On gratuitousness
Gratuitousness is the main taboo of capitalism. It is feared as the greatest danger, because if it were let to run freely in the territories of capitalism, they would be infected and its “poison” would cause its death, or – by the same token – it would turn it into something substantially different. It is difficult to see the taboo of gratuitousness in our economy (and society) because another taboo conceals it, namely the recognition of its existence. In order to understand the profound relationship between gratuitousness and capitalism, we must violate this first taboo by merely starting to talk about it.
According to an important anthropological tradition, the origin of civilization is deeply connected to two words: Violence and the sacred. Even the Bible begins human history outside of Eden with Cain’s fratricide. The death of the meek and righteous Abel becomes the first price of the foundation of human civilization. Founding myths of other cities (e.g. Rome) narrate similar cases of violence and murder (Bruni, 2019).
Communities had to learn how to manage people’s violent impulses, to prevent their own destruction. The creation of taboos must be included among the tools to regulate and control violence, in order to prevent it from becoming emulative, recurrent and explosive. Communities have paid a heavy price for these tools, as they applied to persons and actions leading to forms of discrimination and, more often than not, actual persecution of those who were subject to taboos (women, lepers, the poor, the sick, entire peoples).
The relationship between a community and its taboos shows a radical ambivalence. On the one hand, a taboo is all that you have to avoid, all you cannot touch, against which you should get immunized not to become contaminated and infected by its spirit (the mana). Furthermore, the words associated with taboos should not be pronounced. The land of a taboo cannot be crossed. Communities have changed; they have died and been resurrected according to the rhythm of the creation, violation and elimination of taboos. Even if by completely different modes, the same ancestral rhythm of the Earth keeps appearing in our history.
Likewise, the content of taboos carries a fatal and strong attraction, by developing some invincible traits in people: A taboo cannot be violated, but (and because) we profoundly wish to do so, the desire for vengeance on Cain (“whoever finds me will kill me”) produces his “mark” (“lest any who found him should attack him”): Genesis 4:14.
His words are banned, but the temptation to pronounce them is strong. For example, based on what Freud calls “the taboo on the rulers”, kings cannot be touched by their subjects: A ban that aims to counter the deep passion-desire present in members of the community to kill the kings and rulers.
Objects, animals and people considered taboo also have a dual characteristic: They cannot be touched, nor can they be eliminated. The goal of the use of taboos is not their disappearance, since, if taboos were to disappear, the impassable border would also be gone with it, the community would be contaminated, and so it would fall exactly into the “sin” that the taboo was meant to avoid. The taboo and its marks must therefore be very visible; everyone must be able to recognize the totems.
We can understand a lot about how capitalism works and, in general, about economics, if we take its taboos of gratuitousness seriously. The relationship between gratuitousness and the market encompasses the anthropological traits of taboos.
First, we find the original violence.
Traditional or pre-commercial communities hinged upon two original and distinct principles: Hierarchy and gift. Hierarchy was the instrument for the management of power, while gift regulated reciprocity in families, within clans and communities. The advent of the market took place after the killing of the gift, which must die in order to create the contract and commercial exchange in its place, which are characterized so as not to be a gift, not to be gratuitousness. Market economy does not question the hierarchy; conversely, it radicalizes it – to the extent that capitalist enterprises are also the main place, along with the armies, where hierarchy continues to play a significant and, after all, socially accepted role in the age of democracies.
At the origin of the market, however, there is a sort of primordial violence on gratuitousness-gift (even if it is neither perceived nor told as such by its protagonists). Even Cain’s violence is linked to gift and to the economy. God did not accept his gifts, a denial that generated violence on Abel, the elimination of the fragile brother, who knew how to make gifts.
Gratuitousness is always as fragile and vulnerable as Abel; it is exposed to abuse. However, Cain is also the patron of trades and the founder of the first city, which is named after his son (Enoch). In addition, its very name has a strong assonance with the verb qanah: To buy.
Furthermore, in the Book of Genesis, the word “profit” (bècà) makes its appearance in the scene of Joseph being sold into slavery, again, by his brothers (37, 28). The fraternity of the gifts is denied by the appearance of profit. In Rome, numus (currency) was the non-munus (gift). In modernity, at the heart of the founding myth of political economy, “the invisible hand”, we find the argument that the engine of the wealth of nations is not the “benevolence” or gratuitousness of traders, but their personal interests (Adam Smith, The wealth of nations, 1776). The visible hand holding gifts was replaced by the invisible hand of the market, which is not the Providence during ancient times, because its nature lies in the absence of gifts.
