Consumption, Addiction, Vision, Energy: Political Economies and Utopian Visions in the Writings of the Beat Generation

This work examines economic ideas in Beat writing that pave the way for economic thought in the 60s counterculture. It first describes economic concepts advanced by William S. Burroughs and by Kenneth Rexroth. Burroughs explores the imprisoning effect of economies through his "algebra of need," depicting economic relations in terms of addiction and tracing a pattern of "need" virus in all forms of relation. Rexroth views economics in terms of a "cash nexus" that negates person-centered "I-Thou" relations that express the truest condition of relation of self to other. Using these two models, the paper traces economic themes in work by Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, and Jack Kerouac, showing how these authors shift between descriptions of addictive, reductive conditions of need and escapes from this need through transcendent vision. It concludes by considering how Gary Snyder moves away from the polarity of addiction and transcendence through his commitment to non-duality.