Law Jia-Hao Memoire2021 FINAL

Our Shared Lives:
How Pleasure Can

Strengthen Equality
Law Jia-Hao
Diplômes 2021
Cover Image:
Author’s Illustration, Inspired by Human Time
is Movement (2019), by Studio Olafur Eliasson
The eagle of his nest
No easier divest
And gain the sky,
Than mayest thou,
Except thyself may be

Thine enemy;
Captivity is consciousness,
So’s liberty.
- Emily Dickinson
Finally, I’m crossing the threshold

From the ordinary world
To the reveal of my heart
Undoubtedly, that will for certain
Take the dead out of the sea
And the darkness from the arts
This is my commitment
My modern manifesto
I’m doing it for all of us
Who never got the chance
For... and for...

And all my birds of paradise
Who never got to fly at night
‘Cause they were caught
up in the dance
- Lana Del Rey, Get Free
Cologne, 2019
Fréjus, 2020
To
My family and my friends
Ms Ioana Ocnarescu, Mr Antoine

Dufeu and Mr Michael Leube
Miss Clare Farrell
Samantha, for sharing

the rage and passion
Jordi, for loving and living

with the rage and passion
&
Those who make this life possible

Those who made this work possible
Those who live with hope
And those who struggle to find it
Thank you for sharing

your time with me.
Fréjus, 2020
Contents
Introduction 1
I Capitalism Does Not Enable Equality 5
1. Wage Labour, Time & Income 6

2. Economic Growth, Excessive Consumption & 18
Imbalance
II Pleasurable Movement Towards Equality 29
1. Modal Pleasure, Knowledge & Awareness 30

2. Self-Direction & Agency 36
III Inequality is a Tilted Scale 47
1. The Allures of Physical Pleasure 47

2. Pleasure is Not Absence of Pain 53
Conclusion 59
Glossary 63
Figure Sources 64
Bibliography 65
Annex 71
Interview with Michael Leube, Anthropologist 72

Interview with Clare Farrell, Activist and Co-Founder 84
of Extinction Rebellion (UK)
Venice, 2016
1
Introduction
Capitalism thrives on inequality. The exploitation of our lives gives rise

to the profit that capitalists earn, and the freedom to live their lives
in ways that most of us cannot. Their main claim to such privilege is
that they had the fortune to own some assets. This is not immediately
apparent to those without the means to make sense of the system in
which we live our lives. However, it can be experienced in the way we
live our lives. How many of us have the ability to meaningfully craft
lives we would freely choose to live? This is not about giving everyone
good lives. After all, what a good life is differs from individual to
individual. Instead, this is about whether or not we each have the ability
to craft good, happy lives. For this, we need to be able to exercise our
agency, and we need the freedom to do so. Most of us are oblivious
to the profound unhappiness or the lack of satisfaction that comes
from only being able to live between the hours of work, rest and the
obligations life thrusts upon us. We exchange large portions of our
time for smaller portions in which we can experience some leisure,
working to escape the work that allows us to escape. This inequality –
of freedom, ability, truly free time, and with the world around us – will
only reproduce inequality. If we desire the ability to lead happy lives,
there is an imperative to reconsider how we, as individuals, can move
the needle towards equality. It is only through the equality of all that
individuals are guaranteed freedom. Yet, the process can be difficult.
It might call for some personal pain and sacrifice. Knowing this can be
difficult for individuals to take action. Moreover, it sometimes seems
that big goals require actions to match. If there is an easier way for
individuals to recognise the problem with this way of life, and under-
stand why they have a responsibility not just to themselves but to their
communities and their fellow human beings, doing what is needed can
feel less difficult a task. We all know the simple pleasure we experience
when we know we are doing something that is right, even if it pains
us to do so. Is there a way to replicate this pleasure in the service of
equality for all? To do so, this thesis suggests that pleasure can be
used as a mode for action. Specifically, pleasure as a mode of action
can help realign our desires and our actions with our innate desire to
live well, it can serve as both the means and end to creating lives that
2 Introduction
are more pleasurable and meaningful.
To what extent can pleasure strengthen equality? Within the context

of the thesis, a good life is one where we align our desires with our
well-being, and direct the attendant actions towards it. The agency with
which we exercise our choices is linked to the power we have access
to. Therefore, a good, happy life constitutes an equality of this power.
Because equality affects the everyday experience of individual lives, and
living itself is communal, it is constitutive of well-being and individual
happiness. Therefore, it necessarily involves the individual. In the
thesis, equality and well-being will be referred to interchangeably,
and in both the individual and communal senses of the word. This
thesis will begin by examining how capitalism continually repro-
duces and institutes inequality in our everyday lives. We need to find
a way to make society more equal, so that some people are not able
to benefit at the expense of others. For this, there is a potential for
mobilising the motivating effects of pleasure, and the thesis will go
on to examine the ways in which it can be used to help individuals
generate and strengthen equality through their actions. This could be
in their roles as private individuals, or as members of organisations.
The thesis will seek to understand what it means to reappropriate
pleasure from capitalism and redefine it. It will also demonstrate how
generating equality also helps strengthen equality at the same time.
Finally, the thesis will also examine the limits of pleasure in strength-
ening equality, and identify ways in which designers can intervene.
In this thesis, the critique of capitalism is guided by Johan Fornäs’s

Capitalism: A Companion to Marx’s Economy Critique, a modern 1
companion to Karl Marx’s original Capital. Equality is understood

as the equality of freedoms, rights and capability that are essential
to helping people live good lives. It involves the social arrangements
necessary for helping people exercise their agency in order to effec-
tively craft the lives they desire. Such an understanding is based on
Amartya Sen’s Development as Freedom. In the book, Sen advocates2
a system of freedoms and rights that share symbiotic relationships

with each other, as a counter against the system of inequality found
in capitalist societies. In exploring the role of pleasure, the thesis
will be guided by George Rudebusch’s Socrates, Pleasure, and Value. 3
This book is essential to the thesis, as it makes a strong argument for
1 FORNÄS Johan, Capitalism: A Companion to Marx’s Economy Critique, New York, NY, Routledge, 2013.
2 SEN Amartya, Development as Freedom, New York, NY, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc, 1999
3 RUDEBUSCH George, Socrates, Pleasure and Value, New York, NY, Oxford University Press, 1999.
3
living a good life and demonstrates how modal pleasure is ultimately

an indispensable tool for doing so.
The thesis will be developed in three sections:

Section I: Capitalism Does Not Enable Equality will examine the
ways in which capitalism structures inequality into our lives. It will
do so first by the dichotomy of the roles most individuals play, that
is as wage labourers and consumers. Next, it will look at the way the
law is used to legitimate this dichotomy, and preserve the advantage
capitalists enjoy under capitalism.
Section II: Pleasurable Movement Towards Equality explores the role
of modal pleasure as a guide for generating and strengthening equality.
It will demonstrate how modal pleasure works in various ways, and
why it ultimately constitutes the good life.
Section III: Inequality is a Tilted Scale discusses the limits of pleasure
in generating equality. In particular, it shows how pleasure as a sensation
has been appropriated by capitalism and commodified to distract us
from the more important and impactful forces of exploitation and
inequality.
Orvieto, 2018
5
Capitalism Does Not Enable Equality
“The necessity for a form of socialism is based on the obser-

vation that the world’s present economic arrangements doom
most of the world to misery; that the way of life dictated by
these arrangements is both sterile and immoral; and finally,
that there is no hope for peace in the world so long as these
arrangements obtain.”
– James Baldwin, No Name in the Street
At its very basic, capitalism is a system of unequal relationships. It is 4
not just an economic system, and should be primarily understood as a

political economy – a totality of economy, politics and social relations. 5
Together, this system of relations makes capitalism work while also

structuring and reproducing inequality in our lives. This limits the
amount of freedom – and the power to exercise such freedom – we
each have to improve our own lives. It denies the pleasure that comes
from a life crafted from one’s active involvement in it. When we are
unable to self-direct our lives, the lives we do end up living are not
lives we choose to live. This is because being able to purposefully and
consciously reason, rationalise and decide which actions to take corre-
spond with the ability to live well. Hence, these cannot be happy lives.
6
The material effects of capitalism’s system of inequality on our lives

can be understood through the two primary roles most of us play in
capitalism – labourer and consumer. By codifying this system and its
requirements into the legal and judiciary system that runs our society,
capitalism and its structure of inequality appear as unquestionable
4 FORNÄS Johan, op. cit., p. 2.

5 Ibid., p. 13-14.
6 According to Rudebusch, when something is done well, it attains association with excellence. Therefore, the excel-
lence or defect of human actions confer the human soul with corresponding excellence or defect. Excellence is achieved
with wisdom, or the absence of ignorance. Accordingly, living with excellence is necessary to the good functioning of the
soul or – by extension – living happily. Therefore, the desire to live a happy life is in line with human nature. For more,
refer to RUDEBUSCH George, op. cit., p. 108-113.
6 I - Capitalism Does Not Enable Equality
facts of life. To better understand capitalism and how it does not enable
equality, Marxist critique will be used. This is because “(it) is a method
designed for investigating the inner complexities of capitalism and
offering tools to comprehend and criticise the social reality we live
in. As Fornäs explains, it allows us to move beyond the appearance of
7
things and relationships in capitalism to perceive them as they truly

are. In this way, we can better understand its effects on society and
8
social relationships.
According to David Schweickart who critiques capitalism in After

Capitalism, capitalist societies are defined by three basic characteristics:
1) Most people are wage labourers who work for capitalists who own
the means of production in return for wages. The final product of 9
their labour does not belong to the labourers, but to their capitalist
employers. A capitalist is someone who owns enough productive assets
that allow them to live only on the income generated by these assets. 10
2) The means of production are privately owned.

3) Goods and services are exchanged on a market. This also means
that prices for goods and services are determined by competition,
including wages. 11
Any economy that displays these key characteristics is capitalist

in practice, even if societies differ in terms of political governance.
Our societies are organised and run according to the capitalist mode
of production and its needs. Therefore, most societies are capitalist
societies.
1. Wage Labour, Time and Income
The first role most people play in capitalist societies is that of wage
labourer. The payment of wages in return for labour power forms a
major part of Marxist critique of capitalism because Karl Marx was able
to show – by breaking down the inherent contradictions of capitalism
– that time forms the basis for value creation under capitalism. By
differentiating between who gets to spend time freely and who does

8 Ibid., p. 15-17.
9 Consequently, anyone who depends on a wage for their living is a wage “labourer”, even if they are not normatively
referred to as labourers in the traditional sense of the word.
10 SCHWEICKART David, After Capitalism, p. 26.
11 Ibid., p. 24-25.
7 Wage Labour, Time & Income
not, Marx was able to pinpoint the source of inequality that is inherent
to capitalism. 12
a. Wage Labour Makes Time Expensive to Live
Under capitalism, wage labour has become the norm through which
most people earn the money they need to be able to survive. Wage
labourers have to trade a certain portion of their finite lifetimes for a
salary that under-compensates them for the true value of their time.
They are obliged to do so, otherwise they will not be able to survive,
much less live well. They will always require wages to be able to afford
the necessities for living. As a result, time itself becomes defined by
economic value, and the very act of living – or spending time – becomes
prohibitively expensive for most people. What results is a temporal
inequality, where wage labourers are not free to live life itself without
incurring an economic cost. Thus, each labourer’s lifetime – a sort
of time budget – is dichotomised. Firstly, wage labourers have no
choice but to dispose of a certain amount of their life-time to wage
employment, which includes losing the use of their surplus labour-time
for the capitalists. Next, another amount of time has to be disposed
13
of in order to regenerate the energy needed for the next working day.
Since most people cannot afford to be unemployed, they are obliged to
use their time in these two manners. At the same time, as members of
society, labourers also need to spend time fulfilling the responsibilities
of these roles and meet certain social and cultural needs. These are 14
all necessary for society to function, which in turn allow capitalism

to continue being the dominant mode of production. However, wages
are usually only paid for time spent at work and not the rest of it, even
though these other functions are necessary to the capitalist machine.
Ultimately, capitalism appropriates the value of these functions for
its profits. 15
Capitalism makes this possible because the means of production are

owned by capitalists. Before the free market on which its commodities
can be exchanged, capitalism first requires the legal privilege over the
assets that make up capitalist production processes. This legal privilege
– in the form of deeds, patents and other such contracts – grants
capitalists competitive advantage in accumulating the wealth generated
12 FORNÄS Johan, op. cit., p. 8-10.

13 Ibid., p. 62-65.
14 Ibid., p.82.
15 Ibid., p. 78.
by the use of these assets over others. According to Katharina Pistor,

16
at its very basic, capital is made up of an asset, and the legal code. It is 17
this legal code that cements the relationship an asset holder has over an
asset – that is, ownership of it. This also confers the attendant benefits
of such ownership to the owner. Assets do not just include tangible
18
objects such as land and machines. With the help of the law, it is now
possible for assets to take less tangible forms such as ideas, processes,
digital code and even genetic code.19 Capitalists and capitalism are
able to apply the law to its advantage because it has the state’s backing. 20
The state enforces the law, and recognises the legitimacy of legal claims
through certain social arrangements and agencies, such as the police
force, the courts of law, patent offices and parliament, among others. 21
One of these competitive advantages is the ability to pay labourers

only for the hours spent at work. In general, most of us spend ⅓ of our
lives working. Johan Fornäs explains that “labour power… appears
22
as if it was a constant value in the production process, and the value

of the labourer’s share in the labour product seems to be paid fully
in salary.” Wages appear to be fair and equal compensation for our
23
time. However, according to Marxist critique, labour power is actually

underpaid because the cost of regenerating labour power is often a lot
lower than its ability to produce value. According to Fornäs, a working
24
day is composed of necessary labour-time, and surplus labour-time. 25
16 PISTOR Katharina, op. cit., p. 4.

17 Ibid., p. 2.
18 As Pistor explains, “[The modules of law] bestow important attributes on assets and thereby privilege its holder:
Priority, which ranks competing claims to the same assets; durability, which extends priority claims in time; universality,
which extends them in space; and convertibility, which operates as an insurance device that allows holders to convert their
private credit claims into state money on demand and thereby protect their nominal value…” For more, refer to PISTOR
Katharina, op. cit., p. 3.
19 Ibid., p. 108-131.
20 Ibid., p. 17.
21 The state enforces the law, and recognises the legitimacy of legal claims through certain social arrangements and
agencies, such as the police force, the courts of law, patent offices and parliament, among others. The state has an incentive
to make capitalism possible because its survival has also come to depend on the survival and growth of capitalism. For
more refer to PISTOR Katharina, op. cit., p. 17-20.
22 Gettysburg College, ‘One Third of Your Life Is Spent at Work’, Gettysburg College, accessed 14 September 2020,
https://www.gettysburg.edu/news/stories?id=79db7b34-630c-4f49-ad32-4ab9ea48e72b.
24 Ibid., p. 70.
25 The former refers to the duration in which labourers produce a value equal to the value of the means of subsistence
required for regenerating labour power. For more, refer to FORNÄS Johan, op. cit., p. 78.
The rest of the time – or surplus time – is in fact never truly compen-
sated. The corresponding value generated by the surplus labour-time is
26
the surplus value that capitalists appropriate as their profits when the
final good is sold. In addition, under the capitalist production process,
the labour power of any random wage labourer is in general taken as
the same as that of another wage labourer.27 When one labourer is as
replaceable as another, labour power has been commodified. Fornäs
explains that “When labour power becomes a commodity, the exchange
between capitalist and worker seems also as if it were equal and free,
which conceals the fundamental injustice and fetter of exploitation.” 28
The “freedom” of wage labourers consists only in their freedom from

the means of production, and the freedom to sell their labour power
or starve. They are not free from wage employment.
29 30
This inequality is problematic firstly because wage labourers do not

receive fair and equal remuneration for their time, severely limiting their
ability to craft the lives they themselves desire. As Fornäs observes, «on
the one hand, [the capitalist mode of production] appears historically
as an advance and a necessary aspect of the economic process of the
formation of society, on the other hand, it appears as a more refined
and civilized means of exploitation.” This means that most people do
31
not see wage labour as exploitation, because this way of life has become
the socially accepted fact of life. Moreover, wage labourers do not have
the freedom to meaningfully decide how to spend whatever “leisure”
time they have now in ways that are valuable to them. In part, this is
because the necessity and repetitiveness of wage labour has separated
man from his own time. According to Guy Debord, this means that
32
wage labourers no longer experience life as a journey toward fulfillment

and toward death: “Once he has given up on really living, he can no
longer acknowledge his own death…” Therefore, the wage labourer
does not really understand what it means to live, and labours under
the fears created by capitalism, opening him up to more exploitation.
For example, each labourer’s finite lifetime now has economic value
26 As Fornäs explains, the working day consists of necessary labour-time plus surplus labour-time. The maximal length
of the working day is the total length of a day (24 hours) minus the time necessary for physical and social reproduction
of labour power. Refer to FORNÄS Johan, op. cit., p. 80-87 for more.
27 Ibid, p. 61-62.
28 Ibid., p. 258.
29 Ibid., p. 68.
30 Ibid., p. 61-62.
31 MARX Karl, Op. cit., p. 486 quoted in FORNÄS Johan, Op. cit., p. 103.
32 DEBORD Guy, The Society of the Spectacle, p. 86.
based on how much they can contribute to the capitalist process. This
corresponds to the total earnings they are expected to earn during
their life. Therefore, people now have an incentive to protect this
earning potential against the reality that life is unpredictable. One
way that capitalism exploits this fear is insurance. Debord writes,
“Life insurance ads merely insinuate that [the wage labourer] may be
guilty of dying without having provided for the smooth continuation
of the system following the resultant economic loss.” It is sold as a 33
form of protection against the unpredictability of life, even though the

reality is that it feels necessary because time has been commodified
such that the premature loss of life often results in a substantial loss
of income for their family. The fear of leaving loved ones in destitution
is real and rational because under capitalism and absent substantial
social safety nets, individuals only have each other to rely on. The 34
rise in exploitation of this very real, rational fear is evidenced by the

rise of financial services as an industry, which has in turn been linked
to the rise in income inequality in recent decades. Not only do wage 35
labourers have to trade their life-time for underpaid wages, they also
have to dedicate a certain amount of it “buying time” in the form of
life insurance, the “benefits” of which can only be accessed upon their
own death or permanent injury. In the meantime, capitalists benefit
because they do not have to pay for society to replace the labourer, a cost
borne instead by the state. In this way, labourers defer living in the
36
now to earn their and their loved ones’ means of surviving tomorrow.
In comparison to the rest of society, capitalists do not suffer this

inequality of time. The wage they pay to labourers masks the true value
of labour, such that it appears as though the means of production and
the investment will of capitalists can generate value too. This income 37
does not depend on the exploitation of their time, because the time
they spend freely is generated by the exploitation of the wage labourer’s
time. Thus, capitalism allows capitalists to do with their time what
38
they wish and be completely unproductive if they so desire, while wage

labourers do not enjoy the same freedom. To divorce themselves from
the paradigm of wage labour would often be to starve, especially since
33 Ibid., p. 86.
34 This is partly a result of commodity fetishism, more fully explained later on page 18.
35 ATKINSON Anthony B., Inequality – What Can Be Done?, p. 82.
37 Ibid., p. 190.
38 MARX Karl, Capital, a Critique of Political Economy., trans. Ben FOWKES, vol. 1, p. 667 quoted in FORNÄS
Johan, op. cit., p. 62.
almost no one has the ability or the means to produce the necessities
of modern life. Wage labourers cannot live freely and are obliged to
39
sell their labour power for money in order to survive.
The choice between wage labour and starvation is Hobson’s choice.

