The economic crisis is forcing a reshaping of political superstructural elements in every capitalist country….

The crisis raises deep questions about the nature of capitalism for those who would like to find a way beyond this madness as well. The global parasitism of financial capital has been revealed in many of its interlinked parts…. Most importantly, global capitalism has severely weakened itself economically and politically through the course of this economic crisis, presenting opportunities for it to be deliberately weakened much further from without, both politically and ideologically. But its current condition is only the starting point for the more profound, active and deliberate social critique that is required.

Great Recession, Age 3

by Eddy Laing
8/30/2010

“There are many contradictions in the process of development of a complex thing, and one of them is necessarily the principal contradiction whose existence and development determines or influences the existence and development of the other contradictions.” – Mao Tsetung, On Contradiction

September 2010 marks the second anniversary of the grand collapse of the global debt markets on which so much of the world imperialist system has depended for the last 35 years. This fourth quarter will also mark the third anniversary of the onset of the ‘technical’ recession of which the banking collapse is a major part. Three years later, despite all their best efforts to manipulate debt markets and monetary ‘tools,’ the world capitalist economy remains the metaphorical overturned cart in the ditch, horses splayed on the ground beside it, legs broken and twitching. Even their champion horse whisperer Ben Bernanke says it will remain as it is for several years.

Those financial circuits were and remain key segments of speculative money capital from which the ‘shining city on the hill’ derived its glow and was able to lord it over the rest of the world. The power for those circuits has always been the labor of billions of real people, throughout the colonial and neo-colonial world.

In the imperial homelands, for many people the old price of security meant averting your eyes from everything being done by imperialism in the Third World, keeping your shoulder to the wheel, staying in line, and making a deal with the devil in the form of a mortgage and personal debts so that you could pretend to live a ‘good life.’ The current recession, the most recent and most severe economic crisis in many decades, has brought that charade to an abrupt end and posed exceptionally serious questions for those who just a few years ago led rather different economic lives under this system.

This essay examines the reality of the recession three years later and presents evidence that it is ongoing, deepening, and that the measures taken by the ruling classes have only exacerbated their problems. This recession is effecting the political superstructures of many of those societies and effecting the ideological frames with which individuals and groups in them are interpreting and interacting with current socio-economic situations. In sum, this essay suggests how the current economic recession emerged as the overarching contradiction that is influencing the development of the other social contradictions currently inherent in most capitalist societies.

I

Three years after the ‘technical’ onset of the recession (in the U.S. as defined by the National Bureau of Economic Research) at the end of 2007, the impact is very real on thousands of millions of people globally. The official rate of unemployment in the U.S. — which is skewed downward to count only those who have just been sacked and are collecting the small government stipend, which normally terminates after 26 weeks — was at 4.3% in November and December 2007 when the recession began. It rose gradually throughout the year to 7.1% in December 2008, and hit 9.7% by June 2009. It fluctuated around that level through the rest of 2009, rising to 10.6% in January 2010. It is currently at 9.7%, or about 14,600,000 persons, not including everyone the Labor Department considers to be ‘out of the labor force’ or ‘discouraged’. Adding in those ‘not in the labor force’ (6,500,000) brings the count to 21,000,000, or 14%. ^(1,2,3)

In any event, there are millions more who are not included in these government statistics. People who have never been part of the ‘official’ labor force or who dropped out of it years ago or were forced out and have not been able to get back in. Consider this: in some states, persons who have been convicted of a felony are nearly unemployable as well as ineligible for any type of social assistance, including food stamps. During the last 25 years, the incarceration rate in the U.S. has skyrocketed for all types of newly criminalized acts — or simply for being a young African-American male! Multiple misdemeanors have also been ‘felonized’ with ‘three strike’ sentencing laws, resulting in many more ex-felons now than ever before. For these and many more reasons the real unemployment rate in the U.S. is probably twice the official rate.

For those employed, with the threat of unemployment held overhead, productivity drives and wage reductions have become the routine. It is not an aberration that in the midst of financial crisis, capitals are enhancing their profitability by rationalization regimes intended to wring the very last bit of surplus-value out of ‘their’ workforces. In the U.S., hourly wages in manufacturing have averaged a decline in six of the ten quarters since the start of the recession in December 2007. But before that, wages declined overall in 2004 (coming out of the prior recession) and in 2006, while the rises in 2007 (0.4%) and 2008 (0.1%) were both essentially nil. ⁽⁴⁾

Conversely, manufacturing output per hour showed large quarterly rises (+6.2% in Q2, +16.9% in Q3, +8.1% in Q4) through 2009 before halting in the first quarter of 2010 (+1.2%) as the last drops of profit were squeezed out of workers at capital’s command. ⁽⁵⁾ Indeed, as it has historically, and most recently in the 1997-1999 and the 2001-2004 recessions, capital responds to its market dysfunction by ‘disciplining’ labor. Both unit labor costs ⁽⁶⁾ and hourly compensation have been almost flat throughout the last decade, and when compared to inflationary pressures during this period — the ‘cost of living’ — workers’ wages have declined even further than the ‘official’ numbers indicate.

The productivity drives are hitting limits, no doubt both in terms of resistance and inefficiency. But undoubtedly they are also hitting limits of safety as well. The disaster on the Deepwater Horizon that killed eleven oil workers and released millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico was caused by a series of ‘risk-reward’ decisions by British Petroleum managers who expected to save $10 million in drilling costs. ⁽⁷⁾

Reuters quoted one business analyst groping for a truth: ‘If working people longer and harder is no longer bringing large returns to businesses, executives may have to find other ways to expand production — they might actually have to hire more workers.’ ⁽⁸⁾ The requirement that they draw surplus-value out of human labor is locked up against the short-range horizon of the next quarter’s balance sheet of costs, which is further clouded by the persistent anxiety and confusion of the recession itself.

Instead, unemployment, productivity drives and wage reductions, along with the dramatic effects that the housing market has had on personal finances, have combined to dramatically reduce the level of domestic consumer spending in the U.S. Since the end of 2007, retail sales have declined steadily, and as wholesale inventories increase, this puts further pressure on production and ultimately on some prices. Some of this effect is already being seen in so-called durable goods, such as automobiles and light trucks, prices of which have declined significantly since the end of 2007. There is growing concern (by capital) that this type of deflationary pressure will spread to other retail sectors and/or impact the sectors behind the retail sectors, such as the financial sector. There is also increasing concern about the global effects of deflationary pressures at a distance, in particular to/from China and India, which are both important manufacturing workshops and consumer markets.

