1) The condition of the world is one of superabundance rather than scarcity. Bataille proposes that all life and wealth derive from the sun, which is effectively an unlimited source of energy. In the general economy, what the world faces is not scarcity, as foundationally assumed in conventional economics, but superabundance. While pockets of poverty can be found, the world on aggregate has an excess of wealth.
2) However, there are limits to growth, because there is only so much space on the planet which life can occupy. Once the limits are reached, no further growth is possible. Hence the excess cannot be used for growth; it cannot be saved and it needs to be expended. The choice we have is to either expend it well or badly.
Is Bataille’s conception of general economy credible? In addition to examining these two premises, this paper investigates Bataille’s method to reconceptualise how we can understand the world by adopting a radical position on political economy so as to derive novel insights. Specifically, I analyse his idea of limits and savings, his empirical approach and his critique of scarcity and utility in conventional economics. I contrast his views of capitalism and potlatch with Jean-Joseph Goux’s critique that Bataille’s solution of consumption has already come to pass in today’s capitalist economies and George Gilder’s notion that giving is central to entrepreneurial capitalism, and propose a possible Bataillean response. I then consider Andrew Abbott’s extension to Bataille’s theory of general economy, which Abbott draws on to argue that problems of excess are fundamentally different from problems of scarcity, hence requiring their own solutions. I conclude by assessing whether Bataille has been successful in challenging conventional economics and the applicability of TAS to political economy today.
2. Bataille’s Theory of General Economy
TAS is a systematic exposition by Bataille of his theory of political economy. He begins by explaining the need for a theory of general economy. Bataille believes that economics, as a system of production and consumption, cannot study its phenomena in isolation unlike the hard sciences, because its factors interrelate with one another and with other disciplines. However, the way economics is studied in his time (and currently) is as if it was an “isolatable system of operation” which can ignore the impact economic activity has on the world and how it is influenced by the world.[1] Hence, Bataille argues that we need to study economics within a broader theoretical framework since we need to understand its “general consequences” to “pose the general problems that are linked to the movement of energy on the globe.”[2] He terms such a study “general economy” as it is concerned with the global or cosmic level as opposed to “restrictive economy”, which focuses on the level of the particular.[3]
Why does Bataille link economics to a terrestrial movement of energy? Bataille observes that all wealth is a “cosmic phenomenon” arising from the “superabundance” of sunlight.[4] “Solar energy is the source of life’s exuberant development. The origin and essence of our wealth are given in the radiation of the sun, which dispenses energy–wealth–without any return,” he explains.[5] Sunlight, our source of energy and wealth, is excessive—its quantity is more than what is required to sustain life. The energy of the sun is first used by living things to meet basic requirements for survival, after which the excess is used for growth and reproduction. Consuming food in excess of the basic requirements allows a living thing to grow.[6] When an animal’s individual growth can no longer consume all the excess, it reaches sexual maturity, with reproduction a new stage of growth but of the group rather than of the individual. In this way, living things as a totality depend on the expenditure of excess to grow.[7] However, there is a limit to growth, after which whatever energy or wealth that remains must “necessarily be lost without profit” because there is only so much space available to living things before “life occupies all the available space” on the planet after which no more growth is possible since no more space for growth is available.[8]
2.1 Evidence from Nature
Bataille arrives at this notion of limits by once more turning to natural phenomena. He studies the micro-organism, duckweed. Floating in a pond, duckweed reproduces until the pond’s entire surface is covered with it. The boundary of the pond is the limit of growth for the duckweed. Once this limit is reached, there is an equilibrium of life—unless some duckweed is removed, through death or external forces, there cannot be any more new duckweed. Bataille uses this example to express the tendency for lifeforms to keep growing, as if life “aspires […] to an impossible growth.”[9] However, growth becomes harder when the lifeform encounters the limits of space, leading to a build-up of pressure. This pressure can be resolved through extension, where in the case of a stadium, a higher demand to attend its events may encourage the stadium owners to put in more seats or to enlarge the stadium.
Similarly, “the earth first opens to life the primary space of the waters and the surface of the ground,” and when this is filled, living things, such as trees, start growing upwards into the air.[10] But what if there is no more capacity to add more seats or enlarge the stadium because, for instance, the land outside it is already occupied? The pressure can then be relieved through squander, when living things compete with one another or are depleted by external forces such as natural disasters or accidents. In the extreme, these result in death, creating some vacant space which can then be occupied by other living things, hence restoring equilibrium. As a totality, there is no more growth once the limits are reached, but simply a maintenance or an equilibrium. Any new growth will require destruction to create capacity or vacant space for growth. From this, Bataille infers that the history of life is not a story of scarcity but is “the effect of a wild exuberance [… and] the development of luxury,” where luxury is “the production of increasingly burdensome forms of life.”[11]
2.2 Limits to Growth
Bataille hence reasons that to overcome this inability to keep growing, on an individual or group basis, excess needs to be squandered. He considers this requirement a principle of life, which we overlook to our detriment.[12] This further excess, since it cannot be used for growth, has no alternative but to be lost, and “in no way can this inevitable loss be accounted useful. It is only a matter of an acceptable loss, preferable to another that is regarded as unacceptable: a question of acceptability, not utility.”[13] Bataille is not against utility as a concept, understanding that “as soon as we want to act reasonably, we have to consider the utility of our actions.”[14] However, he asserts that the concept of utility is only relevant if there is a possibility for “an advantage, a maintenance or growth.”[15] Since excess is what is left over after such possibilities of usage, it falls outside the sphere of utility. With no way to usefully employ excess, how else can it be spent? Since utility can no longer be the criterion of assessment, the criterion then becomes whether the way excess is expended is acceptable to the donor. Regardless, “it must be spent, willingly or not, gloriously or catastrophically,” writes Bataille.[16]
Conventional, or in Bataillean terms, restrictive economics is centred on production as the objective of human activity. Profit is the aim for actors in a capitalist economy but the pursuit of profits is futile according to Bataille since “a series of profitable operations has absolutely no other effect than the squandering of profits.”[17] Bataille explains that while this squandering may be anathema to the capitalist who will regard it as “failure” or “misfortune,” it is a matter of inescapable necessity:
When one considers the totality of productive wealth on the surface of the globe, it is evident that the products of this wealth can be employed for productive ends only insofar as the living organism that is economic mankind can increase its equipment.[18]
This increase of equipment can be interpreted as capital investment such as machinery, office buildings and factories, or research investment and innovation to develop new ‘equipment’ in the form of tools, processes, techniques and technology. He argues that such investments can “neither always nor indefinitely” be profitable; profitability will hit limits and so profits must be somehow disposed of.[19]
Bataille explains that human labour and technological innovation extends the available space by augmenting “living matter with supplementary apparatuses,” increasing the capacity available for growth.[20] New techniques initially use up what was previously excess energy or wealth but in turn produces even more excess. “This surplus eventually contributes to making growth more difficult, for growth no longer suffices to use it up,” he writes.[21] Bataille’s explanation corresponds to the economic law of diminishing returns, where increasing inputs result in marginally smaller increases in output.[22] What he adds to this law is how “at a certain point the advantage of extension is neutralised by the contrary advantage, that of luxury.”[23] Beyond this point, expenditure will take over primary importance from growth since growth is no longer as advantageous.
