The Stock Does Not Know You Own it

With the record deficits, high inflation, cost of food and housing, Americans are looking for not only a way to save money, but also to make money. This drive for success and desire to make money has pushed many people to invest in the stock market. And the only real protection against all the vagaries of identity-playing, and against the final role of being part of the crowd when it stampedes, is to have an identity so firm it is not influenced by all the brouhaha in the marketplace. Mr. Linheart Stearns, a New York investment counselor now deceased, wrote a very provocative essay on investing and anxiety, for anxiety is the threat to identity. Mr. Stearns evidently had some clients who were every bit as wacky and the Loony Toons. One of them would not buy bonds because bonds reminded him of death, an observation perhaps not so far wrong in the light of the discussions of Dr. Freud’s Wednesday Evening Psychological Association in Vienna. A dress manufacturer insisted stocks were no different from dresses, to be sold at a profit, if possible, but “marked down and sold regardless before the end of the season.” Mr. Stearns must have been a soothing investment counselor to know, for his thesis is that the end object of investment is serenity, and serenity can only be achieved by the avoidance of anxiety, and to avoid anxiety you have to know who you are and what you are doing. You can see that all this is leading to another of Adam Smith’s Irregular Rules, this one that the identity of the investor and that of the investing action must be coldly separate. If you have been a brilliant decision-maker, it can be granted right away that over a long period of time, maybe that is who you are, and it will not hurt you to walk around feeling brilliant. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

However, it is a dangerous procedure, for the market has a way of inducing humility in even its most successful students. If you think of Comcast as a baby, or even think “That is mine, and I bought it a lot lower,” it is dangerous because to know what you are doing, you do have to be able to step outside yourself and see yourself objectively, and this is very tough. A stock is for all practical purposes, a piece of paper that sits in a bank vault. Most likely you will never see it. It may or may not have an Intrinsic Value; what it is worth on any given day depends on the confluence of buyers and sellers that day. The most important thing to realize is simplistic: The stock does not know you own it. All those marvelous things, or those terrible things, that you feel about a stock, or a list of stocks, or an amount of money represented by a lit of stocks, all of these things are unreciprocated by the stock or the group of stocks. If you want to, you can be in love, but that piece of paper does not love you, and unreciprocated love can turn into masochism, narcissism, or, even wore, market losses and unreciprocated hate. It may sound a little silly to have a reminder saying The Stock Does Not Know You Own It were it not for all the identity fuel provided by the market these days. You could almost sell these identities as buttons: I Am the Owner of IBM, My Stocks Are Up 80 Percent; Flying Tiger Has Been So Good to Me I Love It; You All Laughed When I Bought Solitron and Look at Me Now. Then there is a great big master button called I Am a Millionaire, or I Am So Shrewd My Portfolio Has Come into Seven Figures. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

The magic of this million-dollar number, and of its accessibility to Everyman, is so great that books sell with titles like How I Made a Million or You Can Make Millions, with very little content at all. They are the most dangerous of all the things written on the market because (and I collect them as a hobby) inevitably there is some mechanical formula somewhere within. Never mind who you are or what your capacities are, just charge in with the book open to chapter three. If you know that the stock does not know you own it, you are ahead of the game. You are ahead because you can change your mind ad your actions without regard to what you did or thought yesterday; you can start out with no preconceived notions. Every day is a new day, providing, in the Game, a new set of continuously measurable options. You can live up to all those old market saws, you can cut your losses and let your profits run, and it does not even make your scar tissue itch because, being selfless, you are unscarred. It has been my fate to know people who have made considerable amounts of money, sometimes millions, in the market. One is Randolph, who made it and blew it and made it again. Randolph really wanted to make a million dollars, and he did. When Mr. Linheart Stearns said, the end object of investment ought to be serenity, I think he had a very good point. Now if you think making a million dollars will give you serenity, there are two thing you can do. One is to find a good head doctor and see if you can discovery why you think making a million dollars will give you this serenity. This will involve lying on a couch, remembering dream, talking about your mother, and paying one hundred and forty dollars an hour. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

