Devil and Philosophy 2nd pages_HIP HOP & philosophy 4/8/14 10:43 AM Page 195 21 Souls for Sale JEFF EWING F Y O Selling your soul to the Devil in exchaPnge for a longer life, wealth, beauty, power, or skill has long been a theme in Obooks, movies, and even music. Souls have Obeen sold for Rknowledge and pleasure (Faust), eternal youth (Dorian Gray), the ability to play the guitar (Tommy JohnCson in O Brother, Where Art P Thou?) or the harmonica (Willie “Blind Do g Fulton Smoke House” Brown in the 1986 Emovie, Crossroads), or for rock’n’roll itself (the way Black SCabbath did on thDeir 1975 greatest hits album, We Sold Our Soul for Rock’n’ERoll). The selling of aN soul as an object of exchange for nearly any- thing, as a sort of fictitious comTmodity with nearly universal exchange valuAe, makes it perChaps the most unique of all possi- ble commVodities (and as such, contracts for the sales of souls are the most unique of aEll possible contracts). One theorist in partiDcular, Karl MaRrx (1818–1883), elaborately analyzed con- tracts, exchange, and “the commodity” itself, along with all the hAidden implicatRions of commodities and the exchange process. Let’s see what Marx has to tell us about the “political economy” of the FaustOian bargain with the Devil, and try to uncover what it trulyC is to sell your soul. N Malice and Malleus Maleficarum UWhile the term devil is sometimes used to refer to minor, lesser demons, in Western religions the term refers to Satan, the fallen angel who led a rebellion against God and was banished from Heaven. In Christian theology, a banished Satan is the 195 Devil and Philosophy 2nd pages_HIP HOP & philosophy 4/8/14 10:43 AM Page 196 196 Jeff Ewing prince of the other fallen angels, who attempts to coax human- ity into sinning against God, where they’ll be sent to Hell, pre- sumably tortured indefinitely. Satan’s encouragement of people to sin is part of his overall war against God, where he plans to overthrow Heaven and God’s rule. The war against Heaven and God’s forces ultimately culminates in Armageddon, the final battle between good and evil, and the Apocalypse, the end of the World (preceding the birth of a new one). The Devil doesn’t have the omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence of God, nor does he have the power of creation— he prepares to wage a war against God via a number of tacti- cal measures, including demonic possession, temptation, F straightforward conversion of individuals towardYs an evil life, and (you guessed it) either encouraging or accepting human O trades of souls for worldly pleasures. P An early depiction of sales for souls is found in the MalleOus Maleficarum (1487), which lists supposOed instances oRf pacts with the Devil, though perhaps the Cearliest and most influen- tial example is the story of Docto r Faustus, immoPrtalized in both Christopher Marlowe’s DEoctor Faustus (1604 ) and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust (1808), each inDspired by the leg- end surrounding the GermCan alchemist, astrologer, and magi- cian Dr. Johann Georg Faust. Little veErifiable fact is known about Dr. Faust, but Nhe probably waTs born in the late 1400s, and died in 1540 or 1541. Numerous magical and alchemical abilities had beenA associated witCh Faust, and those powers had widely been aVttributed to a Epact with the Devil. D R A The Quintessential Salesman In even earlier ChriRstian theological tradition (dating back per- haps as early aOs the sixth century), Theophilus of Adana is held to be a cleric who sells his soul and is redeemed by the Virgin Mary. TheCse stories typically involve an individual seeking worldly success, pleasure, knowledge, power, or even love, and they bNarter with a demon or the Devil for the success of their goUal (sometimes until a natural death, sometimes for a partic- ularly defined amount of time) in exchange for their eternal soul. Sometimes they get exactly what they bargained for—and are sometimes satisfied at the time, other times find their side Devil and Philosophy 2nd pages_HIP HOP & philosophy 4/8/14 10:43 AM Page 197 Souls for Sale 197 of the bargain wanting—and other times they are tricked, granted what they wished for but then the unspoken terms of their side of the bargain change around them. The Twilight Zone episode “Escape Clause” has this theme, where a hypochondriac sells his soul for immortality, only to be eventu- ally faced with the possibility of spending life in prison. The essence of these stories is the sale of an eternal soul to the Devil for a worldly gain of some kind, and this theme has permeated Western culture ever since, in art forms as diverse as music (the Charlie Daniels Band’s “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” where the Devil bets the fiddle player Johnny a