Chapter 7

The Collective Source

Through language, every individual weaves an answer to the deepest philosophical question of our time: "What is the relation of the one to the very many?" The relation of the individual to her culture and from thence to the five-and-a-half-billion other humans now living is very different from her relation to her village or social group in centuries past. The media brings us images and information about billions of people we will never see or meet, who are just as human as we are. Similarly, astronomy has brought us a view of our one planet Earth in the midst of millions of galaxies and billions of other stars and all their possible planets. As our knowledge of humanity and the universe has increased, our dimensions as individuals relative to the whole have shrunk incredibly. Yet each of us remains in the foreground for herself and thus appears very large, because she occupies her own view.

The answer to this question from the point of view of the gift paradigm goes something like this: Each human is a part of the collective because her/his identity is formed by using the collective's material, cultural and linguistic gifts, which are given to each of us by others, and are given by each of us to others. Our physical and psychological subjectivities are made of that matter, that matrix (or mother) which we ourselves re-form and become again for others. Each of us is a point or locus, a stitch in the fabric made by the transmission of innumerable gifts. In this fabric, the collective process relates things to words, words to words, things to things and us to each other--to and through the gifts at all the different levels.

The reiteration of masculation at different scales has altered the configuration of this collective process, directing the flow towards a category of self-motivating dominant ones, who attempt to expand their individual importance by establishing relations of control over the collective and its

gifts. These ones are often served by other ones who access a relation to the many indirectly through their relation to the one who dominates the many. While it is conceivable that the expanded ones could give their gifts back to the many, this is not in accord with the gender mandate towards over-taking. Unfortunately, the relation of dominance by the one over the many appears to have a possible outcome in the destruction of the many by the one. Recently, the ability to cause nuclear devastation has made that power available and some 'ones' have played with it. We must reveal the illusory character of the motivation to dominate and expand and re-create ourselves through the giving and receiving process, finding a way to relate as nurturers, ones among many and many among many.

Environmental Niches

An environmental niche is a gift for which receivers evolve; creatures develop with needs that can receive that kind of nurturing. Language is a product and a by-product of the life of past generations, which present generations and individuals can receive and use. It is a collectively created cultural environmental niche.

We need to interact with each other in regard to things because they are valuable to us collectively and individually in various ways. And we have to be able to use things collectively and individually in various ways to bring their value to fruition. Others in the society have contributed a lot to the value of things, but the same is true of the value of words. Usually, the 'how to use it' side of our immediate environment at least, has been given to us free--just left there for us to pick up or handed down to us by our mothers. This, as well as the knowledge of what it would be appropriate for us to use, is transmitted to us by others in the society. But all of that, all of our material culture, happens to be there because others have been interacting with it through the centuries and mediating their interactions with language. Not only have women and things been left out of consideration, but the life processes of the multitudes of the past (and present) have

often been ignored by philosophers who value words above things because they are viewing the world from a decontextualized, masculated point of view. The attitude of sexism is much broader than the issue of gender. It initiates denials and distortions of points of view which influence many other issues. It enters into the interactive dialectic between words and things, definer and defined, deeply altering the collective perspective and the world picture that is presented to its view.

Exchange has mis-taken some of the processes of language and, by transferring them onto the material plane, created a situation in which the gift is actually canceled by the requirement of an equivalent counter gift. This artificial situation is created by re-using the part of the pattern where the word takes the place of a thing, making the gift of the thing unnecessary for the creation of the human relation at the moment: I do not need to give you this flower to create a human relation of co-munication with you at the moment. I can simply say the word 'flower.' The word also serves as a sample-equivalent. In the description of the concept process, we discussed how the sample 'thing' is no longer necessary when the word takes its place as the equivalent for the category. On the material plane in exchange, when the counter gift is given, it also cancels the gift character of the first gift and expresses its value, re-presenting it. This is particularly clear when money is the counter gift.

Money takes the place of the product as the equivalent of other products (thus replacing and canceling that product as an equivalent). It measures and re-presents the value of the product in exchange as the substitute 'gift.' (Curiously, money, the arbiter of exchange, functions only by being given away.) Money also cancels both the qualitative value and the gift value (the inference that the other person is valuable), replacing them with quantitative value and exchange value so they are seen within the category of all the other products on the market.

The nurturing human transaction of giftgiving is altered, and part of the concept process is put in its place to mediate the mutually exclusive relation of private property. This material use

of the concept (and transposed linguistic) process allows each exchanger in turn to act out the definition, to give and receive the substitute gift-word, money. The exchangers can thus give without depriving themselves. They give value to things and their substitute, money, rather than to one another. Money is the means of communication by which the product is defined, and the buyer gives it to the seller much as the definer gives the definiendum to a listener. The seller in turn has to give up the product--what for the definition process would be the thing defined. As it passes through the incarnated concept process, the product's gift value is canceled and transferred on to the money, which is exchanged for it and which we therefore call the exchange value of the product. As the product becomes the property of the buyer, it exits from the market process and becomes a use-value.

When it cancels the attribution of value to the receiver, the process of exchange cancels the gift value of the product in a way which has not usually been recognized. The use value is, as it were, wiped clean of previous experiences. Having bought it and paid its price, we no longer think of where it came from. We usually pay no attention to whether the source of the product we are using is underpaid 'Third World' workers, child labor, or US union members. The product is ready for our use, but gratitude and recognition are not given to its makers--nor is the product received from its makers as a nurturing gift, transmitting value to its receivers by implication. Instead, recognition and gratitude are given to the one who 'made' the money, or perhaps to the buyer, the seller, or the market process itself. For this reason, I believe there is an invisible, logical difference between use values which have passed through the process of exchange and use values which are made by people directly for others and which transmit gift value. The person who uses the use values, preparing and adapting them for the satisfaction of the needs of people in her family, does add gift value to them, but the gift value given to them by their makers has been canceled (or diverted into others' profit) by the exchange process.

Starting with the World

In his analysis of money and commodities (products in exchange), Marx took commodities as his starting point. He believed that previous thinkers had been wrong to begin with money. A similar consideration can be made about the relation between words and the world. In formulating our questions about that relation, we usually take words as our starting point, which sets us off on the wrong path to begin with. We need to start with the world, not with words--with material co-munication, not verbal communication. The answer, in either case, passes through the gift activity of human beings. However, by starting with words themselves, we cannot see the gift character of words or things. The gift character is also hidden because of the word's transparency, because the word position is burdened by masculation and because there is a motivation towards 'taking-the-place-of' in the definition, etc.

Placed in an 'inferior' giftgiving stance towards masculated men, the position of women is similar to the position of things in relation to words. Thus, it is easier for women to understand language starting from the point of view of things, while men usually take the point of view of words. Of course, all humans are also 'things related to words' when we are being talked about: 'that person over there,' 'the next one in line,' 'Janie's friend.' However, because the word has been incarnated in the male gender, women analogously take on the role of things in relation to that 'word.' We have known what it is to be spoken about rather than to speak, to give way to the one who takes our place, stands for us, re-presents us in public, while we continue our giftgiving at home.

But women actively put ourselves in relation, do the work of maintenance, caregiving and child rearing--all the myriad tasks that women have had--continually giving gift value to others in many ways. Things do not do this in first person as we do. They do not put themselves into a relationship with people. What accounts for their active side? It is the activity and creative

receptivity of the collective--beyond the focus of the individual, the background of the many, in which women have also been anonymously standing for centuries. Our unacknowledged giving, providing for others directly and indirectly, is the process and result of an ongoing collective interactive dialectic with things. Not only do humans practice giving but, in the process, we leave a considerable amount of by-products available for the taking. Sometimes, it has seemed that women (and other excluded people) were only a few men's by-products, and like things, had only the value given by the collective, not value coming from themselves as givers in interaction. Things are also like women in that they give-way to words, letting them take their place.