The lack of agency and ability for most people to direct their lives in
ways counter to or different from the needs of capitalism means that
the lives they are forced to live cannot truly be happy, pleasurable
lives, because these are not lives people consciously and purposefully
choose to lead.
b. The Legalisation of Exploitation Perpetuates Inequality
The law aids in social-acceptance of exploitation in the form of wage

labour. It is seen as legal and hence natural simply because what differ-
entiates a legal act from an illegal one often comes down to the law
codifies the way society defines exploitation. It is important to critique
the law and its role in preserving inequality under capitalism because,
according to Katharina Pistor, it is what transforms the ownership of
assets into a profitable endeavour. She writes “Not the asset itself,
40
but its legal coding, protects the asset holder… and gives his wealth
longevity, thereby setting the stage for sustained inequality.” The 41
exploitation of wage labourers by capitalists is legal simply because

the law allows for it. In this case, this form of exploitation is seen as
necessary to capitalism, and capitalist societies by definition rely on
capitalism to survive. With the backing of the state, capitalists are
able to legalise their exploitation of labour power and wage labourers
through contract and labour laws. The agreement struck between both
parties within the terms set out in an employment contract and the
state’s labour laws mask the exploitative features of wage labour. A
contract between both parties is the legal expression of the freely
made agreement between both parties. By entering into a contract 42
with each other, the ownership of labour power is transferred from

the labourer to the capitalist. The capitalist is then able to decide how
43
to use it, and for how long. The contract is legal not only because the
state will enforce its terms, but also because the state allows the law
to code humans as assets. As Katharina Pistor explains in her book
39 Ibid., p. 68.
40 PISTOR Katharina, op. cit., p. 2-6.
41 Ibid., p. 6.
42 MARX Karl, Capital I, p. 279-281, quoted in FORNÄS Johan, Op. cit., p. 66.
43 Ibid., p. 64-66.
The Code of Capital, «[people] can contribute their labor as capital

to a firm. Law is malleable, and it is easy to mold human labor as an
in-kind contribution.” She points to the legality of slavery as proof of
44
such malleability in the application of law to transform humans into

assets. Although seen as an inhumane and unjust application of the
45
law today, the otherwise legal ownership of slaves as living assets in

the past conferred the asset holders – slave owners – with priority to
the wealth that slaves generated for them as means of production. 46
According to Marxis critique, wage labour is exploitative by default.

Thus, workers can only hope for some respite from exploitation, not a
total abolishment of it. The state can certainly provide some protection
to wage labourers in the form of labour protections and benefits that
apply to every worker, or in specific industries. These reduce the degree
of exploitation as they alleviate the consequences of wage labour. The
protection the law provides varies across countries, cultures and time.
The changing nature of work due to technology and how it is perceived
is evidence of how the law is often merely a means to an end. The rise
of the gig economy as mediated by advances in technology in recent
years demonstrates the way the law harms or protects is influenced
by how society values labour and its inherent exploitation. This has
changed the relationship between employment, wage and the benefits
and protections of formal employment. It has allowed some employers
to argue that the flexibility and relative impermanence of the working
arrangements mean that they are not obliged to provide the protec-
tions or benefits to their employees mandated by law. In turn, they can
maximise their profits. Uber, a ridesharing platform with an interna-
tional and global presence, is one example. As Ariene Reis and Vikram
Chand show in their article “Uber Drivers: Employees or Independent
Contractors?”, Uber is able to reduce its operational costs and hence
maximise its profits by contracting drivers as independent contrac-
tors. This allows Uber to avoid paying taxes on income earned by Uber
47
drivers, and skirt limits on work hours and the resultant overtime
benefits – protections that help reduce the degree to which wage
48
labourers are exploited and enhance their well-being.
44 Ibid., p. 11.
45 Ibid., p. 11-12.
46 Ibid., p. 11-12.
47 REIS, Ariene and CHAND Vikram, ‘Uber Drivers: Employees or Independent Contractors?’, Kluwer International
Tax Blog, 3 April 2020, http://kluwertaxblog.com/2020/04/03/uber-drivers-employees-or-independent-contractors/.
48 Ibid.
In the case of Uber, it has faced multiple lawsuits all over the world,
with varying outcomes for its drivers. Some countries like France
and the United Kingdom have ruled that Uber’s drivers are regular
workers. Their courts have argued that since Uber drivers depend
on Uber’s platform and algorithms for their wage, its drivers have a
right to employment benefits and protections. On the other hand,
49
courts in Pennsylvania and Florida sided with Uber, thus limiting the
protection its drivers enjoy in these states. Capitalists such as Uber’s
owners have the resources and power to take advantage of globali-
sation and, according to Pistor, “stitch together from their favorite
legal system and a handful of international treaties a patchwork that
sustains global markets for goods and services.” This allows capitalists
50
to incorporate their companies where they can enjoy the greatest

benefits in the form of tax rates, regulatory relief and shareholder
benefits.51 Furthermore, as Pistor points out, “opting out of one and
into a different legal regime… will not compromise the code’s power as
long as there is at least one state that is willing to back it.” Whether or
52
not the fundamental exploitation that wage labour exacts on labourers

is acceptable – and to what extent – comes down to each individual legal
jurisdiction and its values. The ability of wage labourers and unions to
contest the degrees to which they can be “legally” exploited is often
smaller compared to capitalists.
The access to the law and the power to wield it to one’s advantage
depend heavily on one’s resources. Outside of state-sanctioned protec-
tions, the balance of power in individual, private contracts generally
favours capitalist employers as they often have greater access to
resources and power. They are better able to set the terms of a contract,
freely hiring any labourer willing to accept those terms. The state is
also often slower to respond to changes in conditions that require
corresponding changes in the law. Often, wage labourers only have
53
simple contract and labour laws to turn to for protection. Due to the
necessity of wage labour, they have less power to dictate the terms
of their employment as compared to capitalist employers. Unless the
state provides ample resources and protections, the freedom that wage
labourers have from exploitation consists only in seeking less of it, or
by seeking new employment elsewhere. Moreover, since wage labourers
49 Ibid.
50 PISTOR Katharina, Op. cit., p. 179.
51 Ibid.,, p. 7.
52 Ibid., p. 7.
53 Ibid., p. 179.
are also dependent on wage labour for survival, there is an inequality of

power within the system of wage labour. In this way, as the mechanism
through which capitalist intents are translated into the systems that
organise our society, the law lends greater legitimacy to the exploit-
ative relationship between the capitalist and wage labourer.
Secondly, legal limits on the length of a working day can make them
appear not only natural, but also a common and acceptable limit for
all. This further legitimises the exploitation of wage labour. However,
this limit is not “natural”, as capitalists will always wish to maximise
the length of the working day in order to exploit as much labour power
as possible and maximise profit. The normative 8 hour workday was
54
achieved through a prolonged and sustained struggle by the working

class. In addition, Fornäs writes:
55
Few countries have diminished this length consid-

erably further, testifying to the continued efforts
of capitalists to extract as much surplus labour as
possible: ‘the most fundamental right under the law
of capital is the equal exploitation of labour power by
all capitalists’. 56
On the one hand, by limiting the degree to which capitalists can exploit
labour by restricting the length of a working day, the law makes it
illegal for employees to be made to work more than that. On the other 57
hand, it could also make it difficult for wage labourers to contest the
length of the working day if the conditions arise for it to be meaning-
fully reduced. This is important because if the necessary labour time
has reduced but the length of the working day remains the same.
Technology has raised the productivity of labourers in the past few
decades, but working hours have not reduced by much. If anything, 58
they have increased, as advances in telecommunication technologies

have allowed employers to place more demands on employees. 59
54 Ibid., p. 84.
55 FORNÄS Johan, Op. cit., p. 80-87.
56 Ibid., p. 83.
57 Fornäs explains, “When the length of the working day is regulated by law, capitalists cannot arbitrarily raise the
rate of surplus value by lengthening that working day and thus increasing surplus labour.” FORNÄS Johan, Op. cit., p.
87.
58 SCHWEICKART David, Op. cit., p. 109-110.
59 ‘Modern Technology Brings More Productivity, Longer Working Hours’, TechCrunch (blog), accessed 29 September
2020, https://social.techcrunch.com/2009/07/24/modern-technology-brings-more-productivity-longer-working-hours/.
The ownership of the means of production coupled with the mallea-

bility of the law has meant that capitalists have been able to increase
their exploitation of labourers. Historically, this exploitation is not
naturally reduced nor is it a given. As the example of Uber shows, this
continues to be true today. This demonstrates the inequality in the
distribution of power between capitalists and workers, and the role
of the law in mediating – and maintaining – this unequal balance of
power. In doing so, wage labourers continue to lack the freedom to
decide how to spend their time shaping their own lives and destinies.
c. Inequality of Income, Inequality of Power
Capitalists are able to accumulate greater wealth than wage labourers,

and thus have greater access to the power to direct their own lives.
According to Marxist critique, the wage a labourer receives corre-
sponds to the value of the necessities required for survival in a society. 60
If a capitalist is successful, they should probably be able to “earn”

more money in a month than most of their employees. This often 61
takes the form of profit made by an enterprise, most likely owned by

capitalists. Assuming the standard of living for both are equal, the
62
proportion of total income used to purchase necessities will be larger

for a labourer as compared to the capitalist employer. Over time, as
both parties accumulate more savings, the capitalist is more likely
to end up wealthier than the labourer. Having to dedicate a smaller
portion of their overall income to the necessities of all lives means
that they are better able to use the remainder of their income in other
more advantageous ways.
In addition, the law aids capitalism – and capitalists in turn – in

maintaining income inequality by making it easy and legal for companies
to pay less tax. In doing so, the tax revenue a state can collect to fund
its programmes and policies is limited. This also weakens the state’s
ability to act against and reduce inequality. Liberal corporate and tax
laws help capitalism maintain this inequality by allowing capitalists
to incorporate their companies to their advantage. Capitalists essen-
tially “shop” for the corporate and tax laws most agreeable to their
60 ATKINSON Anthony B., op. cit., p. 11.

61 If a capitalist earns less than their highest paid employee, there is less incentive for them to be a capitalist and would
be better off seeking employment.
62 According to Schweickart, the alternative to capitalist ownership of a company is worker-self management, in which
employees share democratic control of their companies. For more, refer to SCHWEICKART David, op. cit., p. 49-51.
business interests. Such laws essentially make certain countries tax

havens or tax shelters, allowing capitalists to route all their revenue
to these locations and either pay disproportionately low amounts of
tax, or none at all. Apple is an example of the advantages corporations
and their owners enjoy when it comes to paying tax on their profit and
income. Between 2004 and 2014, it paid an effective tax rate of 1-5%
on all its sales within the European Union. It was able to do so by 63
creating two subsidiaries in Ireland which were considered “non-res-

ident” under Irish taxation law. In contrast, the tax rate across the
European Union (EU) was 20%. Viewed from another angle, this repre-
64
sents €14 billion which the EU could have used for the benefit of the
entire region. Low tax rates can be a cause for concern because they
65
limit the benefits of providing a conducive environment for business.

While having a big company like Apple based in one country can do a
lot in terms of employment and investment, low tax rates mean that a
disproportionate amount of revenue generated by this company simply
leaves the country. Taxes are a form of duty paid for the benefit of
66
doing business in a certain country or state. It is a way for the state

to be “paid” for providing the conditions and social arrangements
conducive to the operation of a business. It also helps the state fund
its social programmes and policies, redistributing the wealth generated
more equally, and keep the state running. After all, a company also
requires the state’s recognition in order to operate within its juris-
diction. On the other hand, individuals are obliged by dint of their
67
citizenship and residency statuses to pay taxes accordingly. They do 68
not enjoy the advantages that companies and – by extension – their

owners do. When a capitalist pays less tax on the income they derive
from their businesses, they limit the state’s ability to maintain or
improve the conditions of society. Atkinson found that a rise in post-tax
income inequality was the result of less progressive tax structures.69
He points to the increase in power that corporations have, due to
the development in technology that has allowed them to move their
operations and finances across borders. In order to retain companies
– and employment for residents – states have had to lower tax rates

64 Ibid.,, p. 72.
65 Deutsche Welle (www.dw.com), ‘Apple Tax Ruling for Ireland Shines Light on Global Tax Avoidance’, DW.COM,
23 July 2020, https://www.dw.com/en/apple-ireland-tax-avoidance/a-54274213.
67 Ibid., p. 68-69.
68 Ibid., p. 69-70.
69 ATKINSON Anthony B., Op. cit., p. 54, 66-67.
to remain competitive against each other. This has also affected their
ability to provide the necessary social services, such as education and
healthcare, shifting the burden onto private individuals. As Atkinson
explains, those who benefit from these are mainly business owners –
capitalists by another name. 70
This loss in potential for society to improve life for everybody goes
beyond just that. It also translates to an imbalance in power between
state, wage labourers and capitalists. As Anthony Atkinson argues:
“[We should be] concerned not just with the

consumption of the rich… but also with the power
that wealth can convey. This power may be exercised
over one’s family, as with the passing on of wealth to
heirs, or more generally in such ways as control of the
media or influence with political parties… [Income’s]
reach goes much further than consumption.” 71
Those with larger incomes tend to have better access to power and the
ability to wield it to greater effect than those with less. As a result,
capitalists are better able to weather the bumps in the road and hurdles
that life could throw their way.
Finally, the effects of income inequality are cumulative and do not

restrict themselves to one generation. Those with more today will be
better able to transmit their wealth and its attendant benefits to their
children. They tend to be better able at securing the future of their
72
children. The prevalence of child labour in modern globalised capitalist

production chains is evidence of how different forms of inequality
feed into each other. Since they require food much more urgently than
education, many child labourers are forced to spend their time working
instead of studying. In future, they are more likely to lack the skills
and knowledge required for better employment prospects as adults.
Furthermore, according to Atkinson, as more societies wake up to the
need for more sustainable development, we can expect future income
growth to be slower or even nonexistent. Therefore, he argues, “We
73
should not assume that [future generations] will be better off than we
70 Ibid., p. 103.
71 Ibid., p. 37.
72 Ibid., p. 11.
73 Ibid., p. 42.
are today… They may not be better off and perhaps even worse off.” If 74
we value the lives we lead today, it seems only fair that we should ensure
that those alive today and in the future have the same opportunity
too. This should not be a privilege of the few, but a right for everyone.
Poverty should not be understood simply as economic poverty, nor

should income inequality be seen merely a result of differences in
ability. Inequality is a lived condition unfairly imposed on millions
without the power to change and resist it. It affects their, and the way
people see or value themselves and their lives. As Schweickart writes:
[Poverty] can destroy the spirit as well as the body…

Damage to the human spirit is particularly acute in
a rich society that has removed the legal barriers to
equality and preaches (whatever the practice) the
ethos of meritocracy. If you don’t make it, it’s your
own fault. Poverty becomes unbearable. It destroys
self-respect. 75
People need to be able to afford material goods but they should also be
able to do with their lives what they desire, and live on equal standing
and dignity with their fellow human beings.
2. Economic Growth, Excessive Consumption and Imbalance
Modern capitalism equates growth with ever increasing levels of

consumption. For capitalists, freedom is associated with the ability
to consume goods. When the wage labourer leaves work, capitalism
leeches on these labourers-turned-consumers to fuel this growth.
a. To Live is to Consume
The consumption of commodities helps capitalist economies grow.

This has in turn resulted in a society that equates the consumption of
commodities with living well. This is because the private ownership
of the means of production means has separated labourers from the
product of their labour. These are owned by the capitalists, who pay
labourers just enough to allow them to survive, but not enough that
they can survive without their job. At the same time, it isolates
76
74 Ibid., p. 42.
75 SCHWEICKART David, op. cit., p. 112.
76 FORNÄS Johan, Op. cit., p. 62-65.
19 Economic Growth, Excessive Consumption & Imbalance
labourers from full knowledge of the production process, so that most

labourers are no longer able to produce the necessities of life on their
own. Fornas explains:
77
The working class uses [its wages] for buying means of subsistence in
order to reproduce its labour power and buy some of the consumer
commodities it has itself produced. The money paid in salaries thus
return back from the working class to the capitalist class. After having
consumed the means of subsistence, the workers are as poor as from
the beginning and are forced to sell their labour power anew. 78
In other words, not only are people dependent on

capitalists for the jobs they need to earn the money
to buy necessities, they are also dependent on them for
the very necessities themselves. Within this cycle of
exchange, people are either losing time to earn money
for commodities, or spending the money they earned
on commodities. They are unable to choose what kind
of products they can buy, since it is the capitalists who
decide what to produce for the market. 79
The capitalist system of production and consumption further limits

people’s freedom from capitalist commodity through commodity
fetishism. Because labourers do not have the knowledge or means of
producing their necessities on their own, as individual consumers, they
become dependent on other labourers in other production processes
for the goods they desire. Thus, instead of communal and historical
80
ties, social relations are now moderated by the exchange of goods in the
market. The use value of the goods in question become more important
than other more human or social ways of valuing one’s relationship
with another person. This creates a social alienation, where people are
estranged from each other. Fornäs explains:
81
In comparing 10 yards of linen to one coat, the coat

gets the role of expressing the value of the linen. In
real exchange, only use-values interact, and therefore
the value of a commodity can only be expressed in a
77 Ibid., p. 102-103.
78 Ibid., p. 126.
79 Ibid., p. 63.
80 Ibid., p. 49.
81 Ibid., p. 50.
use-value of another: the value of 10 yards of linen is

one coat... The coat can do this only because both the
linen and the coat contain socially necessary labour,
but this labour is not visible in itself. Instead, the coat
appears to be exchangeable just because of its natural
qualities as a use-value. 82
The fetishisation of commodities as an embodiment of human labour

thus results in a distortion of social reality, such that social relations
between people appear simply as relations between objects. The quality 83
of goods exchanged becomes less important than the use value of the
goods in question - what o theruseful products can someone else offer
in exchange for mine? This aids modern capitalism’s desire for growth
and development. This is because an individual’s value to society now
hinges on their ability to accumulate and consume more and more
capital goods as a consumer. As long as they are consuming, they are
of value to capitalism. As Guy Debord explains in his book The Society
of the Spectacle, the consumerist tendencies of capitalism to a sort
of spectacle – a social relation between people mediated by images. 84
According to Debord, this induced desire to consume is akin to an

opium war “designed to force people to equate goods with commodities
and to equate satisfaction with… survival...” The image of the accumu-
85
lation of commodities leads people to think that they are living well.
The appearance of consumption matters less than what they consume.
The social estrangement brought about by commodity fetishism means
that commodities have become the primary way through which we
relate to each other. As a result, our relationships become governed by
material goods and how much we consume in relation to each other.
Under capitalism, to live is to consume, and not much else.
In everyday life, this tendency to consume is made worse by the

temporal inequality suffered by wage labourers when they assume
their roles as consumers. According to Schweickart, because people
cannot afford to live “freely” and take pleasure from free leisure time,
as consumers, they have to adjust their consumption accordingly in
order to experience pleasure. There is not much else they can do with
86
their money but to buy and consume. In a society of insecure consumers
82 Ibid., p. 49.
83 Ibid., p. 50.
84 DEBORD Guy, op. cit, p. 2.
85 .71 .p ,.dibI
86 SCHWEICKART David, op. cit., p. 107-108.
who are exploited and underpaid at work, and who have been socially
alienated from one another, the consumption of commodities lends
individuals an illusion of status. As a society, we are conditioned to
87
feel safe only through constant consumption. The reprieve granted by

the consumption of commodities is temporary, and so people consume
continually.
b. Increased Consumption Does Not Equate to Social Progress
Under capitalism, we have been led to believe that the ability to

consume more means that our lives are improving. Philip Cafaro 88
points out in Economic Consumption, Pleasure and the Good Life

that mainstream economists often take indicators such as increased
energy consumption or increased purchase of consumer goods as
indicators of progress in developing countries. However, as Amartya 89
Sen and Atkinson both argue, these indicators – as well as others

such as the Gross National Product (GNP) and Household Income –
are often unreliable. Instead, as Cafaro explains, “the information
90,91
that economic growth will provide “more of what we want” is not

necessary to explain growth, nor is it part of its technical definition:
the phrase serves rather to commend growth to us.” It appears that 92
the consumption of goods is conflated with the health of the economy.

Fornäs is in agreement, writing, “capital continues to put firm pressure
on how much workers may consume, and they can never decide this by
themselves.” Consumers are constantly marketed to in order to induce
93
consumption. More fundamentally however, there is an unfreedom of

knowledge. The privatisation of the means of production also means
that full knowledge of the production process and its impacts belong
to capitalists. The division of labour means that there is a loss of the
knowledge of production, and labourers do not know the full extent
94
87 Ibid., p. 108.
88 CAFARO Philip, Economic Consumption, Pleasure and the Good Life, p. 478.
89 CAFARO Philip,op. cit., p. 478.
90 On the Gross National Product, Sen argues that the lived and material reality of life is influenced by much more
than the relativity of opulence that the GNP attempts to portray in one number, such as physiological, social, cultural
and other relevant factors. Refer to SEN, Amartya, The Standard of Living, p. 25-35 for more.
91 As Atkinson explains, these indicators can conceal inequality within households, and the inequalities that can occur
in the process of consumption. Furthermore, income is often just a means to an end, and the use of resources goes beyond
consumption. Refer to ATKINSON Anthony B., op. cit., p. 29-37 for more.
92 CAFARO Philip, op. cit., p. 478.
93 FORNÄS Johan, Op. cit., p. 63.
94 Ibid., p. 101.
of the impact of the production process. This is especially in terms of

environmental or social impact. Consequently, specialisation means
that a labourer likely only has knowledge of their part of the production
process. As consumers, they also do not usually have full and free
access to all the relevant information regarding the impact of their
consumption behaviour. This unfreedom of knowledge has created
a system in which we live our lives unconscious of the effects of our
actions. Cafaro argues:
Economic freedom may be a necessary part of living

a good human life, but such freedom involves both
freedom from outside control and freedom to fashion a
life that one understands and of which one approves…
Those who consume blindly are not free. 95
The unknowledgeable and hence unconscious consumption of commod-

ities cannot be a freely made decision to consume. If so, there is no
self-direction, which means that consumers consuming blindly are
not truly happy.
When we are better able to fulfill our desires by consuming commod-

ities, we are told that it means our lives are getting better. If people’s
decisions to consume were made consciously and with knowledge of its
impacts, more consumption would mean they are happier. However,
research has shown that this is not necessarily the case. Cafaro points
out that research has shown that income – and hence the ability to
consume – has very little bearing on overall satisfaction or happiness.
He writes that «beyond the poorest 10–15 percent of the population,
people’s incomes [and hence their ability to consume] do not correlate
with their subjective satisfaction with life.” Other researchers support
96
this view. In Wealth, Consumption and Happiness, Ahuvia finds 97
that satisfaction with income better correlates to levels of happiness.

