Page 153 - Cultural Studies and Political Economy

142 Chapter Five

following World War I, for example, inflation was such that by 1923 an egg
cost 4 billion marks, an amount that a decade before had represented the value
of all the houses in greater Berlin! This is an instance of a disjuncture between
sign and what it purports to signify, between our monetary symbol and the
material world. By living within the discourse of money, which contains its
own assumptions and logic, and by continually viewing the material world in
money terms, we can easily misconstrue the natural world as being able to
grow forever, just like the money supply. Ecologists maintain, however, that
our culture’s insistence on exponential economic growth will, unless checked,
endanger human survival. 7
There are other cultural consequences, albeit more prosaic, spilling out
from the “common sense” assumption of ubiquitous exponential growth. Cor-
porations merge or take over rivals to fulfill growth ambitions, thereby in-
creasing monopoly or oligopoly power. Governments merge municipalities
since “larger” is thought to be more efficient than smaller, reducing thereby
local self-governance and, some would say, democracy. Food portions in-
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crease, with concomitant accretions to the waistline and deleterious reper-
cussions to health. Stockpiles of weapons forever grow in quantity and dead-
liness, for not to grow is to decline. Sometimes we notice seemingly opposite
trends, such as niche marketing, but even there the governing principle is
growth in profits—through multiplication of niches.

Time
Money as a medium of communication is inherently biased with regard to
time. In Harold Innis’ terms, money makes us present-minded. Money and
prices, briefly, denigrate the past and make us neglectful of the future.
With regard to the past, it is axiomatic for the price system that “by-
gones are forever bygones.” The past, not being variable (except, of
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course, in its retelling!), cannot affect the marginal conditions which main-
stream (or neoclassical) economists insist are the bases upon which maxi-
mizing individuals make decisions. True, firms and individuals in the pres-
ent can be encumbered with debts arising from past activities, even forcing
some into bankruptcy, meaning that the past in a sense lingers into the
present. Likewise, others may have become rich, giving them a much
larger array of options from which to choose. But these considerations are
more a matter of the distribution of wealth (important though that is!) than
they are factors affecting the profitability or utility of choices in the pres-
ent—according to mainstream economists. A bankrupt company, for ex-
ample, can be taken over by new owners/managers, be refinanced with the
debt obligations altered if not wiped out altogether, and decisions made in