The treatment of women as 'things' which nurture and give way in a 'many-to-one' relation to those men who take over and own or control them, repeats the relation between things and words that has always been so hard for philosophers to understand. The male philosophers were starting from their own point of view, the point of view of the over-takers, the owners, and controllers, the 'ones' as opposed to the 'manies.' Women, treated as things, can take the point of view of things, the many, those that give and give-way.

Someone might ask, "Do things really give and give way to words, like women give way to men?" In the fabric of innumerable gifts that make up the process of life of the collective, are things enlivened by our magic hands to become Pinocchios obedient to their Fathers' words at last? Or is it all a projection? Leaving aside Geppetto's words, witches (and the Blue Fairy) feel the life of inanimate things, perhaps because, as women, we know we are like them, under a spell of objectification. Anyway, our words are different, less empty than masculated men's, because we also speak things.

Starting with Words

Starting with words, relating words to things causes the investigator to concentrate on words but divides the idea of words

into at least two parts: the 'vehicle' (sound, signifier, sign, writing, gesture of sign-language) and the 'meaning' ('idea,' 'signified,' 'referent,' 'designatum,' etc.). I believe we are actually packing some of the value of the characteristics of things into what we see as the 'meaning' of the word. Things are then split off from the word, rendered bereft of their value for communication because neither things' or words' for-others aspects are recognized--or given value. We should look at words, not so much as having their own value, but as substitute gifts that carry the value of things in and for communication. This value contributes to forming the community in all its variety by letting each of us bond with other people in specific ways regarding all the parts of the world. It is the general existence of things for others.

In the community distorted by masculation, the genders act out the relation between things and words (which they do not understand.) We have gotten ourselves into this problem because, of course, humans are better able to respond to definitions as self-fulfilling prophecies than things are, however animated things may seem. Men act out the role of the word, women of things. Men, taking the place of women, are women's (for-others) substitute gifts, bearing women's value in communication for the kind of community that we call patriarchy. Women help to create the specific kinds of bonds that form and maintain this community. Men are the communitary substitute gifts of these individual hidden gifts who are gift-givers. Things, too, have a hidden gift side that is attributed to the words that take their places. Words and men are self-referential, while things and women seem not to be. All this confusion comes from dividing the community of self-and-other-creating mutually inclusive speakers and listeners (and givers and receivers) into two original inescapable and opposite categories of gender.

'Meaning'

If we start with things instead of words, we can locate 'meaning' in things in all their varieties of appearances and uses,

Figure 11. Things related to words, words related to each other.

with their relation to words as their relation to their substitute gift for human beings. Different kinds of things that are related to a word (what we usually call the different 'meanings' of the word) can also be similar to each other. For example, the word 'sweet' can convey a taste of honey, or cakes having that taste, or a person with a pleasing attitude. The honey, or the cakes, or the attitude themselves have relevance for human beings. If they were not related to the same word, they would be related to different words. If they were not related to any words as their names, they could nevertheless be related to sentences composed of words to which some of their aspects are related. The fact that things are related to a word implies that they (or things like them) have been used to satisfy the needs of the many. They have a certain amount of generality. It is not just the words themselves that are general, but the things that are related to them through human use. In the formation of the concept, the capacity of things to be repeatably for others as things of the same kind is brought forward by the generalization of the sample with regard to the many and the final assumption of the polarity by a general word. The fact that there is a word for that kind of thing expresses the generality of those things--not just of the word. In fact, the word by itself is nothing; it is dependent on the relation of things to it.

'Meaning'¹ is the top-down word-based term for the relation between things and words. This relation is established by human beings in an on-going way for each other collectively and individually. We usually believe only in a word-to-thing relation, but it is the thing-to-thing and thing-to-word relation that gives value to words for human beings. Without it, words would not have any utility for us. The thing-to-word relation is also

¹We should ask, "Which others is it for?" We attribute qualities of things to words and of words to things. In the linguists' example: 'man' = + adult + male, 'man' does not have the quality of adulthood, or maleness, because 'man' is a word, while a man is not. We cover up the relation of things to words with the idea of a word-based concept, to which qualities can be attributed (given). We transcribe the qualities of men in a notation based on addition and subtraction, which are the quantificatory translation of giving and taking, creating un-kind 'mean-ing'activity without giving. Whom does this attribution serve? If we restored the gift paradigm, perhaps we could call mean-ing 'kind-ing.'

Figure 12. Similar relations of things to words in the langue, traditional wives and children to husbands and property to property owners. (Please disregard color areas; entire graphic should be black and white.)

functional in the making of our identities for several other reasons: humans are also 'things related to words' for each other (we talk about each other); we nurture one another at many levels materially and linguistically; and as we have been saying, many of us are modeling ourselves on some linguistic processes.

We have projected these linguistic processes into the organization of the collective, economically, politically and in the structure of the family. The projections confirm and reward some

types of behavior and discount others, 'training' us, influencing our identities. They make up the contexts in which we live, imposing the parameters of the 'reality' in which our self-made artificial identities operate (which we call 'patriarchy'). (See Figures 11 and 12.)

Not only do women in the US take the names of our husbands but, in traditional roles here and elsewhere, men take our place in the public sphere, speak for us and often make decisions for us. We are known by who it is we are in relation to. In order to know about the relation between things and words, we need to start with things--just as, in order to know about the relation between women and men, we have learned in feminism that we need to start with women. Men have reasoned from words to things for centuries, just as they have reasoned starting with themselves when trying to understand women (and children and 'things'). It seems to me that those who are looking for the meaning of life are, like those who are looking for the meaning of words, starting from a top-down, word-based approach. Instead, we all need to start with material giftgiving rather than linguistic, substitute, re-presentational giftgiving. We need to be giving things, not words, satisfying material needs of others, to create abundance and the satisfaction of the material needs of all, co-municating to form the physical subjectivities (the bodies) not just the linguistic or psychological subjectivities of the co-munity. We need to create the systemic changes that will make generalized material co-munication possible for everyone at all levels.

Parasitic Relations

Altruism may sometimes seem fake, but that is because the artificial masculated exchange ego has learned how to do altruism, but not in a mothering way. Paternalistic charities give small amounts, just enough to take the pressure off a few individuals without changing the big picture. They maintain control of their gifts and of the receivers through 'due diligence'

with the idea that the receivers have to earn their trust. Then women (even mothers), overvaluing these 'charitable' procedures, take them as the norm of how to be altruistic. If women continue to discredit the model (concept sample) of mothering, to look at it only from the self-reflecting and self-validating point of view of masculation and exchange--whether this is due to our own success in the system or to our taking the point of view of the over-valued male 'other' who degrades us--we will lose the revolutionary (the re-evolutionary) potential that now inflames the heart of the worldwide women's movement.

Having for centuries accepted the male bill of goods that we were inferior, and now accepting the bill of goods that we are or should be 'equal' to their model, we risk relinquishing our alignment with Mother Earth, our possibility of saving her, our mothers, ourselves, our daughters and our sons from the hungry mirror of the exchange paradigm. This is a species that is eating itself alive, because it cannot value the concept sample of the abundantly giving mother, or even see her.² We have made giftgiving, which is the source of life and joy, a slave to the artificial masculated ego and its expressions at the economic, political, and ideological levels. This drains the gifts of humanity into the coffers of the few, whose priapic excesses are kept from the needs and transformed into phallic armaments, deadly 'marks,' by which one group can demonstrate its 'superiority' (occupation of the privileged concept sample position) over another, which is forced to give way.

