Transactional reminds us of something related to commerce. Commerce is also tied to transaction as a mode of interaction between humans and the world. But what specifically connects the concept and the act of a transaction with that of commerce, where, and perhaps here there is a difference, a monetary exchange also comes into play? What links the two ontologies is exchange, an act that occurs at a comprehensive, overarching level, extended between all that exists, all that is present.

Among us human beings, exchange takes on specific characteristics: those of an exchange that is always reified, objectified, even when it involves feelings, values at stake, or in comparison. Exchange is an act between entities: a stone occupies a space that would otherwise be empty or occupied by another entity, and this is the exchange it has with reality. I exchange money for goods, but also feelings in a romantic relationship. Someone, regarding feelings, would say it is more about an investment than anything else. I can agree with that. An invested emotional capital is such because it will yield something in a relationship, which presupposes an exchange, even when it is a relationship with oneself.

Let’s start, then, with some definitions. Transaction describes a specific type of interaction or event, such as an automatic email set up by a human, which occurs consequently to an action performed by the user. Commercial is a broader concept, linked to marketing, and is planned, aiming for long-term sales of a commodity.

Is the company of a friend, which I explicitly request, a transactional act or not? For Transactional Analysis, it can be configured as such, since in the context it delimits for study, a reciprocal response or action is expected. There is an exchange, an expectation of response, and social interaction: all three are essential elements of that analytic configuration.

Between transaction and commercialization or the commercial (plan, level), is the difference clear-cut, or is there an area, more or less broad, where their respective sets intersect? I would opt for the latter solution, because the term transaction possesses a series of economic-commercial connotations that we all know. Not only that, but even within the field of Transactional Analysis, this series of connotations, very much adhering to economic-commercial exchange, is reproduced in parallel. This analytic is a psychological theory developed by Eric Berne and is characterized by postulating three ego states – Parent, Adult, Child – in order to analyze interactions, called transactions, between people to understand and modify behavioral patterns. Transactions are, therefore, communicative exchanges between two or more people, analyzed according to their origins in the ego states, with the goal of understanding relational dynamics. I don’t think I’m the only one who has encountered this theory; however, I focused on it after I started following the work of social researcher Sara Stein Lubrano. It is a theory, moreover, that can only be partially used for the cases mentioned above, but which can certainly be an additional aid in understanding what will follow. In fact, it spontaneously occurred to me to wonder if Lubrano’s exposed classification (facts vs. words; concrete commitment vs. debates) was susceptible to some contradiction—specifically, in the case of requesting a friend’s company or other daily actions, which it is very difficult to deny are performed because they generate utility for us who perform them: offering a coffee, greeting someone, validating a bus ticket, not telling every rude person we meet (clearly many) to go to hell, paying taxes, and so on. It is thus undeniable that our lives are immersed in a very dense network of transactions, from which it is complicated even to imagine escaping.

Lubrano suggests there is a fundamental difference between interacting with the pizza delivery person whom we will not see again, or whom we will not need to be friends with, and building a meaningful bond, such as, for example, in a Solidarity Purchasing Group (GAS). However, I wonder: why not give the delivery person hope of becoming our friend or having a sexual relationship with us? And furthermore, can we exclude this in principle? Lubrano suggests building long-term, non-transactional relationships in our communities (this is her intention): that is, we still need some transaction, as in the case of the pizza delivery person (whom I cannot exclude becoming my friend), but this is not what we should focus on if we want to throw sand in the neoliberal gears (this is the motivation). Here, perhaps, we should talk about intentions combined with motivations and their potential for realization. In fact, even non-transactional relationships can turn out to be useless, not be long-lasting, or not even begin. Meaningful relationships cannot be planned, but can only be grasped a posteriori.

Lubrano gives some examples besides the Solidarity Purchasing Groups which, she adds, allow their members to be already organized against evictions, given that they have shared the GAS experience, but also preparing sandwiches to support a protest march is a practical action that creates solidarity. The author offers a further example published in a Guardian article from last May 18 titled: “This article won’t change your mind. Here’s why.” So, Lubrano would have written a useless article. Why, then, does she make a dishonest move, telling us that articles are written to change people’s minds? Is it not also to give some information, to illustrate a slice of the world otherwise unreachable? Of course, this inevitably changes people’s minds, like anything else in our daily lives: nothing remains identical to itself.

It is, however, an interesting example: it argues that the change in voter mentality after Trump’s brief “detention” following various charges in 2024, moving from 17% of those who justified the actions of an out-of-bounds president to a current 58% justification, demonstrates not only cognitive dissonance but also the correctness of her theory. In my view, it proves the opposite: a series of words in circulation changed (I stress, changed) the opinion of the masses, who I do not believe had participated in those events. If anything, here we should bring up social position, educational level, the corrupt and manipulative information system, universal human categories like sadism and masochism.

