Economic rationality, through its fixation on profit motives, fails insofar as it tries to impose instrumental reason onto agents, neglecting the ways in which energy, unproductivity, and excess are intertwined. Instead, what is needed is a “General Economy”—one which studies the interrelation between expenditure and the political economy.

The Need for a Theory of General Economy Before unpacking the nature and implications of non-productive expenditure, it is first necessary to explain more fully what George Bataille means by ‘general economy’ and why he thinks it is an important, and unacknowledged, field of study. Bataille notes in Volume 1 of The Accursed Share that while there might be some simple activities, like the ploughing of a field, that can be easily imagined in isolation from the rest of the world, as soon as we start to think on a larger scale this kind of subdivision becomes impossible. Bataille diagnoses the failure of most theories of political economy as emerging from a related narrow sightedness: economists tend to think of the economy of a country, or even the entire world, as being an aggregation of hypothetically subdivisible activities and events. As such, theorists of economics, in Bataille’s estimation, tend to miss patterns and laws that are visible only when economy is assessed at its most general level. Crucially, for Bataille, this most general level of economy includes causes and events which would never be noticed or deemed relevant by the specialized economist. Bataille writes: “In overall industrial development, are there not social conflicts and planetary wars? In the global activity of men, in short, are there not causes and effects that will appear only provided that the general data of the economy are studied?” (Bataille, The Accursed Share: Volume 1) Above all, the kinds of events and practices Bataille wants to bring into view of political economy are wars, religious practices (and especially sacrifices), and sexual practices. Expanding the field of political economy to that of ‘general economy’ also inflects Bataille’s thinking with a biological component: the contemplation of human societies as continuous with, or analogous to, organic ones. The investment of monetary wealth in the growth of an economic system becomes just one instance of a more general pattern. Bataille then goes on to suggest that in all these systems, some portion of the wealth generated cannot be usefully spent: “The living organism, in a situation determined by the play of energy on the surface of the globe, ordinarily receives more energy than is necessary for maintaining life; the excess energy (wealth) can be used for the growth of a system (e.g., an organism); if the system can no longer grow, or if the excess cannot be completely absorbed in its growth, it must necessarily be lost without profit; it must be spent, willingly or not, gloriously or catastrophically.” (Bataille, The Accursed Share: Volume 1)