However, when people adopt more holistic, subjective views of their
lives and economic situations, they are much more likely to report being
satisfied with what they have. Interestingly, another study found that
only one kind of consumption was positively correlated with happiness
– leisure spending. In particular, a $10,000 increase in spending on

96 Ibid., p. 479-480.
97 AHUVIA Aaron, ‘Wealth, Consumption and Happiness’, in The Cambridge Handbook of Psychology and
Economic Behaviour, ed. Alan Lewis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 199–226, https://doi.org/10.1017/
CBO9780511490118.009.
leisure goods generates 0.17-point increase in life satisfaction. It 98
found no other type of spending that generates this much increase

in happiness. The authors found that leisure spending has this effect
because it has a social or relational component. It reduces loneliness
and increases the feeling of belonging to one’s community or social
circle, which is what makes people happier. Therefore, if increased 99
consumption does indeed lead to greater happiness, there exists little

evidence for it. Beyond the ability to afford the basic necessities in life
and perhaps some unnecessary but pleasure-giving commodities here
and there, it appears people do not need to consume a lot to be happy.
Similarly, on a societal level, consumption-driven economic growth

does not necessarily entail social progress. This is especially so if short
term progress comes at the greater expense of growth or equilibrium
down the road. While modern capitalism has undoubtedly raised the
standard of living for millions, if such prosperity might be short lived
and only limited to those lucky enough to avoid the fallout in later years,
can it really be said that society has progressed? More importantly,
the overly narrow focus of freedom on the ability to consume ignores
the fact that commodities are means for other ends. The necessity of
a commodity depends on its utility to the individual in living, and
this varies from person to person. Conflating the increased ability
100
to consume with an increased ability to live well has upset the delicate
balance between human society and everything else around it, most
notably the environment and our natural resources. When we run up
against the limits of the life-giving systems that sustain our lives, the
consequences would be catastrophic. The assumptions we as a society
have accepted without question has severely limited our ability as
consumers to make informed decisions about our consumption behav-
iours. The benefits of modern capitalist development might have come
at the cost of the future of human civilization. Unfortunately, not only
has this increase in consumption failed at making us happier, it has
led to large scale consequences that threaten our survival as a species.
c. Excessive Consumption Has Led to Systemic Imbalance
The massive increase in overall societal consumption has led to an

imbalance with the natural systems that sustain us – the drastic
98 DELEIRE Thomas and Ariel Kalil, ‘Does Consumption Buy Happiness? Evidence from the United States’, in
International Review of Economics 57, no. 2 (2010), p. 172.
99 Ibid., p. 172-173.
100 SEN, Amartya, Equality of What?, p. 219.
degradation of the natural environment. Greater use of fossil fuels –

101
required to produce and power many of our goods, and our consumption
behaviours today – has been positively associated with environmental
degradation. It has pushed our natural environment – which does not
102
negotiate with our needs and desires – near to its absolute limit such
that climate change is the reality we face today. This unsettling of the
delicate balance between exploiting our natural and finite resources for
our gain poses an existential threat to humanity. In its World Social
Report 2020, the United Nations expects climate change to accelerate
environmental degradation and increase extreme weather events, with
unequal consequences for people across the globe. The poorest are 103
expected to bear the brunt of it, and any recent progress on reducing
inequality is also threatened. 104
The way we consume also brings into question the impact it is going to
have on future generations. When our actions lead to the destruction
and depletion of our resources and the environment, we need to recon-
sider if we have a right to do so. Should our development come at the
105
expense of the survivability of our future generations? Just as wealth

has generational consequences, so does excessive consumption. We
have created a situation which could potentially severely limit the
freedom and well-being of our children, and our children’s children.
This is proof that there could be a greater good that is defined by
more than increased wealth and consumption for a few generations.
As Cafaro writes, “Progress towards this good is genuine progress.
Increased material wealth and increased consumption may either
partially constitute or indirectly indicate such progress; they certainly
do not define it.” Genuine progress for society should result in the
106
improvement of lives not just for those who are living, but for those
to come in the future as well.
It is clear that as a society, we have lost sight of what a good life is.
The “happiness as consumption” trope has limited validity, and even

102 JOHNSSON Filip, Jan Kjärstad, and Johan Rootzén, ‘The Threat to Climate Change Mitigation Posed by the
Abundance of Fossil Fuels’, Climate Policy 19, no. 2 (7 February 2019): 258–74, https://doi.org/10.1080/14693062.201
8.1483885.
103 UNITED NATIONS, World Social Report 2020 – Inequality in a Rapidly Changing World (Executive Summary),
p. 7-8.
104 Ibid.
106 Ibid., p. 480.
when true, is not durable or sustainable. The happiness promised by

capitalism is limited to a privileged few, with the rest chasing after
it without realising that it is but a mirage. As individuals, it appears
that we have very little power against the institution of capitalism.
We are unable to meaningfully exercise our rights to live our lives in
ways that not only ensure our well-being today, but into the future.
Our societies are often said to be founded on the principles of fairness
and justice, so how are these systems of inequality made possible in the
first place? As wage labourers, we have lesser control over their lives
and are enslaved due to the necessity of wage labour. As consumers,
we are also not given the actual freedom to decide which items they
spend their wages on, or pertinent information that allow them to
make better decisions about how and what to buy. Therefore, they
have less power to decide how they wish to engage with the world
and with life itself. As Amartya Sen points out in Development as
Freedom, unfreedom in one aspect can impinge on other freedoms
and ultimately, a person’s agency. Likewise, “Freedoms are not only
107
the primary ends of development, they are also among its principal
means.” Equality is achieved and strengthened by acts of equality.
108
Often, the disparity in the ability of individuals to direct their lives

comes at the expense of their health, their communities, and has
upset the delicate balance between capitalist development and the
environment. All these are forms of oppression and unfreedom either
from or against the realities of life that limit the ability of individuals
to direct their actions and craft happy lives for themselves.
Ultimately, to take care of our own well-being in ways beyond those

provided by capitalism – and from which it profits – means reappro-
priating the power to do so from capitalism. It means to purpose-
fully choose to redefine the benefits of consumption in more holistic,
personal ways than consumption for its own sake. It also means we
need to redefine happiness such that consumption no longer becomes
the main standard of measurement. As Sen argues in The Standard
of Living, “... commodities are no more than means to other ends.
Ultimately, the focus has to be on what life we lead and what we can
or cannot do, can or cannot be.” Ultimately, living well is tied to the
109
individual’s capability to live well. This can be measured by what they

manage to achieve, or whether they manage to craft a life they desire. 110
107 SEN Amartya, The Standard of Living, p. 8.

108 SEN Amartya, Development as Freedom, p. 10.
109 SEN Amartya, The Standard of Living, p. 27.
110 SEN Amartya, Development as Freedom, p. 73-75.
The ability to do so is tied to the freedom one has, and the equal ability
for them to do so with other individuals. As Marc Hassenzahl et 111
al. write in “Designing Moments of Meaning and Pleasure”, if people

are better able to choose how they wish to engage with the world
around them – in other words to exercise their agency – they can make
themselves happier. Ultimately, to make it possible for everyone to
112
live happy lives, the scales of equality have to be recalibrated.
111 Ibid.
112 HASSENZAHL Marc et al., ‘Designing Moments of Meaning and Pleasure - Experience Design and Happiness’
in International Journal of Design 7, no. 3 (2013), p. 21.
27
This page is intentionally left blank.

Paris, 2017
29
Pleasurable Movement Towards Equality
Freedom has a thousand charms to show

That slaves, howe,er contented, never know.
- William Cowper
Equality is an important part of living well, because it makes possible

the self-direction that Gerge Rudebusch says is the key to the good
functioning of the human soul. In this way, equality can be under-
113
stood as ensuring the ability of people to exercise their agency to craft

happy lives. Equality means that people have the power to live their
lives freely. We have seen how, under capitalism, capitalists have a
competitive advantage in capturing a disproportionate amount of the
wealth – and its attendant power – generated by capitalism. There is
a need to critique inequality as it is not fair or just that the ability to
direct our destinies is reserved only for a few. Moreover, as it is wont
to do, life is unpredictable. Circumstances can change quickly and for
no apparent reason. Ensuring that people have the ability to improve
their circumstances is therefore imperative and central to the health
of society. More fundamentally, according to George Rudebusch in
Socrates, Pleasure, and Value, it is human nature to desire a happy
life. This is because the function of the human soul is to live, and to
live well is to be happy. This entails the ability to purposefully and
meaningfully make decisions and engage with the world and other
people. To do so, one has to have wisdom – or the absence of ignorance.
114
For that to happen, access to knowledge and information that inform

our actions and decisions is important. Furthermore, as Rudebusch
points out, “Desire is essential to deliberate action. Desire, ignorant or
113 RUDEBUSCH George, op. cit., p. 108-113.

114 According to Rudebusch, when something is done well, it attains association with excellence. Therefore, the excel-
lence or defect of human actions confer the human soul with corresponding excellence or defect. Excellence is achieved
with wisdom, or the absence of ignorance. Accordingly, living with excellenvce is necessary to the good functioning of the
soul or – by extension – living happily. Therefore, the desire to live a happy life is in line with human nature. For more,
refer to RUDEBUSCH George, op. cit., p. 108-113.
30 II - Pleasurable Movement Towards Equality
knowledgable, continues… until it finds satisfaction…” Desire powers 115
our actions, which affect our well-being. Therefore, an examination of

individual agency and its role in strengthening equality has to have
its starting point in desire itself.
As seen earlier, capitalism maintains an unfreedom of knowledge so

that people remain blind and ignorant to how their desires are being
exploited for the benefit of a few. What is needed here is for a way
for us to interrogate and question our desires and understand how
well aligned they are with our true desire for a happy life. To this
end, Rudebusch proposes pleasure as a mode of activity – or modal
pleasure – that will help us do this. It offers a way for us to ensure that
our actions contribute to our individual and collective well-being in
terms of equality. The following section will explore what this entails
exactly. Ultimately, the goal here is for people to be able to live and act
with pleasure, and equality is needed to achieve this. Hassenzahl et al.
point out that a happy life includes positive experiences in everyday
life, and the ability to more generally assess one’s life as being happy. 116
This ability to assess the condition of one’s life implies that a certain
level of reasoning and rationalisation is central to the act of living,
which also necessarily involves some degree of unpleasant or even
painful moments. With modal pleasure, people can make better sense
of life, and attend to their individual and shared well-being by directing
their energy towards actions that help generate and hence strengthen
equality.
1. Modal Pleasure, Knowledge & Awareness
Pleasure can be understood in two ways. When referring to the

pleasure associated with an activity, it is a sensation. When referring
to a person’s pleasure – such as the pleasure one experiences in doing
something they feel is right – it is a mode of activity. This refers to
the way an activity is carried out, and is separate from any particular
sensations. According to Rudebusch, modal pleasure is experienced
when carrying out “unimpeded activities of the soul” that are under-
stood as the exercise of a function central to a person’s well-being
and their ability to live a good life. This is defined as a happy life
117
in which one applies knowledge to their actions and exercises their

agency to craft a life according to their personal values and well-being.
115 Ibid., p. 107.

116 HASSENZAHL Marc et al., op. cit., p. 21.
117 RUDEBUSCH George, op. cit., p. 5.
31 Modal Pleasure, Knowledge & Awareness
Accordingly, one can live a good life by ensuring their actions are
aligned with well-being. When unimpeded, these activities are antic-
ipated, absorb one’s attention effortlessly and make one reluctant to
break off from them. 118
a. Ignorance as Neutrality
If we have more information about why we desire something, we can

avoid being ignorant about why exactly we have that desire, and the
impact and consequences of fulfilling that desire. Of course, such
information is not always available, as capitalism privileges economic
efficiency. This oftentimes means restricting information that would
otherwise impede this efficiency and the speed of consumption. Just
as the capitalist mode of production separates labour power from its
final product, it also separates consumers from perceiving the entire
production process. Today’s production processes often span the globe,
such that the consumption of a good is usually physically distant from
where it is produced. In this way, the impact of its production and
119
consumption is easier to perceive as a problem for the communities

and authorities of that “other” location. For example, this “out of sight,
out of mind” mentality means that lax environmental standards in
developing countries are often excused in the name of economic devel-
opment. Moreover, as Cafaro points out, capitalism prefers to keep
120
consumers ignorant because then it is possible to avoid prior judgement

of whether a set of preferences is good or bad. To the mainstream
121
economists and capitalists, one set of preferences is as good as another. 122
They would argue that the individual consumer knows best what consti-
tutes their own happiness and that a good life depends on the freedom
of choice. Therefore, allowing individual consumers to consume freely
123
and as they themselves see fit is ideal. However, this is the ideal for
capitalism but it is not necessarily so for the human condition. Keeping
consumers purposefully ignorant is not a neutral act.
The “preference neutrality” mainstream economists advocate is advan-
118 Ibid., p. 5.
122 Ibid.
123 Ibid.
tageous to capitalism because it helps consumers have greater freedom

to consume. It can sell to any and all sets of preferences. Therefore,
it is to capitalism’s advantage to restrict information, including that
associated with each act of consumption. Consumers are thus kept 124
ignorant of the full impact of their consumption behaviour. Otherwise,

they would probably discover that a lot of it is unfair, unsustainable
and untenable. Unethical production processes that depend on massive
deforestation, the exploitation of children and abuse of the poor would
otherwise provoke greater condemnation than they do today. However,
preference should not automatically translate into action. As Cafaro
argues, the strength of a preference is not always a good reason for
doing so, pointing to alcoholics’ preference as an example. This is 125
because an individual may not always be cognizant of the full conse-

quences associated with an action. Just as alcoholics probably concern
themselves much more with the immediate experience that drinking
gives them, consumers probably do not know enough or better about
how their well-being and that of others can be impacted in the short
term and in future. Activist and former fashion designer Clare Farrell
is in agreement, pointing out that there is a real problem with this
physical and perceptual distance. She explains that most people do
not know where the goods they buy come from, nor how many people
were involved in their production. They do not know what it means
to have such information, nor how such ignorance can be harmful
beyond the immediate impact to themselves. Farrell adds that there 126
are often harms to other communities in other parts of the world,

often in less developed countries. These countries often rely on the
low wages provided by employment from industries such as fashion to
power their economic growth and hopefully lift itself out of poverty.
However, this requires the sacrifice of a generation of people who
“lose their lives to heavy exploitation and crippling work…” A fuller 127
account of this kind of information has the potential to help people

make better choices, and inspire positive change in the way people
produce and consume. Therefore, it is imperative that people do not
remain ignorant or neutral about the entire range of impacts and
consequences related to the acts of production and consumption.
Blind or ignorant preference is not a truly self-directed, purposefully

made preference. In the context of consumption, the word “neutrality”
124 Ibid.
125 Ibid., p. 477.
126 See annex page : Farrell, Clare. (2020, September 30th). Personal Interview, p. 86-87.
127 Ibid.
implies a certain degree of conscious commitment to maintain a

balance between excess and defect. However, if this neutrality is
maintained through purposeful shielding of information – and if
such a neutrality is to the advantage of capitalism and capitalists
over that of everyone and everything else – it is not really neutral.
In this case, it cannot be argued that consumers are exercising their
freedom of choice consciously. In this aspect, Cafaro is in agreement
with Rudebusch in that a degree of intelligence is necessarily part of
the good human lives. He writes that if a preference is harmful for an
128
individual’s well-being then that preference should be changed. If it 129
is harmful for the well-being of society, then it should be changed as

well. The balance between either can sometimes be tricky to find, but
that is why knowledge is a prerequisite. Our preference for something
can vary according to our backgrounds, age, experience and context.
With knowledge, the individual now has something with which to
begin measuring and comparing the goodness of the different possible
actions, instead of just personal preference, the strength of a desire
or affordability.
b. Knowledge is Power
Modal pleasure helps us obtain and accumulate knowledge about

ourselves and our desires that can thereby give us the power to self-direct
our actions. Therefore, in taking these actions as we go about our daily
lives, it helps us direct the trajectory of our lives towards a happy,
well-lived one, instead of letting capitalism dictate how we act, live and
breathe. This is power we exercise in the face of capitalism’s sedative
forces. Acting with pleasure as a mode is an impetus for us to try and
understand where the value of an object of our desire is located. As
Rudebusch writes, “‘Desirable’ and ‘good’ do not mean simply ‘desired’
but ‘worthy or deserving of being desired.” In other words, do we
130
desire it for an intrinsic or extrinsic value? How well aligned is it with

our well-being? This is also a way to differentiate between a want and
a need – which is more consequential to our well-being as individuals?
It is akin to the pleasure that may be experienced when taking bitter
medication in order to get better – we do it not because we desire the
medication, but because of the intrinsic value of its role in improving
our well-being. Such a purposeful process can help us avoid making
decisions based only on sensate, physical pleasure. If we investigate

why we desire certain material goods and seek to understand where

their value lies, the knowledge we obtain from it can help us better
decide if we should act on them. Such knowledge can empower us to
take action that we feel justified in taking, knowing it is in alignment
with our well-being. This serves as a bulwark against the unfreedom of
knowledge that helps capitalism work efficiently, explored earlier. As
Rudebusch argues, “an object can be valuable independently of being
desired or valued by human beings.” Living well is very likely the true
131
desire of every human, and modal pleasure can help them achieve this.
In practice, modal pleasure would involve actively interrogating

one’s intentions. Philip Cafaro, a professor of philosophy, proposes a
framework for shifting the focus of our pleasures that would help us
clarify our intentions:
1) from short term to long term enjoyment

2) from the intended consequences to all the consequences
3) from monetary benefits to physical and spiritual benefits
4) from benefits to benefits and disvalues
5) from personal enjoyment to personal excellence 132

Through this process, we can gain a deeper and clearer understanding
of ourselves and why we desire what we desire. More importantly, it
represents an effort to ensure that every action we expend our time
and energy on contributes to our personal excellence, which is tied to
our well-being. Beyond individual well-being, modal pleasure also
133
widens the scope further to take into account the full effects of our
actions on the communities to which we belong, including those we live
in and our environment. This is important because what is good for us
134
may not always be good for others. Concern for short term, immediate
benefits should be balanced with how well these benefits hold up in the
long run, and whether or not it generates a disproportionate amount
of negative externalities for others. On the societal level, the costs
of overall social consumption of a good can outweigh the benefits of
individual consumption. This is evinced by the environmental problems
we face now due to excessive consumption brought about by economic
activities. As Cafaro argues, when a more holistic understanding of
the way our consumption behaviour impacts the world around us,

132 CAFARO Philip, op. cit., p. 481-482.
134 CAFARO Philip, op. cit., p. 481-482.
the rational response could be to limit social consumption in order

to protect the “physical life support systems” from being damaged.
135
Modal pleasure is valuable because it can help us differentiate goodness

from the appearance of pleasantness. Rudebusch explains that this
136
is because the pleasure associated with goodness has a real nature

apart from what seems pleasant to someone and about which they
may misunderstand or be mistaken about. That means that real
137
pleasure is not tied to a specific object. By valuing the goodness of a

desire separately from an object that helps fulfil that desire, our senses
can be clarified and confusion can be reduced. Instead, that goodness
becomes tied to a specific act and its alignment with our well-being. As
Rudebusch explains, “If it is the nature of one’s condition to be skillful,
then the activity in accordance with that nature will be the exercise of
that skill.” If this skill is exercised for the sake of itself and is done
138
well, then it is pleasurable. If it is exercised for the sake of something

else – for example to earn a living from it or to escape the pain of life
under capitalism – then the pleasure we take is secondary to that other
purpose. In fact, it depends on fulfilling that other purpose. In the
case of humans, since it is in our nature to desire to live well, we need
to ensure that our actions are aligned with this goal. The pleasure we
seek should be from the entire process and from knowing that we are
taking good care of our well-being.
Therein lies the difference between the extrinsic and intrinsic values of
pleasure – true adherence with our well-being. In the capitalist world,
where we are surrounded by and have easy access to so many things that
can give us sensatory pleasure, the value is mostly extrinsic, tied to its
temporary and material nature, which has to be consumed again and
again in order to fuel economic growth. It is also valued as an opioid per
Debord, that soothes the pain of a life that courses onwards, seemingly
beyond our control. On the other hand, pleasure as a mode of living
compels us to set aside objects of our desire in order to purposefully
examine our desire and motivations. In addition, by measuring how
well our desires and actions align with well-being, modal pleasure
gives structure and process to the myriad forms that information and
knowledge can come in. As Rudebusch writes, “without some standard
by which to measure one [action] against the other… knowledge like
135 Ibid., p. 477.

