JP Voyer

Join Pro Arts and Little Black Cart on April 20th, 7:00 – 9:00 at Pro Arts Gallery for a book launch and reception for the English language version of “Inquiry Into the Causes and Nature of the Misery of People” by JP Voyer.

This statement from the co-translator of Voyer’s book, Isaac Cronin, explains briefly why he believes The Inquiry is the most important work of social criticism written since World War II.

“In the early 70s as the Situationist International imploded Voyer’s timely call for a detailed critique of Marx and the materialist economists fell on deaf ears in Paris. There was no public response by Debord or anyone else in his camp who had been directly challenged to take up this task. In the following years Voyer proceeded to make a series of bold discoveries. An Inquiry Into The Causes And Nature of The Misery of People takes on, among other classic economists, Adam Smith, whose masterpiece is alluded to in Voyer’s title. For the first time, and in a systematic fashion, Voyer shows: 1) that the economy doesn’t exist except as a false idea and practice on the part of our enemies; 2) that in our world communication, the most human of human acts, is what commodities, not people, do and 3) that there is no such thing as exchange value vs. use value, that there is only value which is the language of abstraction commodities speak to each other without slaves who transport these commodities participating in the discussion.”