Deflation is especially deadly in regard to the circuits of capital. Many people have now heard of the home mortgage that is ‘under water’ — the mortgage loan that is priced higher than the appraised value of the house. That is an example of the lethal problem of deflation. It will be catastrophic if that phenomenon spreads into the debt markets. All of capital’s attempted recovery mechanisms have consisted of piling on ever-larger amounts of mid-term and long-term debt. On August 11, 2010, Reuters quoted the president of the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank saying that he thought the U.S. was closer to a period of prolonged deflation than at any time in recent history. Not coincidentally, the Federal Reserve Bank, through its avatar Ben Bernanke, pronounced at its August 27, 2010 meeting that its priority going forward would be to ‘strongly resist deviations from price stability in the downward direction’ — in other words, to try to control deflation. ⁽⁹⁾

Deflation has not been a concern for capital in regard to consumer food prices, which have remained stable or increased slightly during the recession. Back in the early 1980s, Ronald Reagan famously declared that hunger did not exist in America and ordered the US Department of Agriculture to undertake a series of measures to ‘rationalize’ how it monitored the sector. The most recent salmonella infestations of hundreds of millions of chicken eggs are a tribute to those efforts, of course, but in 1981 a sterling moment was the USDA’s failed effort to reclassify tomato ketchup and pickle relish as ‘vegetables’ for the purpose of its school lunch program.

Every fall, this same Department of Agriculture surveys what it now euphemistically calls the level of food security in the country; the number of people who have ‘access at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life.’ In the course of doing that, it conversely measures the level of food insecurity; the number of people who have ‘limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods or limited or uncertain ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways.’ The survey released at the start of 2010 showed that 49.1 million people in the U.S. were ‘food insecure’ at some point during the preceding 12 months, a rise of 11% over the year earlier. ⁽¹⁰⁾

II

The collapse in the financial sector that took place in September 2008 was the tipping point in an inherently unstable maze of global debt processes. Having happened, it accelerated reactions throughout the web of debt mechanisms, triggering further defaults and liquidations, and dragging other capitals over or very close to the edge. Very quickly, during the first several weeks of that financial crisis, more than a trillion dollars of obligations were wiped from the ledger sheets of scores of U.S. banking institutions; a pattern that was followed in all of the major OECD economies — the UK, Germany, France, Netherlands, Spain, etc. U.S. commercial banks lost more than $2.5 trillion in assets between the end of 2008 and the end of 2009. ⁽¹¹⁾

Even as some of the biggest banks were being forced into mergers or liquidation, key players in the ruling class and the news media stepped forward to direct public attention to the home mortgage market, and especially to the sub-prime lending sector (along with a few investment swindlers, like Bernard Madoff). In retrospect, this stands out ever more clearly as scape-goating particularly small (lower-income) home owners as ‘deadbeat borrowers’ and distracting attention from the spectacles of capitalist speculation, debt, anarchy and blatant ignorance in the centers of finance in New York, London, Zurich, Hong Kong, etc.

Behind the foregrounded home mortgage market collapse, the much larger markets of corporate and financial debt were contracting at quickening rates. This caused the near liquidation of the entire US automobile sector (and the formation of Government Motors), the herding of forced mergers and acquisitions of (until recently) Fortune 500 firms, the prying open of equity stakes in still other corporations by ‘ready and willing’ lenders (such as Berkshire Hathaway’s loan/purchase of a large chunk of General Electric at ‘preferred’ terms), and the demise of tens of thousands of smaller capital formations. For example, from October 2008 to mid-August 2010, 270 U.S. banks with assets once totaling hundreds of billions of dollars were seized by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and sold — at marked down prices — to larger banks. 43% of those failures (118) have taken place since January 1, 2010. ⁽¹²⁾

Outstanding U.S. domestic financial sector debt, a key speculative mechanism for capital expansion over the past thirty-five years, has declined from its late 2008 high of $17.1 trillion (Q4 2008) by about $2.1 trillion (11%). Undoubtedly, this includes a significant amount of defaults. ⁽¹³⁾

Conversely, U.S. federal government debt has grown by about 12% during this period, or about $1.8 trillion, to $8.16 trillion, as the central government through its treasury and central bank (Federal Reserve Bank system) injects money capital to prop up the financial sectors, primarily banking and insurance, but also manufacturing such as in the case of General Motors.

(Corporate debt as a category has remained flat, perhaps signaling its position as a holy ground among capitals, with a slight increase from $7.1 trillion in Q4 2008 to $7.2 trillion in the first quarter of 2010.) ⁽¹³⁾

By comparison, the amount of outstanding home mortgage debt in the U.S. over this same period has declined about 3% from about $10.5 trillion to $10.23 trillion (about 270 billion) and the amount of outstanding consumer credit debt has declined 9.5% from $2.59 to $2.47 trillions (about 220 billion).⁽¹³⁾ These reductions result from increasing numbers of people driven to destitute conditions (personal bankruptcies, mortgage defaults), from individuals being denied access to credit, and from practical frugality in the face of the deepening recession. The residential housing market is at a 15-year low (if not lower, since data collection is only partial).⁽¹⁴⁾ The cumulative result is that the housing and retail markets that have depended upon ‘consumer spending’ now have much less of it to appropriate, and many retail capitals are pitching over into the void of bankruptcy as a result.

III

The fundamental qualities of the Great Recession have replicated all around the world. If it has been significantly felt by sectors of the population in the United States it has been felt ever more so by those living in smaller capitalist economies. Within the European Union, the collapse has devastated Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain, and the more recent members in eastern Europe. Reported unemployment is 20% in Spain, 13% in Ireland, 12% in Greece, 11.4% in Poland, and 11.1% in Hungary. The average across the entire Euro zone is 10%.⁽¹⁵⁾

In response to the collapse of the financial markets, those European economies that are structured to include centralized social service schemes (much more so than the US) have responded with austerity measures that refinance public debt in large part by eliminating public services, sacking government workers, raising taxes, and borrowing funds from other EU countries or the IMF. All of this further borrowing takes place with more austerity strings attached.

The UK recently went through a parliamentary change and has begun implementing a range of new austerity measures of just this type. The current coalition is eliminating or cutting back various agencies and departments (such as the National Health Service, and the Museums, Libraries & Archives Council), raising taxes (VAT was raised to 20%) and implementing various other measures across the board to extract additional revenue, reduce costs and meet debt obligations. There is also an important additional ideological message being sent, invoking the phantom of Margaret Thatcher who declared back in the ’80s that ‘there is no such thing as society.’

