Fascist Spectacle.pdf

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Fascist Spectacle http://content.cdlib.org/xtf/view?docId=ft18700444&chunk.id=0&doc.v... ― 126 ― glory. Fascism could not tolerate the existence of personal aspirations, the possibility of choosing. The suppression of private desires was necessary to eliminate individual initiatives and conflicting demands. Hence, fascism's attack on the senses led to the totalitarian intrusion into the personal, private sphere—a space that through incessant regulation became politicized at the same moment that it was in principle denied. In reality, however, the suppression of the senses and the taming of the "masses" was not an easily accomplished task for the regime, especially at a time when a developing consumer culture was beginning to establish itself in many Western countries. Indeed, Mussolini feared consumption's potentially disruptive effects. The multiplication of desires and temptations, as the necessary result of an enlarged spectrum of options, would threaten to reintroduce individualistic principles into a society that was being organized around totalitarian premises. In contrast to social critics who viewed the suppression of individuality and the coming of a "one-dimensional" world as the most negative consequences of mass propaganda and consumerism, the Italian fascists questioned consumption from the perspective of its emancipatory force (although they were also afraid of the leveling effects of mass production). The aesthetic being a "contradictory, double-edged concept," as Eagleton argues, [29] fascism dreaded consumption's appeal to the senses and its potential to provoke a revolt against power. [30] In this fear, however, fascism was not alone. Its worries about consumption and modernity reflected the terms of a moral controversy that took place in many European countries and the United States at the turn of the twentieth century around the question of mass consumption. Although the development of a consumer public interested in commodities is sometimes situated as far back as the fifteenth century, with the rise of a global trade network, [31] the preoccupation with consumer culture's effects on society became intense at the fin de siècle. It was only then that the growing production of goods gave wide strata of the population access to items previously obtainable only by the upper class. The mass availability of once unreachable products seemed to be encouraging more and more people to possess certain objects in order to achieve a higher social status. The emphasis on luxury, seen as a result of the imitation of superior models, caused economists, social scientists, and philosophers to worry about the consequences on civilization of the democratic revolution. [32] In France, the morality of the desire to consume became an important topic of discussion. The proliferation of unlimited wants solicited an answer to the basic question: "How could the modern economic imperative to multiply needs be rec- ― 127 ― onciled with the moral tradition inherited from Christian and non-Christian antiquity, which counseled self-discipline and restraint of desire?" [33] Economic rationale seemed to dictate that a consumption system was necessary, but consumption appeared to many to be undermining the morality of society. Which should one renounce, morality or progress? And were the two actually incompatible? The debate also addressed the problem of the future of civilization if progress were stopped and the issue of social justice. On the one hand, it was argued, inequality motivates people to work hard in order to attain what others possess, and in this process progress is enhanced. On the other hand, equality establishes social harmony, which grants well-being. Others claimed that consumerism would not necessarily bring inequality. [34] In the end, however, the quest to find happiness through material possessions seemed to many an enslavement of the spirit, a moral degradation. Thus, whether individual consumption was directed toward the acquisition of social status or the achievement of personal self-fulfillment, its deleterious consequences came under attack. [35] Émile Durkheim, for example, wrote that consumption fed "a fevered imagination," which would bring the individual to anomic behavior. [36] For Durkheim, society was possible only if people sacrificed themselves and established social bonds through communal rituals, so he proposed to restrict consumption in order to prevent an objectified and materialistic life. This detachment from the mundane and "profane" world, through what was considered a limited form of asceticism, would allow the individual to enter the sacred—that is, the social. In this process, every person would end up acknowledging society's authority, with rituals sanctifying this recognition. [37] In Wilhelmine Germany, an ambivalent reaction to consumerism also took place in discussions about luxury's impact on middle- and working-class people and about how to manage the changes brought about by modernity. [38] Between 1900 and 1914 several articles and books of both academic and popular circulation debated the question of whether luxury was harmful or beneficial. [39] Continuing a century-old attack on luxury, which was then limited to the aristocracy, critics of conspicuous consumption targeted all classes who seemingly spent beyond their means. Instead of advocating the widespread banning of luxury, however, these critics set forth a productivist ethos as a 76 of 199 7/11/2006 12:54 AM
