On Vulgar Materialism

The most stubborn facts are those of the spirit, not those of the physical<br>world.

— Jean Gottmann, Geography and International Relations

In 1914, before the First World War, there was this belief: “a<br>European war would be economically disastrous, the moneyed classes won’t let it<br>happen”. Europe went to war anyways, and the war was in fact an economic<br>disaster as everyone knew it would be. Why were those people wrong? Because the<br>rich were not in control: the Tsar and the Kaiser and the Emperor were<br>in control.

I thought of this in 2022, in the lead up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine,<br>whenever I would read someone argue: “Russia invading Ukraine would be economic<br>suicide, the oligarchs won’t let Putin do it, they want to keep their yachts and<br>villas”. Then Putin did it anyways, and the oligarchs had their assets in the<br>West seized. Because the oligarchs are mis-named. They have no political power<br>whatever and live and die by Putin, who appoints them to run stuff, and they get<br>to live well, as long as they are loyal. They are the recipients of political<br>patronage, not the source of it. When the wars start anyways, the same<br>cynical people change their tune, suddenly it’s the armaments industry that’s<br>behind it all, the war was profitable after all.

The default lens through which modern people look at the world is vulgar<br>materialism : a stylized, populist version of historical materialism<br>where everything is explained by money, states are weak, democracy is a fiction,<br>corporations and the rich run the world, ideology and religion and nationalism<br>and language have no explanatory power and are merely covers for secret,<br>underlying material motives.

Once you notice it, you see it everywhere: you’ll hear people say that the<br>Rwandan genocide was a scam to sell machetes or the war in Gaza is about<br>oil or ISIS beheadings are caused by a lack of economic<br>opportunity. People on the right justify skepticism of medicine by<br>invoking Big Pharma, and climate skepticism on climate scientists seeking grant<br>money. Glyphosate is probably the most studied molecule in history at<br>this point, but no amount of studies will convince people it’s safe, because<br>corporations are evil.

In fiction—if you think this is a valid way to sense the cultural<br>consensus—the trope of the evil corporation has been done to death and<br>beyond. Just this week I finished a novel and watched a<br>movie where the central bad guys are private corporations with<br>quasi-state powers. Seemingly no-one notices that never, not once in all of<br>human history, has there been anything like “corporate state” of science<br>fiction. No, not the VoC or the EIC, which were “companies” in<br>the sense of bodies corporate, the old medieval sense of the word: power<br>was delegated to them, and they ruled on behalf of the states that chartered<br>them. Not Venice either: you couldn’t buy your way into the Golden<br>Book until the republic was well into the decline. The EIC once controlled<br>25% of world GDP, yet, when Parliament decided it had delegated too much power,<br>they simply neutered it. And you think Jeff Bezos has power?

Now, why is vulgar materialism false?

First, as a way to explain events, the problem with asking “cui bono?”,<br>is that whatever happens—literally in any circumstance—someone will<br>benefit. If nothing bad happens, the peacetime economy benefits. If something<br>bad happens, then, because the means of relief are obtained through the market,<br>the companies that provide those means benefit. Thus war benefits arms<br>manufacturers, plagues benefit pharmaceutical companies, earthquakes benefit<br>glaziers. And it’s not wrong to benefit from relieving a harm. The COVID<br>vaccines saved millions of lives: why shouldn’t pharmaceutical companies<br>benefit? It is wrong to benefit from perpetuating a harm, but companies have<br>limited ability to do that, more on which below.

So the question “who benefits?” always has an answer, which often proves<br>nothing. And if there is no obvious causal chain from the beneficiary to the<br>event, then that just proves the shadowiness and corruption of the whole thing.

Second, we can ask: in the real world, does money give you influence over the<br>state? To some extent, yes. Some lobbying efforts succeed. America is one of the<br>few countries in the world where it’s legal to advertise prescription drugs to<br>the public, for example. But corporations don’t have veto power over the<br>state. If e.g. Pfizer spends billions on a clinical trial, and some guy at the<br>FDA says no, and wipes that investment, who wins? The FDA wins. Pfizer can’t do<br>shit.

There’s also an invisible graveyard problem, where the success of<br>lobbying is very salient, because it’s often shockingly offensive. But there are<br>many contrary cases that are less salient because, well, if you ban something,<br>it doesn’t happen. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission did not approve a<br>single nuclear reactor from its creation in 1975 until Vogtle 3+4. What has<br>Westinghouse done about that?...