Work for pay, and pay for freedom
Acid Bath, “The Bones of Baby Dolls”
Fuck ’em all, we don't need them
I've long thought of money as an abstraction of labor.
Ex: a job pays $10 per hour. For each hour you're at work, you get that amount
of intermediary to exchange for someone else's labor in the form of a good or
service. (Missing from this equation is how we arrive at the value of a dollar, but I didn't
get that degree.)
But here I want to explore the idea of money as a form of will. My intent is
not to replace my original definition, but rather supplant it; given the distinction between those
owning the means of production and those who must sell their time and effort operating those means,
this original definition is still valuable (pun intended).
But what exactly do I mean by will?
will
It's not some secret that money is power. But will is distinct from power.Say: your home, family, and people were destroyed by an enemy army. It's only human to want them destroyed in turn. Perhaps some will say you're giving in to the cycle of revenge, as if it would be your responsibility to forgive and forget your way of life being actively destroyed. Few would be so messianic to your face, and fewer still would do so in your shoes. But you alone don't have the power to enact your will for revenge. No matter how strong your will, you are just an individual, and your power to do anything is vanishingly small.
Will is a desire, and desire is not power. But what if I had instead said, “no matter how much you will this to happen”? In the first example we see will as a noun, as in desire. In this example it is a verb, as in to command. We see then that will has an interesting double meaning, existing at the intersection of desire and command, a desire-command. (No credit to Heidegger, fuck Nazis.)
To elaborate: desire doesn't require an other. For example: you floating alone, lost in space or out at sea, can desire to not be cold or hungry. You can desire some change in your internal state without desiring anything of anyone else. To command, however, requires agency and power over some other. To command your space suit to heat you, or a spear into the closest fish - or more directly, your fingers to activate the heater and your arm to launch the spear - requires their submission to your will. To inspire this submission of some other is power.
To recap: will is a combination of desire and command, or more succinctly a desire-command, and power is to inspire the submission of some other to your will. (The nature and forms of power will be discussed later.) Desire doesn't require power. Command is a function of power. Will is nothing without desire, and will is nothing without the ability to command.
Isn't “free will” then an oxymoron, as a proper will requires the ability to command? And this matches our lived experience, because financial freedom isn't freedom from money - its quite the opposite.
labor
we have a comparison to make: what's the difference between exchanging labor for an abstraction of labor, and exchanging labor for desire-command? what does it mean to hoard desire-command?at time of writing, i'm unemployed. i was laid off three months ago. i'm running out of money and undergoing a frantic job search. so: is it more correct that i've used up the value of my labor that i haven't converted to someone else's labor, or that i no longer have the power to not work?