I read a classic of Quebec literature, Le Matou. A summary goes like this: It’s the very whimsical story of Florent, an ambitious young man who meets his Mephistopheles in the person of a wealthy old man, Egon Ratablavasky, who will enable him to acquire the object of his lust, La Binerie Mont-Royal (a local fast-food restaurant serving traditional Quebec food). Things go badly. The novel is a picaresque fresco that goes off in many directions. Florent and Ratablavasky are joined by Émile, a young boy castaway from the streets who finds refuge in the restaurant run by Florent and his partner, Élise, and a cat who becomes the hero of the novel. Ratablavasky’s generosity conceals a desire for domination and sordid wickedness.
Here’s some academic observations about the ideological inspiration for the novel:
Drawing on the tradition of the “quest novel”, Beauchemin presents his main character in search of autonomy and personal freedom in a society ruled by the instinct for domination and greed for gain. However, as a subversive example of all morality, the author shows us a protagonist who resorts to the very means of the oppression he is rebelling against, thus ensuring the ultimate failure of his efforts to free himself from a malevolent destiny.
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But destiny, this omnivorous form of terror, is embodied by Egon Ratablavasky: omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, Ratablavasky symbolises the power of money, and the evil, the discord sown by the possessing class in a merciless capitalist society. Dominating the petty bourgeoisie (Florent) and the proletariat (the young boy Monsieur Emile), Ratablavasky is the sovereign who rules the universe, the social master who, either arbitrarily or with reason, chooses his victims and slaughters them, or elects his successors provided that they agree to undergo humiliating and myriad initiation rites and tests.
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The meaning of Le Matou is not conveyed by psychological analysis of the characters (which in fact cost the novelist little effort), nor by innovative novelistic techniques. Beneath a semblance of humour and local colour, the novel probes the reality of a pitiless world where happiness can of necessity only be a tainted thing, where the realisation of one’s autonomy remains a flawed mechanism for human beings, where society emerges as an adversary from whom one must at best conduct oneself and towards whom one must (re)act with the most prudent circumspection.
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In fact, the novel highlights the stupefaction that results from work, when there is work, and the misery that the lack of work brings when society decides to awaken the monster of persecution of the working classes that is capitalism. Beauchemin radically denounces this socio-economic scourge, this form of alienation of human beings reduced to a state of absurd humiliation, a slave-master relationship. Ratablavasky’s money guarantees his personal freedom, while Florent is destined to be subjugated. The author desacralizes the Western myth of work by attributing to it not a saving function but a degrading purpose that leads man to abject suffering rather than joyful liberation.
Even though he has a foreign-sounding name, Ratablasky is from Quebec. He’s a francophone. It’s a nickname he’s picked up. The problem isn’t his origins, the problem isn’t anglophones or Jews, it’s money and big business, it’s everything. Florent’s aunt, Madame Jeunehomme, is similarly embroiled in all sorts of big business intrigues. She’s building a casino in Florida, she’s very rich.
Here’s a wonderful quote pointing to the way Madame Jeunehomme sees the world:
“There are only so many ways to get rich,” said the aunt, as she plunged her fork voluptuously into the creamy mass of potatoes, voluptuously plunging her fork into the creamy mass of potatoes which occupied a third of her plate. You have to fool people. All eyes were on her. - Yes, I’m not hiding it. I didn’t make any money with a begging bowl. Come on, don’t play the prude, Lydie, you know all that as well as I do. My husband used to say that if you wanted to make a name for yourself on the street, you had to commit at least two thefts a day. But not everyone can steal. It takes skill… and perseverance. As you know, I owned the biggest bookshop in Quebec city. Do you think it was Athalie that made me rich, or Rameau’s Nephew? Pfuitt! hot air! If we had to rely on educated people to live! I’d be like a cow that only wanted to graze on roses… But I had other means. For example, I used to sell Larousse books to school boards and the following year, strangely enough, the mice had eaten them and I had to start all over again. I don’t know what the good Lord will tell me when I go for a walk in front of him. I put my trust in his mercy and carried on working. After all, he’s the one who gave me a taste for money, so let him deal with the consequences.
This seems wrong today. No fooling needed! Isn’t it true that people who build what people need and want get rich? It’s hard to say, the companies that are most visible are the Microsoft and Google of the world, and they do build useful products. But most people don’t work for them, most people work elsewhere. A few smart, hard-working and lucky people get rich on products or services that help people. But a lot of people get rich by offering products and services people don’t need, or by overcharging, or by taking down a competitor, or with sketchy processes. By fooling. Yes, a lot of people do get rich like that. There’s an intriguing aspect to the limits of our understanding when it comes to what others do. We may have a general sense of someone’s professional life, but we lack insight into what they do exactly to make all that money; or what they did. We can’t fully appreciate how people make their money.
A business model may look fine at first glance. “He’s just a landlord, providing housing. It’s just a bank, providing mortages, financial products.” But for each legit rent, who knows how many fucked up evictions there were? For each “defendable” loan, how many reprehensible practices, aggressive credit push, hidden fees?
But who weights the benefits to society of practices and malpractices? Who adjudicates the utilitarian calculus? Further arguments, further defenses, of a business model (i.e., the contribution is net positive) are just clothes that you drape over your initial attitude. Many attempts to back up judgments about what should be done with appeals to facts are pointless gestures: the appeals are at least as controversial as the original judgments. Not always. Sometimes facts are just so “in your face”, but not often.
And even if it’s “fair” now, was it built on “fair” foundations? Marx argued that initial accumulation of capital is achieved through a mix of forceful dispossession and legal changes. And legal changes are determined by the powerful. I don’t have simple answers. I’m always surprised when people in business, government, academia and the culture industry think they have answers. Some people have such an incredible amount of epistemic confidence. Do they genuinely believe what they say? Are they actually confident in what they propose?
My view is Benjamin’s: “There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.” The achievements of civilization are built on systems of oppression and violence.