Fascist Spectacle http://content.cdlib.org/xtf/view?docId=ft18700444&chunk.id=0&doc.v... way to control spending. "Managing" luxury was the response to a feared loss of vitality and decay among the middle class, whereas the working classes' inclination to emulation was denounced as a possible source of class hatred and social disruption. This eventuality appeared all the more unsettling because the increasingly specialized nature ― 128 ― of labor was believed to exacerbate social fragmentation. Educating consumers to discipline their desires offered a viable answer: ethical self-restraint would balance the pleasures of consumption. In the United States, Robert and Helen Lynd's comparative study of Middletown dramatized the elites' response to the moral conflicts raised by the emerging consumer culture. In Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture , the Lynds presented a striking portrayal of the transformations that Muncie, Indiana, had experienced between the 1890s and the 1920s. In particular, they lamented the loss of genuine social relations and the decline of job satisfaction that seemed to characterize Muncie's transition from the nineteenth century to the twentieth. Alienation and passivity now defined people's lives and their everyday world. Casual relations and deteriorating social values substituted for inclusive participation and deeper human understanding. Within this context, the Lynds were especially concerned with the role of mass leisure activities in the new reality. They concluded that movies, radio, advertising, and the credit system created novel forms of "social illiteracy" that atomized individuals and made them pursue merely subjective needs. [40] Commercial culture circulated an image of money as the solution to people's problems and promoted irrational expenditure. Mass culture, the Lynds estimated, was detrimental to a dignified life and authentic pleasures. Overwhelmed by what they believed was the power of the new leisure ethic, the Lynds advocated limiting the deleterious implications of consumption. [41] In effect, facing the popular classes' need for diversion and compensatory recreation, the Lynds and other 1920s progressive reformers, critics, and ministers advocated a "managerial" approach to mass culture. [42] Managerial liberals resorted to social control in order to channel appetites and wants excited by mass leisure culture. [43] The disbelief in the possibility of stopping industrial development and halting a fast-growing consumer culture had pushed France, Wilhelmine Germany, and the United States to propose plans for disciplining and managing what could not be eliminated. A politics of control, as theorized by Foucault, became the normal and normalizing means of governing the social in an era of eroding traditions. In fascist Italy, the regime's response to the question of consumption and morality also entailed the restriction of materialistic orientations and emphasized the social over the individual. However, the regime faced conflictual internal demands vis-à-vis the economic issue of mass culture, conflicts that threatened to challenge the existence of the regime itself, its status, nature, and raison d'être. On the one hand, the regime intended to uphold the sacrality of society as dictated by its totalitarian view, which required the suppression of individual stances. ― 129 ― On the other hand, it realized that if it wanted to compete in the international arena, it needed to preserve individual initiative in many fields, especially industry and commerce. Thus, because the regime firmly rested on a capitalist production system, Mussolini needed to circumvent the contradiction of attacking the bourgeoisie on moral grounds while cultivating it as an economic asset. He needed to reconcile the divergent programs of assailing consumption and spurring a market economy. The regime adopted contradictory strategies to answer a challenge that seemed difficult to transcend. One such measure was corporativism, which, through a policy encapsulating the relations between capital and labor, was supposed to contain the denounced materialistic conception of life typical of a modernized society. The regime's corporativism—or, better, its discourse on corporativism—exuded spiritualism through the pores of an industrialized production. It focused on national well-being while displacing consumption. With corporativism, fascism mimetically fought against the denied body's reincarnation, the reincorporation of desire. Mimetic Economy At the end of World War I, currents of revolutionary syndicalism and nationalism converged to elaborate an idea of "national syndicalism" based on the solidarity of all productive classes, from workers to managers to entrepreneurs. [44] Theorists and practitioners of this new form of syndicalism vowed not to renounce proletarian struggle; nevertheless, they believed it was in the interest of the working class to achieve emancipation within a politically and economically strong nation. The "revolutionary event" of the war had shown the importance of capitalists and the capitalist system in 77 of 199 7/11/2006 12:54 AM
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