On 11 June 1835, the French newspaper Le Figaro <\/em>publishes an opinion piece discussing the abolition of the Royal lottery of France, due to take effect on 1 January 1836. The article is critical to the abolition, arguing instead for reform. It does, however, take issue with certain anti-abolitionist arguments, notably those that claim that the lottery brought a positive and consolatory illusion into the lives of the poor. \u201cAway with such ideas\u201d, the article declares, for \u201cthe player\u2019s hopes are just a fatal as opium\u201d. Just as \u201cthis poison\u201d, it continues, these hopes \u201conly give a short excitement of well-being\u201d followed by a \u201clong exhaustion and a poignant misery\u201d.3<\/a><\/sup> The use of the opium metaphor in this context presents the lottery institution as the producer of false hopes with detrimental effects, similar to those of the drug.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is worth mentioning here that the effect of the \u201clottery opium\u201d described by Le Figaro <\/em>in 1835 has striking resemblances with what the British psychiatrist Robert Hunter referred to, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, as the \u201clottery stress disorder or LSD\u201d. Writing to the British Medical Journal <\/em>in April 1995, only a few months after the first, televised drawing of the British National lottery (described by James Raven in a previous post<\/a>), Hunter describes a state of \u201canticipatory anxiety [\u2026] accompanied by unrealistic optimism and grandiose ideas\u201d leading up to the drawing, only to be followed by a rapid deflation of mood and feelings of hopelessness\u201d.4<\/a><\/sup> The parallel with Le Figaro<\/em>\u2019s take on the lottery <\/em>is interesting in two ways, because of the resemblance in the description of the \u201csymptoms\u201d, and because of the use of a culturally poignant drug metaphor, opium in 1835, LSD in 1995 (although the metaphor seems more humorously construed in Hunter\u2019s case). <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n If we return to nineteenth-century France, we can observe that the use of the opium metaphor to describe the lottery was not unique to the article in Le Figaro<\/em>. Four years prior, it had been used in La Com\u00e9die du Diable <\/em>(1831), cowritten by the two novelists Honor\u00e9 de Balzac and Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Souli\u00e9. The text is a burlesque farce that stages a banquet set in hell, featuring numerous biblical and historical figures. Among the many dialogues in the text is a discussion between John Law, Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Louis XV, and Confucius, on the topic of the lottery. It is the proverbially voluptuous French king Louis XV, reputed for his love of gambling, who refers to the lottery as opium: <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2013Mais l\u2019argent perdu a donn\u00e9 d\u2019immenses jouissances ; un billet de loterie, n\u2019est-ce pas de l\u2019opium ? \u2013La perte est un r\u00e9veil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [\u2013 But the money lost gave immense pleasures; a lottery ticket, is it not opium? \u2013 The loss is an awakening.]5<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n The metaphor is much more ambiguous here, at least when read from the perspective of the character. It suggests that the lottery provides pleasure even for those who don\u2019t win, insofar as they are able to enjoy the intoxicating effect of the hope of winning. However, it is the severe Confucius who gets the final word, and the infernal tribunal abolishes the lottery for all eternity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n What is interesting in our context is the clear ambivalence of the metaphor, as it is used in the contemporary representations of the lottery. As has been pointed out with regards to Marx\u2019s use of the metaphor, the cultural perception of opium in the first half of the nineteenth century was much more diverse and less distinctly negative compared to what would later be the case. Opium was perceived both as an addictive and reality-distorting drug and as a medicine, making it, in Esther Oluffa Pedersen\u2019s terms, \u201can ambivalent product [\u2026] that len[t] itself to metaphorical use by philosophers and writers during this period\u201d.6<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n The great observer of contemporary France, Honor\u00e9 de Balzac, would return to the opium metaphor to describe the lottery in his novel\u00a0La Rabouilleuse\u00a0<\/em>[The Black Sheep<\/em>] (1840\/1843). The passage in question imbues the metaphor with much richness of meaning, amongst other things by connecting it to an imagery of magic:\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cette passion, si universellement condamn\u00e9e, n\u2019a jamais \u00e9t\u00e9 \u00e9tudi\u00e9e. Personne n\u2019y a vu l\u2019opium de la mis\u00e8re. La loterie, la plus puissante f\u00e9e du monde, ne d\u00e9veloppait-elle pas des esp\u00e9rances magiques ? [\u2026] Quelle est aujourd\u2019hui la puissance sociale qui peut, pour quarante sous, vous rendre heureux pendant cinq jours et vous livrer id\u00e9alement tous les bonheurs de la civilisation ?