2.3 Saving the Accursed Share
Even if we accept Bataille’s version of diminishing returns, it remains to be explained why excess cannot be saved. According to Asger Sørensen, Bataille ignores the notion from classical political economy that money has a special quality that allows for an “almost unlimited accumulation of wealth,” instead considering money as a form of energy.[24] Sørensen claims that the energy from money comes from the social recognition of the value of money. “Bataille’s disregard for money can therefore be interpreted as a disregard of what is specifically capitalist about modern society, since precisely capital could never come into existence without money in this sense,” he notes.[25]
To resolve this puzzle, I propose that one way to understand Bataille’s position is to consider John Maynard Keynes’s equality of saving and investment on the macroeconomic level, expressed by the following sets of accounting identities:[26]
(1) Income = value of output = consumption + investment (rearranging, investment = income – consumption)
(2) Saving = income – consumption
Therefore, saving = investment
(1) identifies national income as the sum of the value of the economy’s output of consumption goods and services, and investment goods and services, there being no other class of goods and services. (2) identifies saving as any excess of income over what is not spent on consumption. Keynes explains his conclusion:
The amount of saving is an outcome of the collective behaviour of individual consumers and the amount of investment of the collective behaviour of individual entrepreneurs; these two amounts are necessarily equal, since each of them is equal to the excess of income over consumption.[27]
Following this accounting logic, savings on the level of the general economy must ultimately be unleashed as investments. Hence, such savings, in the form of investments, will eventually face the law of diminishing returns and the advantages of luxury over extension. Keynes’s theory is applicable to Bataille’s theory of general economy as it deals with the general level of the economy.
According to Bataille, since we cannot save the excess, we can either choose how we wish to expend the excess or be forced to “undergo” the expenditure nonetheless.[28] If excess is not expended in peaceful ways, it is then accursed. “Like an unbroken animal that cannot be trained, it is this energy that destroys us; it is we who pay the price of the inevitable explosion,” claims Bataille.[29] To prevent such harm, Bataille reasons that the pursuit of growth has to “subordinated to giving,” and to use the method of restrictive economy, which advocates accumulation, to address the problems of general economy will be a mistake.[30] While his theory seems plausible, does it bear out in reality? The next section examines the historical evidence he advances.
2.4 Historical Evidence
Bataille positions his method as empirical, though he admits to pushing his case studies to their “boiling point” to hammer home his message.[31] Just as he looks to nature, he also examines the historical record to adduce empirical support for his theory of general economy. From his study of the historical data covering the Aztecs, Islam, Tibet, the early days of capitalism to his time of Soviet industrialisation and the Marshall Plan, and potlatch which will be further examined in section 4.1, he concludes that previously, “value was given to unproductive glory, whereas in our day it is measured in terms of production: Precedence is given to energy acquisition over energy expenditure.”[32]
Bataille sees the two world wars as periods when luxury was more advantageous than growth. After long intervals of population growth and peaceful industrialisation, the two wars were “the greatest orgies of wealth” in history.[33] He observes that the wars were preceded by rises in living standards, where “the majority of the population benefits from more and more unproductive services; work is reduced and wages are increased overall.”[34] According to Bataille and contrary to popular thinking, the wars were not sparked by an attempt to overcome insufficiency and need but by excess. From this and his other case studies, Bataille thus believes the true function of excess wealth is not to be accumulated but to be squandered “without reciprocation.”[35] He recognises that the distribution of wealth can be uneven–from the perspective of the particular, scarcity is the dominant condition. However, from the perspective of the general, it is excess that dominates and presents its own difficulties, different from the difficulties caused by scarcity. I elaborate on these differences in difficulties in section 4.3. For now, having examined Bataille’s theory of general economy, I turn to his method to better understand what he is attempting to achieve with TAS.
3. Bataille’s Method
Bataille explicates his method of analysis in TAS’s preface. He thinks that the problem of political economy remains unsolved because it is not properly “framed”—we are not asking the right questions.[36] He aims to solve it by writing “a book of political economy” to offer a “bold reversal that substitutes a dynamism, in harmony with the world, for the stagnation of isolated ideas, of stubborn problems born of an anxiety that refused to see.”[37] He contends that it is not necessity that gives living things including mankind its problems but its opposite, the accidental and the superfluous which he has termed “luxury.”[38]
Political economy is a study of how a country is governed, taking into account both political and economic factors.[39] Allen Drazen notes that up until the 20th century, what is today called economics was known as political economy, reflecting the notion that economics and politics are inseparably bound with political factors potentially having a “determining influence” in economic outcomes.[40] Tracing the evolution of Bataille’s thoughts on political economy leads us to his 1933 essay, The Notion of Expenditure,[41] where he lays the groundwork which he will later develop into his key economic concepts of excess, expenditure, transgression and sovereignty in his three-volume TAS. Benjamin Noys speculates that Bataille’s reflection on the “crisis of value”[42] in The Notion of Expenditure was influenced by the 1929 Wall Street Crash and the subsequent Great Depression. Unleashing widespread suffering globally, this episode was a catastrophic failure of market-based principles in furthering the welfare of man, though Bataille advances evidentiary support for his notion of expenditure using anthropological and sociological studies instead.