In this way, the constrained gifts of the many are wasted on non-nurturing expenditures of destruction, not to mention the immolation of millions of giftgiving hearts, minds and bodies. By un-making the bodies of the community, co-munication turns against itself, in the image of the concept sample. Meanwhile, this same process, supplying the needs of war (nurturing a phallic exchange), conveniently destroys (through spending wealth on

²I find it fascinating that breasts have been both degraded and sexually objectified in our society. Until recently, our baby bottles were phallicanother symptom of our malady, of replacing the mother with the father model.

armaments) the abundance which would have facilitated giftgiving in parts of the world not directly affected by the war. We have created a many-tiered relation in which a relatively small number of people act as a parasite on the rest, recreating a situation of privilege which is originally created by transferring half of all our babies into a linguistically mediated non-nurturing 'superior' category. This category is over-valued and given to by the nurturers, because of its mandate to achieve the concept sample position. (The sample position is only a conceptual mechanism functional for organizing our perceptions, not a way of 'deserving' love or abundance). The host must re-educate and convince the parasite (which is anyway part of itself). We must not allow the parasite to continue to convince the host.

The parasite is made of mirrors--exchanges, definitions, judgments--and it has to receive energy, money, food, time, nurturing from somewhere else in order to grow big enough to become a privileged 'one' by overcoming many others. But this aberrant state of affairs is not anybody's fault. In fact, blame and guilt are part of the exchange paradigm, ways of making the other 'pay back.' We cannot fix the exchange paradigm by re-applying it again and again to itself. Our prisons and electric chairs are overflowing with people 'paying' for their mistakes. We do not need justice; we need kindness. Justice is really an attempt to define the crime so that it will not happen again. We try to perform this definition through a kind of exchange because exchange derives from the definition. The 'payment' involves a forced material co-munication whereby the criminal is required to give up something, and give way. Perhaps we believe that, by returning to the material level requiring goods, time, or even life in an 'equal' exchange, we will have more effect upon the wrongdoer. An attempt is made to evaluate the gravity of the crime with respect to other crimes (a kind of quantification). The criminal is masculated again, physically distanced (de-contextualized) and put into a category of 'other' with a 'term' or a 'sentence.'

Many 'One-Manies'

Thinking about all this, I saw I had three areas of similar relations to work with: 1. commodities were to money as; 2. things were to words as; 3. women were to men. I could use each to clarify the others.

For example, all of these areas have many to one relations as part of their make-up. All commodities are many, related to money as their equivalent. They are also many in relation to a particular price as one. Things are related to words in various ways as many to one: as many with regard to language as one kind of thing; as many with regard to a single word (for example, the word 'things'); and as many as kinds of things with regard to the word, which 'means' that kind, or re-presents it. As the 'inferior' gender, all women are related to every man as many to one. Each of these relations also involves potential one-to-one relations. The human couple is a one-to-one relation like the more fleeting relation of the exchange of a product for money, and like Saussure's concept of the sign. Variations and changes in the one-to-one relation take place in the on-going relation of women to men with the family's relation to the father. The mother herself figures as one with regard to whom her children are potentially many, but she is replaced by the father as the 'head' of the family. Such examples of the double standard as the Don Juan syndrome or polygamy also involve many-to-one relations. Another many-to-one relation is that of property to its owner, which has often combined with the relation of family as chattel to the father.³ Then, of course, there are subjects to a king, constituencies to their elected representatives, nations to their presidents, employees to their bosses. There are successive many to one stages, for example: Catholics to their priests, priests to their

³Children may participate in many of these relations at different levels. The property relation looks something like Vigotsky's complexes. It is 'one-many' but does not depend upon similarity. The child may also be an owner, of toys, for example, at an early agewhile s/he is 'owned' by the father in the family relation. Associative complexes or their incarnations in property or the family may be held together also by a 'feeling tone'as Carl Jung said about word association and about psychological complexes. The feeling tone of concepts would be influenced by masculation. Carl Jung, 1973 [1906] "A psychological diagnosis of evidence" Experimental Researches, Collected Works of C.G. Jung 2, Leopold Stein and Diana Riviere eds. London, Routledge and Keegan Paul, pp. 318-332.

bishops, bishops to their cardinals, cardinals to their popes. Armies are related in the same stairsteps to their officers and finally to their generals, etc. The overlapping of one-many structures creates a giant mechanism. Perhaps, when some of its pieces are missing, it can be more benign, but the re-enforcement which occurs among the structures in First World patriarchy has made it more deadly and priapic than ever before--with its nuclear weapons ready to obliterate the many, its phallic mushroom cloud evidence that it has achieved the one (1) position.

We have been reasoning and acting from the point of view of words in relation to things, money to commodities, men to women. It seems to me that the explanation for this is that the exchange economy provides a focus on the individual ego and gives value and importance mainly to the one, the abstract isolated consciousness. The importance (and the ways of using) the collective consciousness, group consciousness and other-tending gift experience have been ignored, because we have only known how to start from ourselves as isolated individuals--and only those who have succeeded as isolated individuals have been given credence and the authority to speak. This self-focus is due to masculation, to the self-reflecting logic of exchange and to the top-down hierarchical model. It is consistent with capitalism, especially with the 'independent producer' or entrepreneur cultural hero. Academics are no more free from this syndrome than others, though perhaps they would like to be. The competition, in terms of a certain type of creativity and acumen (the reward of which is ego validation, authority and prestige), influences the world views of academics just as much as if the rewards were only economic ones. Language has become an instrument of power, and those who study it are usually not free from the ego-validating patterns which make this power possible.

Light and Shadow

Women can also develop a self-focused ego, but we often remain to some extent other-oriented because we continue to be

required to be the nurturers of our children. Inside or outside academia, our world views are likely to be broader than men's, especially when we are not intellectually subservient to the patriarchal way. With one foot in each camp, it is easier to see the contradictions. In fact, what we see is that we are standing half in the shadow, half in the light. Even while we compete and succeed in the exchange economy, as individuals we often view ourselves as belonging to the masses of women who are unseen and unrecognized.

Our place in the shadow also lets us look at the others who are in the dark, the masses of people, cultures, women, children, and men, who are placed in the background by the masculated ego. Along with these are all the things, animals, creatures, plants, inventions, art and household effects which have been the objects of our care, use and maintenance throughout the centuries. Here in the dark lie all the tables we have polished, corn we have ground, fields we have planted, horses, cows and chickens we have fed, snow we have shoveled, roofs we have thatched, assembly lines we have worked in, sinks we have unstopped, dances we have danced, children we have raised. In all this variety of activity, we have conferred value upon things and imbued them with the stuff of life freely, which others may freely use. Even when our activity has cost us a lot, humanly or economically, the results of our acting according to nurturing principles still remain as a free legacy for others. The legacy consists of material reality--the house that was lived in and taken care of has survived to this day, the one that was abandoned has decayed and gone--caring ways and unmasculated value-giving hearts and minds.

The male ego notoriously fears death and loves what it fears, because by shifting its vision away from others, it denies what it has received from them--and their existence and importance for it, as well. Thus, it is likely to see itself as the lonely source of what instead has been given to it by others, from the masses of humanity that preceded it, to the workers in its factories and fields, to its mother, wife, sister, child, and (even at times) brother. This is a bit rarer, because the Old Boys Network and male bonding serve to

increase the sense of power and autonomy of the isolated male ego as such. Men learn to recognize the self-reflecting image and validate each other. The 'one' position works particularly well within the denial of the fact that it has received from others. The ego sees everything in the framework of taking--or at least of deserving what it gets. (Deserving is another transposition of exchange, requiring an equivalence between past actions and present rewards.) The emphasis that we have put on the monetization of labor in capitalism has concentrated attention only on that area of our activity and on the kind of human relation which is 'making money.' Since the ego thinks of its perceptions, its world, and its abilities as all coming from itself, its own social artificial character is concealed from it, and it runs the risk of solipsism.