Within the EU economies, the high ratio of government debt to GDP translates into very high risk debt and a growing fear by lenders that not only might specific central banks default on their obligations but that in doing so they will drag other central banks down with them. Two of the leading debtor countries in the EU are Greece, with a public debt obligation that is now more than 113% of its $333Bn GDP, and Italy, with a public debt that exceeds 115% of its $2.11 trillion GDP.⁽¹⁶⁾

This pattern is systemic, however, and most of the EU states exhibit the same weaknesses. The international banking community singled out Portugal (77% of a 228Bn GDP), Ireland (56% of a $228Bn GDP) and Spain (53% of a $1.46Tn GDP) as special dysfunctional cases and, along with Italy and Greece, they were referred to as the PIIGS economies for a time last year until a banker with apparently more public sense read the memo. But they are hardly isolated examples. Germany’s public debt is 72% of its $3.335Tn GDP; France’s public debt is at 77.5% of its $2.67Tn GDP; and the UK’s pubic debt is 68% of its $2.18Tn GDP.⁽¹⁶⁾

Austerity measures in Greece have been met with vocal and militant protests from workers, students, small farmers and others, alternately aimed at the Greek government, the IMF, the European Commission, universities, as well as other sectors of the population such as teachers, trash collectors and health care professionals (all public sector workers). One of the Greek government’s major creditors in the current round of debt re-negotiations with the European Central Bank is the German central bank and this situation has also been used to further promote nationalist politics and ideology, particularly in Germany.^(17,18,19)

Only a few years ago, the so-called emerging markets of Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) were held up as economic engines that would pull global capitalism forward into the 21st century. But of course none of these markets stood outside the international debt cartels or the effects of their collapse. China, being the third or second largest national economy is a case in point. Despite the absolute size of its GDP ($4.9 trillion), the per capital GDP is less than $6,600^(20,21), the official unemployment rate stands at 9.6%, and there are several hundred million additional migrant workers roaming the country in search of work. Many academic and government economists in China consider the period of fast economic growth to have come to an end and that a major concern now is how to control price deflation.⁽²²⁾ This fear of deflation has long been underlying U.S. complaints about Chinese monetary policy — e.g. not allowing the yuan to ‘float’ — and as one market analyst recently remarked regarding trade, ‘it is easy to forget that one of the largest exports from China is deflation’ in terms of inexpensive manufactured goods.⁽²³⁾ Global finance capital worries about the wider impact if price deflation in China spills over into other sectors, such as real estate with its more extensive foreign creditor ties.

In much of the rest of Asia, the Americas, and through all of Africa, the recession has greatly exacerbated the ‘normal’ conditions of neo-colonialism and grinding poverty in ways that may be unimaginable to many people living in ‘high-income’ countries in North America or Europe.

As it has been for more than 600 years, Africa is the source of tremendous wealth for global capitalism. In a recent newsletter, business consultants McKinsey & Co. were glowing in their description of ways in which the savvy capitalist could further rip long-term profits out of Africa workers, where the ‘average return on capital (is) around two-thirds higher than that of comparable companies in China, India, Indonesia, and Vietnam’ and since China’s ‘days as the low-wage factory of the world are limited, Africa will soon be the last remaining major low-wage region.’⁽²⁴⁾

In South Africa, recent host of the FIFA World Cup, the official unemployment rate stood at 25.3% for the second quarter of 2010. As the games got underway in June, the stadium security staff in Durban staged a small protest over the fact that they had been paid only 190 Rand of the 1500 Rand wage they had been promised. The police responded by attacking them with rubber bullets, gas, clubs and arrests.^(25,26) This is a small example of the larger iniquity: an estimated £2.5 billion was spent preparing for the games, but the construction workers who actually labored on building or repairing the 10 stadiums were paid an average of £1.20/hour.⁽²⁷⁾ Replicating the nationalism within the games, during the final week leaflets began circulating in some townships warning immigrants to ‘leave now or be burnt alive,’ recalling the pogroms against Zimbabweans in 2008.⁽²⁸⁾

Workers, students, the unemployed, as well as younger factions within the ruling African National Congress itself, are confronting various power centers about the social and especially the economic conditions within the country. In August, strikes were engaged by autoworkers, teachers, police, health workers, customs officials and other public sector workers, and by students protesting financial assistance cuts.^(29,30,31)

IV

In the United States, since the start of the recession, millions of people have lost their jobs, had their pay cut or been compelled into part-time employment. The number and rate of residential mortgage foreclosures continues to grow and exceeded 325,000 in July 2010.⁽³²⁾ Since the start of 2008 about six million mortgages have been foreclosed. It is an understatement to say that all of this has had a dramatic physical impact on millions of peoples’ lives. What should not be overlooked is the impact this has had and is having on the mentality of those most ideologically invested in the American Dream.

The Pew Research Center conducted a sociological study in May 2010 to evaluate public attitudes about the economy. It found that a majority (54%) of respondents thought that the U.S. was still in a recession, not in a recovery despite the claims that were then being made by government and in the press. And notably this number roughly paralleled the finding that 55% of respondents reported experiencing some type of work-related cut-back during the previous 30 months, such as a pay-cut, unpaid leave, reduction in hours or lay-off.⁽³³⁾

In the Pew study, those respondents who were most likely to report dissatisfaction with their current status included those who may have taken the hardest jolts to their former social status: ‘whites’ and registered Republicans. Coincidentally, we see this same demographic assembling in Tea Party rallies, cheering the proto-fascist demagogues on Fox TV, and joining in anti-immigrant and anti-Islamic pogroms in Arizona, Florida and New York.

The economic crisis is forcing a reshaping of political superstructural elements in every capitalist country, from the U.S. and UK outward. Those restructurings will continue to present themselves as arenas of sharp struggle, which may stay confined mainly to economic issues, as in South Africa or Greece, or which may grow into challenges (although not necessarily fundamental) of political status quo. In many parts of the world (other than the U.S.), this economic and political restructuring, through the instrumentality of the World Bank and IMF, for example, often raises questions of the global relationships of imperialism and political power, including geo-political power.

The crisis is also compelling millions of people to rethink their perceptions of themselves in society and even to consider how a society should operate. And certainly, many other personal and social events and phenomenon are contributing to each of these ideological re-formations. This is where the fascist right’s revivalism and its nostalgia for the triumphalism of the 1980s (or some other imaginary past) come into play, providing the ideological reassurance that what’s wrong with the current picture is simply that some people don’t appreciate their place in the grand imperial scheme of things (but join with the Tea Party to bring them to their senses and share the spoils, or else).

The crisis raises deep questions about the nature of capitalism for those who would like to find a way beyond this madness as well. The global parasitism of financial capital has been revealed in many of its interlinked parts; the greed of individual capitals has been the subject of discussion at regular intervals throughout the last two years as has their egregious modes of behavior; the intentional refusal of governments to ‘regulate’ or take any action to control the banks as they looted clarified what role governments play in all this. Most importantly, global capitalism has severely weakened itself economically and politically through the course of this economic crisis, presenting opportunities for it to be deliberately weakened much further from without, both politically and ideologically. But its current condition is only the starting point for the more profound, active and deliberate social critique that is required.