He is however very much aware of the impact of economic crises. He writes in TAS: “Economic crises, which necessarily have in my work a sense in which they are decisive events, are only represented therein in a summary, superficial fashion. If the truth must be told, I had to choose.”[43] The fear and suffering caused by economic crises gave him the impetus to search for a solution, but he notes that such anxiety can impede the research process.[44] Hence, instead of an analysis of economic crises, he adopted “rules of a reason that do not relent […and] laws that govern us,” in a manner akin to the appeal to laws in conventional economics, though he is careful to “avoid redoing the work of the economists.”[45] He takes a broader view of “the general problem of nature,” shifting the focus of his economics to expenditure instead of production which is the conventional loci of supply-side economics.[46]
Bataille is against the (then and still current) way the economy is managed, which is mostly along capitalistic lines based on modern economic theory. Scarcity is the concept at the heart of modern economic theory, which he terms as “restrictive economy.”[47] According to Lindsey McGoey, “a fundamental axiom of orthodox economic thought has been the assumption that universal scarcity constrains economic decision-making.”[48] Such economics addresses how scarce resources can be allocated efficiently to maximise the welfare of mankind. While Bataille’s critique of scarcity and utility in restrictive economy is focused on capitalism, communism is not the solution since Marx’s economic theory is also premised on these same concepts. Abbott observes that Marx’s Capital is “one long meditation on scarcity; declining wages and class conflict are all about scarcity.”[49] Reflecting on Bataille’s ideas, Jean Baudrillard comments that the Marxist critique of capitalism is insufficient since it is “only a critique of capital […] a critique of exchange value, but an exaltation of use value.”[50] Marxists are still trying to find a “good use of economy”[51] in a world governed by scarcity while what Bataille is trying to do is to completely reimagine the condition of the world, where if we simply became aware of the true reality of a superabundant world, we would not be fixating on the efficient allocation of resources and the accumulation of savings for ‘a rainy day.’ Instead, we would turn our attention to our true economic moral duty to expend excess “gloriously” rather than “catastrophically.”[52]
The conventional perspective of economics can be traced back to Adam Smith, who has been lauded as the “Father of [Modern] Economics.”[53] Smith presents an economic rationalism that equates the market with society as a whole. Omid Nodoushani posits that Bataille seeks to overturn Adam Smith’s morality of the marketplace and its associated notions of scarcity and utility which are foundational to modern economic theory.[54] Similar to the ancient Greeks who directly participated in the polis by debating at the Agora, a public space for assembly and markets, the modern marketplace in which economic activity is conducted remains as one of the few venues still available where “people have an opportunity to participate directly in public life,” writes Noudoushani.[55] Consumers participate mainly by using money to express their demands for goods and services, using their dollars to ‘vote’ for the products they desire. Suppliers participate by responding to these votes by setting prices to meet the demands of the consumers, so that at market equilibrium, the price would be such that the quantity demanded is met by the same quantity supplied, clearing the market of the product.[56]
3.1 Bataille’s Correction of Utility
Understanding demand and supply formation is hence critical to understanding how the economy works. Demand is expressed on an aggregate basis through the demand curve. The construction of the demand curve in microeconomic theory is based on utility, making it a cornerstone axiom of modern economic thought.[57] According to Noudoushani, utilitarian principles remain “hegemonic” today in determining market behaviour even after a revolution in business ethics in the 1990s, recalling Karl Marx’s eternal words: “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas.”[58] Utility is the property of an object to produce “benefit, advantage, pleasure, good or happiness,” theorises Jeremy Bentham, the founder of modern utilitarianism.[59] According to utilitarianism, people are propelled by the desire for pleasure and the avoidance of pain. The principle of utility is hence to maximise utility by maximising our pleasure and minimising our pain.
As already explained, while Bataille is not against utility per se, he contrasts the worldview based on utilitarian rationalism where one spends only when one can obtain a return, with his general economics based on unproductive expenditure where waste and expenditure wreathe in glory those who give generously. However, is not glory, such as the glory received by the giver in potlatch, also an aspect of utility? Bataille observes that the notion of utility in conventional restrictive economics has long departed from Bentham’s “benefit, advantage, pleasure, good or happiness.” In the former, the goal of material utility is
theoretically, pleasure–but only in a moderate form, since violent pleasure is seen as pathological. On the one hand, this material utility is limited to acquisition (in practice, to production) and to the conservation of goods; on the other, it is limited to reproduction and to the conservation of human life.[60]
Hence, Bataille’s critique of utility is not on utility per se but on the outcomes of a utilitarian economic mindset which makes production and accumulation the central phenomena in human life. He writes:
Any general judgement of social activity implies the principle that all individual effort, in order to be valid, must be reducible to the fundamental necessities of production and conservation. Pleasure, whether art, permissible debauchery, or play, is definitively reduced, in the intellectual representations in circulation, to a concession; in other words it is reduced to a diversion whose role is subsidiary.[61]
Bataille, with his themes of excess, transgression, eroticism and sovereignty, wishes to correct for this reduction and return to Bentham’s original conception of utility with one important difference: he believes concepts of honour and duty ought to be “situate[ed] beyond utility and pleasure” instead of being “hypocritically employed in schemes of pecuniary interest,” vulgarising the nobility of both concepts.[62]
Bataille presents India in relation to America, as a case in point. India faces a situation of poverty while America has excess resources. “General economy suggests, therefore, as a correct operation, a transfer of American wealth to India without reciprocation,” a kind of Marshall Plan but for India.[63] He adds that the pressure resulting from this inequality is a threat to America, seeming to suggest that it is in America’s own interest to use its excess to raise the “global standard of living” since it could otherwise result in “danger.”[64] A utilitarian economics that includes honour and duty as part of the utility calculation would understand Bataille’s proposal as quid pro quo—a payoff in the guise of humanitarian assistance to avoid potential war. This is however not Bataille’s intention if we use his ideas on potlatch, with America as the giver of potlatch and India as the receiver. He explains:
The gift that one made […] was a sign of glory […] By giving, one exhibited one’s wealth and one’s good fortune (one’s power) [...] some splendid expenditure that might add lustre to his person by displaying the favour of the gods who had given him everything.[65]
It is a way for the donor country to “grasp what eludes him, to combine the limitless movements of the universe with the limit that belongs to him,” in transcending its limits of growth to gain not “pecuniary interest” but “prestige, glory and rank,” to exchange its “profane” resource wealth for the “sacred.”[66]
3.2 Copernican Reversal
Bataille’s approach is so radical as to initially seem absurd. With his theory of general economy based on a solar cosmology, is Bataille proposing a metaphysics of the world where superabundance rather than scarcity is the basic condition because he believes that is how our world actually is, or is he presenting a radical normative account of our world so as to conceptualise a new way forward for mankind? I believe it is the latter as Bataille makes clear that his conception of general economy is intended to transform our approach to economics and its accompanying ethics. He aims to “shock” and “jostle” our thinking.[67] He writes:
I will simply state […] that the extension of economic growth itself requires the overturning of economic principles–the overturning of the ethics that grounds them. Changing from the perspectives of restrictive economy to those of general economy actually accomplishes a Copernican transformation: a reversal of thinking–and of ethics.[68]
Bataille believes that the curse of the accursed share can be lifted—it “depends on man and only on man.”[69] To do this, Bataille thinks, similar to Marx, that people first need to be conscious of the “movement from which [the curse] emanates,” that is, the general economy, so that living standards globally can be raised.[70] He believes that his solution is so simple that it can achieve widespread acceptance. The way to raise it to the self-consciousness of mankind is to understand how general economy has been present in history, but is Bataille’s interpretation of history correct? This question is especially important since he presents his method as empirical. To answer it, this paper will next examine a critique of Bataille’s conception of capitalism and potlatch by Goux et al. who draws on the work of Gilder.