If your course is successful, you will realize that you do not want a million dollars but something else which the million dollars represents to you, such as love, potency, parenthood, or what you have. Released, you can go off about your business and not worry any more, and you will be poorer only by the number of hours you spent in accomplishing this times one hundred and forty dollars. The other thing you can do is to go ahead and make the million dollars and be serene. Then you will have both a million dollars and serenity, and you do not have to deduct the number of hours times one hundred and forty dollars, unless you feel guilty about make it. Of course, you know the first million goes quick and is never usually enough. To be comfortable, one needs to have five million dollars on hand at all times. Then one is ready for anything. It seems simple, and there is indeed a catch. If the million dollars arrives and serenity does not, what do you do? Aha, you say, you will worry about that when you get to it, you are sure you can handle it. Perhaps you can. Money, contrary to popular myth, does help people more than it spoils them, simply because it opens up more options. The danger is that when you have your million, you then want two, because you have a button saying I Am a Millionaire and that is who you are, and there are, all of a sudden—as you will notice—so many people with buttons saying I am a Double Millionaire. Randolph, I should tell you, is not a real person, or rather, he is a blend of observed characteristics. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

I mention this because when this cautionary tale frit appeared a number of guesses at Randolph’s identity were made, using the old device that The Portfolio Is Mirror to the Man. Two different Randolphs called me. One said I had gotten his stocks right but his domestic situation wrong, and the other aid I was a cad to put in all his leisure-time activities and anyway he had never owned any of those stocks. Recently I was having a premium cranberry juice with a corporate executive in an expensive mid-Manhattan watering hole and he said, “You know, Randolph’s made it all back again.” He had somebody else entirely in mind, but when I checked around I realized that that was what time of market it was, all the Randolphs had made it all back again. There are new Randolphs all the time, and the thing that distinguishes them is that their identities are the sum of a set of numbers. The trouble with Randolph is not just the trouble with one man who made and lost a lot of money, nor even that there are hatching, at this very instant, other Randolphs who will play out this role next month and next year. The trouble goes beyond Randolph, beyond Wall Street; it is a kind of virus in the whole country, when the cards of identity say not how well the shoe is cobbled or the song is sung, but are a set of numbers from an adding machine. Usually we hear only the triumphs by adding machine, but those who live by numbers can also perish by them, and it is a terrible thing to have an adding machine write an epitaph, either way. Perhaps measuring men by the marketplace is one of the penalties of our age, but if some scholar would tell us why this must be, we would all know more about ourselves. What has been said about the lack of “originality” in feeling and thinking holds true also of the act of willing. To recognize this is particularly difficult; modern man seems, if anything, to have too many wishes and his only problem seems to be that, although he knows what he wants, he cannot have it. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

All our energy is spent for the purpose of getting what we want, and most people never question the premise of this activity: that they know their true wants. They do not stop to think whether the aims they are pursuing are something they themselves want. In school they want to have good marks, as adults they want to be more and more successful, to make more money, to have more prestige, to buy a better car, to go places, and so on. Yet when they do stop to think in the midst of all this frantic activity, this question may come to their minds: “If I do get this new job, if I get this better Ultimate Driving Machine, if I can take this trip to Utah—what then? What is the use of it all? Is it really I who wants all this? Am I not running after some goal which is supposed to make me happy and which eludes me as soon as I have reached it?” These questions, when they arise, are frightening, for they question the very basis on which man’s whole activity is built, his knowledge of what he wants. People tend, therefore, to get rid as soon as possible of these disturbing thoughts. They feel that they have been bothered by these questions because they were tired or depressed—and they go on in the pursuit of the aims which they believe are their own. Yet all this bespeaks a dim realization of the truth—the truth that modern man lives under the illusion that he knows what he wants, while he actually wants what he is supposed to want. In order to accept this it is necessary to realize that to know what one really wants is not comparatively easy, as most people think, but one of the most difficult problems any human being has to solve. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