Notes

1. Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey. Series ID LNS13000000. (Seas) Unemployment Level. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Data compiled July 2010. Accessed 26 August 2010.

2. Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey. Series ID LNU05026639. (Unadj) Not in Labor Force, Want a Job Now. BLS. Data compiled July 2010. Accessed 26 August 2010.

3. Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey. Series ID LNU04000000. (Unadj) Unemployment Rate. BLS. Data compiled July 2010. Accessed 26 August 2010.

4. Major Sector Productivity and Costs Index. Series ID PRS30006152. % change quarter ago, at annual rate, Real Hourly Compensation, Manufacturing. BLS. Data compiled July 2010. Accessed 26 August 2010.

5. Major Sector Productivity and Costs Index. Series ID PRS30006092. % change quarter ago, Output Per Hour, Manufacturing. BLS. Data compiled July 2010. Accessed 26 August 2010.

6. Major Sector Productivity and Costs Index. Series ID PRS30006112. % change quarter ago, Unit Labor Costs, Manufacturing. BLS. Data compiled July 2010. Accessed 26 August 2010.

7. BP manager, boss both ignored warnings before Deepwater Horizon blew, panel learns at oil spill hearings. The Times Picayune (New Orleans). 26 August 2010. Accessed 28 August 2010 at http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/08/bp_manager_boss_both_ignored_w.html#incart_rh

8. Productivity falls, Fed mulls stimulus. Reuters. Tue Aug 10 15:07:06 UTC 2010.

9. Bernanke Signals Fed Is Ready to Prop Up Economy. New York Times. 27 August 2010. Accessed at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/28/business/economy/28fed.html

10. Household Food Security in the United States, 2008. USDA. Economic Research Report Number 83. November 2009.

11. Report Z.1. Flow of Funds Accounts of the United States, 10 June 2010. Table F.109. Federal Reserve Bank of the United States.

12. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. 2010. Failed Bank List. Accessed 27 August 2010 at http://www.fdic.gov/bank/individual/failed/banklist.html

13. Report Z.1. Flow of Funds Accounts of the United States, 10 June 2010. Table D.3. Federal Reserve Bank of the United States.

14. Home sales at multiyear lows. Reuters. 24 August 2010. 3:05 EDT.

15. Economic and financial indicators. The Economist. 28 August 2010. p. 81.

16. CIA World Fact Book. 2010. Accessed 28 August 2010 at https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html

17. Neither a borrower nor a lender be. The Economist. 1 May 2010. p. 65

18. The spectre that haunts Europe. The Economist. 13 February 2010. p. 26.

19. The labours of Hercules. The Economist. 13 February 2010. p. 27.

20. CIA World Fact Book. 2010. Accessed 28 August 2010 at https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html

21. China’s economy as No. 2: How it’s playing in Japan. Christian Science Monitor. 17 August 2010.

22. Slowdown ahead but no hard landing. Chinadaily.com.cn. 7 July 2010.

23. Trading Ideas: Shanghai downtrend has strong confirmation. The Edge (Singapore). 10 May 2010.

24. Collier, P. 2010. The case for investing in Africa. McKinsey Quarterly. June 2010.

25. Police break up Cup wages protest. Mail & Guardian (South Africa). 14 June 2010.

26. Police clash with workers in first unrest. Mail & Guardian (South Africa). 14 June 2010.

27. Poverty in the Shadow of Pounds 5bn World Cup. Daily Record (Scotland). 4 June 2010. p.22-23.

28. World Cup is over: leave now or be burnt alive. The Sunday Times (London). 11 July 2010. Edition 1. Scotland. p. 28.

29. S.Africa autoworkers, firms in deal to end strike. Reuters. 20 August 2010.

30. S.Africa court stops some state workers from striking. Reuters. 21 August 2010.

31. DUT suspends academic activity. Mail & Guardian. 18 August 2010.

32. http://www.realtytrac.com/home/

33. The Great Recession at 30 Months. Pew Research Center Publications. 30 June 2010.

No related posts.

This work and its history is of more than historical interest as we strive to understand the current deep crisis of capitalism, precisely because it does indicate different approaches than Capital and serves to demonstrate the breadth and complex flexibility of Marx’s thinking, as well as containing a number of remarks that many have found very suggestive and fertile, such as those on “general intellect.”

The following article is an abridged version of a chapter from Karl Marx’s Grundrisse: Foundations of the critique of political economy 150 years later, edited by Marcello Musto. It is reprinted here from Links. Marcello Musto teaches at the Department of Political Science at York University, Toronto Canada.

The dissemination and reception of the `Grundrisse’ — a contribution to the history of Marxism

By Marcello Musto

I.  1858-1953: One hundred years of solitude

Having abandoned the Grundrisse in May 1858 to make room for work on the A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Karl Marx used parts of it in composing this latter text but then almost never drew on it again. In fact, although it was his habit to invoke his own previous studies, even to transcribe whole passages from them, none of the preparatory manuscripts for Capital, with the exception of those of 1861-3, contains any reference to the Grundrisse. It lay among all the other drafts that he had no intention of bringing into service as he became absorbed in solving more specific problems than they had addressed.

There can be no certainty about the matter, but it is likely that not even Friedrich Engels read the Grundrisse. As is well known, Marx managed to complete only the first volume of Capital by the time of his death, and the unfinished manuscripts for the second and third volumes were selected and put together for publication by Engels. In the course of this activity, he must have examined dozens of notebooks containing preliminary drafts of Capital, and it is plausible to assume that, when he was putting some order into the mountain of papers, he leafed through the Grundrisse and concluded that it was a premature version of his  friend’s work – prior even to the A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy of 1859 – and that it could therefore not be used for his purposes. Besides, Engels never mentioned the Grundrisse, either in his prefaces to the two volumes of Capital that he saw into print or in any of his own vast collection of letters.

After Engels’ death, a large part of Marx’s original texts were deposited in the archive of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in Berlin, where they were treated with the utmost neglect. Political conflicts within the SPD hindered publication of the numerous important materials that Marx had left behind; indeed, they led to dispersal of the manuscripts and for a long time made it impossible to bring out a complete edition of his works. Nor did anyone take responsibility for an inventory of Marx’s intellectual bequest, with the result that the Grundrisse remained buried alongside his other papers.