4. Critique and Extension
4.1 The Economics of Potlatch
In a move reminiscent of Max Weber’s linking of the Protestant Calvinist work ethic to capitalist economics, Bataille re-introduces religion to the domain of political economy but to rather opposite effect from Weber.[71] For Weber, Calvinist thrift provided the right conditions for the development of capitalism due to its ethic of accumulation, investment and reinvestment while Bataille thinks that such behaviour belongs to the domain of the profane and not the religious.[72] Goux analyses Bataille’s move:
Whereas the profane is the domain of utilitarian consumption, the sacred is the domain of experience opened by the unproductive consumption of the surplus: what is sacrificed. [...] The religious or artistic domain is not a simple superstructure of vague whims built on the economic infrastructure: it is itself economic, in the sense of a general economics founded on the expenditure of the excess, on the unproductive and ecstatic consumption of the surplus, through which the human being experiences the ultimate meaning of existence.[73]
In Goux’s analysis, capitalism became the leading economic force through the “complete desacralisation of life (inaugurated by Calvinism and carried to its limit by Marxism).”[74] This move was needed to break free from previous economic regimes in which religion played an important role in directing resources. The impulse towards sacrifice had to be minimised in capitalism because while such a form of consumption was glorious, it was one of pure economic loss which contradicts capitalist economic principles, which is based on utilitarian rationality as discussed in section 3.1. Goux notes that Bataille interprets our anthropological history as a “unification of the two forces that have been considered individually the motors of human societies,” the forces of religion and economics, since “until the birth of capitalism, every society is one of sacrificial expenditure,” after which accumulation took centre-stage in a restrictive economy.[75]
Potlatch is Bataille’s prime example of such sacrificial expenditures. Potlatch is a means of “circulating wealth” involving gift exchanges, throwing festivals or banquets for the community, or a “solemn destruction of riches,” by chiefs, lords and merchants, among other successful people.[76] These rituals are done to “add lustre to his person by displaying the favour of the gods who had given him everything.”[77] However, Goux disputes Bataille’s account of capitalism and potlatch. Goux does not think that the current state of capitalism is the capitalism of the Calvinists with its values of “thrift, sobriety and asceticism” as portrayed by Weber and Bataille.[78] According to Goux, such Calvinist capitalism has already been displaced by an “ethic of consumption, desire, and pleasure,” which makes Bataille’s general economy theory passé since what Bataille prescribes as the antidote to his conception of capitalism is precisely the form that capitalism has adopted.[79] The current state of capitalism has gone beyond its beginnings rooted in restrictive economy to one where “no society has ‘wasted’ as much as contemporary capitalism,” observes Goux.[80]
In addition, Goux points to the work of Gilder who provides a reading of The Gift by Marcel Mauss, from which Bataille adapted his account of potlatch, that differs from Bataille’s interpretation. Gilder posits that potlatch-style giving is not something belonging only to primitive societies but is at the heart of capitalism, drawing on Jean-Baptiste Say’s economic law of how supply creates its own demand. He explains:
The unending offering of entrepreneurs, investing jobs, accumulating inventories–all long before any return is received, all without any assurance that the enterprise will not fail–constitute a pattern of giving that dwarfs in extent and in essential generosity any primitive rite of exchange. Giving is the vital impulse and moral centre of capitalism.[81]
In Gilder’s account, demand for non-necessities is not assured, certainly not a priori, and is preceded by a supply which causes the demand by creating new desires. For Gilder, the element of giving in capitalism resides in suppliers taking the risk that their ‘gift’ will not be reciprocated by demand, payment and subsequently, profits.
According to Goux, even Mauss’s own interpretation of gifts in the contemporary world is not the frenetic squandering envisioned by Bataille but rather a staid picture of “the industrialist who creates family insurance funds” or a society who has national health insurance for its members, “where the community gives to the workers something other than a simple salary.”[82] Clearly, Bataille’s interpretation of potlatch is just one of several interpretations and not necessarily even the most accurate one. Hence, Goux accuses Bataille of romanticising primitive societies. Instead of the generous utopias that Bataille seems to suggest, Goux observes that primitive societies are “extremely unequal, even cruelly hierarchical […where] spectacular consumption is the tool with which the powerful maintain their position above the dazzled, miserable masses.”[83]
In Goux’s account of post-industrial societies, the primacy of consumption has already arrived and it is not quite what Bataille had envisioned. According to Goux, in such economies, “the appeal [to consumers] to compete infinitely in unproductive consumption (through comfort, luxury, technical refinement, the superfluous) allows for the development of production.”[84] Goux argues that the unproductive consumption of tobacco, alcohol, pleasure trips and movies allows for productive, profit-making industries. “If one remains on strictly economic ground, it is in truth impossible to separate productive consumption from unproductive squandering.” he writes.[85] How can Bataille respond to Goux’s and Gilder’s critique?
