An incredible process of avoidance
We are thus in an economic war without economic cause but with a great diversity of wealth. For Patrick Viveret, we are in an incredible process of avoidance: the economy which had to organize abundance to pass afterwards in Adam Smith's " philosophic republic", remained blocked and mainly manages ill-being." The desire to be " has been replaced by " the desire to have " or even "the fear of not having ".
The notion of expense was studied by Georges Bataille not under the angle of the necessity, but under that of the luxury (La Notion de dépense puis La Part maudite, Minuit Critique , 1967). Even when we reach abundance, we submit ourselves to what Boetie called the "voluntary servitude" (speech about voluntary). We spend and we create additional security requirements (and recognition of others) to avoid taking the next step ("self-esteem" and self-achievement "in Maslow's pyramid).
John Maynard Keynes already explained in 1930 (Essais sur la monnaie et l'économie. Les cris de Cassandre, Paris, Payot, 1972) that human societies were organized to fight against shortage and were not prepared culturally to exit rarity. ''Yet I think with dread of the readjustment of the habits and instincts of the ordinary man, bred into him for countless generations, which he may be asked to discard within a few decades.
To use the language of to-day must we not expect a general "nervous breakdown" ?