Neither can gratuitousness be profaned in the market, but it must be visible and well in sight. The boundary around its territory coincides with the very limits of the market: The land of what is freely given starts where that of the market, the contract and incentives ends. Gratuitousness begins beyond the company’s gates, after we have done the shopping and gone home. Everyone should see it, everyone must understand it without any complex speeches: It is enough to identify its signs and its totems: Workplace time cards, the duration of lunch breaks, the management of overtime and especially the language. The words of taboos cannot be uttered: Woe to those who say the word gift or gratuitousness and its synonyms in the ordinary course of business.
Nevertheless, as happened in some totemic civilizations, there are some specific times when the untouchable subject of taboos can and should be mentioned, sacrificed, ritually consumed, in order to seize its mysterious and terrible force. Hence, in business assemblies gift is evoked, pronounced, consumed and then put back in its inviolable tabernacle the next day. We organize employee volunteer initiatives, social dinners to help the poor, to provide organized and regulated activities within the reassuring confines of the rules, limited to that carefully controlled time. These donuncoli, domesticated gifts, managed and controlled, are the new voodoo dolls, resembling the real person (gift-gratuitousness) with the hope of handling it and subjecting it to witchcraft.
Then, what are the deep reasons for the fear that gratuitousness causes in the capitalist economy, to make it the primary taboo? The first reason lies, again, in its appeal. Even in the case of gratuitousness, like all taboos, prohibition stems from a deep desire. We wish for nothing more than gift: We yearn for it, it makes us feel alive, it is our profound vocation. Moreover, if the economy is life, the charm of the gift (given and received) is strongly perceived, and even more so in the economic life.
However, nothing is more outrageous than gift; nothing is free anymore. It is everywhere and it is free, but in the economic field its effects would be particularly devastating. Because it would break the rules of contracts, it would undermine the hierarchy. If companies accepted and embraced the register of the gift-gratuitousness, they would find themselves with people who are unmanageable, unpredictable and capable of actions that cannot be controlled by hierarchies and incentives, because they would be truly free. They would have to deal with workers who would follow their intrinsic motivation, working beyond the limits of the contract, which are too tight and small to contain the overflowing power of gift. They would be faced with people who would not fit in the organization charts, the job descriptions, people who would bring much more life and, therefore, much more confusion and noise with them – as it happens with living things. If company managers recognized this gift as such, if it made them grateful towards their colleagues and employees, that free reciprocity and those strong bonds would be created in businesses that are the typical fruits of gifts, that are recognized, accepted and reciprocated. It would change the hierarchy, which would become fraternal and therefore fragile, vulnerable, exposed just like the meek Abel; but fragility and vulnerability are the great enemies of capitalist enterprises and their immune cultures. To avoid the risk of recognizing gifts and the generation of strong ties, business culture and governance just react by denying it: This is how the taboo of gratuitousness is reborn and strengthened every day. Companies and markets will protect themselves from gratuitousness to protect themselves from their own death.
But there is also something else to say. In recent years, the taboo of gratuitousness has left the economy and large companies to move progressively and quickly to civil society, to non-profit organizations, associations, movements and communities. The taboo is expanding and the house of gratuitousness on Earth is becoming increasingly more cramped. Management techniques and tools, which until recently belonged exclusively to large companies and banks, are now entering many areas of civil society. The real – almost always invisible albeit very high – price of the entry of capitalist management into civil organizations, movements and communities is the gradual elimination of these places of free gifts. So, paradoxically, the taboo of gratuity is created right in the heart of the realities that were born from and for gratuitousness.
The spirit of differences
The beauty of social life mainly depends on the game and the interweaving of differences. The Earth is not only beautiful for the variety of butterflies and flowers. There is much beauty generated by differences in the ways and forms of doing economy, enterprise or banking. Even greater is the beauty that comes from differences between people, from the encounter of their different talents, from the dialogue between their motivations.
Many civil “works of art” that continue to beautify our common ground were carved out of motivations that were greater than economic incentives, of some “because” that was deeper than the monetary “why”. If their founders had obeyed the iron law of business plans, today we would not have all the institutions for the disabled that have loved our special children, nor the thousands of cooperatives born from the desire for life and future of our fathers, mothers and grandparents. These works that flourished because of greater ideals endured over time and beyond ideologies, crossing through the centuries. They sprang from great motivations that have been able to generate considerable, long-lasting and fertile outcomes. Economic and civil life, human life, feels an extreme need for all human resources, as well as the deepest of motivations. Economy reduced to pure economics is lost and is no longer capable of generating life or good economy.