4.2 Bataille’s Possible Defence
Noys agrees with Goux that “Bataille’s economy of excess might have traction on the ascetism of the Protestant ethic of accumulatory capitalism [which] seems to come into strange congruence with a ‘postmodern’ capitalism of realised excess.”[86] They indeed correctly depict Bataille’s view of capitalism as an economics of accumulation since Bataille sees capitalism as a system where there is a preference for “an increase of wealth to its immediate use.”[87] Bataille was however clearly aware of the existence of consumerism which includes luxury and waste, himself raising the use of alcohol as an example of “consuming without a return” though he was referring to the consumer’s lack of return and not the producers.[88] Besides, the term “conspicuous consumption” was already invented 50 years before the publication of TAS and Weber had also written about “heartless hedonism.”[89]
Ishay Landa details a shift in Bataille’s thought between TAS’s first and later volumes. In volume three, in what might be a refinement of his view, Bataille writes: “Those who mean to lead the world—and change it—opt […] for accumulation. Those who prefer that others lead it […] aim at nonproductive consumption.”[90] This suggests that Bataille is not oblivious to the consumption of modern capitalism. However, while the masses may participate in such a capitalism of consumption as noted by Goux, those in power remain in accumulation mode, perhaps including the industries that Goux refers to that profit off the unproductive consumption of the masses and Gilder’s gift-giving entrepreneurs whose gifts are not pure acts of generosity but ultimately aim at profits.
Bataille also admits that methodologically, it is difficult to distinguish between productive and unproductive expenditures: “Real life, composed of all sorts of expenditures, knows nothing of purely productive expenditure; in actuality, it knows nothing of purely unproductive expenditure either.”[91] Regardless, Bataille claims that the kinds of luxury and waste that present and past societies engage in are insufficient to avert the dangers he warns about:
Ancient societies found relief in festivals; some erected admirable monuments that had no useful purpose; we use the excess to multiply ‘services’ that make life smoother, and we are led to reabsorb part of it by increasing leisure time. But these diversions have always been inadequate: Their existence in excess nevertheless (in certain respects) has perpetually doomed multitudes of human beings and great quantities of useful goods to the destruction of wars.[92]
Wasteful festivals, monuments and services from past and present-day consumerist capitalism can only absorb part of the excess—they are mere diversions. Since there is excess left over, excess remains a problem. The possibility of war due to excess remains and may possibly be exacerbated by the profitability of Goux’s industries of unproductive consumption and Gilder’s giving entrepreneurs. Following Bataille’s reasoning, the generation of even more profits from both groups increases the danger of catastrophe since there will be even greater excess leading to even more pressure on the limits of growth. We have hence not escaped Bataille’s problems of limits outlined in Section 2.2. Excess remains a problem.
Even if we dispute the details of Bataille’s account, we must acknowledge that there are problems of excess that are not merely the flip-side of problems of scarcity. Problems of excess such as obesity resulting from over-eating and environmental pollution from too much industrial activity and too many vehicles differ from problems of scarcity, such as insufficient food, underproduction of goods or a lack of transportation. Hence, they require different solutions. They also urgently need solving, with Bataille’s theory of general economy presenting a useful theoretical lens to examine such problems. Abbott demonstrates one such fruitful use of Bataille’s theory to develop strategies dealing with the problems of excess.
4.3 Contrasting Excess and Scarcity
One-third of all food produced went to waste while one-tenth of humanity starved, according to the United Nations (UN).[93] It estimates that 10 percent of the world’s population are living in extreme poverty, “struggling to fulfil the most basic needs like health, education, and access to water and sanitation.”[94] Some people die of thirst, while others flush their toilets with drinkable water. Such gross inequalities seem unfair and downright paradoxical, though in line with Bataille’s idea of the dominance of scarcity from the perspective of the particular and a condition of excess from the perspective of the general. “Particular existence always risks succumbing for lack of resources. It contrasts with general existence whose resources are in excess and for which death has no meaning,” he writes.[95] These varying states of scarcity and excess present their own unique sets of difficulties. However, according to Abbott, economists tend to ignore the problems of excess, treating it only as the flip-side of scarcity and hence not requiring separate analysis, given the economists’ already elaborate study of scarcity. He calls this the identity argument and argues that such an identification of scarcity as the inverse of excess is a mistake since they are “not necessarily conceptual contraries.”[96]
To understand how this false opposition became a presupposition in economics, Abbott examines the historical development of economic thought. While contemporary economics is centred on scarcity, older seminal economic works have considered abundance and its problems. Bernard Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees (1714), a text credited with inspiring Smith’s conception of the invisible hand,[97] speaks about how individuals, by striving after excess, create social abundance.[98] However, by 1798, Thomas Malthus has laid the roots for the identity argument, ignoring the advantages of excess population such as military might and cheap labour, focusing instead on how it will create food scarcity.[99] David Ricardo later formalised Malthus’s conception, producing the definitive “theory of scarcity that has sustained subsequent economics.”[100]
In Ricardo’s theory, scarcity is a source of value while what is excessive is worthless in terms of exchange value. Since excess cannot be priced, the concept is discarded for theoretical parsimony. Marx likewise focuses on scarcity despite writing in an age of rapid economic expansion due to the industrial revolution in Britain. He views excess in the form of overproduction as a state of affairs common in capitalism, emphasising the resulting scarcity of work.[101] This idea became mainstream by the 19th century, with excess production seen as problematic since it led to low prices and unemployment.[102]
Keynes, the economist credited with bringing the world out of the Great Depression with his macroeconomic General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936), did however conceive of a more optimistic future, predicting that his grandchildren will enjoy 15-hour workweeks because of a “new-found bounty of nature” realised through technological innovation.[103] He writes:
For the first time since his creation man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem—how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure, which science and compound interest will have won for him, to live wisely and agreeably and well.[104]
However, the dismal science of economics manages to turn excess into scarcity “for purposes of analysis” by economists more familiar with the theoretical framework of scarcity.[105] Even in such a world of excess and leisure as imagined by Keynes, there will be a scarcity of time to enjoy them, since there are only so few hours in a day to fill with so many competing pleasures, according to Nobel-Prize winning economist, Gary Becker.[106]
