자본주의보다 먼저 온 실패의 예후와 대안적 윤리

Abstract

How did the Korean people who were impoverished by the capitalistic exploitation accept the capitalism imposed by the Japanese imperialists in 1930’s? Salient clues to answer the question can be found in the novels of Kim, Yoojung, which describes impoverished people’s everyday lives in 1930’s. This paper tries to trace such clues based on S. Federici’s feministic critics on capitalism and F. Benjamin’s perception of capitalism as irrational religion. In those days, people were exploited and deprived of their lands and assets which were their means of livelihood by the capitalists as well as by the feudalists, where independent self-sustained peasants were the typical victims. The situations in the novels are not different from the reality, but they are described in paradoxical connotation : the characters of the novels mobilize the capitalism to carry out their own schemes to make money for their livelihood and / or their never-coming fortune. They tries to manipulate the capitalist market system based on exchange value into means for their dreams to escape the horrible living conditions. At this point, the capitalism is not just economic system, but is escalated to the position of religion : the religion, in which every dreams to change one’s destiny as impoverished people have to end in failure. All the characters, who have no money to invest, no land to cultivate, nor any knowledge and information on the capitalist economy to make their fortune with, are actually dreaming false dreams, that will make their lives worse than those before the dreams. The more dreams, the more severe failures in such a colonized and capitalized economical system as 1930’s Korea. This paper tries to explain the paradoxical nature of the capitalism and to find any possible alternatives by analysing Kim’s novels, which describe such dreams and failures in patterned plots. The characters accept the capitalist market system and try to confirm their way of living to the system, but eventually come to horrible fails. Those paths of failure of the characters cast so much salient implications on the nature of the capitalism : The failures comes not only from the characters’ disability, but from the capitalism’s very nature,where nothing but the capital can survive any more. The dreams and failures of the characters are just motifs for revealing the intrinsic irrationality and superstitiousness of the capitalism’s impossible dreams to make endless accumulation of the capital. But the novels go further : they suggest alternative ways of living against the grain of the capitalist greed to maximize profits. Theft, cheating, contract marriage, tresspass, etc. are examples of such ways of living, which are based on mutual understanding and reciprocity in such a communal society as 1930’s Korea. Such motifs of the novels can constitute non-capitalist ethics which transcend the victim-selves, and can offers us who are living in the 21th century a golden opportunity to overcome the fetters of the neo-liberalistic capitalism.