It is a task we frantically try to avoid by accepting ready-made goals as though they were our own. Modern man is ready to take great risks when he tries to achieve the aims which are supposed to be “his”; but he is deeply afraid of taking the risk and the responsibility of giving himself his own aims. Intense activity is often mistake for evidence of self-determined action, although we know that it may well be no more spontaneous than the behaviour of an actor or a person hypnotized. When the general plot o the play is handed out, each actor can act vigorously the role one is assigned and even make up one’s lines and certain details of the action by oneself. Yet one is only playing a rile that has been handed over to one. The particular difficulty in recognizing to what extent our wishes—and our thoughts and feelings as well—are not really our own but put into us from the outside, is closely linked up with the problem of authority and freedom. In the course of modern history the authority of the Church has been replaced by that of the State, that of the State by that of conscience, and in our era, the latter has been replaced by the anonymous authority of common sense and public opinion as instruments of conformity. Because we have freed ourselves of the older overt forms of authority, we do not see that we have become the prey of a new kind of authority. We have become automatons who live under the illusion of being self-willing individuals. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

This illusion helps the individual to remain unaware of one’s insecurity, but this is all the help such an illusion can give. Basically the self of the individual is weakened, so that one feels powerless and extremely insecure. One lives in a World to which one has lost genuine relatedness and in which everybody and everything has become instrumentalized, where one has become a part of the machine that one’s hands have built. One thinks, feels, and wills what one believes one is supposed to think, feel, and will; in this very process one loses one’s self upon which all genuine security of a free individual must be built. The loss of the self has increased the necessity to conform, for it results in a profound doubt of one’s own identity. If I am nothing but what I believe I am supposed to be—who am “I”? We have seen how the doubt about one’s own self started with the breakdown of the medieval order in which the individual had had an unquestionable place in a fixed order. The identity of the modern philosophy since Descartes. Today we take for granted that we are we. Yet the doubt about ourselves still exists, or has even grown. In his plays Mr. Pirandello has given expression to this feeling of modern man. He starts with the question: Who am I? What proof have I for my own identity other than the continuation of my physical self? His answer is not like Mr. Descartes’—the affirmation of the individual self—but its denial: I have no identity, there is no self excepting the one which is the reflex of what others expect me to be: I am “as you desire me.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

This loss of identity then makes it still more imperative to conform; it means that one can be sure of oneself only is one lives up to the expectations of others. If we do not live up to this picture we not only risk disapproval and increased isolation, but we risk losing the identity of our personality, which means jeopardizing sanity. By conforming with the expectations of others, by not being different, these doubts about one’s own identity are silenced and a certain security is gained. However, the price paid is high. Giving up spontaneity and individuality results in a thwarting of life. Psychologically the automation, while being alive biologically, is dead emotionally and mentally. While one goes through the motions of living, one’ life runs through one’s hands like sand. Behind a front of satisfaction and optimism modern humans are deeply unhappy; as a matter of fact, they are on the verge of desperation. One desperately clings to the notion of individuality; one wants to be “different,” and one has no greater recommendation of anything than that “it is different.” We are informed of the individual name of the railroad clerk we buy our tickets from; handbags, playing cards, and portable radios are “personalized,” by having the initials of the owner put on them. All this indicates the hunger for “difference” and yet these are almost the last vestiges of individuality that are left. Modern man is starved for life. However, since, being an automaton, one cannot experience life in the sense of spontaneous activity one task as surrogate any kind of excitement and thrill: the thrill of drinking, of sports, of vicariously living the excitement of fictitious persons on the screen. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

What then is the meaning of freedom for modern humans? One has become free from the external bonds that would prevent one from doing and thinking as one sees fit. If one knew what one wanted, thought, and felt, one would be free to act according to one’s own will. However, one does not know. One conforms to anonymous authorities and adopts a self which is not his or hers. The more one does this, the more powerless one feels the more one is forced to conform. In spite of a veneer of optimism and initiative, modern humans are overcome by a profound feeling of powerlessness which makes one gaze toward approaching catastrophes as though one were paralyzed. Looked at superficially, people appear to function well enough in economic and social life; yet it would be dangerous to overlook the deep-seated unhappiness behind that comforting veneer. If one loses its meaning because it is not lived, humans become desperate. People do not die quietly from physical starvation; they do not die quietly from psychic starvation either. If we look only at the economic needs as far as the “normal” person is concerned, if we do not see the unconscious suffering of the average automatized person, then we fail to see the danger that threatens our culture from its human basis: the readiness to accept any ideology and any leader, if only one promises excitement and offers a political structure and symbols which allegedly give means and order to an individual’s life. The despair of the human automaton is fertile soil for the political purposes of Fascism. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