The only part of it that came to light during this period was the “Introduction”, which Karl Kautsky published in 1903 in Die Neue Zeit (The New Times), together with a brief note that presented it as a “fragmentary draft” dated August 23, 1857. Arguing that it was the introduction to Marx’s magnum opus, Kautsky gave it the title Einleitung zu einer Kritik der politischen Ökonomie (Introduction to a Critique of Political Economy) and maintained that “despite its fragmentary character” it “offered a large number of new viewpoints” (Marx 1903: 710, n. 1). Considerable interest was indeed shown in the text: the first versions in other languages were in French (1903) and in English (1904), and it soon became more widely noticed after Kautsky published it in 1907 as an appendix to the A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. More and more translations followed – including into Russian (1922), Japanese (1926), Greek (1927) and Chinese (1930) – until it became one of the works most commented upon in the whole of Marx’s theoretical production.

While fortune smiled on the “Introduction”, however, the Grundrisse remained unknown for a long time. It is difficult to believe that Kautsky did not discover the whole manuscript along with the “Introduction”, but he never made any mention of it. And a little later, when he decided to publish some previously unknown writings of Marx between 1905 and 1910, he concentrated on a collection of material from 1861-63, to which he gave the title Theories of Surplus-Value.

The discovery of the Grundrisse came in 1923, thanks to David Ryazanov, director of the Marx-Engels Institute (MEI) in Moscow and organiser of the Marx Engels Gesamtausgabe (MEGA), the complete works of Marx and Engels. After examining the Nachlass in Berlin, he revealed the existence of the Grundrisse in a report to the Socialist Academy in Moscow on the literary estate of Marx and Engels:

I found among Marx’s papers another eight notebooks of economic studies… The manuscript can be dated to the middle of the 1850s and contains the first draft of Marx’s work [Das Kapital], whose title he had not yet fixed at the time; it [also] represents the first version of his A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.[2]  (Ryazanov 1925: 393-4).

“In one of these notebooks”, Ryazanov continues, “Kautsky found the ‘Introduction’ to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy – and he considers the preparatory manuscripts for Capital to be of ‘extraordinary interest for what they tell us about the history of Marx’s intellectual development and his characteristic method of work and research” (Ryazanov 1925: 394).

Under an agreement for publication of the MEGA among the Marx-Engels Institute, the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (which still had custody of the Marx-Engels Nachlass), the Grundrisse was photographed together with many other unpublished writings and began to be studied by specialists in Moscow. Between 1925 and 1927 Pavel Veller from the Marx-Engels Institute catalogued all the preparatory materials for Capital, the first of which was the Grundrisse itself. By 1931 it had been completely deciphered and typed out, and in 1933 one part was published in Russian as the “Chapter on Money”, followed two years later by an edition in German. Finally, in 1936, the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute (MELI, successor to the Marx-Engels Institute) acquired six of the eight notebooks of the Grundrisse, which made it possible to solve the remaining editorial problems.

In 1939, then, Marx’s last important manuscript – an extensive work from one of the most fertile periods of his life – appeared in Moscow under the title given it by Veller: Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Ökonomie (Rohentwurf) 1857–1858. Two years later there followed an appendix (Anhang) comprising Marx’s comments of 1850-51 on Ricardo’s Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, his notes on Bastiat and Carey, his own table of contents for the Grundrisse, and the preparatory material (Urtext) for the 1859 Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. The Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute’s preface to the edition of 1939 highlighted its exceptional value: “the manuscript of 1857-1858, published in full for the first time in this volume, marked a decisive stage in Marx’s economic work” (Marx-Engels-Lenin-Institut 1939: VII).

Although the editorial guidelines and the form of publication were similar, the Grundrisse was not included in the volumes of the MEGA but appeared in a separate edition. Furthermore, the proximity of the Second World War meant that the work remained virtually unknown: the 3000 copies soon became very rare, and only a few managed to cross the Soviet frontiers. The Grundrisse did not feature in the Sochinenya of 1928-1947, the first Russian edition of the works of Marx and Engels, and its first republication in German had to wait until 1953. While it is astonishing that a text such as the Grundrisse was published at all during the Stalin period, heretical as it surely was with regard to the then indisputable canons of diamat, Soviet-style “dialectical materialism”, we should also bear in mind that it was then the most important of Marx’s writings not to be circulating in Germany. Its eventual publication in East Berlin in 30,000 copies was part of the celebrations marking Karl Marx Jahr , the 70th anniversary of its author’s death and the 150th of his birth.

Written in 1857-58, the Grundrisse was only available to be read throughout the world from 1953 after a hundred years of solitude.

II. 500,000 copies circulating in the world

Despite the resonance of this major new manuscript prior to Capital, and despite the theoretical value attributed to it, editions in other languages were slow to appear.

Another extract, after the “Introduction”, was the first to generate interest: the “Forms which Precede Capitalist Production”. It was translated into Russian in 1939, and then from Russian into Japanese in 1947-48. Subsequently, the separate German edition of this section and a translation into English helped to ensure a wide readership: the former, which appeared in 1952 as part of the Kleine Bücherei des Marxismus-Leninismus (Small Library of Marxism-Leninism), was the basis for Hungarian and Italian versions (1953 and 1954 respectively); while the latter, published in 1964, helped to spread it in Anglophone countries and, via translations in Argentina (1966) and Spain (1967), into the Spanish-speaking world. The editor of this English edition, Eric Hobsbawm, added a preface that helped to underline its importance: Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations, he wrote, was Marx’s “most systematic attempt to grapple with the problem of historical evolution”, and “it can be said without hesitation that any Marxist historical discussion which does not take [it] into account … must be reconsidered in its light” (Hobsbawm 1964: 10). More and more scholars around the world did indeed begin to concern themselves with this text, which appeared in many other countries and everywhere prompted major historical and theoretical discussions.

Translations of the Grundrisse as a whole began in the late 1950s; its dissemination was a slow yet inexorable process, which eventually permitted a more thorough, and in some respects different, appreciation of Marx’s oeuvre. The best interpreters of the Grundrisse tackled it in the original, but its wider study – both among scholars unable to read German and, above all, among political militants and university students – occurred only after its publication in various national languages.

The first to appear were in the east: in Japan (1958-65) and China (1962–78). A Russian edition came out in the Soviet Union only in 1968-69, as a supplement to the second, enlarged edition of the Sochineniya (1955-66). Its previous exclusion from this was all the more serious because it had resulted in a similar absence from the Marx-Engels Werke (MEW) of 1956–68, which reproduced the Soviet selection of texts. The MEW – the most widely used edition of the works of Marx and Engels, as well as the source for translations into most other languages – was thus deprived of the Grundrisse until its eventual publication as a supplement in 1983.

The Grundrisse also began to circulate in Western Europe in the late 1960s. The first translation appeared in France (1967-68), but it was of inferior quality and had to be replaced by a more faithful one in 1980. An Italian version followed between 1968 and 1970, the initiative significantly coming, as in France, from a publishing house independent of the Communist Party.

