“Streams of Consciousness” is a regular series of articles written by David Meagher. In his first essay of the new decade, Dave discusses Georges Bataille’s La Part Maudite, and the similarities between ‘the poor’ in Capitalist socities, the Aristocracy in pre-Capitalist society, and the Aztec’s as described by Bataille. Dave contrasts these groups with the present-day Bourgouisie who’s value system equates generosity and sacrifice with wastefulness.

What is Wasteful Spending?

by Dave Meagher

For You have hidden Your face from us,
And have consumed us because of our iniquities.

(Isaiah)

Si l’on se demande où se trouve le foyer réel de l’oeuvre, il faudrait répondre que sa détermination est impossible.

(Levi-Strauss)

In his Preface to La part maudite, Georges Bataille describes his book as a work of political economy, but one which does not fit easily in any genre or discipline. It so radically unsettles the assumptions of his time that he describes it, echoing the subtitle of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, as a book for the interest of all, yet which might be of interest to no one at all.

In the first of two chapters on the Aztecs, Bataille considers a number of features of the sacrificial society: a society characterized by the capture of victims in war, the idealization of these sacrificial subjects, and their consummation in sacred rites; wars were not fought for territory, but to capture victims, in the case of the Aztecs, because their gods were in need of blood.

Les Aztèques,… se situent moralement à nos antipodes…. Leur conception du monde s’oppose de façon diamétrale et singulière à celle qui joue en nous dans nos perspectives d’activité. La consumation n’avait pas une moindre place dans leurs pensées que la production dans les nôtres. Ils n’étaient pas moins soucieux de sacrifier que nous ne le sommes de travailler. – The Aztecs,… are to be morally considered as our contraries…. Their conception of the world is diametrically and singularly opposed to that which is played out in our perspectives of activity. Waste had no less a place in their thoughts than production has in ours. They were no less solicitous of sacrifice than we are of work.¹

Perhaps the most striking feature of this statement by Bataille is the shamelessness with which he names ‘us’ as the proponents of productive work and ‘them’ as the practitioners of wasteful sacrifice. But despite the cruelty of Aztec practices, we should not be led to think that the ‘us’ which is morally distinguished from Aztec society is to be considered morally superior, nor should ‘we’, the poor, be surprised to find ourselves closer in our practices to the Aztecs than to the capitalist, thus once again, considered a ‘them’ from the perspective of dominant culture and ideology. Taken simply in terms of expenditure, it is probably safe to say that the poor, as a result of our want, do not have the means to invest any considerable portion of our income, so that whatever small portion is not destined to the means of mere subsistence is used up in unproductive expenditure or waste (consumation). Wasteful spending, what is sometimes called dépense sans réserve in Bataille, is to be thought of as the wanton conflagration of money, its consummation in the fires of evil. The more we waste, the poorer we are, the more we are to be distinguished from bourgeois morality, and surprisingly enough, the closer we find ourselves to Aztec economies.

It is important to understand what Bataille means in this statement by the word: consumation, which I have translated as ‘waste’, but which is not to be confused with another term often used by Bataille: gaspillage, which also means ‘waste’. In this passage, Bataille contrasts consumation with production, and elsewhere with consumption (consommation). In capitalist societies, production and consumption drive the economy by determining prices and generating economic growth. But Bataille’s interest in Aztec society is with what he calls elsewhere ‘so-called unproductive expenditure’ (dépenses dites improductives).² In an essay published twenty years before La part maudite, Bataille speaks of how the bourgeoisie developed the techniques to accumulate property and wealth without the notice of the old aristocracy, and how this emergent class continues to use these techniques to dominate the poor. He says that the bourgeoisie distinguished itself from the aristocracy by consenting to spend only on itself, within itself, that is to say by dissimulating its expenditures, as much as possible, in the eyes of the other classes.³ While the aristocracy continued to maintain some features of the consumation economy, where one’s ability and willingness to hold lavish and ostentatious festivals characterized by great and wasteful spending were signs of one’s grandeur and ebullient strength, Bataille sees bourgeois economy as characterized by acquisitive and mercantile profiteering, where the sign of wealth is not found in one’s ability to give without reserve, but in one’s tendency to laud the material advantages one has acquired over those of lower status.

