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Devil and Philosophy 2nd pages_HIP HOP & philosophy 4/8/14 10:43 AM Page 195

21 for Sale

JEFF EWING

F Y O Selling your to the 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 (), eternal youCth (Dorian Gray), the ability to play the guitar (Tommy Jo hnson in O BrotPher, Where Art Thou?) or the harmonica (Willie “Blind Do g Fulton Smoke House” Brown in the 1986 Emovie, ), 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 UWhile the term devil is sometimes used to refer to minor, lesser , in Western religions the term refers to , the fallen angel who led a rebellion against and was banished from Heaven. In Christian theology, a banished Satan is the

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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 , , 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), 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 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

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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 aPcting 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 Doria n 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

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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

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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). Capitalists attempt, via a variety of measures, to get work- ers to work in actuality to produce value beyond their wage level, a condition Marx refers to as exploitation (where one F works for more than what one gets in returnY) and capitalisOts take home excess over what they’ve paidP workers in the form of surplus value (or, in monetary form, profits). Thus, Owhile workers agree to contract their capaOcity to labor inR exchange for the income they need to meetC their needs, capitalists try to maximize the commodities wor kers produce beyPond that point in order to gain profits from production—wo rkers make more value than they get paid foEr, and capitalists reap the rewards. C D WhaNt Can I Get forE This Soul? In fiction, movies, music, and otheTr media, characters have sold their souls forA a number of vCarious goals, such as immortality in our aforementioned Twilight Zone episode, a successful act- ing careeVr in Rosemary’sE Baby, money in ’s “The DDevil and Tom Walker,” or even redemption (upon sending other souls Hell’s wRay) in the 1981 movie The Devil and Max DAevlin. R In the Faust mythos, Faust exchanges his soul with MephistophOeles for knowledge and power. In , MarlowCe contracts with Lucifer (the Devil) through the demon , selling his soul to Lucifer in exchange for twNenty-four years of his every wish being served by Mephistopheles’s hand. The final night before the contract is Uup finds Faust begging for mercy, but to no avail. Goethe’s Faust begins with Mephistopheles betting God that he can turn one of God’s loyal followers (Faust) away from God. Faust, an alchemist and scholar, despairs over the limits of his knowl- Devil and Philosophy 2nd pages_HIP HOP & philosophy 4/8/14 10:43 AM Page 200

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edge, and is approached by Mephistopheles with a wager that the Devil can provide Faust the transcendence he seeks and Mephistopheles will be Faust’s servant on Earth. The stakes of the wager are that, if Mephistopheles succeeds and Faust finds a moment he wants to live forever, Faust must serve him for- ever in Hell. While there are differences in the details of the two versions of Faust, both find Faust wagering his soul in exchange for knowledge and worldly gain, using his soul as an object of exchange. In Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dorian Gray is a culturally literate and wealthy young man of extraordinary physical attractiveness. Basil Hallward, a painter creating a F portrait of Dorian, introduces him to a friend, LorYd Henry, who makes Dorian upset with a speech about how quickly youth O and beauty fade. Worried about the loss of thePse, Dorian’s most notable traits, Dorian curses the portrait, which he fears wOill someday remind him of his lost youthO and beauty. RDorian pledges his soul under the conditioCn that the painting bears the weight of time and life, thus a llowing him to sPtay forever young and beautiful. Over tiEme, Dorian devot es himself to hedonistic pleasure and debauchery, and witDh each self-serving or other-harming action hCe notes his portrait (in his posses- sion) becoming more hideous. Dorian GEray makes no direct , bNut ‘wagers’ hisT soul for beauty following Lord Henry’s prompt, and continues a life of increasing ‘sin’, hedonism, selfishAness, and debCauchery under Lord Henry’s prompting, aVnd thus Lord HEenry serves the same function in Dorian Gray as the Devil does in direct adaptations of the FaustianD legend. R InA O Brother, Where Art Thou? the convicts Ulysses Everett McGill, Pete HogwRallop, and Delmar O’Donnell are three escaped convicOts in 1930s Mississippi, trying to find Everett’s hidden stolen treasure. Of the number of odd situations and strange chCaracters they encounter on their journey, one of which is their encounter with the guitarist Tommy Johnson (modeNled after the real-life blues musician Tommy Johnson) wUho sold his soul to the devil for the ability to play the guitar (a claim made by the real Tommy). Later, Tommy is found to be almost a victim of a lynching by the Ku Klux Klan until our convicts intervene. For Tommy, his soul was used as an object of exchange for skill in playing the guitar (and apparently he Devil and Philosophy 2nd pages_HIP HOP & philosophy 4/8/14 10:43 AM Page 201

