Lefebvre on “the origins of our civilization”

In his account of how western society gradually, though incessantly, has progressed towards the state of human alienation from everyday practice and labor – or, consumption as well as production – Lefebvre (p. 244) declares that

“Hidden beneath what appears to be human reason lies an irrational reality; but lying even more deeply hidden beneath what appears to be absurd is a dehumanized Rationality. Where? All around us – though not so much in rural areas as in our ‘modern’ towns.”

In other words, it is pertinent to understand that the economic and technical progress which distinguishes modern society from its predecessor(s) is not mirrored in any greater ‘Reason’ in social life as such; or, rather, the “dehumanized” rationality is inaccessible to the individuals actually living the modern life to whom it appears as either irrational, or falsely rational.

But why is the non-reasonable everyday life less characteristic of rural than urban areas? To understand this, it is necessary to sketch Lefebvre’s historical assumptions of the genesis of society. As all such explications – so common to social theorists in the past – are essentially speculative and fail to live up to the tests of historical accuracy they purport to fulfill. Nonetheless, to fully understand the claims of ‘grand’ social theory, it is essential to grasp the implicit history they are founded on. So with Lefebvre’s Marxism: his theory of social evolution is given in a peculiar chapter of The Critique of Everyday Life entitled “Notes Written One Sunday in the French Countryside”.

Instead of beginning his account with hypothetical descriptions of the Ur-tribe on the Savannah in Africa – such as, for example Freud has done – or speculations of early, and so-called primitive tribal life – such as Bachofen and Durkheim – Lefebvre embarks from villages in Antiquity. Rural life in ancient Greece, he assumes, was fundamentally similar to that of contemporary villagers in Southern Europe.

And how was this life? – It was characterized by sequential interruptions of the quotidian by religious festivals fixed by the calendar; “These country festivals consisted essentially of a large meal” (p. 201). This meal represented the community which both contributed to, and ate of the courses. These religious meals were extravagant with regards to the resources and financial means available to these peasants of Antiquity: they were “great ‘sacrifices’, in the practical sense of the word; in one day they devour all the provisions and stocks it has taken them months to accumulate” (p. 202). It is, of course, wrong to say that all religious rural celebrations ended in economic sacrifice, since some years yielded better crops than others. Still, Lefebvre’s point is simply that celebrations were risky endeavors that jeopardized future means of sustenance.

If celebrations consisted in meals, and meals benefited the community it hosted; the question is why the rural forefathers divided life into distinctive occasions of celebration and work. The origin undoubtedly most have something to do with the natural pace of sowing and harvest, and so forth, but this is common knowledge and does little to explain how Lefebvre can assume that life today is any more alienated than it was – and to some degree still is – in the countryside. The explanation lies in the assumptions Lefebvre makes about Nature:

“Rural communities associated nature specifically with human joyfulness. Nature was peopled with ‘mysterious’ powers, powers that were human and close, yet at the same time fantastic (…) Thus when the community gathered to carry out this simple action of eating and dinking, the event was attended by a sense of magnificence which intensified the feeling of joy (…) By celebrating, the community (…) was associating Nature with the human community, binding the two together.” (p. 203)

This explains the motivation the rural ancients had to partake in the costly communal meal; since Nature herself was shareholder to the event, contributions from each family appeared as a form of investment or down-payment for past debt. What seems risky business was, in fact, a way of stabilizing the community at the same time as keeping the relations with Nature in harmony. In a way Lefebvre turns common sense on its head; the reason the rural population practices tight observance of routines is not because the pace of nature demands it, but because routines materialized the mysterious link between Man and Nature, and between people (p. 204). Importantly, even though festivals contrasted sharply with everyday life, they were not separate from it. They were like everyday life only more intense (p. 207).

So far so good; but in the mythic-economic logic of ancient agriculture lay the seeds of future disruption. Since participation was at once considered commercial and sacred; both privately and communally beneficial, the possibility of exploitation presented itself once the equal distribution of wealth was broken. And, although he doesn’t explain exactly when and how this process occurred, Lefebvre identifies the end of this original Arcadian innocence with the emergence of private property (p. 204), which differentiated the participants in communal celebrations and meals. The rich not only gave more, but demanded more in return: “The very fact that they gained social prestige enabled them to become even wealthier” (p. 204). This “rural aristocracy” shattered the balance, and was later supplanted by a “rural bourgeoisie”. To stick with Lefebvre’s own terminology, we could say that the ‘irrational’ aristocracy’ gave way to the ‘dehumanizingly rational bourgeoisie’. Social equality went first, then magic and mystique.


The Work of Time

Lefebvre (pp. 207-8) identifies two ways in which the balance of the rural community was threatened (and we can assume that, according to him, both have been at work in engendering modernity).

Firstly, the rural community can be threatened if the communal rituals and celebration were no longer performed in order to celebrate social unity and cohesion but rather for the sake of the magical powers believed to inhere in them. In other words, when and where religion is practices for its own sake, it is a danger for the community that practices it.

Secondly, the rural community is under siege when inequality emerges and grows between members of the community – a process it is hard to say if Lefebvre thinks is inevitable, merely likely, or casual. What seems certain is that Lefebvre assumes that material inequality, when it arises, self-perpetuates both due to the tendency of resources to accumulate and because they stay in families across generations.

Although separate, the two ways in which the rural balance is shattered easily go together. For instance, families of wealth are often also the religiously powerful. Moreover, the entanglement between mystical (religion) and material (money) power has the peculiar capacity to alienate through the false rationality produced by money and mystique: “Let us not forget that by the gifts and ‘sacrifices’ they made in proportions to their wealth and influence, the chiefs became increasingly powerful while at the same time still appearing to be the embodiment of the community’s own power” (p. 208). This, I believe, simply means that materially powerful people tap in on the religious power – arising from the collectivity – because they are able to provide more food and resources to the festivals (the embodiments of the collectivity).

Think tax payments and charity! Economic power makes both possible, and people feel entitled to a certain reverence due to their contributions to both: “There is one special little item which every well-off and god-fearing family budgets for: charity (…) The poor should make sacrifices by working a lot, and the rich by giving a little” (p. 212). This, of course, occurs first when the process – modernization – has gone far enough to conceal the connections between money and power, and to alienate the members of the collectivity from each other. And this, in turn, happens easier (only?) in towns.



-- Alexander