One of the most radical trends of the humanism of immunity underlying contemporary capitalism is the need to control, curb and normalize the deepest motivations of human beings, especially those that are inherent, where our gratitude and freedom have their roots. As a matter of fact, when we activate our passions, ideals and our spirit, sometimes it happens that our ways of behaviour go beyond the control of organizations. Our actions become unpredictable because they are free, and therefore they put protocols and job descriptions in crisis. They cause crisis, especially in management that – because of its tasks and nature – has to make organizational behaviour controllable and predictable. To be able to handle many different people and direct them all towards the basic goals of the company, it is necessary to implement a strong homogenization and standardization of behaviour, so that they become incapable of creativity (that all of them would like, by their words). Intrinsic motivations are more powerful and, therefore, more destabilizing. We disengage from the cost-benefit calculation and become able to do things just for the inherent happiness of the action. We would not have scientific research, poetry, a lot of art or true spirituality without intrinsic motivations, as we would not have many businesses, communities and organizations, arising from the passions and ideals of the founders and living because and insofar as someone continues to work not only for money. All true creativity has an essential need for intrinsic motivation. But – as we see every day, tragically – intrinsic motivation is also at the root of the worst human behaviours.
Here is the reason why the modern spirit, in particular the economic spirit, chose to settle only for the instrumental or extrinsic motivations – fearing the potentially destabilizing effects of the great human motivations. Therefore, we have let democracy manage the public game of differences and identities, but we expelled it from businesses. And so our organizational culture seeks to turn human motivation into all the various incentives to reduce the many “because”-s into a single, simple “why”. We have thus reduced the wounds (vulnerability) inside our businesses, but we have also reduced the blessings (welfare).
Incentives have become a great tool for controlling and managing “reduced” people who are underpowered in their many motivations, in order to align them with the goals of organizations (the incentivus was the wind musical instrument that gave the tune for the instruments of the orchestra, the trumpet that incited the troops to battle, the enchanting flute of the snake-charmer). So, economics and managerial sciences have come to settle for the less powerful motivations of humans – even when they try to manipulate them by promising new recruits a paradise that they cannot and do not want to give. This is also a price of modernity.
The operation of motivational levelling is dangerous everywhere, because the “one-dimensional man” does not work well anywhere and, most importantly, is not happy. Dropping out the deepest, generative and free motivations results in disastrous consequences for the organizations born and fuelled by ideals, charismas, passions – the so-called VDO-s (values-driven organizations). These “different” organizations have a basic need to involve a share, however small, of workers, executives and founders with intrinsic motivation, endowed with a “genetic code” that is different from the one assumed and implemented by the dominant management theory. These people are active in social enterprises and civil, religious communities, in many non-governmental organizations (NGOs), spiritual and cultural movements, in the world of environmentalism, critical consumption and human rights; but often we find them also among the founders of family businesses, and in much of the “normal” economy of craftsmen, small businessmen, cooperatives and ethical and territorial financing.
We would not have these organizations and communities without the presence of these “yeast” type of people who are creative, generative and often destabilizing in terms of the established order, as they are “inner-driven”, namely the bearers of a “charisma” that pushes them to act in obedience to their daimon. These workers of an intrinsic motivation have two principal motivational marks. On the one side, they are little motivated by the economic incentives of management theory and respond poorly, or not at all, to the external sound of the charmer flute, since they love to hear other, internal melodies instead. At the same time, they are infinitely sensitive to the ideal size of the organization that they have founded or where they work; not only for economic, but rather for identity, idealistic and vocational reasons.
Management of people with intrinsic motivation is crucial when these organizations go through times of crisis and conflict, caused by a generational or leadership change, for example, or the death and succession of the founder. These moments – that are delicate ones in every organization – are crucial to the VDOs, because of the most typical and all too common error: Not understanding the very petitions and complaints coming from the most motivated members. As a matter of fact, if those who manage or accompany a VDO as consultants do not recognize the value of these deeper motivations, that are different from incentives, not only do they not reach the goal they hoped for, but they further worsen the crisis of these people and the organization.
When the ideal’s quality is at stake, usually the first to complain are the ones who are more interested in the quality that is being lost. However, if directors and managers interpret this type of protest merely as a cost, and therefore do not accept it and reject it,...