<\/p>\n\n\n\n [This passion, so universally condemned, has never been studied. No one has seen in it the opium of poverty. The lottery, the world\u2019s most powerful fairy, did she not develop magic hopes? [\u2026] What social force can today, for the sum of forty sous, make you happy for five days and deliver you all the joys of civilization in ideal form?]7<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n This passage clearly resonates with the article in\u00a0Le Figaro<\/em>, especially because of the opium metaphor and the reference to \u201cmagic hopes\u201d. However, whereas both terms have a clearly negative signification in the newspaper article, they read with much greater ambiguity in Balzac\u2019s novel, implying primarily that the lottery can alleviate the pains of poverty and create pleasurable hope. Any notion of opium as dulling is only implicit. Particularly interesting, moreover, is Balzac\u2019s phrasing of the lottery as a \u201csocial force\u201d, indicating that the lottery’s capacity to capture people\u2019s imaginations had made an impact on the social fabric of early-nineteenth-century France.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Could this passage from Balzac have influenced Marx\u2019s famous text on religion? The Italian socialist philosopher Antonio Gramsci asks the question in an article from 1949 entitled \u201cReligion, the lottery, and the opium of misery\u201d. If the use of the metaphor to describe religion was also present in earlier German philosophy,8<\/a><\/sup> it is not unlikely that Marx, who was a great admirer of Balzac, may have found inspiration in The Black Sheep.<\/em>9<\/a><\/sup> <\/em>Regardless of there being a direct influence or not, and despite the two authors representing distinct political positions, it is striking that Marx\u2019s and Balzac\u2019s uses of the metaphor have in common that they present the two phenomena \u2013 religion and the lottery \u2013 as highly ambivalent social forces that produce illusory bliss, but which are also capable of alleviating misery. In that sense, both constitute a pharmakon <\/em>in the old Greek sense: simultaneously remedy and poison.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n By Marius Warholm Haugen In 1843, Karl Marx wrote about religion, that it is “the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of spiritless conditions. It is the opium of the people”. The opium metaphor is undoubtedly one of the most famous phrases of the German thinker, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":390,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"[{\"id\":\"a5145d37-84ff-4b20-bc4f-3ae3a9b995ac\",\"content\":\"Karl Marx, \\\"Contribution to the critique of Hegel\\u2019s philosophy of law,\\\" in\\u00a0Collected works : Vol. 3 : Marx and Engels : 1843-44<\\\/em>(London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1975), 175. Emphasis in original.\"},{\"id\":\"d4be6897-41ae-4fd1-9c60-16ace36a7842\",\"content\":\"Esther Oluffa Pedersen, \\\"Religion is the Opium of the People: An Investigation into the Intellectual Context of Marx's Critique of Religion,\\\"\\u00a0History of Political Thought<\\\/em>\\u00a036, no. 2 (2015): 355.\"},{\"id\":\"cad9a2a9-8b73-40c0-8778-191eab6433cc\",\"content\":\"\\\"La Loterie,\\\"\\u00a0Le Figaro<\\\/em>\\u00a0(Paris), le 11 juin 1835.\\u00a0My translation.\"},{\"id\":\"9020f22d-eaf5-4ba1-bb38-94b3d892e0f2\",\"content\":\"Robert Hunter, \\\"Lottery Stress Disorder,\\\"\\u00a0BMJ: British Medical Journal<\\\/em>\\u00a0310, no. 6983 (1995): 875.\"},{\"id\":\"e1d3d7a2-f55a-4c1c-a5dc-64050c54fd3a\",\"content\":\"Honor\\u00e9 de Balzac and Fr\\u00e9d\\u00e9ric Souli\\u00e9, \\\"La Com\\u00e9die du Diable,\\\" in\\u00a0\\u0152uvres diverses<\\\/em>, ed. Pierre-Georges Castex et al., Biblioth\\u00e8que de la Pl\\u00e9iade (Paris: Gallimard, 1996 [1831]), 1116.\\u00a0My translation.\"},{\"id\":\"69571ca8-2d8e-430d-b158-5af5dedd6635\",\"content\":\"Pedersen, \\\"Religion is the Opium of the People,\\\" 358\\u201359.\"},{\"id\":\"19d1f3c8-6997-43b3-835a-3194c7da6a86\",\"content\":\"\\u00a0Honor\\u00e9 de Balzac,\\u00a0La Rabouilleuse<\\\/em>\\u00a0(Paris: \\u00c9ditions Gallimard, 1972), 104.\\u00a0My translation.\"},{\"id\":\"96dd1b05-76ce-4de0-929e-b685aa99509c\",\"content\":\"\\u00a0See\\u00a0Pedersen, \\\"Religion is the Opium of the People.\\\"\"},{\"id\":\"89cb1ea1-279a-4588-bbdc-fc4e3622cc67\",\"content\":\"Antonio Gramsci, \\\"La religione, il lotto e l\\u2019oppio della miseria,\\\" in\\u00a0Opere di Antonio Gramsci : 4 : Note sul Machiavelli, sulla politica e sulla stato moderno<\\\/em>, ed. Antonio Gramsci (Firenze: Einaudi, 1949), 288\\u201389.\"}]"},"categories":[1],"tags":[4],"class_list":["post-388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ukategorisert","tag-lotteryfantasy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ntnu.no\/blogger\/lotteryfantasy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ntnu.no\/blogger\/lotteryfantasy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ntnu.no\/blogger\/lotteryfantasy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ntnu.no\/blogger\/lotteryfantasy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ntnu.no\/blogger\/lotteryfantasy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.ntnu.no\/blogger\/lotteryfantasy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":406,"href":"https:\/\/www.ntnu.no\/blogger\/lotteryfantasy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388\/revisions\/406"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ntnu.no\/blogger\/lotteryfantasy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ntnu.no\/blogger\/lotteryfantasy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ntnu.no\/blogger\/lotteryfantasy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ntnu.no\/blogger\/lotteryfantasy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.ntnu.no\/blogger\/lotteryfantasy\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/88\/2024\/03\/ma-79804-1024x933.jpg\")
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