, as we shall
see, he develops in his analysis of the metropolis. The blasé attitude is indifferent to
both questions of the highest and lowest social values and the flexible attitude to form.
Instead it regards all exchange and interchange to be reduced to the same grey level.
By way of compensation it seeks escape in the craving for excitement, the quest for
extreme impressions and the passion for acceleration as an end in itself.
Does this mean that Simmel concludes that the development of the money econ-
omy reduces human freedom? His analysis of the duality of structure in the system
of monetary exchange would appear to suggest as much. The division of labour pro-
duces new dependencies upon the individual and fragments experience in as much
as personality is subject to the function of work. Thus, the division of labour requires
the individual to subdue the whole personality in order to concentrate on the work
function. Compared with feudal society, where the orientation to work was more
communal and relaxed, the modern money economy requires individuals to practice
calculated depersonalization. This tendency is exacerbated by the money economy,
which encourages relations to be based on functional exchange and discourages the
engagement of the whole personality. Yet Simmel is well aware that the condition of
the free labourer is very different from the feudal serf. The free labourer has the right
to withdraw labour and move from one occupation to another. Money breaks the
feudal relationship between the labourer and the land and induces greater occupa-
tional, geographical and social mobility. It permits broader differentation of func-
tions in the individual personality and, by the same token wider social differentiation.
The replacement of the hierarchical ideal by the meritocratic principle means that
the connections between individuals are more diverse and variable than under the
feudal system. In a word money facilitates the production of diversity.
Money is not quite the handmaiden of diversity. The division of labour, the forma-
tion of varieties of political reflexivity and, in particular, the growth of the metropo-
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