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never pulled a ‘Devil Went Down to Georgia’ and challenged the devil to keep his soul). Tommy Johnson shows yet another potential object of exchange for a human soul—guitar skill (thus widening the range of potential worldly gains from knowledge, power, and wealth, to presumably the whole range of potential skills, like the ability to make sushi, speak Italian, master the Etch-a-Sketch, or perform terrific card tricks). All these examples exhibit the diversity of ‘things’ you can trade a soul for—knowledge, power, skills, beauty. . . trading souls is the Amazon.com of bartering—you can get anything for them, and all you have to do is be willing to spend eternity in Hell, or otherwise serve the demon who served you (or whatever else F the specific terms of agreement end up to be).Y O Marx and the CommodifPied Soul O Marx was a materialist—he didn’t tOhink there was truth to metaphysical, religious, or spiritual claims. Thus, MRarx would argue that there is no soul to b e Ctraded or a “DPevil” to trade it to—but let’s just forget that for a moment, sh all we? Assuming there is a soul and a Devil Eto trade it to, what kind of tradable entity or object might the soul be? The sDoul can be traded for anything—it is a true Cuniversal comEmodity. In this respect, it resembles the traNditional function of gold, the commodity his- torically linked with money, whiTch functions as the universal measure of thAe value of otheCr commodities. Gold has long been the universal commodity—like the human soul on the meta- physical lVevel, but the sEoul does one better—it can grant one gold, Dbut one cannot trade gold for one’s soul (old-Catholic indul- gences notwithstandRing!). But why the one-sided trade-ability? AGold is the uRniversal commodity on the Earthly plane, but souls have effectively one buyer—the Devil (or sometimes his minions on Ohis behalf). The trade in souls is perhaps the only perfectCbuyer’s monopoly. One often recognized insight of politi- cal economy of any stripe—right-wing, centrist, left-wing, or MaNrxist—is that the degree of monopoly of buyers or sellers gives them nearly unlimited power to demand prices, so long as Uthe good’s sale or purchase is important. Since the Devil, accord- ing to fiction and movies, can effectively grant anything, the use value of what he has to offer is nearly limitless (according to fic- tion he can grant worldly power, nearly infinite knowledge, Devil and Philosophy 2nd pages_HIP HOP & philosophy 4/8/14 10:43 AM Page 202

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almost ageless invulnerability à la Dorian Gray, and so forth), and the good he asks in return is something everyone has according to Western theology. Capitalism runs differently from the rules of the Devil in one respect—capitalist commodities are sold for monetary profit, and thus production occurs for what is called effective demand rather than demand itself—for capitalism it doesn’t matter what you want or need, unless you have the money to pay for it, which you might not have. If you do not have the money, your need does not get met, even if it kills you. The Devil, on the other hand, asks only the tradable com- modity everyone has from the time they are born—their soul. F And since everyone has effective demand (what Ythey need to trade to the Devil) and the Devil can grant nearly any desire O (except for true salvation, access to HeavePn, et cetera, . . . obviously!) and has a complete monopoly over the provisiOon of worldly desires via the trade of a Osoul (while WRestern theology holds that God will proviCde, God will not presum- ably provide all things, and doe s not trade in Psouls), the Devil has the market powerE to ask the highe st price—the soul—if the person trading it wants somethDing badly enough to pay. C As a commodity, the soul has imporEtant use value—it is the source of immortaNlity (survives Tdeath), made in the image of God, and one’s choices in life impact the final use value of the soul. This relAates to Marx’sC development of the labor the- ory of value—Vlabor createsE or develops use values in goods (natural objects come ready-made with use value, but it takes human lDabor to make Rnature useful for needs, even if that laboAr is as simple as picking an apple from a tree). Your labor then ultimately detRermines the use value of your soul (even if that use value Ostarts out supposedly pure) in a similar way to how labor determines the use-value of other resources and goods. SiCmultaneously, the soul has nearly unlimited exchange value. You could perhaps classify the soul has hav- ing a sNimilar status to ‘nature’—the use-value precedes but is mUodified by human labor, and its development and generation occur for reasons other than commodity exchange and profit. The person who sells their soul loses its use-value in favor of its exchange value, and the Devil enlarges his Hellish kingdom. Devil and Philosophy 2nd pages_HIP HOP & philosophy 4/8/14 10:43 AM Page 203

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Souletarian Revolution? As we’ve seen, from the pseudo-immortality of Dorian Gray, the knowledge and power of Faust, the guitar-playing skill of Tommy Johnson, the acting success of Rosemary’s husband in Rosemary’s Baby, or the immortality of Twilight Zone’s “Escape Clause” can all be purchased at the cost of a human soul. The soul is not produced to be a commodity—in Western theology God does not generate souls as objects for sale to the Devil— but nonetheless, while having almost universal exchange-value (much like a more powerful, spiritual version of gold) souls tra- ditionally have only one buyer—the Devil. This monopoly sta- tus grants the Devil the ability to extract the ultimate deal, the F permanent human soul, in exchange for all Yof these worldly gains, setting up the drama behind all person-sells-soul-foOr- random-stuff plot-lines. The soul fits Ploosely withiOn the Marxian labor theory of value tradition, in that the use-value of the soul (its possibility of admittaOnce to Heaven Ror Hell) is impacted by human activity, muCch like natural resources or other goods. P By this analysis, it is moEre possible to sell a soul to the Devil (in Western theology) and get your neeDds met than it is (for many people) to get Cneeds met through capitalism. This is because unlike the market for soulsE, capitalism only provides based on effective Ndemand, and iTf you can’t pay, you can’t sur- vive if your onAly resource is within the market. The Devil asks a high price, a person’s immoCrtal soul, but the human soul is a resource eVveryone has (soE all demand is ‘effective demand’). The height of the price isn’t that different from Marx’s materialist accouDnt of capitalismR (if Marx’s atheism and materialism are rAight, the ultimate price is not the final abode of a human soul, but the natural Rand material death of a human body), as capi- talist exchaOnge tendencies allow many individuals the world over to die from lack of their needs being met, many poor and workinCg class people pay the highest price under capitalism. NoNnetheless, the sale of your soul to the Devil, the soul as the ultimate object of exchange (but where the individual pays the Uultimate price) is staple of Western literature—and one that makes clearest sense when looked at with Marx’s critique of political economy.