Looking at language from the point of view of the gift paradigm is a good cure for solipsism. If we consider each word as a by-product of the linguistically-mediated life processes of the multitudes of people before us, by which they satisfied each others' communicative needs and which is also freely given to us, we find ourselves in contact with millions of other giftgiving and communicating people, because we have received our words (and our culture and our material goods) from them. Actually, solipsism is not so much a philosophical position in our society as a psychological and a political one. It allows cruelty without responsibility, blissing out in our own well-being in the face of others' pain. Our compassion withers and dries up and our souls become prisoners of our egos. We allow our governments to make innumerable decisions which kill other people or let them die, perpetrating economic and military genocide while we stay safely at home wondering whether those other people really existed in the first place.

People who talk about creating our own reality are perhaps unknowingly inspired by the limitless creativity and magical quality of the gift of language, without however acknowledging the source of the gift as others-in-general. Some religious attitudes, both New Age and Fundamentalist, are prone to weaseling out of

the human race, so as not to feel powerless among the multitude, and instead to belong only to the privileged 'one' position. When we begin to relate only to God (who is often also seen as a masculated 'one,' and therefore similar to each of us as an isolated individual) and not to the human race and the planet, our attitude tends to become megalomaniacal and paranoid. Then we act in singularly discompassionate ways, ignoring those people outside our immediate focus--whose spirituality, after all, is just as great or as small as our own. If we can re-conceptualize ourselves as having received from the people of the past and present, beginning with our own mothers, we are no longer separate and disempowered. In fact, seeing oneself as a masculated ego (as not receiving from others except through 'deserving') does really make us powerless. Then we overcompensate.

At any rate, solipsism is disproved by the fact that we think in language, which we have gotten from others. There used to be a creationist theory that God had buried those dinosaur bones out there to 'test our faith' in the Bible story of Genesis. Similarly, for solipsists, S/He would have to have implanted language in our minds to test our faith by making us suspect there were other people out there. Actually, our earth is so vast and varied we could never begin to live on it as individuals. We need the common perceptions of the many to give any kind of real context to our individual lives. Society is a sort of enormous fly's eye which, by putting together its many facets into a collective vision, is able to see the big picture. This picture is facilitated by and transcribed into language in order to mediate our social relations with each other. And the transcription, in turn, provides a sort of enormous collective eardrum, which reverberates in response to everything that is important at a certain threshold of intensity beyond the individual level. Through collective elaboration, the cultural values of the things the co-munity responds to are stored in words, kept alive as gifts available for all, constantly in use.⁴

⁴Though most of us arrive at an effective linguistic competence, the lack of access to experiences of cultural variety, and to the positive aspects of education, sometimes deprives economically disadvantaged people of many of these gifts.

Still, the patriarchal ego looks only at the things which are within its own focus, shining its own light upon them. It is because people, in first place in the so-called 'First World,' are in this mode that we are able to ignore the flow of goods, money and value from the so-called 'Third World' at home and abroad to US. When the CIA is not directly destabilizing Third World governments or the US funding fascist tyrants against the interests of the many poor, 'First World' patriarchy takes over economically. While our media and our therapy focus on the here and now, our government uses our money, their influence and their armaments to devastate the people in the dark. Big businesses relocate in the Third World, causing economic and environmental disaster, while some of us at home reap the profits and others lose their jobs. When the businesses are unable to hide, they cover up with lies, re-defining what they do as 'development.' Under the appearance of helping people, they bring the gift mode into focus, though falsely, to cover the bitter exchange-mode, exploitative things that they are really doing. This has the effect of portraying the gift-mode as something other than it is, and of identifying it with the men, especially in the government and big business, who are farthest away from the truth. Often, as individuals these men have never nurtured anybody, having themselves always functioned within the exchange mechanism.

Our 'First World' needs are actually being satisfied free or at very low cost to us by 'Third World' people. An equivalent of their work does not go back to them. The difference in the economies allows the business people to pocket most of the price we pay them, put it in our banks, transferring that value one more time from the have-nots to the haves, from the dark to the light, the invisible to the visible. Like a lock in a river, the flow of value is blocked and maintained at a 'higher' level. The 'First World' economies, as a whole, have received an enormous amount from the 'Third World' economies. Individually, it may be hard to see this, or we may not feel the benefit directly. But the much larger amount of value circulating here than there is due to the unequal

exchange, an exchange which in practice ends up as a free gift from 'Third World' people to US.

Our short-term profit motive, which fits so well with the privileged ego mode, lets the people in the dark (those of the past, those of the present in the 'Third World' at home or abroad, and those of the future, all our children) be damaged or destroyed by poverty, pollution and war to pay for what is in the 'light,' our own continued well-being. The problem is not moral depravity and a psychological penchant towards greed but a 'normal' world view, an ego structure, and an economic way which fit and function together to the detriment of all. Individually, I do not think we know we are doing this, or we would stop, make each other stop. Collectively, our consciousness is in denial--which makes it hard to come to individual consciousness. That is why we so desperately need a paradigm shift.

The mandate towards over-taking and being 'one' by having and domination is broadcast at every level in our society. The scarcity that is artificially created by the powers that be, in order to maintain the system of exchange, intensifies the penalties for not succeeding in the mandate. We do not realize that it is logically impossible for everyone to be a 'one' related to the many and that no other life agenda is available to most males beyond masculation per se. Meaningful work, education and entertainment are offered almost exclusively to economic 'haves,' and all of those areas are anyway part of the exchange economy. Gangs and criminal behavior are the only chance many people have to carry out the masculated life agenda, though violence against women continues to be an option for males needing to act as dominant 'ones.' While all of these activities need to be defined as 'wrong,' it is only through a re-vision and re-definition of society itself that the problem can be solved.

We have to shift paradigms and educate everyone into the nurturing way, not masculate our boy babies into an ego structure that requires dominance and privilege to feel it is carrying out its gender identity mandate. We have to restore the mothering

model for all, educate our boys to be giftgivers too, from the beginning. After they have had to give up the mother and learn how not to nurture, how can they at a later date learn to be 'good' by following the rules, the behavioral syntax deriving from the naming of gender, the overtaking Law of the Father?

Chapter 8

Castration Envy

A war between the haves and the have-nots is being waged. I think its root causes are in what I have decided to call 'castration envy.' The relation of private property is a product of the mutual opposition of gender categories combined with the privileged concept sample position. The boy finds he is in the category opposite to giftgiving, because of what he has (the penis), while the mother is defined as female because she gives (nurturing) and because she does not have (a penis). A 'having' category is opposed to a 'giving' category. Giftgiving and not-having are identified with each other--and with being female. Since he is in the same category as the father (who is a privileged concept sample, a one), the boy has to take part in the role of the 'many,' things, those who give way, the weak, before this relation can be overturned and, as an adult, he can become the sample or 'one.' The boy's role is also similar to the commodity, compared again and again to a general quantitative standard of value. While 'having' puts the boy in a competitive situation, which might be considered difficult and negative, he is consoled by the fact that he belongs to the privileged gender to which more is given.

Property and Money

Money is the substitute (material) gift for the commodity, and the sample for the category of value. It takes the place of all other concept models (including the male) as sample for the value of products in exchange--in their transition out of the gift way. The owner is to property as money is to commodities, as father is to child, as father's penis is to child's, as sample is to the many that are compared to it.¹

¹Money takes the place of the owner as the concept 'sample' to which commodities are related as values, until it is given up and the commodities become related as property to new owners as 'samples.' A 'one-many' property relation is taken over by a 'one-many' value concept relation, and then a new 'one-many' property relation occurs.