The text was published in Spanish in the 1970s. If one excludes the version of 1970-71 published in Cuba, which was of little value as it was done from the French version, and whose circulation remained confined within the limits of that country, the first proper Spanish translation was accomplished in Argentina between 1971 and 1976. There followed another three done conjointly in Spain, Argentina and Mexico, making Spanish the language with the largest number of translations of the Grundrisse.

The English translation was preceded in 1971 by a selection of extracts, whose editor, David McLellan, raised readers’ expectations of the text: “The Grundrisse is much more than a rough draft of Capital” (McLellan 1971: 2); indeed, more than any other work, it “contains a synthesis of the various strands of Marx’s thought… In a sense, none of Marx’s works is complete, but the completest of them is the Grundrisse” (McLellan 1971: 14-15). The complete translation finally arrived in 1973, a full 20 years after the original edition in German. Its translator, Martin Nicolaus, wrote in a foreword: “Besides their great biographical and historical value, they [the Grundrisse] add much new material, and stand as the only outline of Marx’s full political-economic project. … The Grundrisse challenges and puts to the test every serious intepretation of Marx yet conceived” (Nicolaus 1973: 7).

The 1970s were also the crucial decade for translations in Eastern Europe. For, once the green light had been given in the Soviet Union, there was no longer any obstacle to its appearance in the “satellite” countries: Hungary (1972), Czechoslovakia (1971-77 in Czech, 1974-75 in Slovak) and Romania (1972-74), as well as in Yugoslavia (1979). During the same period, two contrasting Danish editions were put on sale more or less simultaneously: one by the publishing house linked to the Communist Party (1974-78), the other by a publisher close to the New Left (1975-77).

In the 1980s the Grundrisse was also translated in Iran (1985-87), where it constituted the first rigorous edition in Persian of any of Marx’s works, and in a number of further European countries. The Slovenian edition dates from 1985, and the Polish and Finnish from 1986 (the latter with Soviet support).
With the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of what was known as “actually existing socialism”, which in reality had been a blatant negation of Marx’s thought, there was a lull in the publication of Marx’s writings. Nevertheless, even in the years when the silence surrounding its author was broken only by people consigning it with absolute certainty to oblivion, the Grundrisse continued to be translated into other languages. Editions in Greece (1989-92), Turkey (1999-2003), South Korea (2000) and Brazil (2008) make it Marx’s work with the largest number of new translations in the last two decades.
All in all, the Grundrisse has been translated in its entirety into 22 languages,[3] in a total of 32 different versions. Not including partial editions, it has been printed in more than 500,000 copies[4] – a figure that would greatly surprise the man who wrote it only to summarise, with the greatest of haste, the economic studies he had undertaken up to that point.

III. Readers and interpreters

The history of the reception of the Grundrisse, as well as of its dissemination, is marked by quite a late start. The decisive reason for this, apart from the twists and turns associated with its rediscovery, is certainly the complexity of the fragmentary and roughly sketched manuscript itself, so difficult to interpret and to render in other languages. In this connection, the authoritative scholar Roman Rosdolsky has noted:

In 1948, when I first had the good fortune to see one of the then very rare copies …, it was clear from the outset that this was a work which was of fundamental importance for Marxist theory. However, its unusual form and to some extent obscure manner of expression made it far from suitable for reaching a wide circle of readers.  (Rosdolsky 1977: xi)

These considerations led Rosdolsky to attempt a clear exposition and critical examination of the text: the result, his Zur Entstehungsgeschichte des Marxschen ‘Kapital’. Der Rohentwurf des ‘Kapital’ 1857-58 (The Making of Marx’s `Capital’), which appeared in German in 1968, is the first and still the principal monograph devoted to the Grundrisse. Translated into many languages, it encouraged the publication and circulation of Marx’s work and has had a considerable influence on all its subsequent interpreters.

Nineteen sixty-eight was a significant year for the Grundrisse. In addition to Rosdolsky’s book, the first essay on it in English appeared in the March-April issue of New Left Review: Martin Nicolaus’ “The Unknown Marx”, which had the merit of making the Grundrisse more widely known and underlining the need for a full translation. Meanwhile, in Germany and Italy, the Grundrisse won over some of the leading actors in the student revolt, who were excited by the radical and explosive content as they worked their way through its pages. The fascination was irresistible especially among those in the New Left who were committed to overturn the interpretation of Marx provided by [Stalinist] Marxism-Leninism.

On the other hand, the times were changing in the east too. After an initial period in which the Grundrisse was almost completely ignored, or regarded with diffidence, Vitalii Vygodskii’s introductory study – Istoriya odnogo velikogo otkrytiya Karla Marksa (The Story of a Great Discovery: How Marx Wrote ‘Capital’), published in Russia in 1965 and the German Democratic Republic in 1967 – took a sharply different tack. He defined it as a “work of genius”, which “takes us into Marx’s `creative laboratory’ and enables us to follow step by step the process in which Marx worked out his economic theory”, and to which it was therefore necessary to give due heed (Vygodski 1974: 44).

In the space of just a few years the Grundrisse became a key text for many influential Marxists. Apart from those already mentioned, the scholars who especially concerned themselves with it were: Walter Tuchscheerer in the German Democratic Republic, Alfred Schmidt in the Federal Republic of Germany, members of the Budapest School in Hungary, Lucien Sève in France, Kiyoaki Hirata in Japan, Gajo Petrovi? in Yugoslavia, Antonio Negri in Italy, Adam Schaff in Poland and Allen Oakley in Australia. In general, it became a work with which any serious student of Marx had to come to grips. With various nuances, the interpreters of the Grundrisse divided between those who considered it an autonomous work conceptually complete in itself and those who saw it as an early manuscript that merely paved the way for Capital. The ideological background to discussions of the Grundrisse – the core of the dispute was the legitimacy or illegitimacy of approaches to Marx, with their huge political repercussions – favoured the development of inadequate and what seem today ludicrous interpretations. For some of the most zealous commentators on the Grundrisse even argued that it was theoretically superior to Capital, despite the additional 10 years of intense research that went into the composition of the latter. Similarly, among the main detractors of the Grundrisse, there were some who claimed that, despite the important sections for our understanding of Marx’s relationship with Hegel and despite the significant passages on alienation, it did not add anything to what was already known about Marx.