But Lubrano’s examples are used to refocus politics from chatter, from words, to doing. As an Italian, the “politics of doing” of Berlusconi’s memory comes to mind, which still seems in vogue today, but which also pairs with the chronological precedent of Craxi’s “decisionism.” Is simply “doing”—but what, exactly—enough to be in the right? I admit that Lubrano has a generic point (action can create a deeper bond than verbal clashes or encounters, but it too can become a reason for conflict); however, upon closer examination, the axiom simply does not hold up empirically; there is no direct and demonstrable causal relationship between choice, action, and coming to consciousness. There is a kind of mystique of action in these positions, an underlying irrationality that leads to reducing political action to a series of small and often ephemeral interventions. I personally confess that I don’t know what the best strategies and tactics for a progressive politics are, and I don’t think Lubrano truly knows either, but there is a grain of truth in what she says: strategies and tactics arise from organizational and political experience and not vice versa.

The underlying irrationality, however, that I spoke of earlier is explained thus, with the words of Pier Paolo Pasolini: “That [young people] postulate rigorous, total, absolute objectives, and, at the same time, give primacy to action over thought. The counterpart to irrationality is the myth of organization. Our young mystics of politics are also formidable organizers. Just think of their street demonstrations in recent years. Nothing similar had ever been seen in the past. The revealing indicator of the young people’s substantial irrationalism is verbalism.” And he continues: “The characteristics of young people’s verbalism are an absolute fluency of speech, an absolute ability to smooth out any difficulty in thought. Any concept, even the most complicated, is immediately transformed, in their interventions, oral or written, into words that simplify it, facilitate it, make it speakable. The lexicon is entirely taken from sociology. The other characteristic of verbalism is stereotyping. All young people use the same phrases, as if they were reciting a text from memory.” And behind this irrationalism there is something: “A deeply rooted state of existential uncertainty, bordering on a tragic sense of impotence. The moment young people lay down their invasive, violent and, fundamentally, repressive language, and are caught by surprise, they appear extremely lost. I have never seen young people as needy of a father figure as the young people of this generation. When they are not guarded, their gaze turns around begging for help.” The mystique of action, moreover, has had fascist outlets; we must not forget that. Could the fact that debates and chatter do not produce change in society, but rather legitimate its hierarchical structures in the depths, not simply be due to the fact that the two levels of intervention are different, opposite, and lack causality or correlation between them? We know, however, that the issue does not end here, and not only according to semiotics and linguistic pragmatics, but also according to daily empirical observation, starting from the realization that chatter does not impede the historical events with which the world is constantly filled and of which chatter is one of the events in which it manifests itself.

Even overlooking the fact that Lubrano wipes the slate clean on the entire theory of performative linguistic acts, perhaps intentionally because she detests them, can we really argue that Solidarity Purchasing Groups have changed the world? Or can they change it by creating a new one every day? It is the concrete, empirically measurable, and given social conditions that can accommodate a certain number of GAS or other organizations, something not modifiable by simple willpower.

Lubrano’s explanation misses an important point: the real and total dominion of capital over the society we live in today, which is a formidable instrument of attack on meaningful, long-term relationships, making everything capitalistically valorizable, sellable, and commercially viable. It is precisely the triumph of those transactions Lubrano abhors.

Even wanting to meet Lubrano’s ideas halfway and assert that her theorizations are part of a tug-of-war with neoliberal power and accepting to be part of this struggle, we would still have to admit further things. First of all, that in Italy, such things are now old and date back at least 20-25 years; they are things already heard and seen at work, but which have mostly been followed by politicized people, already convinced of the utility of those choices, and which have changed nothing in a society in irreversible decline, except by putting it in a condition to better endure a deleterious system.

The point, then, is not about doing rather than talking and trying to convince, but about reaching or being put in the condition to do something, since today we don’t even reach that point. People either don’t find what we say and propose useful, or when they do find it useful, they are already doing it on their own. Therefore: don’t try to convince someone, but act even in small things, according to a progressive agenda (Lubrano), is the intent. But the point is that people are not attuned to this, so Lubrano’s alternative is ineffective. All that remains is to join some group that “does concrete things” and get busy ourselves. It is useless to reiterate that this is nothing new or something for which the majority of citizens would exert themselves.

In conclusion, transactional is commercial, every human action is subject to this dimension which is also a dimension of meaning, since exchange requires this; transactional and non-transactional are two sides of the same coin and are a real manifestation of the human, its eternal configuration with contingent applications, a possibility always in potency that is realized in the presence of a sufficient cause.