Anti-Production

Definition

Anti-production is the mechanism by which symbolic exchange prevents accumulation: the deliberate consumption, destruction and dispersal of goods (and of the surplus) so that reciprocity is not broken and power does not arise. It belongs to The Mirror of Production's anthropological argument rather than to the later Baudrillard's vocabulary of fatality, and it is defined negatively against the concept of a producible surplus. "There are no producers; there are no 'means of production' and no objective labor, controlled or not. There are no needs and no satisfactions that orient them: this is the old illusion of subsistence economy!" (ch. III, "Surplus and Anti-Production", p. 74). The absence of accumulation is not a deficit of development but a structure, and it is unintelligible to economic thought: "it is impossible to think this non-growth, this non-productive desire" (same section). Of the ethnographic record Baudrillard notes that "the savages fritter away their resources in feasts and risk living 'beneath the basic minimum'" (same section) — festive destruction, in the pattern the anthropological literature calls potlatch, rather than saving.

The book's formulation of the principle is explicit about the alternative: "this exchange excludes any surplus: anything that cannot be exchanged or symbolically shared would break the reciprocity and institute power. Better yet, this exchange excludes all 'production.' The exchanged goods are apportioned and limited, often imported from far away according to strict rules. Why? Because, given over to individual or group production, they would risk being proliferated and thereby break the fragile mechanism of reciprocity. … limitation of exchanged goods. It is the exact opposite of our economy based on unlimited production of goods and on the discontinuous abstraction of contractual exchange" (ch. III, "Surplus and Anti-Production", pp. 74–77). The full definition returns in the book's political chapter: the symbolic social relation is "the uninterrupted cycle of giving and receiving, which, in primitive exchange, includes the consumption of the 'surplus' and deliberate anti-production whenever accumulation (the thing not exchanged, taken and not returned, earned and not wasted, produced and not destroyed), risks breaking the reciprocity and begins to generate power" (ch. V, "Political Revolution and 'Cultural' Revolution"). Anti-production is thus the same reversibility seen from the side of goods: "the reversibility of the process of accumulation in festivals and waste, the reversibility of the process of production in destruction, the reversibility of the process of power in exchange and death" (same section; see reversibility).

Scarcity here is not a natural condition but the condition of exchange — "this is really why there is no scarcity. Scarcity only exists in our own linear perspective of the accumulation of goods. Here it suffices that the cycle of gifts and counter-gifts is not interrupted" (ch. III, "Magic and Labor", pp. 81–83). It is bounded exchange, not deprivation, that sustains the relation, which is why scarcity for us "arises in the market economy" and "is what produces and reproduces economic exchange" (ch. II, "The Moral Philosophy of the Enlightenment", pp. 57–58). Everyday life belongs to the cycle: "for the primitives, eating, drinking, and living are first of all acts that are exchanged: if they are not exchanged, they do not occur" (ch. III, "Surplus and Anti-Production", pp. 76–77). The contrast with our system is exact — a system in which "to consume is to start producing again. All that is expended is in fact invested; nothing is ever totally lost" (ch. V, "Political Revolution and 'Cultural' Revolution", p. 145), whereas the symbolic demand is that "nothing is ever produced without something being destroyed" (same section, p. 146).

Key Thinkers

• Jean Baudrillard — the concept's author: the surplus that cannot be exchanged would "institute power"; festive destruction; scarcity as the condition of exchange rather than its deficit (1973/1975).
• Karl Marx — the counter-position: production as the schema that makes non-growth unthinkable and revises the gift into "subsistence plus surplus."
• Marcel Mauss (not yet paged) — the gift and counter-gift: the obligation to return, which anti-production protects against accumulation.
• Georges Bataille (not yet paged) — expenditure, waste and the accursed share; the book invokes Bataille's "sacrificial economy or symbolic exchange is exclusive of political economy."
• Maurice Godelier (not yet paged) — cited on the Siane, who "pour back the extra that comes from contact with white civilization" in festive exchanges, while he continues to affirm that primitive societies produce a surplus.

Related Concepts

• symbolic-exchange — the principle anti-production implements: the reversible cycle that accumulation would break.
• primitive-societies-as-alterity — the anthropology in which anti-production is the central evidence.
• reversibility — the general form: accumulation reversed in festivals and waste, production in destruction.
• mode-of-production — the concept whose projection makes "non-growth" appear as a refusal to produce.
• consumption — the system's inverse: expenditure that is always an investment, waste that cannot be lost.
• cultural-revolution — the political corollary: a system that "can no longer achieve any symbolic integration."

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• The Mirror of Production (Baudrillard 1975) — the concept's full statement: "there are no producers… this is the old illusion of subsistence economy!" (ch. III, p. 74); the goods that "are apportioned and limited" because proliferation "would risk… break[ing] the fragile mechanism of reciprocity" (ch. III, pp. 74–77); "the consumption of the 'surplus' and deliberate anti-production whenever accumulation… risks breaking the reciprocity and begins to generate power" (ch. V, "Political Revolution and 'Cultural' Revolution"); and "for the primitives, eating, drinking, and living are first of all acts that are exchanged" (ch. III, pp. 76–77).
• Jean Baudrillard: The Defence of the Real (Butler 1999) — the book-length secondary study that reads Baudrillard "in his own terms": the paradox of the sign (paradox-of-the-sign), simulation as the realization rather than the loss of the real (simulation-hyperreality), seduction as the limit to simulation, and the doubling power of theory (doubling, the-real, double-strategy).

Open Questions

• Is anti-production a description of gift economies or a philosophical counter-concept? The empirical support in the book is thin and second-hand (Sahlins, Godelier), and the term is formulated against political economy.
• If scarcity is "the condition of symbolic exchange," what distinguishes a deliberately limited economy from a materially poor one? The book's answer — that limitation is a rule, not a lack — needs the ethnographic detail it does not supply.
• Does anti-production have any modern form? The book suggests only negative ones: the system "cannot make consumption a true consummation, a festival, a waste."
• How does anti-production relate to the later Baudrillard's Fatal Strategies material on expenditure and the inexchangeable — a continuation of the same mechanism, or a different one under the same name? See symbolic-exchange.