BALZAC AND THE TRAGEDY OF THE COMMODITY

THE DESTRUCTIVE POWER OF CAPITAL IN HUMAN RELATIONS

Abstract

This article analyzes, in light of Lukácsian aesthetics and the realist literature of Honoré de Balzac, how capitalism and the logic of the commodity promote the moral and emotional degradation of human relations, revealing the destructive power of capital over subjectivity and sociability. The works Father Goriot, Eugénie Grandet, and Lost Illusions are interpreted as aesthetic representations of the social contradictions of the nineteenth century. The study is organized into the following sections: Introduction; Capital and the Reification of the Human Being; The Commodity and the Moral and Emotional
Degradation of Human Relations; Balzac’s Realist Literature and the Defense of Humanism; and Final Considerations. This theoretical and bibliographic study establishes a dialogue between Balzac (2012; 2013) and thinkers such as Marx (2010; 2013), Engels (2010), and Lukács (1966, 1978, 2010). It concludes that the commodity subjects human subjectivity and emotional bonds to the determinations of capital, leading to the reification of the human being. In this context, the realist literature of Honoré de Balzac, from the perspective of Lukácsian aesthetics, constitutes a form of aesthetic and ontological resistance, reaffirming the value of humanism in the face of the dehumanization imposed by the destructive system of capital.