The male is one who has the 'mark,' which points him out both as potential sample man and as potential owner, in a one-many relation to his property. The penis is perhaps the sample piece of property. But it is inalienable--he cannot and will not give it up.² The patriarchal father stands in a similar one-many relation to his family, of ownership. In a way the father's control of the family seems to be required by the consideration that, in scarcity, those who give will lack if they do not receive from others, and those who keep and do not give will not lack. (There is surely an anal-retentive aspect of all this as well.) Mothers and children under the control of the father can be made not to practice giftgiving outside the family, not to satisfy others' needs sexually or materially. Those who have will therefore presumably continue to survive in scarcity. By owning large quantities of money, the sample of value, the one who has assures more nurturing for himself and those related to him, under his one-many control in the concept-structured family.

Exchange, by requiring equivalence, brings a relative item to comparison with a standard, so into the concept process. The same process happens in many different areas of life: in the masculation of the baby boy, in measurements and tests of all kinds, grades in schools, sports records, beauty contests, role-modeling. The relation of presidents to citizens, movie and music stars to fans, first prize hogs to piglets are variations on the theme.

Similar to exchange is the Western marriage ceremony, where the woman is an item being transferred out of the family group, which is relative to her father as sample 'one,' to a new relation to her husband as sample 'one.' This pattern is changing to some extent in the US, but we are still influenced by it, and it continues in many variants in other parts of the world. Though her wedding day is supposed to be the happiest day of her life, a sample day, and the woman herself is seen then as sample of Woman, she is only playing the role of a sample thing in the

²See Annette Weiner's book on the cross-cultural economic logic of not-giving: Inalienable Possessions, The Paradox of Keeping-While-Giving, The University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1992.

process of being over-taken by its (new) substitute, the husband, who is functioning very much like a word. It is fitting then that the woman should take her husband's name.

A new self-replicating concept-family unit is formed, where the boys will continue to learn to become 'male' by renouncing the gift process (and sometimes by punishing and degrading it), and the girls will learn to give their gifts and allegiance to the male sample. Property, like marriage, is based upon the mutual exclusion of the 'ones'.³ Each owner is in a one-many relation with his/her properties and in a mutually exclusive relation with every other owner. Money steps in as the sample for the concept of value, to which products are related and by which they are replaced, much as the priest steps in between father and husband to regulate the transfer of the woman (still a giver) from one family 'concept' to another. Altering the relation of those who belong to a category, relative to a sample, so that they can be transferred to a different (mutually opposed) category and a different sample requires a definitive word pronounced by the priest or presented as an actual portion of the material word and value sample (money) by a buyer. Deeds, licenses, and contracts are enduring re-presentations of the definitive words.

Labor and Money

The sale of labor time takes place in much the same way, although labor is often given freely to family and acquaintances

³I believe the OBN (Old Boys' Network), like the group of property owners, incarnates the differential values of words opposed to one another in the langue. Women and children have historically been to their husband and fathers as properties are to their owners and as things are to the words which stand for them. Each of the members of the category of husbands/fathers is in a differential, mutually exclusive relation with every other while in a one-many relation with his own family. The husband/father has to keep the other 'ones' from taking his place and property owners face the same challenge. In the langue, each word is in a differential relation with all the others, while it is in a 'one-many' inclusive relation with the things which are related to it as their name. We said that when the sample is no longer necessary for forming the concept, it becomes just another thing of that kind. However, its removal might also be attributed to its being incorporated or subsumed into the word, a kind of logofication. Males (especially those in 'superior' categories) appear to become words, while females (and others in 'inferior' categories) appear to become things, 'reified.'

and gifts and services actually permeate much of life, so labor is somewhat more flexible than private property. Because of scarcity, jobs (monetized exchange labor) seem to be gifts. Many women and men do not receive this gift of being defined by money, which allows survival. Monetization, or the lack of it, is an instrument of power, because it defines one group as relevant to the concept of economic value, the other as irrelevant (they do not have the 'common quality' of exchange value). This categorization implies that those outside could become part of the privileged group if only they were good, efficient, or educated enough. Their success or failure seems to depend upon qualities which they have or have-not.⁴ The importance of exchange value is that it gives access to the category that has a chance to survive. However, the scarcity (not having) that is necessary for exchange to prevail as a process is artificially created so that the monetized (having) category will be privileged.

Masculated men traditionally need women who have been abandoned and left bereft of the gift of belonging to a privileged category, having a degree or title (another verbal masculation), or even having a monetized job (monetary masculation), who take care of them in order to make them better able to succeed in the fierce competition to be in the highly monetized categories. Here is the leverage point where capitalism and patriarchy are locked together with those they define as 'different.' The total system needs and uses the individual needs of those who are outside the category of the employed. For example, the job market needs the unemployed who want to become employed, in order to keep the price of labor down. Those who do monetized work need the free labor of those who do not, which passes through them and permits them to add more gift labor to their jobs. The system rewards the employed by contrasting their relative well-being

⁴ The idea of buying and selling labor time seems clear enough, but there are many differences between the ownership of our lives and the ownership of property. Our relation to our lives is really not 'one-many,' as our relation to property is, even though we can divide it into time periods, and we may or may not have many marketable qualities or abilities.

with the suffering caused by the unsatisfied needs of the unemployed.⁵ Thus, those who 'have' are encouraged to attribute more relative value to what they do have, through fear of the abandonment and suffering experienced by the have-nots. Similarly, the mistreatment of women and girls, even (in some cultures) the abandonment of girl babies to die, makes those who have the 'mark' attribute more importance to it and to being in the masculated category because of fear that they would undergo similar mistreatment if they were female have-nots.

The Primordial Error

It is as if there were an unconscious reasoning of this sort: if a boy has been put into the non-nurturing category because of the penis, he might remedy this estrangement through castration and, therefore, wish for castration in order to be like his nurturing mother. (Freud revealed that we often fear what we desire.) But through misogyny, society shows him that girls, who are born 'castrated,' are even more grievously abandoned than he is, so he should value what he has. He might be seen as having castration envy but being healed of it as an adult through the mistreatment of the have-nots. And the more goods he gets from them, the larger his 'having' is and the less he presumably wants to be like them or envies their lack.

Perhaps the boy wants to give the penis to the mother, because she doesn't have one, and satisfy her 'need' to be in the superior category. However, he decides to keep it (treats it as an inalienable possession and, therefore, as more valuable than what he would give away). He gives up giving it and gives up the gift paradigm at the same time. Thus, he demonstrates that the gift way is alienable, or less important to him than keeping the penis (not being castrated) and remaining in the category 'male.' In ex-change, he takes on genital sexuality in

⁵The institution of welfare defines the excluded category as 'poor' and allows some minimal giftgiving to be done by the patriarchal state. This is a paradoxical masculation of people as 'have-nots' with consequent humiliation, allowing the subsistence of an underclass who believe their poverty is due to their personal defects ('lacks').

the place of nurturing, much as the whole society takes on economic exchange in the place of giftgiving. As an adult, by amassing possessions and money (which can be both kept and given), he has a chance to engage again in selective nurturing towards others.⁶ In fact, if he arrives at a state of wealth, he can give abundantly if he wishes and finally appear even more nurturing than the mother, who was only useful to him anyway in infancy. By giving to a few, he can repeat the pattern, privileging them over others who lack, repeating his own entrance into the privileged category, making them 'haves' as opposed to their 'lacking' (economically female) counterparts.

