Wilhelm Reich at the Barber

Check out this dialog, written under a pen name by Wilhelm Reich in 1935, now published in translation:

Customer: If I understand you correctly, you produce after subtracting all costs about 10 to 12 marks for him per day and of this you receive 3 to 3.50 marks. And if times become permanently bad for the business he’ll sack you, in which case the reserve fund is of no use to you. So what in fact does he use this money for?

Assistant: Well, for example the boss has to acquire modern machines. At present we’re replacing the hand clippers by electric ones.

Customer: What does that mean?

Assistant (surprised): What, you don’t understand that? It’s quite simple. Now I can deal with 10 customers a day, afterwards I’ll be able to deal with 20 because the cutting will be much faster.

Customer: And each one of these 20 will be paying 1 mark as before. And you, how much will you get then?
Assistant (even more surprised): Naturally, I’ll continue to get my 100 marks.

Customer: Excuse my being so inquisitive, I’m getting a bit lost and am rather amazed. With the new improved machines you’ll be earning 20 marks for, him but you yourself will continue to receive only 3.50. That means the surplus has grown from 8 to about 13? Where does the money go?

Reich’s goal, is to show how Marxist theory can be explained without relying on dense prose and theoretical texts. Which, as this illustration of surplus value shows, it easily can be done. I’ve found that most economic concepts are best illustrated with little parables, along these lines of Customer A, Salesperson B, or even Currency A, Debt Note B. Theory, in that it attempt to define self-descriptive terms of debate, often cascades into complicated language pretty quickly, whereas anyone who has ever borrowed money can understand compound interest if explained in terms of $10 paid back over the course of 5 days.

One of the reasons I lost my fascination with academic pursuits (at least within the academy) is because of the complicated cascade of theory. Now, I am all for having a wide vocabulary, and I love technical terms. There are certain oblique concepts that must be grasped with long words. Each word is a tool, and you wouldn’t try to discuss existentialism in single syllables any more than you would try to build a house with only an ax. But, the complication of theory isn’t an end in itself. I got frustrated that the goal was not to bring these supposedly great theories into a wider focus. I didn’t want things to be simplified. I wanted every day to strive to be more complex, and for philosophy to meet it on its way, coaxing it and helping it along. But few people seemed to be interested in this, or at least effectively.

So now I write online, and publish little SF stories about Marxian cyborgs! I think Reich is correct. Maybe I didn’t have too many people on the edge of their seats with my little parable, and Reich’s story is not exactly a page turner either. But it’s a start. Most of the fiction that does have me gripping the paperback pages in concentrated enthusiasm does introduce a philosophical or otherwise theoretical concept. If you try to introduce semiotics to someone who has read Philip K. Dick, you will have a much easier time doing it than otherwise.

I’d love to push it even further, but short of a burst of writing ingenuity that produces a gripping narrative of Deleuzian bodies-without-organs, I’m not sure what it would look like. In the meantime, I think continuing to push entertaining writing in a certain theoretical direction, to slip in the theory when one can, is the best way. Little tidbits, rather than big academic walls.