Factory Records as the accursed share

"Economic science merely generalises the isolated situation; it restricts its object to operations carried out with a view to a limited end, that of economic man. It does not take into consideration a play of energy that no particular end limits: the play of living matter in general, involved in the movement of light of which it is the result"
Georges Bataille, The Accursed Share

Reading all the obituaries and memories of Tony Wilson over the past three days, it's occurred to me how much Bataille would have approved of Manchester's most famous 'twat'. Bataille argued that "it is not necessity but its contrary, "luxury" that presents living matter and mankind with their fundamental problems". What to do when one has more than one needs? Should one expand?  Or sacrifice the surplus? Or give it away in search of glory? Or waste it in some even more imaginative fashion?

While economics and business common sense focus on exchange and necessity, Bataille's notion of 'general economy' studies the practices whereby society releases the pressure in acts that, from a narrowly economic standpoint, appear irrational and wasteful. The economic function of Tibet, for instance, is described by Bataille as a form of economic punch-bag, to absorb the warlike excesses of its neighbouring states; Soviet industrialisation used the sate apparatus to extract surpluses on a level even capitalism had never managed, to build a modern military-industrial complex. 

Factory, Wilson and their surrounding characters couldn't have provided Batailles with a better case study. A businessman who didn't use contracts; the highest-selling 12" of all time that cost more to produce than to sell; the band whose salaries were spent on building a nightclub and commissioning 'menstrual egg-timers' without them even noticing; then the final glorious Bataillian bonfire of a drug-addicted band destroying an absurdly expensive (and useless because it would never stay still) boardroom table by sitting on it.

Another of Bataille's case studies is the Marshall Plan, in which the US economy burst its banks and flooded Europe with no hope of reparation. And yet we can now safely say that this looks in retrospect like good economic management. The regeneration experts could perhaps say the same thing about Tony Wilson's anarchic business practices - he wasted everything for the longer term prosperity of Manchester, in a way conventional businesses are too short-termist to. Perhaps it's possible to collapse the distinction between 'restricted economy' and 'general economy' into a variation in time horizons. But I'm not so sure. As Bataille put it "the least that one can say is that the present forms of wealth make a shambles and a human mockery of those who think they own it. In this respect present-day society is a huge counterfeit, where this truth of wealth has underhandedly slipped into extreme poverty." Which is not a charge you can level at Tony Wilson and Factory...

Comments

[LeeB]

I won't pretend to keep up with your increasingly academic analyses here (glad I'm not on your pub quiz team ;-) but I like the thrust of this and I want to share a supporting example.

Somebody I know well took about £2m+ investment in their first business venture - a Web agency - partly to grow the business and partly to set up two rather improbable sub-ventures. The most improbable of these was an online music venture run by a friend (err ... of his...) who wrote impenetrable Phd prose about cultural theory. The resulting flash-based, less-than-accessible web site boasted an impressive array of darkcore and dubstep 'tunes'. It's ambition was to make music navigable in 3D by coincidences in BPM (and why this never got on Blue Peter I still don't understand;-). I cannot comment on whether or not my friend had any intention or expectation of seeing the money spent on this venture returned in any way. It may be that the money was considered an 'investment' in good karma, or perhaps a gift to the gods.

Anyway, Tony Wilson spotted it and called to say it was "f*ckin' ACE!' and he jumped on a train down from Manc and came to see my friend in Brixton. During an entertaining meeting, he ranted about the music business and claimed that music should be sold online by the track, and every track should cost 49p - no more, no less - and he had started a 'business' to make this happen. My friend, whose teenage years were fuelled by Joy Division, and later experimental phase partly informed by Madchester, was left in awe of the man's utter disregard for anything except passion and whimsy.

In some cultures, men throw a drop of liquor on the ground before drinking. In others, costly displays of prowess (like the peacock's tail) are accorded social status. You are quite right that Tony Wilson was an economic let-off valve for Manchester throughout the 1980's. But in many ways he was simply a classic renaissance man for whom the petty so-called rules of the economics of small-minds held no attraction except as something to disprove, which, as you point out, he has done.

I raise a glass to him now, not only a music mogul but a business guru who was ahead of his time, as we can now see in this age of ecosystems and the (rediscovered) gift economy.

[Will Davies]

Thanks Lee. One of the many nice little stories that has emerged in the last few days.

[Louise Ferguson]

Lee, as any fule kno, coincides in BPM are no coincidences (the entire segmentation of the music industry is based upon it), and any DJ might be interested. So not so daft.

I only ever met Tony W at In The City, the music conference that he founded in Manchester. And as for anyone of my age of any sense ;-), Joy Division were the founding fathers and Tony W the master of ceremonies.

Tony understood the value of things. All these small people understand only the price. That is why they made money, and he made much more (if much less financially).

In a sense he was forward looking, and in a sense a throwback. Look at the practices rife in the record business back in the day (no contracts, no anything.) What he wasn't was a bean-counter.

And I think Lee is right about the Renaissance man thing. He pursued everything that was interesting (and what is interesting changes), however bonkers it seemed (at the time). He was able not to worry about what people thought, or how many pennies were in the bank...for a while. That is why he is/was inspirational, while the bean-counting followers of the gnomes of Zurich will leave little of lasting importance, and no emotional engagement of any type.

So what's the average dubstep BPM, Lee?