Another defect of the mother's giving-way or standing aside as the boy's model is that the child is not validated as precious by seeming inalienable. She may also seem to have given up her penis, even given it to the boy. The father, however, does not have this defect, because he kept his, and he keeps the boy in his gender category. He seems to have known how not to give away too much. If the father had only been the mother, the boy may reason, s/he would have the penis, and the boy would still be like him/her and still be able to be a nurturer. These speculative trains of thought are moot, of course, because it is not the penis that takes the boy away from the category of the mother, but the social construction of gender around the opposition of the gender terms. Socially, we name him 'male' because he has a penis. If he wants to remain nurturing, and well he should as a little homo donans, he would not have to change his body, giving up his penis, but only change the name and the concept of gender in his society (an arduous job but definitely less threatening than losing a body part). This healing of language would keep him from wanting what he also must fear, and must not achieve--his castration. The society would be able to stop over-privileging 'having' and penalizing 'not having' both as regards to male genitals and as regards money and other kinds of properties.

⁶Perhaps the monetary support he gives his wife is a way of making her 'have' what he could not give his mother.

Puerarchy

Rich people often fear not having, even though they may want to give to those who do not have. The same kinds of privileges that reward boys over girls are given to the rich over the poor. The same paranoia and lack of security beset the rich when they perceive the need of others as a desire to take what they have, castrate them of their goods. Wealthy women are in a contradictory position, because they only have money or property, not the male 'mark' of privilege. This may be the reason they buy expensive portable objects, like jewelry, that demonstrate they are members of the superior category. Guns and knives are marks that restore the phallic equation and sometimes do make it possible for poor people to force giftgiving from the rich through robbery. The rich often force giftgiving from the poor through the leverage of low salaries and other means of exploitation. However, they do not define it as robbery but as profit. The system of profit taking is defended by hierarchies of police or military armed with guns and knives.

The intensification of the needs of poor people demonstrates the necessity for the practice of the gift economy on a large scale. However, giving up money resonates with giving up the penis (castration), giving up the privileged category and thus the possibility of living in abundance. Abundance itself is a good thing, but it is being used to reward 'having,' not-giving and the kind of categorization, definition, and de-serving that come from masculation. By creating widespread scarcity, capitalism provides the conditions for the exchange economy to prevail and makes what is the birthright of all into the reward of the lucky few, just as masculation does with the mother's abundance. The relation between the 'haves' and the 'have-nots' acts out the combination of fear and desire for castration that arises from the false categorizations of masculation. The anxiety of our boy children has cast its spell upon society as a whole, causing incredible harm. It may be hard for us to acknowledge this situation, because we unconsciously feel we should pay back for the harm that has been

done. However, in that case we are needlessly reasoning according to the exchange paradigm.

There is no payment that could equal the harm that has been done, but the fact is--if we want to enter the gift paradigm, we must anyway be for-giving. We can begin by re-defining the system as something that needs to be changed, not just 'the way things are,' and we can begin by addressing that need. We can re-interpret patriarchy in the light of the gift paradigm as a bad dream and start all over again. Perhaps we should re-name the system that is based upon this childhood nightmare, calling it not patriarchy but 'puerarchy,' the rule of the boy. Or even 'puer' archy--the rule of the word 'boy.'

Misogyny

The mistreatment of females in general can also be seen as a reprisal against the mother for giving up the boy into the other gender. Such an exchange (or evening of the score) is perhaps not just a mercenary attack, but a renewed attempt to form a concept by creating repeated instances of the problem of inclusion/exclusion according to physical properties. This attempt has not succeeded, though the abandonment of the 'have-nots' by the 'haves' has taken place on ever larger scales. Now the 'haves' are some 250 million people, while the 'have-nots' are 5.5 billion. One reason for this is that the translation of the problem of having and lacking the penis into the economic terms of having and lacking the means of livelihood has created numberless new problems and disguised their common origin in the infantile misperception. Here, differently from the childhood nightmare (where it may be feared that mothers give away their penises to their male children), the 'have-nots' do actually give to the 'haves'--though this is concealed by an over-emphasis on the value and deserving of the 'haves,' whose 'one' positions are held in place by hierarchies and gained by competition and domination.

The misunderstanding that is creating this terrible distortion in values (and in reality itself) is very profound but so innocent and obvious as to be invisible. It is just masculation and the consequent turning away from the mothering model that is making us value death and destruction over life and well-being for all. The 'haves' should be giving to the 'have-nots,' giving to satisfy needs, not abandoning or killing them to punish them for not having--or so that the 'haves' will value their possessions, jobs, money, and phalluses more. I am trying to explain patterns that I believe underlie our problems. I do not deny that many men love their children, and that boys often retain the capacity for nurturing, but I believe these patterns cut deep channels in our culture and influence the behavior of all in needlessly negative ways.

Nurturing Exchange

The abstraction, boy = father, is made more important than the concrete creative nurturing relation in the internal ('marginal')⁷ priority list of the parents. The visible physical similarity is more important than the behavioral or the on-going ad hoc construction of the self, based on love. Yet, that has to happen, too, though it happens through servitude by the mother and deserving by the child. Equivalence between the child and father is self-confirming by such mirroring effects as the child reflecting the father reflecting himself in him (the father fulfilling himself as sample 'one' through being the equivalent to which the boy is relative) and through other examples of the concept relations in the wider context. Giftgiving is other-confirming. Presently, it is wrongly nurturing exchange as its 'other' and confirming equivalence, the principle of substitution. It nurtures the contradiction of itself, the substitution of giftgiving, and its replacement by the phallic equation. Giftgivers give to the process of exchange as

⁷Marginalism in economics is based upon the consideration of the relative alienability and inalienability of possessions. Economic operators have to ask themselves what they are least willing to give up.

our 'other,' and we also make the boy our 'other' by letting the father sample substitute us--creating the male image (of equivalence and substitution) for him to follow. A simple other-oriented process gives to a complex and artificial self-reflecting one.

The mother upholds and nurtures the boy's similarity to the father; she affirms the importance of their similarity, while it is both obvious and unseen that she does not require the boy's similarity to herself, because she is in fact nurturing him--who is someone different from herself (different first because he is a child, and then because he is being made male). The privileging and the father's attention seem to be conditional upon the boy's similarity to the father, and perhaps on the size of the child (big boy), and therefore also upon the size of the penis, which is not really like the father's anyway. (Their equation is therefore only counter-factual and programmatic in the beginning.)

To this can be added the need or desire to assert paternity and, therefore, also a privileging of other individual physical similarities, such as facial features, hair and skin color, height. Even behavioral traits can be identified as similar. Then, also, obedience to the father's word makes the boy act according to his father's plan, thereby showing who the child 'belongs' to. The character of 'belonging to' is important also for girls. They need to belong to the father and, therefore, should be obedient to his Law, even if they have to be like the mother, eventually. This requirement comes about because property and the concept coincide as one-many patterns. Since the father cannot be the gender model for the girl (the other one-many pattern), the property relation emerges more strongly. Girls follow the model of their mothers in belonging to the father, and in giving importance to the one-many concept relation among males.