On Bataille’s account, the customs regulating spending among the poor are considered closer to the noble ranks of so-called primitive, as well as aristocratic societies, while bourgeois morality, despite its continued dominance, remains a deviant form of the use of resources, relying on accounting principles to secure marginal increases to the wealth secured through the exploitation of labour and through the practice of lending at interest. As Bataille reveals, it is only as a result of capitalist ascendancy that the more basic distinction between nobles and ignobles was to some extent overcome, only to be replaced by a class struggle where generosity and noblesse disappear, and where jealousy persists. In these new dynamics, the most abject poor continue their unproductive use of whatever means they may come by, and shame the bourgeois by this consummation even in their condition of want, while the bourgeois shame them in turn by their material advantage, gained by means of a new sense of ‘sacrifice’, the privation privately practiced by the capitalist investor.

It is hard for us today to imagine a society in which one’s wealth is not measured by the size of one’s bank account, or by the price of one’s house, car, yacht, or private jet. Even in such a society, however, there remain remnants of what Bataille calls an economy of consumation: where such luxurious goods as jewellery and champagne are always to be given as an end in itself such as funerals, wars, cults, sumptuous monuments, spectacles, arts, and sexual perversions were in times of old. In Bataille’s consideration of Aztec society, the bloody sacrifice of animals and humans was to be considered the greatest sign of wealth.

‘The victim is a surplus taken from among the mass of useful wealth. And he cannot be taken except to be wasted without profit (consumé sans profit), forever destroyed as a result. (The victim) is, as soon as he is chosen, the accursed share (la part maudite), promised to violent waste (consumation violente). But malediction pulls him out of the order of things (l’arrache de l’ordre des choses); it renders his face (figure) recognizable, which shines from then on in the intimacy, the anguish, the depths of living beings.’⁴

The novelty of Bataille’s view of political economy is indisputable. His use of the structural anthropology of his contemporaries and the field studies of a sixteenth century colonial priest are outstanding. His book covers pacifist and warrior societies as ideal types, political and religious sociology as the ideological foundations of political economy, as well as developing the theoretical foundations of his unique challenge to traditional economic theory. Historical circumstances put some of his predictions to the test. And though he spoke of revising the book to meet these challenges, he died before completing this new edition. From beginning to end, Bataille offers himself and his reputation to be sacrificed, and in transgressing the limits of temporal existence, he achieves the ultimate transcendence, being eulogized for decades to come.

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David Meagher was born in Montreal in 1966. He studied philosophy at Champlain College; McGill University; and Lonergan College, Concordia University. Receiving his BA in philosophy from McGill University in 1991, he has been living in poverty for twenty years, pursuing independent studies in political science, philosophy, psychiatry, and criminology. Dave’s articles have been published in a variety of minor newspapers and magazines. His current interests include contemporary thought, the sources of the hermeneutics of suspicion, and re-reading Derrida, and he is currently working on a three-volume study entitled Schizophrenia. Dave is a contributing editor at Neighbours and a regular contributor to PeacockPoverty. He has been living in Toronto since 2006.

1. Bataille. La part maudite. (Miniut: 1967) [↩]
2. Bataille. ‘La notion de dépense’. in Ibid. pp. 26-27. [↩]
3. Ibid. p. 38. – Elle s’est distinguée de l’aristocratie en ce qu’elle n’a consenti à dépenser que pour soi, à l’intérieure d’elle-même, c’est-à-dire en dissimulant ses dépenses, autant que possible, aux yeux des autres classes. [↩]
4. Bataille. La part maudite. pp. 104-105. [↩]