137 Ibid.
138 Ibid., p. 6.
a slave will be pushed around by any impulse.” Knowledge allows

139
every action to be an opportunity to exercise our agency and enact

more equality in the world.
2. Self-Direction and Agency
Acting with pleasure gives the individual an opportunity for redis-

covering and better understanding the self, and their motivations. By
starting to question how well aligned a desire is with one’s well-being,
knowledge and information can then begin to be sourced and accumu-
lated. With time and experience, the application of this knowledge to
our actions then becomes a matter of skill and wisdom.
a. Modal Pleasure is a Skill for Living Well
Modal pleasure is a skill that people can develop with time and
experience. It is a metric art of calculating magnitudes of good and
bad, by basing these calculations on their knowledge regarding the
impact of an action. It helps the individual differentiate between true
pleasure and false pleasure. It also helps them avoid mistaking sensate
pleasure as valuable for its own sake. This is important because some
sensate pleasures are linked to actions that are inherently valuable.
However, most of the time, sensate pleasures – as well as pain – are
merely imperfect representations of benefits and harms and should be
taken as just that – representations. An ignorant person would take
140
sensate pleasure at face value – as something beneficial. By conflating

sensate pleasure for the good, they will seek the maximisation of this
pleasure. On the other hand, a person who acts with pleasure would
consider their options for how their well-being can be achieved. They
would weigh the benefits against the deficits. It is impossible to expect
that there would be a way to act on a desire that is itself free from
negative consequences and externalities. Knowing this means that
this person should compare each option against the others, and pick
the one that optimises goodness and badness. Moreover, as Rudebusch
explains, “without… knowledge that is virtue, even if one had a super
demon for guidance, one would lack the unspoiled pleasure of virtuous
activity in which one’s happiness as a human being consists.” The 141
139 Ibid., p. 23.

140 Ibid., p. 92.
141 Ibid., p. 127.
37 Self-Direction & Agency
exercise of any skill requires knowledge for it to be pleasurable.
What this means in reality is that a person acting with pleasure should
open their minds up to clarify the intrinsic value of their desire. This
is because acting with pleasure means that one should also be open to
not just understanding what gives pleasure, i.e. desire, but other ways
of knowing and perceiving pleasure as well. This would allow them
to closely study the impact of each option according to how well it
aligns with their well-being and that of others. They should calculate
the magnitudes of good and bad that would be a result of an action.
Rudebusch refers to a quote from Jeremy Bentham, who writes:
Every circumstance by which the condition of an

individual can be influenced, being remarked and
inventoried, nothing… (is) left to chance, caprice,
or unguided discretion, everything being surveyed
and set clown in dimension, number, weight, and
measure… 142
This is to say that in order to ensure one’s autonomy, they should do

what they can to weigh the good and bad associated with an action –
as much as one can realistically predict or anticipate them – to ensure
that it is worth taking. They can take pleasure from knowing that
they made a decision that is better aligned with their well-being as
well as that of others. As anthropologist Michael Leube explains, not
having the full information regarding the production of the goods
people consume probably helps them sleep better at night, as a lot of
the things that make it possible for people to enjoy modern life are a
result of a lot of misery placed on others. That is why, by developing
143
the ability to measure and calculate magnitudes of good and bad,

people can take pleasure in doing what they can to generate more
good through individual action. By nature, man desires a good life. 144
Modal pleasure makes this possible by making the act of living itself
synonymous with the act of tending to our well-being. Strengthening
equality thus becomes possible and actionable.
b. Wisdom for Self-Direction
Wisdom developed with knowledge and experience helps us exercise
142 Ibid., p. 92.

143 See annex page : Leube, Michael. (2020, August, 25th). Personal Interview, p. 79.
self-direction and avoid acting ignorant to the consequences of our

actions. According to Rudebusch, wisdom is the ability to “measure
and determine the correct weights to attach to justice, power, wealth,
life, and the like.” These are factors that contribute to well-being.
145
Giving each aspect their right weight would determine the best course
of action. The ability to reason and rationalise with ourselves is neces-
sarily a part of our nature. This wisdom is directly linked to the
146
ability to self-direct our actions towards living well. Moreover, this 147
accumulation of knowledge and experience appears to be an integral

part of the awakening of consciousness that Fornas explains is needed
to overthrow capitalism. The wisdom to know when and how to act is
148
therefore crucial to knowing which action is better or more equalising.
How then does wisdom enable self-direction? Rudebusch offers an

analogy. Imagine a chess player and his opponent who is guided by
a chess demon, both of whom appear to be on par with each other.
Rudebusch writes, “For chess players the (insubordinate) activity of
playing chess is pleasure.” Therefore, regardless of the outcome of
149
each game, the unguided chess player derives pleasure from the act of
playing chess itself. Ultimately, only the true expert player – one with
true knowledge and experience of the game – can take pure pleasure
in the exercise of their skills as a chess player. Similarly, the goodness
of a person’s life is connected to their ability to live well, which is
linked to their wisdom. The actions they take reflect the wisdom that
guided them towards privileging these over other possible actions.
The cross-examinations, evaluations and judgements that are under-
taken by the individual whose choices are informed by “knowledge
and love of the good” gives rise to this wisdom. Therefore, there is a 150
relationship between possessing relevant knowledge and information

and how well aligned their choices are with their well-being.
145 Ibid., p. 91.

146 As Amartya Sen argues, “It is the power of reason that allows us to consider our obligations and ideals as well as
our interests and advantages. To deny this freedom of thought would amount to a severe constraint on the reach of our
rationality.” For more, see SEN Amartya, Development as Freedom, p. 272.
148 Fornas argues that when people make sense of the contradictory forces of capitalism and its mechanics, they will be
able to better perceive the inequalities between their roles as labourers and consumers, and that of capitalists. With this
knowledge, they can then make better consumption decisions in ways that meaningfully contribute to their well-being.
For more, see FORNÄS Johan, Op. cit., p. 9-10.
150 Ibid., p. 78.
Figure 1 Images of the Fair Trade mark, used for products which have
been fairly traded, certified by Fair Trade International.
Self-direction is important in strengthening equality because the

dominance of capitalism means that we now have many options for
consumption, but the knowledge and information associated with
each one is not immediately clear or accessible. It thus comes down
to the individual to try and make the best choice. From the individual
consumer to a leader invested with the power and influence required
to direct policy and effect change, pleasure as a mode for living would
involve sourcing for relevant knowledge and information about the
impact of their actions. This would include actively looking at and
trying to understand the full impact in terms of equality when making
a decision between a set of possible actions. Which action would
contribute more to equality? Which is the more equitable choice? More
information – as much as possible – about the impact associated with
acting on the desire will have to be sought. By interrogating a desire
further, a fuller, more accurate understanding of potential impact
on others and other communities can then be achieved. Individual
action is crucial, because, as Atkinson explains, “Consumers make a
difference by buying from suppliers who are paying a living wage, or
whose products are fair trade. Individuals, acting on their own or collec-
tively, make a difference by supporting local shops and enterprises.” 151
As consumers, we can make our actions matter by only consuming

goods that are in alignment with our well-being and ultimately,
151 ATKINSON Anthony B., op. cit., p. 307-308.

equality for everyone.
Often, the “best” choice is determined by several factors, including

affordability. Others, such as the long term consequences to health,
the environment and others, figure less often in these judgements.
However, since equality is a necessary part of human wellness, the
decision on which action one should take cannot be left to chance,
impulse, ignorance or neutrality. This is especially so in the face of
the ways capitalism preserves the inequality central to its dominance.
Modal pleasure offers a way for people to judge and make decisions
between different possible actions based on their alignment with
well-being. For example, knowledge regarding a clothing item would
not just include information about its material, provenance and
production. As Farrell points out in her interview, other pertinent
forms of knowledge include the environmental impact of producing
the item and shipping it to the point of sale. In addition, information
regarding the people who are employed to produce it should be sought
out, as its impact could be generational. Therefore, this exercise in 152
accumulating relevant knowledge is necessary to the process.
Certainly, most producers do not have an incentive to advertise the

negative impacts associated with their products, and the average
shopper will have to take the initiative and look for this information
elsewhere. There exist some efforts that try and convey this information
as efficiently as possible, to help consumers make better decisions.
Fair Trade International is one such example. It is an independent
product certification that attests to the fair trading terms of an item’s
production process. It tries to make things easier for consumers by
153
labelling fairly traded items, such as cotton (Figure 1). In the case of
a clothing item, consumers might be interested to know that buying
fairly traded items generally provides greater benefit for others. These
items are usually grown and treated in environmentally friendly ways,
and labourers involved in the chain of production are usually fairly
compensated. Between an item made from fairly traded cotton and
154
another from non-fairly traded cotton, the former is probably the

better, more equalising choice.
152 See annex page : Farrell, Clare. (2020, September 30th). Personal Interview, p. 95.
153 ‘How Fairtrade Certification Works’, Fairtrade International, accessed 10 November 2020, https://www.fairtrade.
net/about/certification.
154 ‘Fair Trade Organization Code 2019’ (Fair Trade International, 2019), https://files.fairtrade.net/2019_
FairtradeOrganizationCode.pdf.
Having a better understanding of why one holds a certain desire can

help individuals make better, more informed choices. They would be
better able to direct their desires and choose to take action in ways
that are beneficial not just to themselves, but to larger society as well.
Consuming with greater awareness and consciousness can also allow
them to take pleasure from knowing that they are contributing towards
greater fairness.
The goal is not to always make the choice that generates the most
equality out of all possible choices, because that is not always possible.
The cost associated with each choice may differ too. Rather, modal
pleasure makes it possible for people to make the most informed
decision at that particular moment in time. The process of interro-
gation and accumulation of knowledge – as much of it as is necessary
and possible – necessitated by modal pleasure is what can help make
this happen. Within the context of what an individual consumer
can meaningfully do, the more equalising choice resulting from the
most informed decision process would be the optimal choice. This
choice would be the result of the knowledge and lived experience the
individual has accumulated over time – a reflection of their wisdom.
The ability to make this choice is the very act of self-direction that
fulfils the condition for a life well lived.
c. Agency as Process
Cumulatively, modal pleasure is a movement that builds up through the

smallest actions moving towards the larger goal of equality. Imagine
a range of ten options for fulfilling a desire, arranged randomly. By
weighing one action against another, modal pleasure helps us identify
the more righteous action. We can start by weighing the two easiest
options against each other, and identify the one that has greater
potential for generating equality. Then we compare that with the next
option, so on and so forth. As we do so, we move along the scale of
options, from most unequal to the most equal. With time, greater
experience and knowledge, this skill for measuring goodness and
badness, benefit and deficit becomes more and more refined. The practi-
tioner becomes more experienced in their consumption decisions as
they continually develop this skill. They may develop nuances in their
understanding of the self and their desires. In this way, we can – over
time – move more easily between weighing tiny actions to weighing
even bigger ones that might involve other people as well. In this way,
the vector moves in the direction of equality, strengthening it one
action by one action.
Of course, well-intended actions do not always deliver the desired

results. However, it is important that in the face of forces that seek
to incapacitate us, we try to do what we can and what is reasonable.
The more important thing is that there is an increment on the side
of equality than otherwise. Ultimately, it is also about allowing
individuals to exercise their agency and direct their actions as full
human beings. As Sen remarks, “It is the power of reason that allows
us to consider our obligations and ideals as well as our interests and
advantages. To deny this freedom of thought would amount to a severe
constraint on the reach of our rationality.” An individual empowered
155
to exercise their power of reason and who takes action informed by

this reason can take pleasure in knowing that through their actions,
they can avoid – at the very least – supporting and sustaining the
production of a good that is tainted by exploitation and degradation.
In his book Processual Sociology, sociologist Andrew Abbott writes
that “individuals have continuity over time to a degree that social
structures do not.” No matter how tiny an action may appear, it
156
is still a movement towards equality. The ability of an individual to

generate equality with small, individual actions can be multiplied when
more and more individuals take the same action. As people gain more
knowledge and experience, they can make better decisions. Over time,
this effect accumulates when more and more people act with pleasure
in their lives. Sen explains, “What is needed for such an approach
is not any general requirement that there should be no unintended
effects, but only that reasoned attempts to bring about social change
should, in the relevant circumstances, help us to get better results.” 157
Generating greater, more equalising impact on a larger scale requires

the participation of many individuals – each is just as important as
the next.
d. Modal Pleasure is a Virtue
Ultimately, modal pleasure is a virtue because it is the excellence of the

human soul. When pursued for the sake of its intrinsic goodness, it
158
has the ability to make one’s life happier. In the context of capitalism
and equality, the virtue of modal pleasure should be understood as «a

156 ABBOTT Andrew, Processual Sociology, p. 5.
mean in respect of its substance (that is neither too much nor too little
food… neither too many or too few) and in respect of its definition (a
mean between excess and deficiency), but with respect to excellence
and rightness it is an extreme.” What this means is that it helps one
159
find the optimal mean between excess and defect. These extremities
apply literally – to find the balance between overconsumption and
non-consumption. That is to say that even when tough choices have to
be made about consumption, swearing off of it entirely is probably not
the answer. Nor should it be, because what is optimal depends on an
individual’s situation. If an action threatens the ability of a person to
survive – such as swearing off the necessities of life because they also
happen to be capitalist commodities – it contradicts the well-being of a
person and should not be done. As Rudebusch writes, “One option can
be better than another without it being the case that the second option
is so bad that it is not worth living and without it being the case that
either option is harmful.” More importantly, the movement towards
160
equality requires the energy and sustained commitment of people.

There exists an optimal level of consumption that ensures not just the
survival of a person, but that allows them to thrive and assess their
lives as being happy, further encouraging them to continue doing so.
Modal pleasure helps the practitioner find the mean between the real
possibility of acting ignorantly, and the real impossibility of acting with
full, attendant knowledge. As Rudebusch writes, “Desire, ignorant or
knowledgeable, continues (absent intervening factors) until it finds
satisfaction by achieving its object. But knowledgeable desire has a
clear object…” It gives individuals the power of knowledge to help
161
them find the optimum between their well-being and that of everyone
else’s. Cafaro is in agreement, and examines the benefits for devel-
162
oping a swamp into a park as an example. A capitalist developer 163
wanting to profit from this project might seek to obscure important

information such as a disenfranchised community’s cultural ties to
the swamp, to make the development appear as a better choice for
everyone. For example, they are often used as ceremonial and initi-
ation sites by Australian aboriginals, a community that has faced a lot
of discrimination and abuse in Australia. An individual ignorant of
164
159 Ibid., p. 92.

160 Ibid., p. 122.
161 Ibid., p. 102.
162 Ibid., p. 98-107.
164 Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment, ‘Wetlands and Indigenous Values’, Department of
the possible consequences for developing a swamp into a park would

focus only on the pleasures that having a park could give them, and
thus have an ignorant desire for the park to be developed. However,
as Cafaro points out, if we were to expand the field of knowledge
and consider other aspects of our consumption – in this case of the
natural environment – we will see that there could be an increased
risk of catastrophic floods, and the destruction of valuable natural
resources. In that case, it would not be rational for an individual of
165
the community to encourage the development. They could balance the

benefits for them to have a park nearby with the benefits of having a
safe and stable living environment that will not be threatened by floods
or other “natural” disasters that could cost lives. More often than not,
these are exacerbated by man’s disregard for the natural environment.
Such knowledge can also help them develop greater respect for other
people’s interests in the swamp, such as pre-existing cultural ties.
The optimal choice in such a situation would be to avoid developing it
without consideration for anything other than economic gain.
It might seem like if one were to try and live with modal pleasure in this
day and age, they would have to give up many modern conveniences
and pleasures. That is not entirely true. In fact, Rudebusch argues that
the best life consists of self-restraint and moderation. Certainly, to 166
an extent, if the conveniences and pleasures come at the expense of

someone else’s time and life, that means they are conveniences and
pleasures only for some. It is also important to ask if some conveni-
ences are manufactured so that it is more convenient to consume
even more. As Cafaro explains, enlarging the context of information
surrounding an action does not prove that decreased consumption is
better. He writes:
It is difficult to find a principled procedure for

balancing the value of pleasure against the value
of personal excellence and achievement [as part
of our well-being]. But our judgements concerning
consumption depend importantly on how we balance
these… such judgements depend on how we balance
the pursuit of personal excellence and our respon-
sibilities towards others, for it sometimes happens
that increased consumption genuinely benefits an
Agriculture, Water and the Environment, accessed 3 October 2020, http://www.environment.gov.au/.

individual consumer while seriously harming others. 167
One can still enjoy the pleasures of modern life, even if they are
desired for the sensate pleasure they give. It would be unsustainable
for concerned individuals to try and make the right decision every
single time. If the life that they lead in doing so is one that is unhappy,
it would be a futile undertaking. What modal pleasure does is expand
the definition of what it means to take pleasure from life. It frees us
from a narrow definition of pleasure that is tied to the consumption
of commodities. Instead, it enacts pleasure in the entire process of
taking an action, and aligns it with our well-being. It allows us to
take and enjoy pleasure in more forms. This also means that our lives
become happier.
Ultimately, modal pleasure is a virtue that helps us draw a line in the

sand between excess and defect, between sacrificing the pleasure of a
faceless stranger for maximum benefit, and sacrificing one’s well-being
for the difficult-to-assure benefit of that same faceless stranger or
another. The value of modal pleasure lies in its making the consider-
ation of our actions not only possible, but concrete and purposeful. In
doing so, every action we take adds to our well-being and the well-being
of our communities. As a process, modal pleasure undermines capital-
ism’s tendency to obfuscate and undermine such interrogation, so that
we can more meaningfully exercise our agency as thinking humans
able to reason with the best and worst of ourselves. It provides a
way for equality and the well-being of others to be constitutive of
individual well-being, a salve against the way commodity fetishism has
separated and isolated us from each other. The equality and well-being
of all is constitutive of individual well-being. Modal pleasure can help
Individuals understand that they have a role to play in contributing to
the well-being of society, and that they can do so through individual
action. It is certainly not an easy task. That is why, as with all big under-
takings, it is helpful to keep an eye towards the ultimate goal – that
of equality, so that the good life we each desire can be just as possible
for ourselves as for the rest of our fellow human beings.