Can we make our mode of social and economic organization responsible for this state of man? As was indicated, our industrial system, its way of production and consumption, the relations between human beings which is fosters, creates precisely the human situation which has not been described. Not because it wants to create it, not due to evil intentions of individuals, but because of the fact that the average humans’ character is formed by the practice of life which is provided by the structure of society. No doubt the form which capitalism has taken in the twenty-first century is very different from what it was in the nineteenth century—so different, in fact, that it is doubtful whether even the same term should be applied to both systems. The enormous concentration of capital in giant enterprises, the increasing separation of management from ownership, the existence of powerful trade unions, state subsidies for agriculture and for some parts of industry, the elements of the “welfare state,” elements of price control and a directed market, and many more features radically distinguish twenty-first century capitalism from that of the past. Yet whatever terminology we choose, certain basic elements are common to the old and the new capitalism: the principle that not solidarity and love, but individualistic, egotistical action beings the best results for everybody; the belief that an impersonal mechanism, the market, should regulate the life of society, not the will, vision and planning of the people. Capitalism puts things (capital) higher than life (labour). Power follows from possessions, not from activity. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

Contemporary capitalism creates additional obstacles for the unfolding of humans. It needs smoothly working teams of workers, clerks, engineers, consumers; it needs the because big enterprises, ped by bureaucracies, require this kind of organization and the “organization human” who fits into it. Our system must create people who fits its need; it must create people who cooperate smoothly and in large numbers; people who want to consume more and more; people whose tastes are standardized and can be easily anticipated and influenced. It needs people who feel free and independent, not subject to any authority or principle of conscience, yet who are willing to be commanded to do what is expected of them, to fit into the social machine without friction; it needs people who can be guided without force, led without leaders, prompted without aim—except the aim to make good, to be on the move, to go ahead. Production is guided by the principle that capital investment must bring profit, rather than by the principle that the real needs of people determine what is to be produced. Since everything, including radio, Internet, mobile phones, digital streaming, television, books, and medicines, is subject to the profit principle, the people are manipulated into the kind of consumption which is often poisonous for the spirit, and sometimes also for the body. The failure of our society to fulfill the human aspirations rooted in our spiritual traditions has immediate consequences for the two most burning practical issues of our time: that of peace and that of the equalization between the wealth of the West and the poverty of two-thirds of humankind. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

The alienation of modern man with all its consequences makes if difficult for him to solve these problems. Because of the fact that he worships things and has lost the reverence for life, his own and that of his fellow men, he is blind not only to moral principles, but also to rational thought in the interest of his survival. It is clear that atomic armament is likely to lead to universal destruction and, even if atomic is likely to lead to universal destruction and, even if atomic war could be prevented, that it will lead to a climate of fear, suspicion, and regimentation which is exactly the climate in which freedom and democracy cannot live. It is clear that the economic haps between poor and rich nations will lead to violent explosions and dictatorships—yet nothing but the most half-hearted and hence futile attempts are suggested to solve these problems. Indeed, it seems that we are going to prove that the gods blind those whom they want to destroy. Thus far goes the record of capitalism. Even though the Soviet Union may not be a revolutionary power yet, she is not an imperialist power and as such is not her aim one of World domination? The conquest of the satellite states is referred to as the first step toward such designs. (Clearly, the conquest of the satellite states can hardly be considered a revolutionary accomplishment. They were won not by workers’ revolutions, but by Russian military occupation. They were, especially at first, nothing but conquered states forced to adopt the conqueror’s social and political system.) The only satellite state that was the result of an authentic Communist-national revolution and not of Russian occupation, Yugoslavia, asserted its complete independence from Russia in 1948. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