golden fiddle if Johnny beats him in a fiddling contest), movies (Rosemary’s Baby, where Rosemary’s husband Guy contracts F with a coven that Rosemary will unwillingly Ygive birth to thOe Antichrist in return for Guy’s successful Pacting career), televi- sion (many episodes of The Twilight Zone), videogameOs, and numerous works of literature (includOing of course RFaust, and implied in The Picture of Dorian CGray). P X MaErx the Spot A long-standing staple of media in the WeDst, the concept of sell- ing your soul in exchanCge for some wEorldly end—often secured with a written coNntract for exchange—attempts to transform the human soul into a commodityT for sale on the spiritual mar- ket. Karl MaArx, the radicalC German philosopher, economist, and revolutionary, wrote Volume I of his great work Das Kapital (CVapital) in 186E7 and grounded this key work in an analyDsis of the commodity and exchange relationships under capitalism. R AMarx wrote Ra number of influential works throughout his lifetime, but his most distinct contribution to the study of the political ecoOnomy of capitalism comes in the form of his mag- num opCus, Das Kapital. Marx starts Volume I with an analysis of “the commodity,” which is an object that is exchanged (boNught and sold) in a market. Understanding commodities is important to understand capitalism. All commodities, Marx Uargues, have two kinds of value—their use value (how useful a thing is, what desires or needs it can fulfill) and their value (how much labor went into their production). This latter con- cept is complex to understand (the labor content of a good, its Devil and Philosophy 2nd pages_HIP HOP & philosophy 4/8/14 10:43 AM Page 198 198 Jeff Ewing value, is represented by its exchange value, how much it should exchange for on the market, and exchange value is modified by a number of other factors to translate into a monetary price, what a good costs in an actual transaction), but you can roughly summarize Marx’s point by describing all commodities under capitalism as objects that have both real uses and, simultane- ously, various prices that determine how much you can get in return for it in a market. Marx also clearly points out that an object (or service) has to have use value to have exchange value (because if labor somehow produces something that no one has any use for, that labor will have no value at all). F C Is for Capitalism Y O Capitalism is distinct from most other economPic systems in the sense that production, the transformation by human laborO of resources and other goods, occurs primarOily for the sale oRf those objects on the market. In prior WesteCrn economic systems, pro- duction of goods predominantly occ urred for reasonsP other than sale, and a proportion of thoseE goods were forcib ly “tribute” to the owners of resources and tools used in proDduction (landlords under feudalism, slaveholCders under slavery). While capitalism is distinct for being thEe only economic system in which most productNion occurs for sTale on the market, it’s also distinct for being a system in which the means by which people produce (resourceAs, tools) are privCately owned by particular indi- viduals, the caVpitalists. Capitalists also are certainly willing to sell resources and goods which hEave been cultivated or produced for reasons oDther than sale oRn the market, but the fact that the major- ity oAf production is intended for sale is the distinctive factor. Marx also assumRes that all exchange occurs between goods that have equaOl exchange value (that is, Marx assumes no one gets cheated). While this is not always true and people may be cheated inC fact quite often, Marx’s economic analysis starts from best-case-scenario assumptions about capitalism and how it worNks—no one gets cheated, no one is coerced, the playing fiUeld between capitalists is competitive—to show the necessary consequences of capitalist production in the best of all possible worlds. Workers agree to sell their labor-power (their capacity to labor) in exchange for wages, with which they can meet their needs on the market by buying goods and services. Marx Devil and Philosophy 2nd pages_HIP HOP & philosophy 4/8/14 10:43 AM Page 199 Souls for Sale 199 assumes that their pay must on balance enable them to meet their needs (or else why would they agree to work for someone else’s benefit?), and thus the value of their yearly labor power sold on the market is roughly equal to the value of the goods and services they need to survive the year at a socially deter- mined average level of acceptability (that is, they get paid enough to survive and live a life at an acceptable quality), and in households with dependents this wage level covers the abil- ity for dependents to survive as well (including children and stay-at-home spouses).