46
Bordeaux, 2017
47
Inequality is a Tilted Scale
Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only.
- Henry David Thoreau
Capitalism has come to dominate our society because it plays on our

senses, captivating us and holding us in thrall of its appearance of
wealth and goodness. That the human race has never been bigger in
number also means that capitalism is often accepted as not only the
way to live, but also the most successful system of human civilisation.
It appears to be natural and impossible to defy, such that the scales are
tilted against equality. As explored in the section before, movement
towards equality requires effort, sacrifice and dedication. Equality as
well-being is an ever changing equilibrium between what the individual
wants and needs, and what others want and need. To choose not to
act on every desire that surfaces can feel a lot like self-flagellation at
times. Why choose to endure the pain of depriving oneself of pleasure
when the balm is so easy to obtain? Capitalism has made it so easy
to find a hundred variants of the same object. However, it is precisely
because capitalism has done so that makes it easy to slip and fall. In
this way, each step towards equality must be made consciously. An
individual seeking to generate equality cannot do it unconscious of
the ways capitalism makes the next slip of the foot appear natural,
inevitable and, sometimes, somehow desirable.
1. The Allures of Physical Pleasure
The other form of pleasure we can experience while living is one we

are all certainly familiar with. It plays on our senses, and is associated
with physical forms that give pleasure. However, sensate pleasures are
imperfect representations of value to well-being, and thus cannot be
relied on to generate and strengthen equality.
48 III - Inequality is a Tilted Scale
a. Physical Pleasures are Unreliable
According to Rudebusch, physical or sensate pleasures are “misleading,

disorienting, vacillating, unsafe.” Thus, the person who mistakes
168
pleasure sensations for value “confuses what resembles for what is.” 169
Consuming for the sake of pleasure becomes desired for its own sake.
This is clearly linked to the way capitalism defines freedom, which is
the freedom to consume or own commodities. As Fornäs explains:
The roots of basic bourgeois ideas of equality and

freedom [are]... traced down to simple commodity
circulation... equality and freedom are still in some
sense ‘true’, even though people are only equal and
free as commodity owners. 170
By desiring commodities for the sensate pleasures they provide, our

consumption behaviour aids capitalism’s growth, playing into and
further entrenching its system of inequality.
Under capitalism, people lead lives that are profoundly unfree. As

explained earlier, this is because they lack the ability to meaningfully
direct their lives towards other definitions of happiness or fulfilment.
Doing so threatens their economic livelihood, and hence their very
ability to survive. Living in a society which only knows freedom in the
form of the consumption of commodities means that people can only
live to exercise this single form of freedom. This consumption gives
people immediate – albeit temporary – pleasure. This is exacerbated
by the fact that there is no other, real sense of freedom, temporal
or otherwise. The unfreedom of time means that people only have
the space between each working day to exercise this freedom at will. 171
This time is their time away from work when they switch roles from
wage labourer to consumer. When real life is so profoundly unhappy
and unfree, every opportunity for happiness in the form of sensate
pleasure can feel more intense, important and necessary than it really
is. When such pleasure is associated with highly visible, physicalised
forms that give access to pleasure – commodities, in other words –
it is little wonder why people consume so much. Its tendency to be
embodied physically in the form of objects, and its ability to more easily

169 Ibid., p. 92.
49 The Allures of Physical Pleasure
capture our senses is precisely why sensate pleasures are unreliable,

as explained above. Furthermore, as Rudebusch writes:
In the case of both vision and pleasure there is a bodily faculty with
«the capacity to produce subjective experience» of magnitude. Because
of the effects of proximity (whether in space or time), each receptive
faculty (whether it receives visible or pleasurable appearances) can
make the larger seem smaller and the smaller seem larger. 172
Our physical senses distort the intensity of our desires, making the
smaller, everyday desires appear much larger than they really are.
This is especially so when the pleasure-giving thing takes the form
of an object that we can see. On the other hand, modal pleasure is
associated with the overall process with which we go about fulfilling
our desires. The pleasure it gives is dependent on how well aligned
the desire and the actions we take to fulfil it are with our well-being.
Therefore, modal pleasure is not beholden to the object of desire, nor
the variations in its quantity, quality and other material factors. It
is much less visible and physically sensible, but its measurements of
pleasure are true, oriented, constant and safe. 173
That is not to say that the sensate pleasures do not have any value
themselves. Leube points out that sensate pleasure has a role in our
physiology. This is mainly to signal to us whether something feels
174
good or bad, and has a lot to do with the living conditions of the earliest
humans. He gives the example of ice cream, which is a food many
people find tasty and physically pleasurable to consume. He says that
this is probably because sugar and fat were very difficult to come by
in the earliest days of our evolutionary history. Over time, our brain 175
evolved to tell us that these dietary components are enjoyable, because

they are essential for our physiological well-being. On the other hand,
we know that excessive consumption of ice cream can be bad for our
health, leading to issues such as diabetes and obesity. Therefore, the 176
desire for ice cream is tied to its extrinsic pleasures. These pleasures
are perceived by our physical senses. On their own, they can only
tell us whether or not an experience is pleasant, not whether it has
any intrinsic goodness. Moreover, as Rudebusch explains, “extrinsic

173 Ibid., p. 92.
175 Ibid.
176 Ibid., p. 65-66.
desirability is dependent on causal relations out in the world that

may be unknown to the one who desires.” Due to the ignorance
177
perpetuated by capitalism, people may not know exactly why they

desire something, beyond its value as a commodity. Therefore, when
they consume commodities that have been produced based on the
exploitation of the environment and other people, they are contrib-
uting to the economic success of these production processes. This gives
capitalists the incentive to continue producing these commodities in
the same way. This further legitimises capitalism and its system of
inequality.
On the other hand, the larger desire for a good life and our own overall
well-being can feel smaller and less important because they are not
immediately visible in the here and now. Revisiting the example of ice
cream, a person acting with pleasure should interrogate the real value of
desiring it. They might discover that they enjoy such ice cream because
it helps them relax and destress. Enjoying some ice cream is part of their
way of taking care of themselves and seeing to their needs. A person
who takes their health seriously can still find pleasure in eating the
occasional ice cream because it is not the act of eating the ice cream
itself that they enjoy, but rather, the pleasure they take by attending
to their mental and emotional well-being. In this example, the act
of self-care is much more important than the act of eating ice cream
itself. The individual has a plethora of options that are aligned with
the nature of the act, such as taking a warm bath, enjoying a glass of
wine or even exercising. Moreover, bodily sensations “are not identified
with but merely represent objects or activities that constitute value.” 178
Under capitalism, the consumer who confuses the physical pleasure of

eating ice cream for the entirety of its value will find that their ability
to access this pleasure depends on the availability of their ice cream
of choice, and their ability to pay for it. In other words, this depends
on the capitalist seeing fit to continue producing this ice cream for the
market, and the consumer having the income to afford it. Their pleasure
is thus dependent on physical and economic conditions. On the other
hand, the person who lives and acts with pleasure has the option of
fulfilling their desire in many other ways. This is because for them,
their ultimate goal is to attend to their well-being. The object and the
sensations of pleasure an object or an activity is capable of providing
are subordinate to the desire to take care of one’s own well-being. For
the consumer who bases their actions on sensate pleasure however,

178 Ibid., p. 92.
51 The Allures of Physical Pleasure
the immediacy of physical sensation can make it difficult to try and

perceive their desire from a greater distance in relation to the overall
well-being of the individual and of society.
b. Physical Pleasures and Instant Gratification
Sensate pleasures can be more attractive to the simple, ignorant

consumer, because they can be felt more immediately. Rudebusch
writes, “Most people would claim that a person may have knowledge
of long-term pleasure but a stronger desire for immediate pleasure.” 179
When there is an object in front of a person that can give them the
pleasure, it is harder for them to resist it in the name of a more distant
and less visible pleasure, even if the latter is better for them. This is so,
even though the pleasures we perceive through our senses are quite
unreliable. As Rudebusch argues, physical pleasures are “misleading,
disorienting, vacillating, unsafe.” They can vary in appearance – the
180
pleasure associated with eating an ice cream varies with its flavour,
quality and quantity, for example. Thus it is not always guaranteed, and
hence it is unreliable. Because it varies in magnitude and form, there
is also no standard by which to measure one type of sensate pleasure
against another. Thus, Rudebusch writes, «the knowledgeable are
optimizers while the ignorant are maximisers.” At the same time, this
181
ignorant desire has a tendency towards maximisation, since “desire,

ignorant or knowledgeable, continues… until and only until it finds
satisfaction by achieving its object.” Ignorant individuals conflate
182
the maximisation of pleasure with the maximisation of well-being.

They are therefore more prone to acting on impulse rather than with
purpose. This would be all well and good if people were acting impul-
183
sively in ways that are beneficial to their well-being. However, the

nature of modal pleasure and its alignment with well-being means that
the pleasure it gives is generated through a longer process. Therefore,
this is not likely.
On the other hand, the immediacy and tangibility of pleasure in the

form of commodity allows capitalism to play upon this weakness of
the human mind and will to create conditions for this weakness to
be exploited repeatedly. This is achieved through commodification
179 Ibid., p. 25.

180 Ibid., p. 92.
181 Ibid., p. 99.
182 Ibid., p. 107.
183 Ibid., p. 23.
and consumption, but also the restriction of knowledge and infor-

mation regarding these two acts. In the capitalist economy, consumers
value commodities for their ability to moderate social relations. As
explained earlier, the generation of surplus value in the capitalist
mode of production also allows a class of people to appropriate it and
accumulate wealth. Once property can be owned and held privately,
status becomes tied to the ownership of property. This leads to 184
conspicuous consumption, which is when “people spend money on

artifacts of consumption in order to give an indication of their wealth
to other members of society.” These conditions cause people to only
185
be able to relate with each other through highly visible forms of

consumption and ownership. Leuebe also explains that this is essen-
tially a display of the ability to consume excessively and waste. It
is appealing to our basic senses because wastage suggests that the
necessary, basic needs for survival have been fulfilled. Ignorant 186
consumers would thus associate higher levels of consumption of

commodities with higher levels of well-being. They would seek to
maximise their consumption, because from their perspective, this
would mean that they are maximising their wellness.
In comparison, modal pleasure requires time – time to seek out and

accumulate relevant knowledge, time for examination of our desires,
and time to assess the impact of a possible set of actions. It is precisely
the thing that we as wage labourers and consumers can ill afford, even
if it is necessary to our well-being and equality. This makes it all the
easier to just not try at all. To the person trapped in poverty, the fight
for equality is something that they experience every day – with hunger,
and inaccessibility to education and healthcare. To the average middle
class person stuck in a job they do not like, the need to pay off their
loans would exert much more immediate and immense pressure than
the need to ensure their disadvantaged peers are able to live good lives.
However, the fight for equality depends on everyone. Cafaro writes:
We need to move from a narrow, simplistic self- interest to a compre-

hensive, enlightened self-interest. We can begin by taking small, incre-
mental steps on our part as individuals, and as we grow, we form
communities that can better undertake action on larger scales.
We need to find a way to mobilise the power of many individuals, and
184 TRIGG Andrew B., Veblen, Bourdieu, and Conspicuous Consumption, p. 100.
185 Ibid., p. 101.
53 Pleasure is Not Absence of Pain
to direct it towards the greater good of equality for all. The challenge
is to find a way to include and empower individuals to do what they
can in their daily lives, even as they deal with the challenges that
inevitably arise in the day to day.
2. Pleasure is Not Absence of Pain
So far, modal pleasure has had a more individualist slant. This is

because as individuals, we are better at controlling our own actions
instead of the actions of others. However, the strengthening of equality
requires participation at the levels of society and the state. In addition,
while progress towards equality is pleasurable, it is not without pain.
a. Modal Pleasure and Society
Modal pleasure, as described by Rudebusch, is focused mainly on

what the individual can do to ensure their well-being. The thesis has
thus focused mainly on the potential for individuals to enact equality
through individual action. However, according to Atkinson and Sen,
realising equality for all requires coordination on the level of the
state and society. The many proposals made by Atkinson to combat
inequality involve the use of economic and taxation mechanisms, such
as progressive wage taxes. These require political coordination, which
187
are beyond the reach of the average individual. Redefining well-being

on the societal level towards a holistic and more subjective one also
requires societal dialogue, which has to be coordinated by the custo-
dians of society – the state. Sen is in agreement, writing, “These
processes are crucial to the formation of values and priorities, and we
cannot... take preferences as given independently of public discussion...
irrespective of whether open debates and interchanges are permitted
or not.” Well-being has a communal aspect, and so it necessitates
188
space for input from the communities we are part of. Sen also believes
that, even if we each have our own individual interests, our values are
what help us move beyond individualism to also consider benefits to
others as being beneficial to us as members of society. This often has
to do with expanding the notion of what is the “rational” or optimal
choice for the individual to also include seeing sympathy and justice
for others as rational choices that – at the end of the day – create a
beneficial society for everyone. Moreover, as Cafaro points out, when
189
187 ATKINSON Anthony B., op. cit., p. 305-308.

189 Ibid., p. 270.
it comes to the way we behave and consume as a society, it is not unrea-

sonable to assess the impact of overall social consumption. Benefits 190
to individuals can sometimes generate systemic, negative externalities.

Therefore, individual preferences guided by alignment to individual
well-being should also include an assessment of overall social impact.
This is also true when we consider the ways the law is used to enact
the system of inequality that forms the basis of capitalism. Pistor
calls it “a powerful social ordering technology”. It materialises our
191
social values and affirmations, as Sen calls the values and culture that
influence the way we behave and conduct ourselves as human commu-
nities. He highlights the role of the state and society in influencing
192
the way we behave, writing:
Responsible adults must be in charge of their own

well-being; it is for them to decide how to use their
capabilities. But the capabilities that a person does
actually have… depend on the nature of social arrange-
ments, which can be crucial for individual freedoms.
And there the state and the society cannot escape
responsibility. 193
The state and society put in place the policies, agencies and structures
that, in and of themselves, represent the values they cherish. They
function as arbiters of what is acceptable or not, right or not, and what
is aligned with or contrary to the values of a community. Therefore,
individual action is not enough for generating full equality. There has
to be commitment to it on the societal level, such that every individual
– in their capacities as labourers in policy-making institutions, and
in all the other roles they play that contribute to the functioning of
society – can exercise their self agency and make better choices. Again,
this is something that Sen points out, writing “The nature of equality
is such that it has many diverse aspects that relate to a variety of activ-
ities and institutions…” Hence, modal pleasure alone is not sufficient
194
for equality to be strengthened on a societal level. The coordination

among a large number of diverse individuals – each with their own
notions of well-being – could entail giving up a degree of autonomy

191 PISTOR Katharina, op. cit., p. 17.
193 Ibid., p. 288.
194 Ibid., p. 297.
and decision making.
b. Equality and Unequal Pains
Even as a pathway towards living a happy life of equality with one

another, modal pleasure does not imply an absence of pain. This should
be evident in the examples of sacrifice on the part of individuals, but
such pain is probably not going to be the same for every individual. For
the average person, pain is probably not something that is naturally
desired. Rudebusch writes “Our reason for hating pain lies… in the
very quality of the experience. The nature of the experience is our
reason for disliking pain, and that is the end of the matter.” How 195
many people would willingly give up the comforts that they have
earned by sacrificing their time and effort without complaint? Just
as a sensate pleasure can be more arresting than a modal pleasure due
to its immediacy and greater tangibility, so could pain capture our
attention much more effectively. The pain associated with changing a
lifelong habit, relearning new ways of acting, producing and consuming
can act as a roadblock and limit the potential for positive change.
One way in which the pleasurable movement towards equality would

probably not be painless is in the fact that it is not going to always be
an easy or convenient thing to do. As a society, we will probably have
to reduce our consumption levels and change the way we produce the
goods and services we need. It would be difficult to convince people
for whom this way of life is all they have ever known that this is the
right sacrifice for them to make. In Inequality – What Can Be Done?,
Atkinson analyses the reasons for growing inequality in the form of
income inequality. He makes 15 proposals for how the income gap
can be reduced. One of the proposals involves a more progressive rate
structure for personal income tax. As Atkinson explains of the changes
individuals will have to make in order to generate equality: “At an
individual level, it involves “material sacrifice for some”; there has to be
acceptance that taxes have to be raised.” A progressive rate structure
196
on personal income tax would see high wage earners paying a larger
proportion of their income as tax, as compared to those who earn
amounts closer to the median wage. This will also reduce the ability
of these high wage earners to consume at excessive levels. They will
not be able to consume as conspicuously as they may desire to in the
name of greater equality. This is because those rightfully earning more
195 .38 .p ,.tic .po ,egroeG HCSUBEDUR

196 .272 .p ,.tic .po ,.B ynohtnA NOSNIKTA
are seen as having benefited more, or have enjoyed more privilege. In

turn, they might be obliged to give back a greater proportion of their
earnings to society. Therefore, these people may have their (self-mo-
tivated) reasons for opposing such a movement. With more money,
they would also have access to more power and influence to resist
such change and preserve their privilege. This could be done through
197
donations to political parties or controlling the media to influence

public perception. Therefore, the process of generating equality will
198
not be a smooth or necessarily painless one, regardless of whose stance

wins out in the end. Conflicts will certainly arise. The 8 hours working
day was not won peacefully. There should be no expectation for this
199
movement to go off without a hitch either.
It would be helpful to understand pain in another way, by examining

the role it plays in ensuring our well-being. We are all familiar with pain
as a symptom of a problem with our body or health. If the magnitude
of pain is associated with the degree of change, perhaps what the pains
that would result from the process of strengthening equality do is
point out exactly where the problems with capitalism or inequality lie.
If an individual’s prosperity comes at the expense of another individ-
ual’s, equality would likely mean a reordering towards a rebalancing
of accounts between the both of them. This rebalancing is explored
in Schweickart’s book, After Capitalism, in which he proposes some
changes society can make to achieve an anti-capitalist world. In it,
Schweickart imagines a severe economic crisis that would expose the
systems of inequality that make capitalism appear credible. In this 200
scenario, he predicts that the competitive advantage that capitalists

enjoy under capitalism will be destroyed, but everything else that
generates economic value should remain largely intact and functional:
Of course, the financial markets will crash… Capitalists

will try to cash in their stocks and bonds, but these
will be worthless, since there will be no buyers. Huge
amounts of paper wealth will evaporate – but the
productive infrastructure of the nation will remain
wholly intact… Producers keep producing; consumers
keep consuming. 201
197 Ibid., p. 37.

198 Ibid., p. 37.
200 SCHWEICKART David, op. cit., p. 188.
201 Ibid., p. 189.
At the same time, some people might also find themselves unemployed
until they can find jobs in a new economic order that privileges true
democracy and the equalisation of power. These pains could be
202
attributed to the very systems that structured inequality into our

lives and that continue to entrench it in our everyday experiences. For
example, the evisceration of paper wealth in the form of stocks and
bonds is related to the exploitative system of wage labour. Dividend
payments come from profit, which is derived from surplus value that
is appropriated by the capitalist production process from underpaying
labourers. On the other hand, Schweickart believes this new paradigm
203
would allow economic value – and social relationships – to be redefined.

This would give society the opportunity to redistribute power more
equally.
Moreover, it should not be forgotten that life as it is under capitalism

is not painless. The profound unfreedom with which most of us live our
lives is a pain that we do not feel in discrete moments, but is felt in the
entirety of our lives. Strengthening equality offers a way for pain to be
reduced, and for individuals to improve their conditions regardless of
the pains life puts in their way. It would be helpful to be reminded that
again, our senses are again only capable of telling us whether or not a
sensation is pleasurable or painful. They cannot tell us whether or not
they are inherently good or bad. The consequences of our actions can
often be unpredictable. The best that can be done is to minimise the
negative consequences and maximising the benefits of the movement
towards equality. However, it is precisely this unpredictability of life
that this movement towards equality is so important. We can never
prevent or predict the many random misfortunes that life might throw
our way. What we can do is to lessen the impact these misfortunes can
have on our ability to pursue the lives we want. As Atkinson writes,
“Equality of opportunity is achieved when… circumstances… do not
play any role in the resulting outcome.” The possibility of action is
204
key to positive change, and while pain might be prohibitive, if taken

in the spirit of necessary pain for greater pleasure, it can be bearable.
202 Ibid., p. 190-192.