Indeed, at Yalta, Mr. Stalin had approved the common declaration which stipulated: “To foster the conditions in which the liberated peoples may exercise these rights, the three governments will jointly assist the people in any European liberated state of former Axis satellite state in Europe where in their judgment conditions require (a) to establish conditions of internal peace; (b) to carry out emergency measures for the relief of distressed peoples; (c) to form interim governmental authorities broadly representative of all democratic elements in the population and pledge to the earliest possible establishment through free elections of government responsive to the will of the people; and (d) to facilitate where necessary the holding of such elections.” Mr. Stalin broke his promise, and made these states his sphere of interest. What were his reasons? The immediate objectives dictating the Soviet policy in East Europe during the war and immediately afterwards, and affecting the pattern of Soviet relations with it, may be broken down into five major areas of presumed Soviet interest. The first involved the desire to exert influence on the lands immediately west of the Russian frontier in order to deny the area to Germany—in the past a source of major threat to Russian security. There is no doubt that from the perspective of the prenuclear age of the Soviet leaders could not feel certain that the mere defeat of Germany would ensure Soviet security and that the post-World War I situation would not be repeated. Moscow’s emphasis on security was readily understood by the Western powers, especially in view of Russia’s war effort. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

The Prime Minister, at the time, Winston Churchill frequently stated in the Commons during the war that the West was willing to go to some lengths to guarantee Soviet security from Germany on terms satisfactory to the Russians. As a result, the Western leaders were also inclined to grant the Soviet Union the benefit of the doubt insofar as the second broad Soviet objective was concerned: to ensure that East Europe would not be controlled by domestic elements which, while hostile to Germany, would also be hostile to the Soviet Union. Mr. Stalin encountered little difficulty in demonstrating that East Europe could not shield the USSR against a resurgent Germany is simultaneously it was unwilling to collaborate very closely with the USSR. Hence, he argued, it is essential that East Europe not only be denied to Germany but also that it be governed by regimes which were purged of all opponents of USSR. Given the prevailing power balance, it was up to Mr. Stalin to decide what criteria would determine just who was an enemy of the USSR. The remaining three probably Soviet objectives for East Europe seemed at the time less apparent to the West; or perhaps it was that the West simply felt unable to oppose them. The first of these was to use the area for purposes of Soviet economic recovery. The war damages inflicted on the USSR by the Germans could be healed much more rapidly by extracting capital from East Central Europe through the removal of enterprises and resources. Insofar as the former Axis power were concerned—that was Bulgaria, Hungary, and Rumania as well as Germany—the Western powers concurred and a policy of reparations was endorsed. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

The situation differed sharply in the case of Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia, all Allied powers. There could be no question of direct reparations, but at least in the case of Poland and Yugoslavia the Soviet Union extracted some economic advantages. In Poland there was the matter of the incorporation of eastern Poland into the USSR and the removal of industrial equipment from those parts of Germany assigned to Poland as compensation for the German occupation and for the loss of territory to the USSR. In the case of Yugoslavia joint companies were established which, according to the Yugoslavs, the USSR found profitable. The fourth objective was to deny the area to the capitalist World since it was likely to plot hostile moves against the USSR. No doubt the Soviet leaders, even at the height of the Grand Alliance, must have considered the possibility that some day after the conclusion of the war the capitalist World would again be arrayed against the USSR, which is kind of what we are seeing with Russians war against Ukraine. The United States of America has given Russia the cold shoulder and is sending billions to Ukraine. Many of the wartime Soviet suspicious about alleged British or American contacts with German anti-Nazi groups were derived from such general ideological assumptions about capitalist behaviour. As a result, Anglo-American declarations to the effect that postwar governments in East Central Europe must be democratic were presumably viewed in Moscow with a great deal of mistrust. The Kremlin undoubtedly suspected that such governments were meant to be the springboard for an eventual capitalist onslaught against the USSR. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