Not only were there opposing readings of the Grundrisse, there were also non-readings of it – the most striking and representative example being that of Louis Althusser. Even as he attempted to make Marx’s supposed silences speak and to read Capital in such a way as to “make visible whatever invisible survivals there are in it” (Althusser and Balibar 1979: 32), he permitted himself to overlook the conspicuous mass of hundreds of written pages of the Grundrisse and to effect a (later hotly debated) division of Marx’s thought into the works of his youth and the works of his maturity, without taking cognisance of the content and significance of the manuscripts of 1857-58.[5]

From the mid-1970s on, however, the Grundrisse won an ever larger number of readers and interpreters. Two extensive commentaries appeared, one in Japanese in 1974 (Morita, Kiriro and Toshio Yamada 1974), the other in German in 1978 (Projektgruppe Entwicklung des Marxschen Systems 1978), but many other authors also wrote about it. A number of scholars saw it as a text of special importance for one of the most widely debated issues concerning Marx’s thought: his intellectual debt to Hegel. Others were fascinated by the almost prophetic statements in the fragments on machinery and automation, and in Japan too the Grundrisse was read as a highly topical text for our understanding of modernity. In the 1980s the first detailed studies began to appear in China, where the work was used to throw light on the genesis of Capital, while in the Soviet Union a collective volume was published entirely on the Grundrisse (Vv. Aa. 1987).

In recent years, the enduring capacity of Marx’s works to explain (while also criticising) the capitalist mode of production has prompted a revival of interest on the part of many international scholars (see Musto 2007). If this revival lasts and if it is accompanied by a new demand for Marx in the field of politics, the Grundrisse will certainly once more prove to be one of his writings capable of attracting major attention.

Meanwhile, in the hope that “Marx’s theory will be a living source of knowledge and the political practice which this knowledge directs” (Rosdolsky 1977: xiv), the story presented here of the global dissemination and reception of the Grundrisse is intended as a modest recognition of its author and as an attempt to reconstruct a still unwritten chapter in the history of Marxism.

Appendix: Chronological table of translations of the Grundrisse

1939-41
First German edition

1953
Second German edition

1958-65
Japanese translation

1962-78
Chinese translation

1967-8
French translation

1968-9
Russian translation

1968-70
Italian translation

1970-1
Spanish translation

1971-7
Czech translation

1972
Hungarian translation

1972-4
Romanian translation

1973
English translation

1974-5
Slovak translation

1974-8
Danish translation

1979
Serbian/Serbo–Croatian translation

1985
Slovenian translation

1985-7
Persian translation

1986
Polish translation

1986
Finnish translation

1989-92
Greek translation

1999-2003
Turkish translation

2000
Korean translation

2010
Portuguese translation

References

Althusser, Louis and Balibar, Étienne (1979) Reading Capital, London: Verso.

Hobsbawm, Eric J. (1964) “Introduction”, in Karl Marx, Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations, London: Lawrence & Wishart, pp. 9-65.

Marx, Karl (1903) “Einleitung zu einer Kritik der politischen Ökonomie’’, Die Neue Zeit, Year 21, vol. 1: 710–18, 741–5, and 772–81.

Marx-Engels-Lenin-Institut (1939), “Vorwort’’ (Foreword), in Karl Marx, Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Ökonomie (Rohentwurf) 1857–1858, Moscow: Verlag für Fremdsprachige Literatur, pp. VII-XVI.

McLellan, David (1971) Marx’s Grundrisse, London: Macmillan.

Morita, Kiriro and Toshio, Yamada, (1974) Komentaru keizaigakuhihan’yoko (Commentaries on the Grundrisse), Tokyo: Nihonhyoronsha.

Musto, Marcello (2007) “The Rediscovery of Karl Marx”, International Review of Social History, 52/3: 477-98.

Nicolaus, Martin (1973) “Foreword’’, in Marx, Karl Grundrisse, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, pp. 7-63.

Projektgruppe Entwicklung des Marxschen Systems (1978) Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Ökonomie (Rohentwurf). Kommentar (Outlines of the Critique of Political Economy. Rough Draft. Commentary), Hamburg: VSA.

Rosdolsky, Roman (1977) The Making of Marx’s ‘Capital’, vol. 1, London: Pluto Press.

Ryazanov, David (1925) “Neueste Mitteilungen über den literarischen Nachlaß von Karl Marx und Friedrich Engels’’ (Latest reports on the literary bequest of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels), Archiv für die Geschichte des Sozialismus und der Arbeiterbewegung, Year 11: 385-400.

Sève, Lucien (2004) Penser avec Marx aujourd’hui, Paris: La Dispute.

Vv. Aa. (1987) Pervonachal’ny variant ‘Kapitala’. Ekonomicheskie rukopisi K. Marksa 1857–1858 godov (The first version of Capital, K. Marx’s Economic Manuscripts of 1857–1858), Moscow: Politizdat.

Vygodskii, Vitalii (1974) The Story of a Great Discovery: How Marx Wrote ‘Capital’, Tunbridge Wells: Abacus Press.

Notes

[2] The Russian version of this report was published in 1923.

[3] See the chronological table of translations in Appendix 1. To the full translations mentioned above should be added the selections in Swedish (Karl Marx, Grunddragen i kritiken av den politiska ekonomin, Stockholm: Zenit/R&S, 1971) and Macedonian (Karl Marx, Osnovi na kritikata na politi?kata ekonomija (grub nafrlok): 1857-1858, Skopje: Komunist, 1989), as well as the translations of the “Introduction” and “The Forms which precede Capitalist Production” into a large number of languages, from Vietnamese to Norwegian, Arabic to Dutch, Hebrew to Bulgarian.

[4] The total has been calculated by adding together the print runs ascertained during research in the countries in question.

[5] See Lucien Sève, Penser avec Marx aujourd’hui, Paris: La Dispute, 2004, who recalls how “with the exception of texts such as the Introduction [...] Althusser never read the Grundrisse, in the real sense of the word reading” (p. 29). Adapting Gaston Bachelard’s term “epistemological break” (coupure épistémologique), which Althusser had himself borrowed and used, Sève speaks of an “artificial bibliographical break” (coupure bibliographique) that led to the most mistaken views of its genesis and thus of its consistency with Marx’s mature thought (p. 30).

No related posts.

Thanks to Nick Patetsky, who has recommended or referred to Goldner’s writings several times. This essay, originally written five years ago,  is reprinted from Break Their Haughty Power (and what a dynamite name that is!).

Fictitious Capital and the Transition Out of Capitalism

By Loren Goldner

The following is a “thought experiment” which attempts to see fictitious capital in relation to the end of capitalism. By pursuing the concept of fictitious capital as far as we can,  by illuminating the unbelievable distortions it has fomented in what is called “economic development” on a world scale, we can highlight the nature of contemporary struggles as well as explain why there are not more struggles. We can also address the reasons why a  “society beyond capitalism” seems such a remote possibility at present.