203 Ibid., p. 37.
204 ATKINSON Anthony B., op. cit., p. 10.
58
Cologne, 2019
59
Conclusion
[looking at himself in the mirror]

Jojo: Jojo Betzler. Ten and a half years
old. Today, just do what you can.
– Jojo Rabbit (2019)
Capitalism has created a system of inequality that keeps a great majority

of the human population enslaved. The insidiousness of its mechanisms
is masked by its legal machinations, making its exploitation appear
natural. The great poverty of our well being as individuals and a society
are hidden by the sheer volume of the objects we surround ourselves
with. We are so profoundly unequal, especially in relation to those
with the fortune of being capitalists. By enslaving the rest of society
for the benefit of the few through wage labour, our time is exploited
so that capitalists can be free to live their own lives in ways that they
desire. Meanwhile, our real, human desire for a good life is supposed to
be placated by the consumption of commodities. Any pleasure we may
experience is temporary, and the only way to experience more of it is
to continue trading our time for money. We have become so separated
and isolated from each other that our relationships are governed and
moderated through objects. Often, many of us live our lives uncon-
sciously, going through the motions, only pausing occasionally to
wonder why any happiness we feel is fleeting, while pain and sadness
are profound. Modal pleasure offers a way for power and agency to be
taken back from capitalism, so that we can craft good, happy lives that
we truly desire. We all understand the feeling of pleasure that comes
with knowing when we do what is right. If we relearn what it means
to take real pleasure from the uneven contours of life, there is still a
chance for us to create good lives for everyone today and into the future.
To do this, we need to interrogate and investigate our desires to see why
we have them in the first place. Modal pleasure will help us align our
desires and actions with our individual and collective well-being, and
find the optimum between pain and pleasure, self-sacrifice and self-in-
dulgence. The emphasis on individual action is actually an impetus to
take greater responsibility for our actions. It asks that we increase our
60 Conclusion
understanding of not just who we are, but why we desire happiness,

and how actions that generate and strengthen equality constitute that
goal. It allows us to exercise our human skills of reasoning and ration-
ality, to define and act in ways that are meaningful to ourselves and
our communities. By expanding the notion of pleasure, from one that
is physical and temporary to one that is situated more within the intan-
gible, we also expand the definition of pleasure itself. We might find
that pleasure can be taken in ways beyond the physical and temporal.
We can find very suddenly that every action becomes an opportunity
for us to experience pleasure. Ultimately, modal pleasure can help
us find the pleasure in living life on par with one another, so that we
can have the confidence to navigate life as it truly is – unvarnished
and unpredictable but absolutely worthy of experiencing consciously
and hopefully.
Humans have lived with and thrived on much less than we do now.
The challenge is, as always, to turn circumstance into opportunity. The
ever rising levels of consumption that capitalism relies on for growth
has engendered a societal perception that ties the act of consuming
to the act of living well. However, increased individual consumption
can have larger shared implications on a societal level. We see that the
excessive consumption has led to an imbalance in our relationship with
the environment. This imbalance is an inequality, not just between us
and the environment, but between us and the poorest among us, as
well as with future generations. However, modal pleasure offers us a
way to rethink this, by interrogating how we perceive pleasure, and to
align our desires and actions with our overall well-being. In this way,
as individuals, we can act on our desires in more conscious, positive
ways. Consumption and well-being do not have to be on opposing
ends. As a designer, there is an imperative to help people develop more
conscious relationships with the objects we surround ourselves with.
How can I, as a designer, reduce excessive consumption while
improving well-being?
The capitalist mode of production separates private individuals as

labourers and as consumers from the entire chain of production. In the
case of labourers, they rely almost exclusively on wage employment for
survival. The modern globalised chain of production means that many
labourers are employed for very little money, to produce expensive
commodities for consumers in other countries. As Farrell points out,
these labourers often experience a lot of exploitation and pain to earn
61
less than they truly deserve. The physical distance and invisibility
205
of the systems of production in far away places makes it easier for

end consumers to ignore their impacts. Knowing that our actions as
individuals have consequences for others, there is an opportunity for
the distance to be bridged, and for a fairer distribution of the benefits of
production and consumption. Designers are often the bridge between
producers and consumers. How can I, as a designer, improve the
impact of production for better consumption?
Like living, equality is communal. It is achieved for the benefit of all,

through the action of people as individuals. Modal pleasure makes it
possible for individuals to do their part, even if the goal seems too big
and unattainable for one person. In addition, sensate pleasures are
in closer proximity and more visible in the form of pleasure-giving
commodities than the pleasure of being able to act and live on equal
standing with our fellow human beings. Therefore, the personal sacri-
fices that equality may demand from individuals can be more difficult
and less tempting to make. Perhaps more than the big, public and
visible actions that we can take as communities, it is the smaller,
everyday acts that have to be sustained over longer periods and maybe
even over lifetimes. As an individual interested in achieving this ideal,
I am therefore inspired to ask: How can I, as a designer, motivate
and sustain individuals in generating equality in their everyday
lives?
205 See annex page : Farrell, Clare. (2020, September 30th). Personal Interview, p. 95.
62
Nuda Veritas, 1889, by Gustav Klimt

San Francisco, 2018
63
Glossary
Modal pleasure is experienced when carrying out unimpeded activities

of the soul that are understood as the exercise of a function central
to a person’s well-being and their ability to live a good life. When
unimpeded, these activities are anticipated, absorb one’s attention
effortlessly and make one reluctant to break off from them. 206
Equality is the equality of freedoms, rights and capability that are

essential to helping people live good lives. It involves the social arrange-
ments necessary for helping people exercise their agency in order to
effectively craft the lives they desire. Because equality affects the
everyday experience of individual lives, and living itself is communal,
equality is constitutive to well-being and individual happiness.
64
Figure Sources
Figure 1: ‘Fair Trade Mark Guidelines’. Fair Trade International, 2018.

https://www.fairtrade.net/act/mark-use-guidelines.
65
Bibliography
Books
Ahuvia, Aaron. ‘Wealth, Consumption and Happiness’. In The Cambridge

Handbook of Psychology and Economic Behaviour, edited by Alan Lewis,
199–226. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. https://doi.
org/10.1017/CBO9780511490118.009.
Abbott, Andrew Delano. Processual Sociology. Chicago ; London: The
University of Chicago Press, 2016.
Atkinson, Anthony B. Inequality - What Can Be Done? Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 2015.
Debord, Guy. The Society of the Spectacle. Translated by Ken Knabb.
Berkely, CA: Bureau of Public Secrets, 2014.
Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism
and Schizophrenia. Translated by Brian Massumi. Vol. 19. Minneapolis,
MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1989.
Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and
Schizophrenia. Translated by Robert Hutley, Mark Seem, and Helen R.
Lane. 10th ed. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2000.
Fornäs, Johan. Capitalism: A Companion to Marx’s Economy Critique. 1st
ed. New York, NY: Routledge, 2013.
Hennessy, Rosemary. Profit and Pleasure: Sexual Identities in Late
Capitalism. Second Edition. New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis
Group, 2018.
Holland, Eugene W. Deleuze and Guattari’s ‘A Thousand Plateaus’ - A
Reader’s Guide. 1st ed. India: Bloomsbury, 2013.
———. Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus: Introduction to
Schizoanalysis. 1st ed. London: Routledge, 2002. https://doi.
org/10.4324/9780203007426.
Koller, John M. Oriental Philosophies. 2nd ed. London: Macmillan
Education UK, 1985. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-08237-7.
Kupperman, Joel J. Classic Asian Philosophy: A Guide to the Essential
Texts. 1st ed. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Nu ssbau m, Ma r t h a Craven, a nd A m a r t ya Sen, ed s.
The Quality of Life. New York, N Y: Oxford Universit y
Press, 1993. htt ps://g loba l.oup.com /academ ic /product /
66 Bibliography
the-quality-of-life-9780198287971?cc=fr&lang=en&.
Piketty, Thomas. Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Translated by
Arthur Goldhammer. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press, 2014.
Pistor, Katharina. The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and
Inequality. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019.
Riel, Gerd van. Pleasure and the Good Life: Plato, Aristotle, and the
Neoplatonists. Philosophia Antiqua, v. 85. Leiden: Brill, 2000.
Rudebusch, George. Socrates, Pleasure and Value. New York, NY: Oxford
University Press, 1999.
Schweickart, David. After Capitalism. 2nd ed. Plymouth, UK: Rowman
& Littlefield Publishers, Inc, 2011.
Sen, Amartya. Development as Freedom. 1st. ed. New York, NY: Alfred
A. Knopf, Inc, 1999.
———. ‘Equality of What?’ In The Tanner Lectures on Human Values,
edited by S. McMurrin. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,
1979. http://www.ophi.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/Sen-1979_
Equality-of-What.pdf.
Sen, Amartya, John Muellbauer, Ravi Kanbur, Keith Hart, and Bernard
Williams. The Standard of Living. Edited by Geoffrey Hawthorn.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
Wright, Christopher, and Daniel Nyberg. Climate Change, Capitalism,
and Corporations: Processes of Creative Self-Destruction. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2015. https://doi.org/10.1017/
CBO9781139939676.
Documents
‘Fair Trade Mark Guidelines’. Fair Trade International, 2018. https://

www.fairtrade.net/act/mark-use-guidelines.
‘Fair Trade Organization Code 2019’. Fair Trade International, 2019.
https://files.fairtrade.net/2019_FairtradeOrganizationCode.pdf.
Journal Articles
Cafaro, Philip. ‘Economic Consumption, Pleasure, and the Good Life’.

Journal of Social Philosophy 32, no. 4 (November 2001): 471–86. https://
doi.org/10.1111/0047-2786.00108.
Davidson, Mark, and Kurt Iveson. ‘Recovering the Politics of the City:
From the “Post-Political City” to a “Method of Equality” for Critical
Urban Geography’. Progress in Human Geography 39, no. 5 (October
2015): 543–59. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132514535284.
67
DeLeire, Thomas, and Ariel Kalil. ‘Does Consumption Buy Happiness?

Evidence from the United States’. International Review of Economics 57,
no. 2 (June 2010): 163–76. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12232-010-0093-6.
Dorninger, Christian, Alf Hornborg, David J. Abson, Henrik von
Wehrden, Anke Schaffartzik, Stefan Giljum, John-Oliver Engler, Robert
L. Feller, Klaus Hubacek, and Hanspeter Wieland. ‘Global Patterns
of Ecologically Unequal Exchange: Implications for Sustainability in
the 21st Century’. Ecological Economics 179 (January 2021): 106824.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2020.106824.
Johnsson, Filip, Jan Kjärstad, and Johan Rootzén. ‘The Threat to
Climate Change Mitigation Posed by the Abundance of Fossil Fuels’.
Climate Policy 19, no. 2 (7 February 2019): 258–74. https://doi.org/10
.1080/14693062.2018.1483885.
Litman, Todd, and Felix Laube. ‘Automobile Dependency and Economic
Development’, n.d., 20.
Osberg, Lars. ‘Review of Development as Freedom, by Amartya Sen’.
Compte Rendus, no. Autumn 2000 (2000): 135–37.
Roberts, Marc. ‘Capitalism, Psychiatry, and Schizophrenia: A
Critical Introduction to Deleuze and Guattari?S Anti-Oedipus’.
Nursing Philosophy 8, no. 2 (April 2007): 114–27. https://doi.
org/10.1111/j.1466-769X.2007.00306.x.
Stahel, Andri W. ‘Time Contradictions of Capitalism’. Capitalism
Nature Socialism 10, no. 1 (March 1999): 101–32. https://doi.
org/10.1080/10455759909358851.
Trigg, Andrew B. ‘Veblen, Bourdieu, and Conspicuous Consumption’.
Journal of Economic Issues 35, no. 1 (March 2001): 99–115. https://doi.
org/10.1080/00213624.2001.11506342.
Zeyl, Donald J. Review of Socrates, Pleasure and Value, by George
Rudebusch. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 65, no. 2 (2002):
490–92.
Online Articles
Frank, Robert, American Billionaires Got $434 Billion Richer during the
Pandemic, CNBC, 21 May 2020, retrieved 23 August 2020, <https://
www.cnbc.com/2020/05/21/american-billionaires-got-434-billion-
richer-during-the-pandemic.html>.
———, Richest 1% Now Owns Half the World’s Wealth, CNBC,
14 November 2017, retrieved 6 July 2020, <https://www.cnbc.
com/2017/11/14/richest-1-percent-now-own-half-the-worlds-wealth.
html>.
Gettysburg College. ‘One Third of Your Life Is Spent at Work’. Gettysburg
68 Bibliography
College. Accessed 14 September 2020. https://www.gettysburg.edu/

news/stories?id=79db7b34-630c-4f49-ad32-4ab9ea48e72b.
Reis, Ariene, and Vikram Chand, Uber Drivers: Employees or Independent
Contractors?, Kluwer International Tax Blog, 3 April 2020, retrieved
29 September 2020, <http://kluwertaxblog.com/2020/04/03/
uber-drivers-employees-or-independent-contractors/>.
Steinbaum, Marsha l l. ‘U ber’s A ntitr ust Problem’. The
American Prospect, 11 May 2016. https://prospect.org/api/
content/86e80f3a-54f7-5bac-a7c3-e7450d30436a/.
TechCrunch. ‘Modern Technology Brings More Productivity,
L o n g e r Wo r k i n g H o u r s ’. A c c e s s e d 2 9 S e p t e m b e r
2 0 2 0 . h t t p s : //s o c i a l . t e c h c r u n c h . c o m / 2 0 0 9 / 0 7/ 2 4 /
modern-technology-brings-more-productivity-longer-working-hours/.
Visram, Talib, and Talib Visram. ‘CEOs Now Earn 320
Times More than Average Workers’. Fast Company, 19
Aug ust 2020. htt ps://w w w.fastcompany.com /90541658/
ceos-now-earn-320-times-more-than-average-workers.
Welle (www.dw.com), Deutsche, Apple Tax Ruling for Ireland Shines Light on
Global Tax Avoidance, DW.COM, 23 July 2020, retrieved 9 October 2020,
<https://www.dw.com/en/apple-ireland-tax-avoidance/a-54274213>.
Podcasts
West, Stephen. ‘Deleuze Part 1 - What Is Philosophy?’ Philosophize

This!, n.d. https://philosophizethis.org/deleuze-pt-1/.
———. ‘Deleuze Part 2 - Immanence’. Philosophize This!, n.d. https://
philosophizethis.org/gilles-deleuze-pt-2-immanence/.
———. ‘Deleuze Part 3 - Anti-Oedipus’. Philosophize This!, n.d.
https://philosophizethis.org/anti_oedipus/.
———. ‘Deleuze Part 4 - Flows’. Philosophize This!, n.d. https://philos-
ophizethis.org/deleuze-flows/.
———. ‘Deleuze Part 5 - Difference’. Philosophize This!, n.d. https://
philosophizethis.org/deleuze-difference/.
Presentations
Rancière, Jacques. ‘Democracy, Equality, Emancipation in a

Changing World’. Speech presented at the B-Fest (International
Antiauthoritarian Festival of Babylonia Journal), Athens,
27 M ay 2017. ht t ps://w w w.babylon i a .g r/2017/0 6/11 /
jacques-ranciere-democracy-equality-emancipation-changing-world/.
69
Reports
United Nations, ‘World Social Report 2020 - Inequality in a Rapidly

Changing World (Executive Summary)’. United Nations. Accessed
7 June 2020. https://www.un.org/development/desa/dspd/
wp-content/uploads/sites/22/2020/02/World-Social-Report2020-
ExecutiveSummary.pdf.
Web
Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment, Wetlands and

Indigenous Values, retrieved 3 October 2020. <http://www.environment.
gov.au/>.
Our World in Data, Distribution of Population between Different
Poverty Thresholds, World, 1981 to 2015’, 2019, retrieved 9 October
2020, <https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/distribution-of-popula-
tion-poverty-thresholds?stackMode=relative&year=latest>.
WID - World Inequality Database, Global Bottom 50% and Top 1% Income
Shares, 1980-2016, retrieved 23 August 2020,
<https://wid.world/data/>.
WID - World Inequality Database, World GDP per Capita, 1980-2016,
retrieved 23 August 2020. https://wid.world/data/.
This page is intentionally left blank.
71
Annex
72 Annex
Interview with Michael Leube
Professor Leube teaches anthropology at different universities,

including Strate École de Design. I met him in November 2019,
when he gave two classes on Anthropology, as well as in June
2020 when he gave two classes on Ethnography. His work is
based on the understanding of human nature. He is especially
interested in value creation through design, and the role of
design in social innovation and circular economy.
This interview was conducted over Skype, on 23 August 2020.

It has been edited for clarity.
Jia-Hao (JHL): What is your definition of pleasure as an

anthropologist?
Michael Leube (ML): For me, pleasure is the meaning of life. I believe
that animals can perceive pleasure; you can tell if a dog is happy or
unhappy. You can see it with animals — there’s definitely a sense of
pleasure.
Now, neurologically speaking, pleasure is release of some endorphins

or dopamines that result from an action. It’s behavioural. As [American
psychologist B. F. Skinner] would say, it’s a reinforcer. So you receive
pleasure, and the pleasure you receive is actually a breaking down of
chemicals, and it’s nature’s way of telling you this is good for you. So
that’s how I would respond to that, coming from anthropology.
But what I meant earlier — the word ‘pleasure’ is very carnal. It has
very much to do with [the] bodily pleasures. Something feels good,
or something tastes good… when you have ice cream. It has a sexual
touch as well. For your thesis, I’m not sure if you intend that, but now
that I am speaking to you, I think we’re speaking about an awareness
of a sensation that is outside of pure survival.
JHL: Do you mean to say that pleasure contributes to our

survival as a species?
ML: You’ve heard me in class and I’m very much rooted in evolutionary
theory, so I’m always asking the ‘why’ and I’m always taking a step back,
so you have an ice cream and I ask you if you’re enjoying it. And you
73 Interview with Michael basic
say yes, this is a pleasurable experience, and I would ask why? And you
would say, “Because it tastes yummy.” To me that would be tautology
- a circular argument. You say something is pleasurable because it’s
pleasurable because it’s pleasurable, basically.
So the anthropologist keeps asking why and you get to some theories
like okay, some endorphins are released in your head that tell you that
this combination of sugar and fat which is ice cream is good for you,
and so nature rewards you [with] feeling a bit high. Right?
Now that makes a lot of sense when you keep asking why, to our
ancestors, where our genetic information comes from. Because that
combination of high caloric foods was not available very often. It’s a
classic example of what is called an ‘evolutionary mismatch’. And it
can get you into trouble as a human. You eat too much sugar and you
develop diabetes or obesity, or whatever. It can quickly go from pleasure
to absolute non-pleasure. I mean, we don’t need to speak about drugs
to make that point. The first time you pick up heroin — I have not —
I’m sure it’s an incredible rush of pleasure. The problem is you come
back down and you want that again.
So pleasure is very much linked with pain and coming from evolu-
tionary theory, I am a very strong believer that this is a way of nature
— the grander system that we are part of — to tell you whether this
is good or this is bad or this is good for you. That’s the way a biological
anthropologist would look at pleasure.
JHL: Besides an evolutionary advantage, do you think there is a

cultural element to pleasure as well, in terms of what different
cultures might find pleasurable?
ML: Now if we turn to the cultural element, the first thing that came
to mind is Amartya Sen and the capability approach. I love that book
Development as Freedom. It was a long time ago that I read that. He
co-authored the Human Development Index (HDI) and it’s a very,
very much better way of assessing how a country is doing, ranking the
country, than just GDP. And the ability to enjoy life is part of that. It
is intrinsically linked to equality.
[Returning] a little back to the biological take, and I strongly encourage

you to think of humans as just one primate. We have developed culture
and we have developed design, absolutely. I am not negating that, but
74 Annex
we have different parts of our brain. We have the frontal cortex which
is probably the most recent part and we go all the way backwards to
the limbic system which is very archaic. So a question comes up when
the paleo-anthropologist and the archaeologist dig through all of these
layers and go further back in time. The question that sometimes comes
[up] is, why art? Why did people spend important resources, important
time, muscle, infrastructural challenges, logistical challenges, to do
something that is “useless”, has no function?
Starting with the neolithic and what’s called the cultural revolution,
or cultural explosion rather, all of a sudden you find cave paintings.
You find jewellery, you find musical instruments, ornamentation, body
manipulation – why did they do that? Why didn’t they spend their
resources and their time on going out and getting food or building
better shelters. There are different theories on that and one that I find
interesting is that it’s a way of demonstrating that you have actually
managed to fulfil the basic human needs. So you’ve gotten food, you’ve
gotten shelter, you’ve formed a family and you live in a tribe, now you
can go beyond that and create something that creates pleasure. That
becomes functional.
JHL: So there is an innate sense of pleasure that is linked to

displaying the ability to live beyond a minimum level of means?
ML: The person that comes to mind is Thorstein Veblen. This is work
that was done over a hundred years ago. This guy came up with the term
“conspicuous consumption”. I think you need to include this because
it’s very much linked to capitalism. Veblen was an economist, but at
the same time an evolutionary thinker, and he postulated similarly
that if all the necessary human needs are met, you can then go above
that and consume conspicuously. So instead of just ordering a small
lunch at a restaurant to fulfil your hunger and your thirst, you consume
something much larger and you consume an expensive bottle of red
wine. And this would be a way of saying, look, I am genetically and
culturally so well off. Look at me, I can actually waste. And that is
absolutely something that is happening in capitalism. Not only can
everyone instantly get gratification, instant pleasure through consum-
erism, but it’s also a way of demonstrating that.
75 Interview with Michael Leube
JHL: What is the role of pleasure? How can it be used to expand

equality? There’s a slight difference. How can I design pleasure?
How can I craft a system that will convince people to do their
part to expand equality?
ML: This is really a big discussion. As it started out, the idea of

capitalism was that everybody can partake. Get rid of the caste system
and to a certain extent the class system. Everyone can participate as
producer and consumer. As it turns out, it didn’t often turn out that
way. My position is that – in theory – I don’t like a big state either. I
want people to take on the responsibility and to know what is good
for them and what is good for society. That’s what’s called idealism.
But looking at the real world, capitalism has brought the world to the
brink of disaster, and I think the root of the problem is not the people.
I think it is wrong to say that we are all hedonistic, pleasure loving

people and we are destroying the planet in the process. I think that is
too short of a question, and that is too pessimistic because it means
we are fucked. If it is in our genes, it is over, we cannot change our
genes that easily. So I think it’s in our system, and every system has
regulatives inside of it. Everything. I say this a lot in class and stuff.
Right now I have a thermal regulator inside of me that makes sure I do
not overheat or get too cold. Everything has a system inside of it. So if
you take a human species that likes pleasure, and likes to consume in
order to get pleasure, and then you take away regulatives, that becomes
a very ugly, carcinogenic if you want. A kind of cancer growth.
Look at the people producing the stuff we consume in order to get

pleasure. Look at the sweatshops, look at the deforestation of the
Amazon, look at the treatment of animals. The list goes on and on
and on. So that was kind of a vast statement so let’s try and bring it
back down to something smaller.
I think humans have been set up by nature, through our evolution,

to go after pleasure because it feels good. In the past, that was a very
good strategy. You have sex because it feels good, and if it doesn’t feel
good, the species would have died out after the first generation. No
one would do that activity if it didn’t feel good. That would be pretty
stupid. Or nobody would go for fruit if it didn’t taste sweet and pleas-
urable to us. If warmth didn’t feel good, we wouldn’t have built shelters.
And that goes on and on and on.
76 Annex
JHL: So beyond what has been coded into our genes, is there an
imperative as a human to do what is better for our communities?
ML: I think that’s inside of us. We want to maximise what the

economists call our marginal utility. We want to make… we want to
constantly improve our situation. We want to make the next moment
better than the present one. And that’s what designers do, it’s trying
to make a kind of ‘eat’ situation into a ‘shoot’ situation. It’s kind of
my definition of design.
So you have that, you’ve got the species, and now you put a system of
consumption and production over that species. And that system, like
you said very rightly in the beginning, is completely rigged. Money
goes where money is. It’s a siphoning of resources, it’s theft, starting
with the 15th century with the colonists. Totally. And in the end, not
everyone has a fair share of the resources and of pleasure.
Design is politics. You the designer, in a manipulative act… the designer

manipulates humans by making services, by making products, by
making houses. But your idea as a designer is to go for a more equal,
more just society. So even if your subject sounds quite abstract at first,
it seems quite legitimate.
JHL: Now that, as an anthropologist, there is an inherent need

for pleasure, what is the definition of equality? What is the
imperative for equality?
ML: Now we’re going deep. If you come from evolutionary science,
which is the mother of theories, that things evolve, things change
constantly, and that there is constant development of the universe,
that’s as big as you can make evolutionary theory sound.
Now once you’ve grasped that though, you start seeing beauty in that.
And the only way that things can unfold is that if there are differ-
ences. If all things are equal — what we call clones — evolution stops.
Literally. So this is a massive argument against communism that I
just made. The universe is based on differences. Because if there are
no differences, what can be selected to survive or to die?
JHL: So inequality functions as a way towards the greater good?