To keep the gift and exchange paradigms in place, it is often necessary for exchangers to avoid even the appearance of giftgiving. However, a lot of giftgiving in exchange does happen, through surplus labor, gift labor, and just as the result of cheating. Even things like inflation, printing new money, and exchange rate

differentials provide free gifts for some. All this is all hidden by an appearance of equal exchange. That is why we have to keep our gaze fixed on the appearance of equality, and that is one gift of equality--that it hides the gifts of giftgiving and the bridging of diversity. It does the same in the boy's change of categories. The equality with his father hides what he has lost to gain his privilege--the giftgiving he seems to have been dispossessed of, cheated out of--where the good actually comes from. Once giftgiving is given up, it is as if society decides to cut its losses in the compromise. Equal exchange seems to be the best that can be had, so we focus on its gifts which are the values of patriarchy: safety under the rule of the honored and (occasionally) benign patriarch, equality, and justice. They are accompanied by the domination and blotting out of the values of giftgiving and abundance: other orientation, kindness, tolerance, diversity, and the leap of love across the synapse.

Figure 13.

Chapter 9

Is = $

The need which a word-gift satisfies is not a need directly for the object, or a need to consume it. That is why we do not have to carry the things we are talking about around with us, like the philosophers in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels. As our experience goes on, ever-new communicative needs arise to establish human relations of inclusion with one another, in regard to all the parts of the world. We satisfy those communicative needs by giving verbal gifts to establish the relations, instead of giving and receiving material gifts. By doing this, we transform what might have seemed an objective world into an intensely giftgiving world, in which humans interact with each other on the gift basis, at least in this one area of their lives, all the time. Linguistic giftgiving continues to happen, whatever else we do, even when we are acting in very inhumane ways towards each other. Indeed, if we could bring our actions in the material world into alignment with the gift aspects of language, we would have the basis for the flowering of humanity.

Word-gifts, however, have several advantages over most material gifts. First, words are easy for humans to make and store. Second, the different instances of a word are used by us as one word. This collapsing of the different sound events into one allows the possibility of the word's being for each of us the 'same thing' that it is for others. It also makes the word something which can easily be in two, or many, places at the same time. Third, these peculiarities give rise to the generality of the word, in that it can be used over and over by many, as something to which things can be related and with regard to which human relations can be established. A word can be made by virtually anyone and also received by virtually anyone.

The act of substitution of verbal gifts for material gifts, as well as for 'immaterial' things, events, situations, ideas which are seen as for-others, is a specifically human act. The word is a special

Figure 14. Substituting the acts of substitution inserts a meta moment into the sentence. As the single substitute for acts of substitution, 'is' becomes very general.

kind of substitute gift and the communicative needs which it satisfies are specifically human needs, which have also adapted to the means of their satisfaction. Multiply the needs by the number of things there are to talk about that are relevant enough to people to occasion a single word-gift (a name) to arise in their regard, and we have a linguistic gift plenum of an immense variety and combinability, in which each word participates as one among many and which everyone in the community can potentially use.

To Be Meta

There is one abstract word, the verb 'to be' (also called the 'copula'), which has given philosophers a great deal to think about. Although it is not used in all languages, where it does exist its presence is intriguing. Its quantitative and logical transcription as '=' seems to be as widespread as the market economy. I believe that in the definition, the verb 'to be' is a word-gift which satisfies a communicative need arising from the very sentence in which it is embedded. It substitutes for the acts of gift-substitution just performed or about to be performed by the other words in the sentence. In 'a cat is a domestic feline,' 'is' is the substitute gift for the act of gift-substitution, which is performed by means of 'cat.' At the same time, it substitutes for the next gift-substitution, 'domestic feline,' which can thus be seen as an act of the same kind as 'cat.' Taking the verb 'to be' as a word-gift substitute for other gift acts, which are happening within the sentence of which it is a part, allows us to consider it a 'meta' part of the sentence. (See Figure 14.) This accounts for the present-time character of the verb 'to be,' since its referents (the 'things' related to it) are immediately there, happening in the same sentence. This act of word-gift substitution is itself a service, done for the other person. It satisfies a meta sentential communicative need, the need for a word re-presentation of the acts happening in the present sentence, establishing a relation between persons to them in the here and now. This insertion of a shift into a meta moment inside the sentence mediates its function as a definition, allowing the definiendum to substitute for the definiens.

If language does indeed function according to the principle of substitute giftgiving, it should be clear that a very large number of acts of substitution must be occurring all the time as we speak. The act is itself a very general one. The word which functions as substitute gift for the act of substitution is therefore the most general of words. There are no other words at the same level of generality. This does not prevent it from remaining humble and being used abundantly. It is because of its unique position that the verb 'to be' is itself difficult to define, but we do try to define it, since it seems to be just a word like any other. Our minds boggle and seem to expand to the whole world and contract to the immediate present, when we say such things as 'being is.' Perhaps this is because 'being'--the verb 'to be'--is a meta word-gift (not a simple substitute, but the gift-substitute for the act of word gift-substitution itself). It is both very general and does not have a group of terms at its own level of generality to which it could be opposed as a value.¹

In order for words and the communicative needs which they satisfy to develop, there has to be a verbal plane that is maintained as a common-place alongside the rest of life. When things become important enough on the nonverbal plane, they acquire a permanent communicative gift on the verbal plane in the form of a word. We use that word as we shift our communicative giftgiving from the nonverbal to the verbal plane. That shift may be seen as a substitution: we access the verbal gift and use it in place of the nonverbal gift (or in the definition, in place of other verbal gifts) to create bonds with another. It is this shift or act of substitution itself that we name when we say 'is.' That is why we can use 'is' both when we speak of something that is nonverbal, pointing it out (deixis), as in 'That is a cat,' and when we use a verbal definiens, 'A cat is a furry friendly animal with a long tail.' In both cases, 'is' re-presents the shift from a nonverbal to a verbal gift. One, from the reality plane to the verbal (passing

¹Perhaps 'to exist' is almost as general.

through the relatively empty place-taker 'that') and the other from the reality plane to the verbal plane, and then again to a more constant element of the verbal plane.

Sentences combine general collective word-gifts to satisfy contingent and particular communicative needs. Each of the aspects of a situation or event, taken singly, can be seen as related to a word-gift, its name. When the words are taken together in sequence (what linguists call the axis of 'metonymy'), they combine and collaborate with each other (by giving to and receiving from each other), particularizing each other to satisfy a particular communicative need arising from the situation which the speaker and listener are addressing. Together, they are a provisional and fleeting way of bringing forward some elements of the world as relevant, distinguishing them from elements that are not relevant. They provide a combination of words to which the relevant elements are related, at least for the moment.²

The relation between words and things, as well as the concept relation we have been discussing, take place on what linguists have called the axis of 'metaphor.' Here things at different levels are related to one another on the basis of an equivalence and the ability of an element on one plane to take the place of others on another. The axis of metaphor often involves the one-many polarity.³ Metonymy and metaphor work together in discourse, as well as in definitions. Strings of words (metonymy), many of which are individually in one-many relations with the things for which they are substitute gifts (metaphor), are put together according to transposed gift relations. Providing a word as a substitute gift is itself a particular kind of service.

²In the definition, a continuing tension or polarity between what is said and what is not said, what is present as an equivalent and what is excluded, aids in the fore-grounding of relevant elements or items, as opposed to those which are not relevant or valuable at the moment. If I say 'a cat is a four legged animal,' for instance, I do not need to say 'a cat is not a two-legged animal' or 'two-legged is not four-legged, because the assertion of 'four-legged' already excludes 'two-legged.' The foregrounding of elements that takes place gradually in the concept formation process (and more or less deliberately in the definition) is simply implied in the use of words for communicative need satisfaction in the flow of adult speech.
³Metaphor and metonymy (substitution and combination) are two poles of language function which are also found in aphasia (speech loss) in a 'similarity disorder' or a 'contiguity disorder.' See Roman Jakobson, op. cit., Ch.7.