The fifth probably objective was related to the preceding one. If ideological assumptions played a role in the crystallization of Soviet defensive interests in East Europe, then it is likely that the other part of the ideological orientation, namely its offensive component, was also present. Leninist-Stalinist strategic concepts have always emphasized the importance of a strong basis for expansive operation, and it is inevitable that any accretion of territory to the base of socialism in itself was regarded as reflecting the march of socialism towards its eventual victory. It would be impossible not to relate the new political situation in East Europe to this historical process, especially since the prevailing situation was already clearly suggesting that the area had become divorced from capitalist domination in space and from the capitalist era in time. It would be inconceivable not to consider the establishment of Soviet power in East Europe as another revolutionary turning point in a process which must go forward. There is no doubt that Mr. Stalin wanted to show himself, true to the ideology, as the revolutionary successor of Mr. Lenin, and as a successful stateman, but it is equally clear that in the case of the satellites he was a successor of the Czars, rather than the of Mr. Lenin and Mr. Trotsky. Aside from this, the first four points are quite sufficient to explain Mr. Stalin’s conquests of these states, and the fact that they were objectives which as such had nothing to do with communism, World revolution, et cetera. The wish to make these states a part of the Soviet sphere of interest would have existed equally in a Czarist or in a liberal government. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

In the West this breach of promise was generally interpreted not only as a sign of Mr. Stalin’s untrustworthiness, but also as a proof of his intention to conquer Europe, and later the World. Actually his action was, in principle, not different from the attitude of the British, French, and Italian leaders after the First World War at Versailles. In spite of having accepted Mr. Wilson’s Fourteen Points, they insisted, under various rationalizations, on territorial acquisitions agreed on during the war in secret treaties, which made a mockery of Mr. Wilson’s principles of self-determination. They wanted their spoils of war and they defeated Mr. Wilson. What Mr. Stalin did was essentially the same, and he too used various tricks to rationalize his breach of promise. He may, in fact, have thought that Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Churchill had not meant the Yalta declaration to be entirely serious, and he may have been surprised when he discovered their genuine indignation. The question is: If the seizure of the satellite states was not a revolutionary action, was it an act of Russian imperialism, indicating a Russian desire for World conquest? What nation does not want to conquer the World? No doubt the Soviet Union is the heir to Czarist Russian. The industrial development of a potentially rich country like Russia must have led to the emergence of a strong, industrial Russia under any ideology provided she were led by a government capable of choosing adequate methods for its economic development. Czarist Russian was an imperialist power, as were Great Britian, France, and Germany. Her main aspirations were to gain a warm water port (preferably through control of the Dardanelles), control of Persia (in 1907 Czarist Russia agreed to share with Great Britain the control of Persia), and sphere of influence in the Near, Middle, and Far East. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

The Russian government was not particularly successful in its attempts for territorial aggrandizement, especially after the loss of the war against Japan in 1905. However, quite aside from this, Czarist imperialism was bound by the same limitations as that of other European countries. That drive to the formation of metaphour, that fundamental drive of humans that cannot be written off even for a moment, since one would thereby be writing off humans themselves, is in truth not overcome, indeed hardly even subdued, by the fact that it builds as a stronghold for itself out of it own fleeting products, namely, concepts, a regular and rigid World. It seeks out a new realm for its effects, another channel, and finds it in myth and in art generally. It constantly confounds the rubrics and cells of concepts by arranging new figurations, metaphours, metonymies, constantly exhibiting the desire to make and remake the existing World of waking humans as colourful, irregular, inconsequential, incoherent, charming, and eternally new as the World of dreams. Indeed, waking humans themselves are clear that they are awake thanks only to the rigid and regular web of concepts and, for that reason, occasionally comes to believe that one is dreaming when that web od concepts is torn apart momentarily by art. If we had the same dream every night, we would be as engaged by it as we are by the things we see every day. If an artisan were sure of dreaming every night a full thirteen hours that one was king, I believe, he would be just as happy as a king who dreamed every night for thirteen hours that he was an artisan. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20