As a sort of motivator?
ML: So if everything were to be the same — imagine a population of

clones that are exactly the same, of plants, or animals or humans or
whatever, they’re all exactly the same — and some kind of external
challenge arises. Now in that situation all of them die or all of them
survive. The change is minimal. Nothing can come after. It stays static.
Having said that, we are all born equal and that’s what makes the world
go round. It’s beautiful, in my opinion. But we have then the challenge
of organising a system of law that says all should be treated as equal…
I very much believe in the treatment — the chance given to everyone.
I think it is fantastic that the people born with a handicap are helped
out by the rest. I think it is fantastic that children are born that would
have otherwise died in the process. I think it is great that we support
the marginalised. I think it’s fantastic that we have a movement for
the emancipation of women, emancipation for homosexuality, trans-
genders… All of that is civilization to me. But we should not forget
that we are all unequal.
So coming full circle to Amartya Sen and the capability approach. When
I read it 15 years ago, I loved it because it was the first time someone
says the way to measure if a country is doing well or not is to see if
everyone has the capability to fully express themselves, and that in
the end is the highest form of pleasure, in my opinion. I think when
you feel stifled and you cannot fully engage your potential — that is
when you get depressed.
So the universe is based on inequality, and if everything was equal,

it would be at a standstill. And at the same time, we have a system…
And that’s what makes humans special. I don’t think dogs realise this
other dog is handicap and we need to install a welfare state to take
care of that one dog. I don’t think that happens; it’s either eat or get
eaten amongst wolves, let’s say.
We humans have woken up, and said wait a second, there’s empathy,
there are people who are worse off than I am, let’s help them. And I
guess you could kind of push that theory down to what you’re working
on and that is, when I say better or worse off, it might be more access or
less access to pleasure. In the end, that’s pretty much what it is actually.
78 Annex
JHL: So am I right to say that equality is a direction? We all start

off from different starting points and different circumstances…
ML: Well I think you mean to say a programme, or a process, no? I

don’t know about direction because direction implies that someone
knows where to go. That would be kind of arrogant for me to say, well
this is how you make everyone equal or treat everyone equal. That’s
the million dollar question.
I wouldn’t know the perfect system yet. I can tell you this though.
What I find really important is to constantly go back to what the data
says, to what the science says. That’s why I take this job as an anthro-
pologist working in the world of design very serious. If you study the
vast majority of how humans live, there’s a lot of evidence coming in
every day. One thing we are starting to realise is that we have always
lived in small tribes. This new thing called the state — let’s say the
first state was Mesopotamia 6,000 years ago — that’s nothing in terms
of evolutionary time. It’s like an experiment, a prototype that we are
trying right now.
But the literature suggests very strongly that we do best in small

groups. Small self organised groups. This is where I think the key is
for a lot of design decisions. We are not individualistic… individualists
that live on an island — no connection to anyone else. That’s wrong.
That’s what a lot of capitalist theories are based on and that’s just
wrong. But we are also not super happy in massive states or massive
empires.
JHL: Do you see inequality on the rise? What kind of inequality

do you think is the most pressing one, at the end of the day?
ML: We’re doing this interview in 2020, and I think it safe to say that
this is an age of information, and perhaps the most valuable resource
today is information. Unfortunately, it is not equally distributed.
So that brings me back to this tribalism discussion we had with the
internet, with information in general.
Now if you take that — information as a resource, and if you go back

in time, there’s been similar unequal use of resources everywhere
historically. So transparency is definitely a key there, but the way the
economic order is running right now, transparency is poison for the
industry. If my shirt here says, this was made by a twelve year old child
in Bangladesh because they work for cheaper and don’t demand as many
rights, I don’t think I’ll buy it. So transparency… non-transparency
helps me sleep at night. I need to be honest here. There’s a lot of stuff
I surround myself with in my life that causes a lot of suffering in a lot
of people. A lot of displeasure on a lot of people to get a lot of pleasure.
JHL: We’re not given the whole picture behind one object that
we hold in our hands.
ML: Yes there are a lot of hidden dimensions there.
JHL: It’s not just about how we are being impacted now, but in
the future as well.
ML: That’s it, but there’s a danger of… throwing the baby out with the
bath water. I’m not saying let’s shut down the internet, it is inherently
wrong. Far from it. I’m not even saying let’s shut down capitalism. But
it is rigged to a certain extent that right now is very biased and you
would be sticking your head into the sand to deny that. So my kind
of idealistic future of design is to give people back the potential to be
private, to do what they want to do, what they see fit with their lives,
and to give them back that control. The reason I talk so sharply against
social media is not social media as such. That’s an archaic desire of
humans — we need to exchange information, need to show where we
are in society, where we belong in the hierarchy. That’s archaic. What I
criticise is this business model that has been put in place that is very
hard to get rid off, this triangle between the supplier — call it Facebook.
You the consumer, who is not actually the consumer, you’re actually
the product. And the third party which is the advertising company.
So the deal that we’ve been given in the last… not that long ago, the
last 10, 15 years, is basically that you get this pleasurable app where
you get to exchange things, share photos, meet people you haven’t
seen in a long time, stay in touch with people in a globalised world —
for free. Nothing is free in the universe. As soon as something is free,
you’re the product.
JHL: But what is your solution to this inequality then?
ML: I’m not saying get rid of social media, but why do we not pay for
it? A few cents. Like if someone says I really like what Instagram does,
and I get a lot of pleasure out of it, and I like sharing that pleasure,
80 Annex
great. But why is that “free”? It cannot be free. That’s the un-trans-
parency part, that’s the evil part.
Google. I use Google every day. Free. But it’s not free, even in terms
of resources it’s not free. One Google search is apparently using as
much electricity as burning a light bulb for 5 minutes. It’s not free,
and it shouldn’t be free. I think it should cost something, and I can
even make some money out of it also, like if I upload something on to
the world wide web then I should be able to make something out of it
also. Why not? That would be true capitalism and much more trans-
parent and far more equal I think.
JHL: So what do you think is missing that would make people

desire more equality? If you’re talking about how we are
inherently supposed to function only in small communities, I
wouldn’t be concerning myself with how we make society as a
whole choose actions that create more equality, but what the
individual can do? How do we make them… Because if it boils
down to it, it’s always choosing between 2 actions. So how do
we help people decide which one to take? Are there any cultural
or historical examples of this?
ML: We’re kind of bordering on to this thing called the paradox of

choice. You know the feeling of going into the supermarket and you
have so many choices that [it does not feel] pleasurable. That’s the
paradox of choice. Sometimes you wish that you could go in there and
there are two types of pasta sauce but no, you go in there and there
are hundreds.
Your question is basically how much do we let people choose? And

that goes into Nudge Theory, paternalism… It’s kind of a pandora’s
box. My vision is to give people a choice to be happy, and happiness is
very much linked to pleasure, obviously. Not always, too much pleasure
can lead to a lot of pain as well obviously, but I think like I said, this
is almost too big of a subject.
I think when I get to a point like this and think this is too complex for
me, I resort back to what’s called the behavioural economists. These
are people who experiment and see how humans naturally behave in
a given situation. What kind of choices they make. And we have a lot
of biases built in evolutionarily. I think those have to be looked at very
strongly, and I think that kind of knowledge needs to be employed in
design decisions to cause cultural change.
I do believe that we are designing our future. I’m not an anarchist. I do

believe we need to design our future, and I think those processes need
to be based on human sciences, and I think behavioural economics is
a strong candidate there. I don’t think it’s just trial and error. There’s a
whole body of knowledge out there that we can fall back on that helps
us make interesting decisions.
I don’t like this current model of where we make extremely complex

things super dumb for everybody to realise and understand. I think
that’s really dangerous and I get back once again to the smartphone.
I’ve read some crazy statistics that smartphones have more computing
power than what was used at the end of the 60’s to put people on the
moon. And everybody has got one in their pockets. Nobody knows
how they work, nobody understands the business plan really, but we
understand how to hit little icons.
So Steve Jobs with his intuitive design is a genius, but in my opinion,

a very dark genius. This idea of making touch screens that any monkey
can use is “genius” but it has a dark, dark side to it I think. But that’s
not my vision. I think that if somebody wants to use very sophisti-
cated products and services, I do think that they need to be able to
understand the code behind that. And that’s why I embrace ideas like
open sources computing like Linux, but also in products. We should be
able to at least have a chance to glimpse at least how these machinery
work. That to me at least gives us a chance at a more equal society,
because those that say, I don’t need to understand all this complexity,
well okay, you don’t. But that [choice] has been taken away from us
in many ways.
Millions of people would disagree with me right now. Hundreds of

million people, if they saw online what I am saying right now, would
say, “But I want to use this crazy, new lifestyle. I don’t care about what
they do with my data and me. I just want to live comfortably and be
pleasurable.” — I don’t think that will lead to an equal society.
Bruce Stirling wrote a really good book, Shaping Things, [which] is

an important book in my opinion. He comes up with this concept
of “Spime” - a mashup of space and time. He envisions this future…
he says he’s writing this as he’s drinking a bottle of red wine, and he
says let’s look at this bottle and imagine for a second that me, the
82 Annex
consumer, is given the ability to know everything about its production.

Both the liquid, and the bottle. So imagine this bottle of wine has a
Spime attached to it that is kind of like a QR code that allows me as
the consumer but also the producer of the bottle of wine to follow
that commodity from before it was a bottle of wine to during the
consumption of wine to after, to recycling it, to bringing it back to a
circularity.
JHL: So it’s about putting the power of knowledge in the hands

of everyone?
ML: [Yes] that’s within our reach technologically speaking… And it’s
starting to happen more and more, and that leads to total transparency.
To get a little bit cynical, that’s within our reach and it’s being employed
in many ways already but most of our effort goes into sending… cat
videos, pornography and conspiracy theories. So I think for humanity
we need to sober up and say, if we are going to all use this together in an
equal sense, we need to also put in our part. We cannot just download
a bunch of [it] and enjoy and get pleasure from downloading stuff. It
needs to be an active, participatory process.
JHL: But how do you convince people to do that?
ML: I had the pleasure of meeting one of the absolute pioneers of the
internet, John Perry Barlow. He died recently, but he worked for the
Electronic Frontier, and he wrote a manifesto or a kind of constitution
of the internet. He was very much talking like I am talking now, and
he said a wonderful sentence, “You cannot wake up a person that
pretends to be sleeping.”
I think what he meant is there are a lot of people who know there are
a lot of dark [things] going on online and offline in the world today,
but they are wilfully ignorant. Those that are awake, you don’t need
to wake up, but those who are pretending to be sleeping, you cannot
wake up either because they’re not actually asleep… I think hundreds
of millions of people are pretending to be asleep, sort of self-medi-
cating themselves. I think a lot of us are self-medicating by hanging
on the internet or social media, getting this sensation that we have
so many friends and that our lives are so awesome, when the shit is
about to hit the fan and there is some seriously wrong stuff going on.
Climate change being one example. Slavery has not gone away. Slavery
is alive and well.
The key here is transparency and it’s participatory shaping of things

— participatory design.
In German we say “Gestalten”; it doesn’t translate well but it’s larger

than design. When I say design people usually think of fancy glasses
and sneakers. Design to me is just to make something that isn’t here
yet, in its broader sense. I think the shaping of things needs to be
more transparent, it needs to be more participatory and it needs to
be more equal. I think those three ingredients can lead to a more just
and more pleasurable world. So you as a designer, if you can come up
with a way for a more egalitarian, more equal spread of pleasure, I
think you would do your part in improving society.
I have found that working with fringe societies, minority groups,

immigrants… I’ve found that even more than having a conversation,
even more effective than bringing people together and increasing
pleasure for everyone, it is working on something together.
I think when we think of smart cities and the cities of the future, I
think they need spaces that everyone — and I really mean everyone
— works on together, eye to eye. So stakeholders… Everyone in the
end is a stakeholder. Value creation through stakeholder participation.
84 Annex
Interview with Clare Farrell
Ms Clare Farrell is an activist based in the United Kingdom. She

is a co-founder of Extinction Rebellion (XR), an international
movement that uses non-violent civil disobedience in the hopes
of stopping mass extinction and social collapse. It has been one
of the most successful movements in recent years in engaging
authorities and corporations on issues like climate change and
environmental degradation, as well as the ills of capitalism. Ms
Farrell was formerly a fashion designer, but spends her time
educating fashion design students on issues of sustainability.
This interview was conducted over Skype, on 30 September

2020. It has been edited for clarity.
Jia-Hao (JHL): What motivates you personally to get involved

and take action?
Clare Farrell (CF): I think the main thing that motivated me at the
start was that it was just so interesting. The work that I did with Roger
leading up to now was - before XR - I was really very self-conscious that
I was in an experimental mode with him and we would try something
and see what happens. Poke the system there and see what happens if
you do this. What happens if you do [that]? Oh they don’t arrest you.
That’s interesting. Then what happens if you do this over there? Oh
then they arrest you. They’re going to get very angry. It was kind of
like a big experiment, we were trying to see what happens when you
do different things.
JHL: Trying to see what sticks and what works?
CF: Exactly. And I think Roger’s PhD work (at King’s College London,
researching how to to achieve social change through civil disobedience
and radical movements) was fairly unique… You know there’s not a
lot of people who are doing that academic work, and so I just found it
endlessly interesting to be working with him
And so the first thing is thinking it was really interesting.
And I guess another thing was thinking that well, knowing that we’ve
absolutely fucked it, and so why wouldn’t you do this stuff? There’s
85 Interview with Clare Farrell
definitely a sense for me of not having much to lose because we’ve

fucked things up so badly, and I knew that I felt like that before I
met Roger. So I’ve definitely not been sort of educated on that matter
completely by my experience at XR. And I think also, increasingly,
where I feel further away from my original career, or at least further
away from my production of clothing and fashion, it’s like a psycho-
logical and spiritual liberation to not be working in the fashion industry
anymore, but to be doing something which might make the world a
better place, rather than what I’ve described in the past as my sense of
self and morality being broken in half just to be able to earn a living.
So there’s a wonderful pleasure in the work, and it’s hardly to do with

being completely embedded in something that I don’t feel… I don’t
feel like I have to contort myself in order to do the work. I feel like I
can go and just do it, and that’s okay.
JHL: And be present fully, as yourself?
CF: Yes.
And for once I am not making someone else rich, whilst I work with
some other people who are very poor, and I am myself very precarious,
in between. It’s kind of… it’s a different mode to operate in, because
I’ve only been able to do a very little bit of work on the side, and most
of the time I’m full time working with the movement.
JHL: How do you see the relationship between environmental

degradation and issues of equality and equity?
CF: I guess the first thing is that they’re interrelated. The other thing
is that I think there’s a cultural problem with our willingness to allow
destruction of things that we basically need to be alive and thinking
the way that we do harm to the living world, we do harm to ourselves,
and in some really horrible way, that’s definitely tied to the way we are
doing harm to each other. It’s all part of the same cultural problem. I
don’t know if “problem” is the right word, but it’s all part of the same
story and I guess we’ve dominated each other, and we’ve dominated
the earth as well.
I don’t know if you’ve heard of a guy called Daniel Schmachtenberger.

It’s very interesting but I was listening to him speak recently and
he was talking about win-lose game theory. So basically operate on
86 Annex
win-lose, just this binary, so you either go and kill someone in a war
and take their stuff, or they come and kill you and take your stuff.
So you’ve got a problem there, because if the one side doesn’t want to
fight but the other side does, they’re going to come in and fight you
anyway. So you’re going to be forced into the position of having to be
militarised and have the war. The problem comes when you have so
much power that winning the war will also destroy the ground you
are fighting on. So you win, but you immediately lose. And I feel like
humanity has gone to this place where there’s this ultimate state of
domination. So whatever anyone is trying to do right now in terms of
winning, I think they will end up losing because I don’t think there’s a
way out of it. I’m not as clever as Daniel, so listen to him. But I think
there’s something to think about here really, which is important. That’s
obviously on a big, dispassionate thinking kind of level but for sure,
on a more human, on the ground level, there’s so much that needs to
be changed as we try to find our way through this situation.
You won’t be able to fix our problems on this planet, without people
being more equal. I just think it’s not possible… [it is] systemic.
JHL: Would you say that a lot of inaction right now could be
attributed to the fact that people don’t have full knowledge
about the consequences of their actions? They don’t have full
knowledge because the products that we consume come from
another country, it’s the environment in another country
that’s being razed to the ground to produce the goods that we
consume. Do you think that’s part of the problem?
CF: Yes definitely, and I think with fashion especially. People in this
country are very detached from where things come from. No one knows
how you make a phone. No one knows how you make a t-shirt. Children
don’t know where eggs come from, they think that things come from a
shop. Children think that milk comes from a card box. We’re very, very
disconnected from where things come from because we’ve pushed it all
away so that we don’t have to see and touch production. And we also
don’t have to see disposal. We put [rubbish] in a bin and where does it
go? I don’t care. It just goes away like magic. We’ve literally designed
society in such a way that we can luxuriate in this middle space where
this is no birth, there’s no death; there’s no production, there’s no
disposal. We’re just stuck in the middle bit going like, calling things
cyclical. But our systems are not cyclical, they’re linear as fuck. You
buy something, you put it in the bin, it goes into the ground. That’s
not a cycle. That’s not the lifecycle people’s garments have. They just
sort of go into the bin. So we have a very big problem with not under-
standing that systemically, but also where things come from and how
many people have touched it, and what that means.
When I see people buying very, very cheap clothing thinking they
can wear something once and then throw it away… When they take
something on holiday and they know they’re gonna throw it in the
bin before they come home. So they take loads of clothes, they leave it
all in the bin, and fill their bag up with other things to bring home…
There’s this sort of weird culture around clothing, which is like… I think
if people had any better understanding of what things are - perhaps
the price is also a problem - but the industry itself has also devalued
the product itself so much that, why would you think that a pair of
jeans was hard to produce, which it is? Why would you think a shirt
is hard to produce if you can buy one for like £5? And it just appears.
Boats full of them.
So it’s a problem, because people don’t even know that cotton is a plant.
They don’t even know that leather is an animal skin. So they’re just
buying this stuff going, oh, I’ve got loads of this stuff. But the worst
part of it is that they feel totally unfulfilled, most of them. They’re
like, I’ve got all this stuff but why is my life still quite shit? So you’ve
got to do the work to work that shit out.
JHL: You’ve got to engage with something larger than yourself.
CF: Yes.
JHL: I know that when I spoke with the XR group here in Paris,
they were telling me that there are different groups, such as
logistics, and another team organising the demonstrations. For
example, they try to make it comfortable for people to partic-
ipate in these activities. I’m not sure if it’s the same in the UK?
CF: Yes it is.