The verb 'to be' constitutes an intersection and a passage between the two axes of metonymy (contiguity) and metaphor (substitution). As a substitute gift for the act of substitution, it is metaphor, but as a substitute placed alongside the things for which it stands (the other acts of gift-substitution in the sentence), it is contiguous and forms a metonymical succession. As we saw above, on the axis of contiguity, a sentence replays gift relations which could take place on the nonverbal level. However, the definition differs from other types of sentences, because it is constructed according to layers of substitution, in which the definiens serves as provisional word-gift phrase for the kind of thing being defined, and the definiendum then takes the place of the definiens as the constant and general name of that kind of thing for the listener. The definition is a service the speaker performs for the listener, creating an inclusive relation and giving, in the moment, something (a word gift) that may last the listener's lifetime.

Such logical connectives as 'both/and,' 'either/or,' and 'not' modify (are given to) the verb 'to be,' so as to make it the substitute gift for the act of substitution of two or more items 'a cat is both a feline and a domestic animal,' one of two items 'a cat is either feline or canine,' or for something other than the item mentioned. 'A cat is not a canine' says that the first term does not satisfy the same general communicative need as the second term and, therefore, cannot be substituted for it. Syllogistic 'if/then' ("if all a's are b's and all b's are c's, then all a's are c's") says that 'a,' 'b,' 'c' are gift substitutes for the same 'thing.' The principle of gift-substitution, shifting planes, functions between language and the world, as well as within language itself in the definition and at a meta level with the verb 'to be' in the definition.

On the other hand, when we use the verb 'to be' to describe something in the world, 'the dog is brown,' we use 'is' to 'give' or attribute 'brown' to 'dog.' The dog has the 'property' or gift of being brown (given by the universe or the dog painter, the source is not at issue). A thorough discussion of all of the possibilities of the interpretation of language using the gift paradigm, though

fascinating, would make this book too long and academic. I want only to suggest some of the possibilities in order to go on to the discussion of exchange for money in their light.

The definition is different from the sentences of ongoing discourse, because it has more to do with the process of gift-substitution itself and serves a meta linguistic gift function, satisfying the need of the listener for a word she does not have. However, in a sense, the definition has been drained of its giftgiving aspects for centuries by patriarchal philosophers and linguists, for whom it seemed to be expressing 'objective'⁴ aseptic relations among words, instead of relations among persons. These objective relations among words are regulated by abstract laws of syntax similar to the abstract laws which regulate our masculated society.

We can restore the gift principle to language, recognizing that the patterns of gift relations among persons continue in language and are also trans-lated or shifted from the human level to the verbal. Since misogyny has blinded us and kept us from recognizing those relations among persons, we have never thought of looking for them in language. Instead, we have recognized abstract and arbitrary laws similar to those we create for the regulation of masculated behavior in patriarchy. We might ask if our laws are a syntax used to regulate the self-supremacy of each of our isolated incarnated (male) words, or if our idea of syntax is extrapolated from our rules of domination, command and obedience. It might also seem that the verb 'to be' drains the sentence of giftgiving just as masculation drains the society.

Actually, I believe that this appearance comes from the fact that the verb 'to be' is associated with the definition (which is

⁴We should suspect 'objectivity' as a reification or fetishization having to do with phallic property and its analogs, from toy cars and trains to guns and missiles. The boy's male identity concept and private property are two transposed concept relations among things as opposed to an ad hoc giving-and-receiving identity. Thus a concept relation among things constitutes the male identity, not a configuration of subjectivities constructed through giving and receiving. When things which have been deprived of their gift character are proposed as 'presents' to be re-'presented' the gift connection between the levels becomes invisible. The 'present' appears to have only to do with time not with the gift. However, perhaps the temporal aspect of 'present' derives from the fact that the satisfaction of needs focusses us on the here and now.

itself originally a benign process) where the mechanism of substitution is used internally in a way which is different from the flow of speech. The giftgiving in the definition takes place between persons at a meta linguistic level through a substitution of words for other words. Since the process is different from the rest of speech, its gifts may not be apparent, and the 'over-taking' function of the definiendum may appear to be the 'fault' of the verb 'to be.' However, it is really the primordial use of the definition in masculation (the different levels of substitution and the hall-of-mirrors effect) that rubs off on the verb 'to be,' giving it a bad name. Some people involved with General Semantics have felt that they should avoid the verb 'to be' altogether, and they have eliminated it from their speech.⁵ It is not the verb 'to be' which is parasitic upon humanity, however, but puer-patri-archy. Returning to the gift paradigm in economics (as in language) will allow, among many other things, the restoration of the verb 'to be'to its rightful place as part of the mother tongue.

Being and Money

The same thing happens in the definition with 'to be' that happens now in exchange for money--which is a substitute for the act of substitution of another's product for one's own, and one's own product for that of another. The substitution happens even though the products themselves are particular--not standing as general, but only as particular equivalents and substitutes for the products of the person with whom the exchange takes place. Moreover, the act of substitution is not yet complete when money has been substituted for it. Like 'to be,' money forms a metonymic succession with that for which it stands, but it does so by actually interrupting that act and placing itself in the middle of it, pushing the first product away. The buyer's money often begins the process in the same space with the product it is being exchanged for (contiguous with it), but then, acting on the axis of metaphor, it physically supplants the seller's product, changing hands.

⁵ To Be or Not: An E-Prime Anthology, ISGS, San Francisco, 1992.

The substitution of money for a product anticipates the substitution of the money for another product, and a reversal of the roles of seller and buyer. Since money takes the place of all products as their general equivalent, it has the character of generality, which they do not. Every time it takes their place, it provides this character of generality and connection with others in the society, for that particular transaction. Every time it is given away for other products, this character of generality and connection is given away by the buyer. The substitution of the act of exchange for money for the direct act of substitution of one product for another in barter does almost the same thing in the economic realm that the verb 'to be' does in the definition. It creates a metonymic moment with what it has substituted (the products)--but this requires human beings to take part in the 'phrase' as actors. The actors take turns in their roles of seller and buyer, and this alters the metonymic succession, keeping it from developing into other kinds of 'sentences' beyond the 'definition.'⁶

The exchangers can, however, operate upon the plane of substitution and buy in order to sell, so as to increase the quantity of general equivalent that they hold. The linguistic axis of metonymy is recreated in another way in the addition of quantitatively and qualitatively similar units to one another (one plus one plus one) in the numerical system by which value is assessed in price. This also permits the addition of sums of money to one another, which provides the possibility of hoarding and the development of capital.

Since it has retained the character of material gift and concept sample in a situation of private property, money actually

⁶In barter, exchange remains a particular dyad, not in relation to a general equivalent. A barter system provides many moments of dyadic exchange requiring calculations of equivalence according to time or some other standard. It is important not to confuse barter with giftgiving. Barter is still giving-in-order-to-receive, while giftgiving is directed towards the need of the other. The logics are different. The barter systems and alternative monies that are presently being developed in green and bio-regionalist groups might be considered a step towards a gift economy. However, they continue to be based on exchange and contain the defects of exchange, one of which is taking-the-place-of giftgiving. I want to be very clear that giftgiving and barter are not the same thing. Abolishing money is like abolishing the verb 'to be.' It doesn't solve the problems caused by masculation and exchange.

does have to be physically substituted for products and received or given away in their place (axis of metaphor). When it is present in one's hands, they are not; when they are present, it is not. And we do actually have to carry it around with us in order to give it to others, as a substitute for their products. The process of linguistic substitution has come full circle; the word has been re-incarnated. Swift's scenario has also proved true. (Little do we know, we have the verb 'to be' jingling in our pockets.) I believe that subconscious reasons often influence the symbols, as well as the words that 'stick' in our culture. Thus, the striking similarity of the dollar sign '$' to 'is' seems to me to support the identification of 'to