The notion of excess as a precursor to the ‘better’ things in life pre-dates economic thought. Aristotle explains that only after our physical needs and desires are met, when there is a state of excess, could knowledge for its own sake then commence.[107] A popular modern rendition of Aristotle’s idea is Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, where Maslow argues that basic needs must first be met before higher-order needs and wants can be pursued:
The urge to write poetry, the desire to acquire an automobile, the interest in American history, the desire for a new pair of shoes are, in the extreme case, forgotten or become of secondary importance. For the man who is extremely and dangerously hungry, no other interests exist but food.[108]
A state of excess is required for one to achieve the next tier in Maslow’s hierarchy, which finally culminates in the need for self-actualisation after the “satisfaction of physiological, safety, love and esteem needs” respectively.[109]
However, such accounts suggest an opposition between excess and scarcity, as if they are mutually exclusive and opposite concepts. Abbott objects to this translation of the problems of excess into problems of scarcity which in Becker’s case is the translation of excess goods into a lack of time to enjoy them.[110] This objection is important because such translation is what allows economists to ignore excess as a separate question. Abbott argues that scarcity and excess are on a spectrum rather than oppositional, becoming oppositional only in limit cases. Refuting Becker’s case, Abbott explains that treating time like a budget constraint is incorrect because the opportunity cost of time is not the same as the opportunity cost of money. Buying one thing prevents the purchase of another with the same dollars. However, time does not behave like that since multiple utilities may be achieved in the same expenditure of time or even multiplied.[111]
Prima facie, excess seems to be either a nice problem to have or a non-problem. Abbott considers the industrial production process. Production requires multiple inputs and if just one input is insufficient, the product cannot be produced. However, if all inputs are just sufficient or in excess, production can proceed with the excess posing no difficulty of production failure but perhaps posing a storage difficulty. Hence, if excess is problematic, it is problematic for different reasons than scarcity. “Excess is something fundamentally different from scarcity” and therefore, the problems of excess need to be treated differently from the problems of scarcity.[112]
Bataille suggests that a disregard for the problems of excess, common among economists including those as renowned as Malthus and Becker, is due to the economy not being considered in its general sense. The mistake according to Bataille, is that economics adopts the methodology of the sciences, reducing phenomena into discrete operations based on an average individual. We then extend this understanding to the whole of society by aggregating the individual outcomes: “Economic science merely generalises the isolated situation; it restricts its object to operations carried out with a view to a limited end, that of economic man.”[113] However, we are not merely homo economicus, whose actions are only driven by economic considerations. Instead, we are destined to useless consumption and the choice we are confronted with is how excess is to be expended as homo ecologicus, human beings qua “living organisms” interacting with others in the “entire domain of human activities” including non-economic activities as far afield as religion, art and eroticism where “formidable energies are consumed for the celebration of the gods, the glory of the great or the dionysiac pleasure of the humble.”[114] Hence we need to reform our thinking altogether if we want to find a solution to economic problems and avoid catastrophe.
Abbott, drawing on Bataille’s general economy theory, tries to do this by understanding excess as a class of its own. He examines the causes of the problems of excess by distinguishing two types of excess on the levels of the individual and society: surfeit, an excess of one thing, and welter, an excess that arises from too many things.[115] From this, he proposes two classes of strategies to deal with the problems of excess:
1) reduction strategies, which cut down the amount of excess. These have two subtypes:
a. defensive strategies, which ignores the excess, and
b. reactive strategies, which simplifies excess by reducing it to more manageable terms.
2) rescaling strategies, which change the definition of desirability. These also have two subtypes:
a. creative strategies, which accepts existing excess and increases it, by making excess and its enjoyment central to life, and
b. adaptive strategies, which make a virtue of the excess.[116]
Abbott’s account supports and extends Bataille’s theory by demonstrating the need for excess to be analysed as its own economic problem and by proposing a set of broad approaches to counter the problems of excess.
5. Conclusion
Has TAS accomplished the Copernican transformation Bataille had set out to achieve? The accursed share is the part of wealth that is cursed. For Bataille, this is the excess after man’s needs are met. Actors in capitalistic societies attempt to control residual wealth by saving it and then subsequently unleashing these savings through investments. If profitable, such investments lead to an even greater amount of excess and diminishing returns, thus only delaying the inevitable expenditure. The choice we have is to expend the excess in a glorious or catastrophic way. It is a question of acceptability and not utility. Bataille presents his method as empirical, drawing from nature and history, with potlatch being an important example of the kind of sacrificial expenditure he advocates, away from the capitalism of thrift. However, Goux thinks that capitalism today has already taken the form of consumption, desire and pleasure that Bataille preaches. A possible Bataillean response is that while the masses may be consuming non-productively, the powerful are still accumulating wealth. In addition, such spending is still insufficient to solve the problem of excess. The problem of excess has been typically studied as the flip-side of scarcity since economists have a well-developed framework of scarcity to work from. However, excess and scarcity are fundamentally different requiring different treatment, leading Abbott to propose strategies specific to countering the problems of excess.
Despite the contestability of some details of Bataille’s account, such as his solar cosmology and his conception of potlatch, his conception of general economy remains coherent, credible and is successful in challenging our understanding of economics, which currently has a restrictive rather than a general perspective. Which perspective is prevalent determines our behaviour since they lead to different ethical norms. A mindset of scarcity drives wealth accumulation and inequality, leaving the world open to catastrophe, while a mindset of superabundance drives generosity, leading to a raising of the overall living standards of the global population and glory for the generous. Which mindset is ideal for us will lie somewhere between the two perspectives since either extreme will be untenable or unsustainable. Given how much the global economy has tilted to the side of scarcity, Bataille’s TAS can be viewed as a corrective to help us move to a more generous position.
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Aristotle. “Metaphysics, Book 1.” In The Works of Aristotle, edited by William David Ross. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1928.
Bataille, Georges. The Accursed Share: An Essay on General Economy. Volume I: Consumption. Translated by Robert Hurley. New York: Zone Books, 1988.