88 Annex
JHL: Okay, so they have a team bringing food, and stuff like
that, so that people are fed while they’re protesting. Where did
this idea come from? You want to make it inviting and pleas-
urable even for passersby, so they can participate right there
and then. Is that correct? How did you come up with this idea?
CF: It’s a really good question. I don’t know when we decided to just
feed everyone. I think it’s really nice.
JHL: Yes it is!
CF: Yes it’s quite cool isn’t it?
In London, in April last year was the best time for this because we were
still a surprise and we got away with a lot. And so when we put the boat
in Oxford Circus, some people… There are these little squares on the
pavement which gives access to the water supply. You can buy a tool
that’s like a long pipe and you can put it inside and tap the water supply.
And so when we put the boat in Oxford Circus, and everyone comes
around, people got on the top, started to put the sail, stage, make the
sound system. At the same time, some people had a tent which they
put over where the water supply was. And they put this pipe attached,
and a sink, and they set up a kitchen on top of the water mains with
a tap, so they could wash up. And it was so fast, I don’t know how
they did it. But they gradually came in, put it together, and you sort
of turn around and go, shit, there’s a kitchen! And there were profes-
sional cooks there with gas canisters with heating, pots and stuff,
and I was like, wow I didn’t realise how good the kitchen was going to
be. So these days now, [the police] take our sinks. And last year, they
arrested the kitchen sink. There was a sink and it had six police stood
around it, protecting and guarding the sink so they could remove it.
So [the authorities] don’t like that we can feed people, because it’s such
a good way to engage the public. Because people come by and you’re
like, do you want some food? And they’re like, oh maybe. And then
someone has some food and you can have a conversation with them.
It’s very, very helpful for that, to make lots of people feel welcomed.
And it’s really joyful to give away food, everybody really loves it. Lots of
people volunteer to go and work in the kitchen, because it’s really fun
to give people food. Everybody’s happy. It’s just a joy. So there was this
guy who ran a kitchen called “Food for All”. He has ambitions to feed
5,000 people every day and stuff like this. So it probably came from him,
and a lot of other activists who brought lots of food waste. So people
who came from the south west brought all this food, and I remember
it coming into the office. These crates and crates of vegetables, apples,
oranges, massive bags of rice… And it went to 4 different sides around
the city. And somehow I think, when you sit in an occupied space
and eat your free dinner with your friends, it’s just like better than
anything else. I mean it’s just great isn’t it?
It’s a shame now that it’s difficult for us to do this the same way, so we
need to rethink food in XR, UK, because it’s so hard for us to set that
system up before that was so beautiful. So it needs to be smaller, more…
JHL: Mobile, perhaps?
CF: More places and smaller. And I don’t know if you have Hare Krishna
people in Paris. They like feeding people as well, so they’re quite good
as well. They come around on a bike, and they have a big container of
curry, and they give you a plate of curry, so they always come and feed
us too. So it’ll be nice to work out a more decentralised way of doing
food, which I don’t know how you do it if you want to make it warm.
But it’s very special eating together. I wasn’t expecting it to be as good
as it was, in a way, before we did it, because previously we didn’t really
do food. We were thinking about music. We were thinking about where
we were, what the space was going to feel like. How would it function
and all this other stuff. And the food came from [out of the blue] and
it was like, oh, that’s really good. That makes it really special, and I
wasn’t expecting it.
JHL: It makes it seem more like a party. Less… not that it

detracts from the point of the demonstration, but it gives it a
more festive atmosphere in my experience, and it creates an
opportunity for interaction with a stranger to talk about what’s
happening.
I know that XR has managed to get a lot of people involved, not

just in the UK but in many other countries as well. It’s come to
a point where people associate it with a lot of chaos because of
the disruption it brings, which is also sort of the point. But it’s
also allowed XR to become one of the most well-known organi-
sations involved in raising awareness and trying to create real
and meaningful change. What would you say is the secret to
XR’s success so far?
90 Annex
CF: Audacity, I think, is very important. That came from the very
beginning of going and holding a meeting and saying, are you willing
to be arrested - yes or no, for this. So it’s very upfront about what kind
of risks we were going to take.
And then the visual audacity of parking a boat in a street, or closing
bridges.
I’ve worked very much on the design team, so I think the messaging
and the identity have travelled very well. That’s been a huge success
partly because I work with some really brilliant people who designed
the font, and drew some of the graphic elements that we’ve used a lot,
like birds, and skulls, and all of that stuff.
And one of the things we wanted to do when we set it up was to have

a colour scheme which people could get behind no matter who they
were. And thinking on an intersectional level. We didn’t want a rainbow
of colours, but we wanted lots of different colours and then went for
those in between colours so those sort of like dirty green, orange and
pale pink and pale blue. So not primary colours, but lots of colours.
And then making that simple flag which can then roll those colours
out above people’s heads. So we thought a lot at the start about how
we were gonna embellish people’s bodies, how we were going to dress
the space, what it would look and feel like. We were trying to create
a protest that, from down the road, looks really cool so you’re like, I
really want to know what that is cos it looks so fucking cool.
JHL: Besides design, what else has contributed to XR’s success?
CF: I think one of the main things which XR has done well - and I
think it needs to remind itself that this is something that works really
well - is shift people from a utilitarian way of thinking into virtue
ethics. So thinking through the lens of what makes me happy and a
good person? And spiritually feel like I’m doing the right thing, which
is very different to a lot of thinking which has come before, which is
- well, at least in recent years - which is like, if it’s not likely to work I
won’t do it. And the problem with that is that you see people’s ambition
shrink, because they think that they can’t do anything, so they only
ask for something this big, because they think they’re never going
to get [something a lot bigger]. So we should go for this, because it’s
realistic and that means we’re more likely to win, and that means we’re
much more likely to be able to carry on, and I think that’s entirely
wrong. I think that’s totally wrong. Because if you want to negotiate
for something, you ask for [something big], and you might get [a small
part]. But if you ask for [a small part], you might get nothing. That’s
how it actually works in real life, right?
People [working] in campaigning and NGOs and protest movements

even… people have been working with the wrong theoretical framework,
which sets them up to get less, not more. So some of those thinkings -
some of them came from Roger - but some of the things I spoke to him
about in the early stages are fundamentally important to our success.
So I think that, and along with not being attached to the outcome. So
being okay with the fact that you’re asking for [something big], you
might get [a small part of it], but you might also get nothing. Or you
also might get a massive fine and risk a jail sentence, and you might
get nothing. You have to just be ready to also, you know, know that
you cannot control the outcome. And that makes people very much
more effective as activists. And you can see it a lot with people of faith.
I’ve worked with people of religious backgrounds. We have some very
radical christians in our movement in the UK. They just find it very
straight forward to act in line with their morality, and in service -
totally in service, and I find that really inspiring to see.
Those are a few of the things that I think have been good.
JHL: You mentioned the ways you have used design to create this
XR experience. What would you say is the role of the designer
in equality and capitalism?
CF: Well I guess the first thing is that [the design profession] needs to
have a long, hard look at itself. I can’t remember who it was that said
designers do the devil’s work for capitalism. The way that design has
been coerced into this sort of level of complicity with the problems
we have, and even in some cases, the design work entirely creates
some of the problems. It doesn’t just keep giving you the new thing
that’s a bit tempting to buy. But sometimes it’s the design of an entire
system that makes things worse, not better. And in that way, design
has a lot to answer for, and it has a lot of work to do which is not the
work it does now. So I think it’s massive, actually. And particularly,
92 Annex
certain types of designers have the opportunity to change the way

people think, change what people do, change their habits… As a fashion
designer, you can think well, fashion designers are part of a design
system which tells people how to wash their clothes, for example. Like
if I designed clothes that you wash cold, or at 20 degrees, then that’s
what I’m giving to people with instructions saying you don’t need to
heat your water. That makes a difference, if people don’t heat their
water for washing. That’s massive. Part of a garment’s impact is just
the way it gets washed. So you need to have the capacity to design
systems, and I think in the future, good design is going to be couched
in system design. People need a very, very rapid education on regen-
erative systems and regeneration. I don’t really feel like I’m able to do
enough research on that myself at the moment because I’m so busy.
But if I was only working on fashion that would be my focus right now
- on regenerative system design.
And I think we are at risk of circularity becoming a place where people

stop for too long. Because I think we need to move very quickly through
that conversation and find out what actually happens next when we
start to repair things. In fashion anyway, it’s always a very nice idea if
you want to carry on keeping the market looking exactly the same but
you recycle everything. So you make the stuff, you sell the stuff, it’s
very fast, it’s very cheap. But it goes to the recycling factory where it
gets melted down and then you make a new thing. You keep everything
basically the same, except you stop things from going into the ground.
Great idea, but it’s definitely not enough is it? And it also doesn’t exist.
To do that, it needs massive investment, but it doesn’t have that. I have
to teach students about recycling and waste issues, and they’re like,
so you can recycle clothes. And you can but people don’t because the
factories don’t exist. It’s not at scale. You can’t do circularity at scale
because you don’t build the factories. So we need to do all that so we
stop putting things into the ground, and then we need to very, very
quickly move on from that - now we have more to do. That’s what I’m
interested in - how we are able to shift our mindset towards seeing
what we do as something that is part of everything else. Seeing things
as being interconnected. Understanding that to change this we need to
interact with politics. To change we need to interact with the economic
model and say, actually folks, we can’t carry on doing this.
JHL: You can’t hope to co-opt a new system and try to make it
work under capitalism, because capitalism is the main problem
here.
CF: Yes. I think also there’s a problem with critiquing capitalism,

because capitalism is not a word that has one meaning. It has a lot of
meanings to a lot of different people. We’ve tried… and a lot of people
have criticised us saying, oh they don’t understand that capitalism is
the main problem, they’re so stupid, and that’s not true. I think what
we’re trying to do is to go very carefully towards these conversations.
Because we also know that - I don’t know if this is true in France but
it’s definitely true in the UK - we’ve mobilised quite a lot of people
that aren’t from the left, typically. They’re a bit more in the middle.
We don’t have many from the right. We do have some people who used
to be conservative party members and stuff like that. We have a broad
spectrum of a lot of people who are probably broadly all part of the
left. But we have a centre sort of moderate person who is part of XR
in the UK and they don’t wanna talk about overthrowing capitalism.
They just want to talk about participatory democracy - let’s go there,
let’s see what that brings, and are happy to see what the people say.
And there’s no doubt in my mind that our third demand - which is the
most important one in my opinion - offers people the opportunity to
sit around together, look at the problems, and they will come back, if
they do it properly, and say, we need a new economic model. They just
will, because it doesn’t work.
So I don’t need to go out and go, anti-[capitalism]! Because people will

work that out if we get that demand. And I think they have in France,
haven’t they? With the French convention [La Convention citoyenne
pour le climat]. So [the French] have had something that looks exactly
like our third demand. And within it, the people made a bunch of
recommendations to the government. I think almost all of them were
accepted, apart from reducing the speed limit on the motorway. I was
told by someone in France that the speed limit on the motorway was
all in the news - everyone saying, environmentalists want people to
stop driving fast. But actually, the government accepted almost all
of their other recommendations. Very sensible, very good recom-
mendations. Things like banning advertising for the most polluting
companies and products. Fucking cool. Can we talk about that here?
No. No one’s talking about that. They made a recommendation to the
president that they need, in order to make things better, there’s going
to be a new economic model and a new governance model. Different
way of doing politics, different way of doing economics. These are just
ordinary people that went and sat and looked and looked and looked at
problems, and they come back and they go, we need a different model.
94 Annex
Which is basically saying we can’t have capitalism anymore, we have

to change it right?
But I think somehow people have a bit of an allergic response if you say,
capitalism is very bad, we need to change it. People go, oh you’re one of
those people, go away. So I think it’s interesting we are finding these
different ways, more rich, more exciting ways to talk about the stuff,
and also maybe slightly move on into a space where we are thinking
what is the alternative? I don’t think it’s just what people think of
as socialism either. I think we have to try to go somewhere new. It’s
going to look like socialism right? But I think it’s not like socialism
in the past. I think we might be able to come up with some more new
things that make it the thing for the 21st century. That’s if we do it.
JHL: And if we do it in time.
CF: Yes.
JHL: We’ve been talking about taking action, the need for new
systems, better systems. All these are on the scale of society,
or community. I’m curious, in your opinion and experience,
what is something that individuals can do in their everyday
lives to push the lever forward on issues of equality, as an all
encompassing term to cover things like equity, equality in
consumption, in the way we work as a society in relation to
each other, in terms of capitalism, in terms of power?
CF: There are lots of different things you could do. At the moment,
I think that what we are doing in XR is part of a recipe - we don’t
know the whole recipe but we know some bits. I think it’s part of
the most effective work that you can do in a short time frame. But
I think also that people can live in alternative ways, people can… I
don’t know if you have the transition town movement in France. In
the UK, there is a network of places where people are living differently.
The transition town movement started in 2007. It’s trying to build a
community-centred world by doing that sort of one community at a
time. I think that’s what the people who set this up at the beginning
felt that this was the most effective response that they could make,
was to try and transition the way people live, to a more sustainable,
community-focused way. I think that’s right, but it didn’t grow fast and
big enough. So you can get engaged with that stuff, and I’m sure you
can find connection to permaculture, people focusing a lot on equality
and resilience, cooperation, fairness and kindness; trying to generate

a culture of support and compassion and all of that good stuff.
So you can go that way as well, in the way you choose to live your life.
But I think for me at the moment it’s that the work we are doing is
going to be something that can make a big impact towards this stuff.
In terms of global equity, I think there’s something about that that

blows my mind because it feels so big, and the people that can change it
are… they’re super inaccessible. There’s a space where that conversation
happens, which I think is quite concerning, about development and
about sustainable development and what that means. And the fact that
sustainable development often - to me anyway - sounds like it means
well, it has good intentions, but it has the actual effect of reinforcing
the culture, particularly of growth-based capitalism, extraction,
exploitation. It has the flavour of that, and you sort of see it being
shoved into countries where that culture is not that strong. And it’s got
a “Have this! This will make you better!” [kind of feel to it]. So I think
we are going about things the wrong way, and I don’t know what all the
answers are at all. I don’t think that I understand the complexities of
that work well enough to say, we should do this and it will fix it. But I
think one of the first things that we have to do is stop making things
worse. And that’s a problem, because we are making things worse. The
example I’ve got again is from fashion, but last year I met somebody
at a fashion conference who’s a Chinese factory representative. They’re
setting up factories in Ethiopia to make sweatshirts, sportswear. And
he had a pair of tracksuit bottoms from Under Armour, and he was
like, we can make you these for 60¢ in Ethiopia. And it’s part of factory
developments that are in line with the UN Sustainable Development
goals. And he was so proud of the fact that this was partnered with
the UN because of sustainable development, and he had this pair of
trousers that were 60¢. And I was like, I don’t understand what you’re
doing! I mean that’s a big problem, because at the moment the only
way to help those people in Ethiopia who probably they’re saying, oh
they’re very poor, we lift them out of poverty this way. I mean we’re
talking about a generation of sacrifice, you have sweatshop labour,
you have all of this horrible exploitation that’s seen in the fashion
industry like, that’s just how you lift a country out of poverty, through
the garment sector, where you just have a generation of people who
suffer and lose their lives to heavy exploitation and crippling work,
and shit pay, and no respect, in the hopes that those sweatshops will
one day be like a factory that’s not a sweatshop, that’s actually a nice
96 Annex
factory where you have a nicer lift. And then in the hopes that after
that… you know how many generations do we give it until people have
a dignified existence? It’s fucked, isn’t it?
I don’t know the answer, it’s a big mess. I don’t know if that answers
your question.
JHL: I think we often under-estimate what the man on the street is

capable of, especially when given the information and knowledge. I
think that’s also part of XR’s strategy?
CF: Yes.
Fréjus, 2020
Our Shared Lives – How
Pleasure Can Strengthen
Equality
Capitalism thrives on inequality, and its power is
continually reproduced by structuring it into our lives.
Most people do not have the freedom to freely live
their lives. As a result, there is a deep and profound
dissatisfaction. Instead, many of our desires become
misguided attempts at attending to our well-being,
and the pleasure that results becomes the very thing
by which we measure the worth of our lives. Such
pleasure is often ephemeral and unreliable. On the
other hand, it presents a way for individuals to be
motivated. The real pleasure that we feel when we
know we are doing something good and right has the
Law Jia-Hao
potential to empower individuals to exercise their
Diplômes 2021
agency and play their part in enacting equality for
all. The thesis explores the ways in which capitalism
structures inequality into our lives, and the extent to
which pleasure can be reappropriated and redefined
in order to generate equality for everyone’s benefit.

Law Jia-Hao Memoire2021 FINAL

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Copyright

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Law Jia-Hao Memoire2021 FINAL

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Our Shared Lives:

How Pleasure Can

Except thyself may be

Finally, I’m crossing the threshold

For... and for...

- Lana Del Rey, Get Free

My family and my friends

Ms Ioana Ocnarescu, Mr Antoine

Miss Clare Farrell

Samantha, for sharing

Jordi, for loving and living

Those who make this life possible

Thank you for sharing

I Capitalism Does Not Enable Equality 5

1. Wage Labour, Time & Income 6

II Pleasurable Movement Towards Equality 29

1. Modal Pleasure, Knowledge & Awareness 30

III Inequality is a Tilted Scale 47

1. The Allures of Physical Pleasure 47

Interview with Michael Leube, Anthropologist 72

Capitalism thrives on inequality. The exploitation of our lives gives rise

are more pleasurable and meaningful.

To what extent can pleasure strengthen equality? Within the context

In this thesis, the critique of capitalism is guided by Johan Fornäs’s

companion to Karl Marx’s original Capital. Equality is understood

a system of freedoms and rights that share symbiotic relationships

This book is essential to the thesis, as it makes a strong argument for

living a good life and demonstrates how modal pleasure is ultimately

The thesis will be developed in three sections:

Capitalism Does Not Enable Equality

“The necessity for a form of socialism is based on the obser-

– James Baldwin, No Name in the Street

At its very basic, capitalism is a system of unequal relationships. It is 4

not just an economic system, and should be primarily understood as a

Together, this system of relations makes capitalism work while also

The material effects of capitalism’s system of inequality on our lives

4 FORNÄS Johan, op. cit., p. 2.

things and relationships in capitalism to perceive them as they truly

According to David Schweickart who critiques capitalism in After

2) The means of production are privately owned.

Any economy that displays these key characteristics is capitalist

1. Wage Labour, Time and Income

7 FORNÄS Johan, op. cit., p. 2.

a. Wage Labour Makes Time Expensive to Live

all necessary for society to function, which in turn allow capitalism

Capitalism makes this possible because the means of production are

12 FORNÄS Johan, op. cit., p. 8-10.

by the use of these assets over others. According to Katharina Pistor,

One of these competitive advantages is the ability to pay labourers

as if it was a constant value in the production process, and the value

time. However, according to Marxist critique, labour power is actually

day is composed of necessary labour-time, and surplus labour-time. 25

16 PISTOR Katharina, op. cit., p. 4.

The “freedom” of wage labourers consists only in their freedom from

This inequality is problematic firstly because wage labourers do not

wage labourers no longer experience life as a journey toward fulfillment

form of protection against the unpredictability of life, even though the

rise in exploitation of this very real, rational fear is evidenced by the

In comparison to the rest of society, capitalists do not suffer this

they wish and be completely unproductive if they so desire, while wage

sell their labour power for money in order to survive.

The choice between wage labour and starvation is Hobson’s choice.

b. The Legalisation of Exploitation Perpetuates Inequality

The law aids in social-acceptance of exploitation in the form of wage

exploitation of wage labourers by capitalists is legal simply because

with each other, the ownership of labour power is transferred from