Capitalism’s vampires

In the transition from complex societies to modern states, the taste for exploitation was retained

by Michael Nenonen <mnenonen@republic-news.org>

I used to be one of Anne Rice's most committed fans. Interview With A Vampire (1976) hooked me, and for years thereafter I let Rice's imagination mould my own. By the time I finished reading Lasher (1993), though, I'd had my fill. Her cuisine remained the same, but my palate hadn't. After reading Eli Sagan's At the Dawn of Tyranny: The Origin of Individualism, Political Oppression, and the State (Knopf, 1985), I understand why.

Before discussing Sagan's work, I should offer some idea of what Rice's novels are about—or at least the thirteen I've read. Until 1993, at any rate, Rice was writing about beautiful vampires even when she was supposedly writing about witches and mummies, upper-class nymphettes and sadomasochistic aristocrats. Vampirism isn't restricted to literal bloodsucking; it occurs whenever we steal another person's vitality, regardless of how the theft is carried out. This theft was the centerpiece of Rice's fiction.

Her protagonists were typically talented and gorgeous, wealthy and amoral. Some were superhuman. By the early 90s the vampire Lestat could fly and lift many tonnes; he might as well have been from Krypton. Whether they were drinking blood or enjoying fine art, her characters' tastes were invariably expensive. The plight of the characters forced to feed those tastes was paid little heed; the poor and ugly were regularly exploited, humiliated, and literally devoured. Her protagonists' virtue was highlighted by the material, intellectual, aesthetic, and psychological poverty of the people beneath their feet.

Rice's influence upon the S&M and Goth subcultures has been remarkable. Much like Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek, her fiction inspires a way of life, though few of her fans seem to understand the classism underlying that fiction. Though she certainly celebrates the power of beauty, Rice also promotes the beauty of power. 

Let's turn to Sagan's work, which explores the psychosocial transformations that accompanied the rise of complex societies. These are transitional societies, existing between early tribal societies on the one side and literate state societies on the other. Complex societies are marked by kingship and aristocracy, phenomena unknown in previous stages of social development. Whereas tribal societies maintain order through the informal pressures of kinship networks, in complex societies the nobility escapes the bonds of collective existence.

Complex societies unleash previously constrained creative potentials. Sagan writes, "The individuality that we prize so highly, which did not exist in primitive society, had its beginnings in the complex. Epic poetry, fairy tale, professional bards, and theatre originated here." Alongside this creative explosion, social taboos begin to be violated in a manner familiar to readers of Rice's tales: "Male homosexuality and bisexuality played an important role in most advanced complex societies. Royal incest, in which the king marries his half-or full sister, was a widespread ritual form. Prostitution, adultery games, sexual exhibitionism, and compulsive gambling made their first, but not their last, appearance on the cultural scene in these same societies." Also unleashed are hitherto unknown depths of political cruelty. "Once it had been demonstrated that a certain kind of psychological and political power was possible, once the breakthrough had been made, once the constrictions the kinship system exercised on individual assertion had been smashed, then it became possible for a certain kind of human trash—those whose only 'virtue' was a potent will-to-power—to become the leaders of society."

The most vicious feature of complex societies, and one that's particularly relevant for Anne Rice's work, is their nearly universal practice of human sacrifice, a practice that's rare in tribal societies and that dies out as complex societies give way to literate states. 

Ritually sacrificing the powerless reinforces the class structure of complex societies and makes it easier for the nobility to psychologically dissociate itself from kinship ties. Nobles must, after all, believe they have qualities that set them apart from base commoners. To be "noble" is to be superhuman, with all the privileges due to such an elevated condition and without any of the moral fetters binding the inferior classes. Nobles define themselves in contrast to commoners. Commoners are ugly, while nobles are beautiful; commoners are stupid, while nobles are wise; commoners are poor, while nobles are rich; commoners are weak, while nobles are mighty. Human sacrifice enshrines this division between the lordly and the contemptible. Vampires like Lestat are perfect embodiments of noble fantasy.

I believe there's another, equally important psychological motivation for human sacrifice. Nobles are confronted by ample evidence of their fundamental identity with the people they oppress. Try though they might, they can't escape the human condition, a condition marked by suffering, decay, and death. The psychological problem presented by these realities must be particularly acute in complex societies, where the gains of the nobility are still unstable. In the face of their own mortality, nobles try to master death itself. Human sacrifice is one method of achieving this goal. This power is intoxicating, especially when combined with the nobility's appropriation of the product of the masses' labor. Without such intoxication, however, the separation between commoners and nobles simply can't be maintained. 

The separation gets easier as the nobility's gains become more firmly entrenched in the social order—that is, as complex societies turn into literate state societies. Thereafter, overt human sacrifice becomes less common, and is gradually replaced by other methods of domination and exploitation. Regardless of this change, nobles continue believing in their own majesty and continue defending this belief at all costs. Their avarice and ostentation are rivaled only by their eagerness to use financial, political, and military force to ensure the abject submission of the vast majority of the human species. One need simply look at the Bush dynasty to see that the nobility's glory is still purchased with our death and debasement. Like Anne Rice's vampires, they remain addicted to our blood.

Perhaps it's this ancient addiction that gives Rice's books their appeal. We're all tempted, to some degree or another, by the promise of nobility. Each of us wants to escape the human condition, to enjoy vampirism's wicked delights. We secretly yearn to dine on human misery, to soak our egos in the suffering of slaves, to be the agent of death but never its victim. We dream of magnificence and debauchery, of an existence filled with pleasure but unbound by compassion. We're easily seduced by fantasies of omnipotence, especially since those fantasies are so conducive to the expression of our creative potentials. Of course, only the few are allowed to fulfill these fantasies; for most of us, they're merely a means of identifying with our oppressors. 

I abandoned Rice because I'd begun to feel as though I were a cow who was dreaming of running a slaughterhouse. Even so, I can't deny the transgressively revelatory power of her work. And here we have the dilemma facing us all. We're challenged, both as individuals and as societies, to find a balance between independence and interdependence, a balance that nurtures our creative potentials while tempering the political sadism and ecological idiocy that accompany excessive individualism. Who among us knows how to find that balance, or even what it would look like? More than this, how can the nobility be persuaded to relinquish an addiction they've been feeding for literally thousands of years?

****