———. The Accursed Share, Volumes 2 and 3. Translated by Robert Hurley. New York: Zone Books, 1991.
———. “The Notion of Expenditure.” In Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927-1939, edited by Allan Stoekl, 116–29. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985.
Bentham, Jeremy. An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. Kitchener: Batoche Books, 2000.
Gilder, George. Wealth and Poverty. New York: Bantam Books, 1981.
Keynes, John Maynard. Essays in Persuasion. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1963.
———. The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2018. doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-70344-2.
Marx, Karl. “Letter to Ruge.” In Early Writings. London: Penguin, 1975.
Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. “Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 2, Book 2.” In Collected Works. New York: International Publishers Co, 1997.
———. “The Communist Manifesto.” In The Marx-Engels Reader, edited by Robert C. Tucker. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1978.
———. The German Ideology: Including Theses on Feuerbach and Introduction to The Critique of Political Economy. Amherst: Prometheus Books, 1998.
Maslow, A. H. “A Theory of Human Motivation.” Psychological Review 50(4) (1943). doi: 10.1037/h0054346.
Weber, Max. Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis, 2013.
Secondary Literature
Abbott, Andrew. “The Problem of Excess.” Sociological Theory 32, no. 1 (2014): 1–26. doi: 10.1177/0735275114523419.
Baudrillard, Jean. “When Bataille Attacked the Metaphysical Principle of Economy.” In Ideology and Power in the Age of Lenin in Ruins, edited by Arthur Kroker and Marilouise Kroker, 135–38. London: Macmillan Education UK, 1991. doi: 10.1007/978-1-349-22346-6_10.
Berry, Christopher J. Adam Smith: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.
Drazen, Allan. Political Economy in Macroeconomics. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000.
Goux, Jean-Joseph, Kathryn Ascheim, and Rhonda Garelick. “General Economics and Postmodern Capitalism.” Yale French Studies, no. 78 (1990). doi: 10.2307/2930123.
Landa, Ishay. “Bataille’s Libidinal Economics: Capitalism as an Open Wound.” Critical Sociology 41, no. 4–5 (2015): 581–96. doi: 10.1177/0896920514526625.
McGoey, Linsey. “Bataille and the Sociology of Abundance: Reassessing Gifts, Debt and Economic Excess.” Theory, Culture & Society 35 (2018).
Nodoushani, Omid. “A Postmodern Theory of General Economy: The Contribution of Georges Bataille.” Studies in Cultures, Organizations and Societies 5, no. 2 (1999): 331–45. doi: 10.1080/10245289908523531.
Noys, Benjamin. Georges Bataille: A Critical Introduction. London: Pluto Press, 2015. doi: 10.2307/j.ctt18fscq5.
———. “‘Grey in Grey’: Crisis, Critique, Change.” Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies, no. 4 (2011).
Sloman, John. Economics. 6th ed. Harlow: Prentice Hall/Financial Times, 2006.
Sørensen, Asger. “On a Universal Scale: Economy in Bataille’s General Economy.” Philosophy & Social Criticism 38, no. 2 (2012): 169–97. doi: 10.1177/0191453711427256.
UNDP. United Nations Development Programme Annual Report 2019. New York: UNDP, 2020.
Word count: 7,494
[1] Georges Bataille, The Accursed Share: An Essay on General Economy. Volume I: Consumption, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Zone Books, 1988), 19.
[2] Bataille, 20.
[3] Bataille, 25, 22.
[4] Bataille, 20, 27.
[5] Bataille, 28.
[6] Bataille, 27.
[7] Bataille, 28.
[8] Bataille, 21, 30.
[9] Bataille, 30.
[10] Bataille, 31.
[11] Bataille, 33.
[12] Bataille, 21.
[13] Bataille, 31.
[14] Bataille, 30.
[15] Bataille, 30.
[16] Bataille, 21.
[17] Bataille, 21.
[18] Bataille, 22.
[19] Bataille, 22.
[20] Bataille, 36.
[21] Bataille, 37.
[22] “Diminishing Returns,” Encyclopedia Britannica, 2017, https://www.britannica.com/topic/diminishing-returns.
[23] Bataille, TAS, 37.
[24] Asger Sørensen, “On a Universal Scale: Economy in Bataille’s General Economy,” Philosophy & Social Criticism 38, no. 2 (2012): 187, doi: 10.1177/0191453711427256.
[25] Sørensen, 187.
[26] John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2018), 56, doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-70344-2. While Bataille does not reference Keynes’s General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money directly in TAS, he is aware of Keynes, referring to Keynes’s bottle in the preface of TAS (TAS, 13).
[27] Keynes, 56.
[28] Bataille, TAS, 23.
[29] Bataille, 24.
[30] Bataille, 25.
[31] Bataille, 10.
[32] Bataille, 29.
[33] Bataille, 37.
[34] Bataille, 37.
[35] Bataille, 38.
[36] Bataille, 10.
[37] Bataille, 11.
[38] Bataille, 12.
[39] Michael A. Veseth and David N. Balaam, “Political Economy,” Encyclopedia Britannica, 2006, https://www.britannica.com/topic/political-economy.
[40] Allan Drazen, Political Economy in Macroeconomics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 3.
[41] Georges Bataille, “The Notion of Expenditure,” in Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927-1939, ed. Allan Stoekl (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985), 116–29.
[42] Benjamin Noys, Georges Bataille: A Critical Introduction (London: Pluto Press, 2015), 105, doi: 10.2307/j.ctt18fscq5.
[43] Bataille, TAS, 13.
[44] Bataille, 14.
[45] Bataille, 12–13.
[46] Bataille, 9, 13.
[47] Bataille, 25.
[48] Linsey McGoey, “Bataille and the Sociology of Abundance: Reassessing Gifts, Debt and Economic Excess,” Theory, Culture & Society 35 (2018): 70.
[49] Andrew Abbott, “The Problem of Excess,” Sociological Theory 32, no. 1 (2014): 4, doi: 10.1177/0735275114523419.
[50] Jean Baudrillard, “When Bataille Attacked the Metaphysical Principle of Economy,” in Ideology and Power in the Age of Lenin in Ruins, ed. Arthur Kroker and Marilouise Kroker (London: Macmillan Education UK, 1991), 136, doi: 0.1007/978-1-349-22346-6_10.
[51] Baudrillard, 136.
[52] Bataille, TAS, 21.
[53] Berry Christopher J., Adam Smith: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 101. While Smith is known as the Father of Economics, I inserted the word ‘modern’ since economic thought predates him. Indeed, one of the things Bataille attempts to show in his economic writing is how the origins of economics lies not in accumulation but in loss, using potlatch as his seminal example.
[54] Omid Nodoushani, “A Postmodern Theory of General Economy: The Contribution of Georges Bataille,” Studies in Cultures, Organizations and Societies 5, no. 2 (1999): 333, doi: 10.1080/10245289908523531.
[55] Nodoushani, 333. My italics .
[56] John Sloman, Economics, 6th ed (Harlow: Prentice Hall/Financial Times, 2006), 43.
[57] Sloman, 96.
[58] Nodoushani, “Postmodern Theory of General Economy,” 333; Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology: Including Theses on Feuerbach and Introduction to The Critique of Political Economy (Amherst: Prometheus Books, 1998), 67.
[59] Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (Kitchener: Batoche Books, 2000), 14.
[60] Bataille, “The Notion of Expenditure,” 116.
[61] Bataille, 117.
[62] Bataille, 116.
[63] Bataille, TAS, 40.
[64] Bataille, 40.
[65] Bataille, 65–66.
[66] Bataille, 70, 73.
[67] Bataille, 11.
[68] Bataille, 25.
[69] Bataille, 40.
[70] Cf. Karl Marx, “Letter to Ruge,” in Early Writings (London: Penguin, 1975), 209. “We shall simply show the world why it is struggling, and consciousness of this is a thing it must acquire whether it wishes or not;” Bataille, TAS, 41.
[71] Bataille, TAS, 116.
[72] Max Weber, Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Hoboken: Taylor and Francis, 2013), 116.
[73] Jean-Joseph Goux, Kathryn Ascheim, and Rhonda Garelick, “General Economics and Postmodern Capitalism,” Yale French Studies, no. 78 (1990): 207–8, doi: 10.2307/2930123. My italics.
[74] Goux, Ascheim, and Garelick, 208.
[75] Goux, Ascheim, and Garelick, 208.
[76] Bataille, TAS, 67–68.
[77] Bataille, 66.
[78] Goux, Ascheim, and Garelick, “General Economics and Postmodern Capitalism,” 209.
[79] Goux, Ascheim, and Garelick, 210.
[80] Goux, Ascheim, and Garelick, 210.
[81] George Gilder, Wealth and Poverty (New York: Bantam Books, 1981), 30.
[82] Goux, Ascheim, and Garelick, “General Economics and Postmodern Capitalism,” 214.
[83] Goux, Ascheim, and Garelick, 220.
[84] Goux, Ascheim, and Garelick, 219.
[85] Goux, Ascheim, and Garelick, 220.
[86] Benjamin Noys, “‘Grey in Grey’: Crisis, Critique, Change,” Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies, no. 4 (2011): 54.
[87] Bataille, TAS, 119.
[88] Bataille, 119.
[89] Ishay Landa, “Bataille’s Libidinal Economics: Capitalism as an Open Wound,” Critical Sociology 41, no. 4–5 (2015): 582, doi: 10.1177/0896920514526625.
[90] Georges Bataille, The Accursed Share, Volumes 2 and 3, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Zone Books, 1991), 422.
[91] Bataille, TAS, 12. Bataille explains that he makes this over-simplified distinction so that his thinking can first be grasped, but this “rudimentary classification” will later have to be further explicated through “detailed analysis.”
[92] Bataille, 24.
[93] UNDP, United Nations Development Programme Annual Report 2019 (New York: UNDP, 2020), 19.
[94] United Nations, “Ending Poverty,” United Nations, accessed April 1, 2021, https://www.un.org/en/global-issues/ending-poverty.
[95] Bataille, TAS, 39.
[96] Andrew Abbott, “The Problem of Excess,” Sociological Theory 32, no. 1 (2014): 8, 2, doi: 10.1177/0735275114523419.
[97] The invisible hand is described by Smith in The Wealth of Nations (1776).
[98] Abbott, “Problem of Excess,” 3.
[99] Thomas Robert Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population (London: J. Johnson, 1798)
[100] Abbott, “Problem of Excess,” 4.
[101] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, “Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 2, Book 2,” in Collected Works (New York: International Publishers Co, 1997), 82–83; Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, “The Communist Manifesto,” in The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Robert C. Tucker (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1978), 479.
[102] Abbott, “Problem of Excess,” 4–5.
[103] John Maynard Keynes, Essays in Persuasion (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1963), 368.
[104] Keynes, 367.
[105] Abbott, “Problem of Excess,” 5. The term “dismal science” comes from 19th century Scottish historian, Thomas Carlyle.
[106] Abbott, 5. Becker won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1992.
[107] Aristotle, “Metaphysics, Book 1,” in The Works of Aristotle, ed. William David Ross (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1928), Chp. 1.
[108] A. H. Maslow, “A Theory of Human Motivation,” Psychological Review 50(4) (1943): 373–74, doi: 10.1037/h0054346.
[109] Maslow, 383.
[110] Abbott, “Problem of Excess,” 8.
[111] Abbott, 9. Abbott gives an example of how the pleasure from watching a sports event together with a friend may be greater than the sum of the pleasures of both watching the event separately plus spending time with a friend sans event.
[112] Abbott, 11.
[113] Bataille, TAS, 23.
[114] Nodoushani, “Postmodern Theory of General Economy,” 335; Goux, Ascheim, and Garelick, “General Economics and Postmodern Capitalism,” 207–8.
[115] Abbott, “Problem of Excess,” 12–13. Surfeit creates problems in two ways: 1) overload, where the task is too large and complicated, and 2) habituation, where the routine of having excess decreases the perceived value of the object. Welter can lead to: 1) an overload of alternatives, where there are too many choices creating difficulties in selection, and 2) value contextuality, which is induced by the overload of alternatives. The value of each alternative changes in combination with the others chosen.
[116] Abbott, 15–17.
This essay has been published in Critique, p. 51-62. https://www.durham.ac.uk/media/durham-university/departments-/philosophy/MMXXII-NO.-1.pdf
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