In discussing fictitious capital, we must never forget that it is subordinate to, and derivative from, capital generally. It is important not to foment the illusion that the struggle is against “fictitious capital”, leaving “real” capital itself unexamined. But at the same time, it is indispensable to sort out the fictitious dimension of the contemporary economy, if only conceptually. Many people today, including people on the radical left, regard contemporary capitalism as functioning normally, more or less the way it always has. I could not disagree more. Perhaps, as contemporary ideologies assert, capitalism has “reinvented” or is “reinventing” itself,  as it has done several times in the past.  Be that as it may, the post-1973 period presents one of the strangest, if not the strangest phases in the history of capitalism.

What, then, is fictitious capital?

Fictitious capital is, on first approach, paper claims on wealth (in the form of profit, interest and ground rent) in excess of the total available surplus value, plus available loot from primitive accumulation.

There is $33 trillion in outstanding debt (Federal, state, local, corporate,
personal) in the U.S. economy, three times GDP. (No one knows how much is tied up in the international hedge funds and derivatives.) The state (including
Federal, state and local levels) consumes 40% of GDP.
The net U.S. debt abroad is $3 trillion ($11 trillion held by foreigners minus $8 trillion in U.S. assets abroad) That amount is growing by $500 billion a year
at current rates. Foreigners hold an increasing percent of U.S. government debt; the four major Asian central banks (Japan, China, South Korea, Taiwan) alone hold over $1 trillion.  It is the Federal government’s debt which makes possible the reflationary actions of the Federal Reserve Bank. If Doug Noland’s notion of “financial arbitrage capitalism”
is right, the old conceptualization of the role of the banking system and the Fed’s (apparent) ability to expand and contract credit availability through it,  is superceded;  increasing amounts of “virtual” credit are created by “securitized finance”
independent of banks. One must also consider the government-linked entities (Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae), which backed the reflation of
mortgages of the past 4 years, leading to an incredible housing bubble. This entire edifice depends on 1) low inflation in the U.S., as higher inflation would scare off foreign lenders; 2) the willingness of U.S,  “consumers” to go more and more heavily into
debt (with debt service now taking 14% of incomes, as opposed to 11% a few years ago) 3) the willingness and ability of foreigners to go on re-lending U.S. balance-of-payments deficits back to the U.S.

Let’s shift to another level altogether: the extent of
unproductive labor and unproductive consumption in the U.S. economy. Marx defines the state debt as fictitious; he defines labor performed for revenue (as opposed to capital) as unproductive. Many Marxists would agree that military expenditure performed for the
revenue of the state is unproductive labor, even if it produces a profit for an individual capitalist. One can extend that paradigm, I think, much farther in
terms of other goods and services commanded by state revenue, and/or the fictitious capital of the state debt. To be productively consumed, surplus-value that is concretely means of production (Dept. I)  or means of consumption (Dept. II) must RETURN to C or V for further expanded reproduction; by that criterion, it would seem that unproductive consumption in the U.S. economy must be enormous.

Now perhaps for the most controversial point: what do individual reported corporate profits mean in such a situation? Do they really correspond to a proportional amount of surplus-value? The amount of profit from interest and
ground rent relative to profit from manufacture grows every year. Even within profit of “manufacture”, what does this mean when companies like GE and GM are now
earning more profits from their financial departments than from production? And if a significant amount of that production (with GE, a very significant amount)
is for (unproductive) capitalists’ consumption (i.e. military) then what does the expanded M’ that returns to each corporation as profit mean? What does it correspond to
in terms of C and V in their material form that must be productively consumed in further expansion for the capital circuit to continue?

We know the countervailing tendencies that must partly subsidize the circulation of so much fictitious capital and so much capitalist’s consumption: primitive accumulation (non-payment of equivalents) for goods imported from the less advanced parts of the
world, for labor power recruited from Third World petty producer economies; pushing labor power below its reproductive value; using fixed capital past its replacement time; looting of nature (non-replacement of resources) or destruction of the environment as a
whole.

All of this adds up to a pretty grim picture,  looking  like nothing so much as a vast bankruptcy subsized by foreign creditors, who would themselves be bankrupted by the contraction of the debt pyramid sustaining the whole operation. This is far bigger than the biggest Spanish bankruptcy of the 16th century in terms of its current and potential impact on the world economy.

When Marx was writing Capital the trends described above were far less prominent.  Fictitious capital was pretty much destroyed with each decennial crisis; the amount of unproductive consumption in the economies he studied was nothing
compared to what is has become (though it was already surprisingly widespread) . I think his conceptual apparatus is still perfectly contemporary for sorting out what is what.

Historical Overview

Let us briefly review how things got to this state of affairs.

Capitalism in 1890-1914 was approaching the crisis of the British-dominated world system. While the “sterling standard” never came close to the levels of U.S. international indebtedness until the 1914-1945 “Thirty Years War” and its aftermath, British industry no longer could back up Britain’s financial role under the impact of U.S. and German competition. The extended single crisis of 1914-1945 must be understood as a “substitute depression”, (punctuated by an actual depression from 1929 to ca. 1938) in which the classic bankruptcy proceedings were carried out on British capital’s world hegemony.
Germany and the U.S. battled for the spoils; the U.S. won.

But “underneath” the financial and geopolitical transformation of that period—one still the basis of current world arrangements—a more fundamental transformation was occurring, namely the passage of world capitalism from its phase of “formal domination”, with a preponderance of absolute surplus value based on the lengthening of the working day,to its phase of “real domination”, based on technological intensification of the labor process. This was accompanied by a revolution in agricultural productivity and transportation costs which reduced the cost of food in the average worker’s consumption from 50% (in the mid-19th century) to a far smaller share, thereby opening the way to “mass consumer durables” which came on stream in the 1920’s, symbolized first of all by the automobile.

This “automobile-oil-steel-rubber” complex of production and consumption was the heart of the world  capitalist boom from 1945 to 1975.  Beyond the immediate process of production, the automobile-centered economy had a huge impact on the development of cities, suburbs (and ultimately exurbs), hence of real estate, construction (including highways), and all the sectors that feed into construction, not to mention the environmental impact. Mass public transportation in countries such as the U.S. was gutted in the interests of this economy. Necessary travel time to and from work was significantly increased. Working-class urban culture, and public life, was weakened by the flight to the suburbs.

Fictitious capital played an important role in the 1945-1975 boom phase, though still small by comparison with the role it has played since.  U.S. government debt coming out of World War II was $250 billion, roughly 110% of GDP in 1945 dollars. (Today it is conservatively estimated at $11 trillion, or three times GDP.) The postwar arrangements that established the IMF, World Bank, GATT (predecessor to the WTO), and the Marshall Plan (cf. Michael Hudson’s Super-Imperialism, 2nd ed. 2002) cannot concern us here. But the dismantling of the British and French empires and the subordination of Europe and Japan to U.S. hegemony created the  global “economy of scale” necessary to accommodate the new productive forces that had been building up during the 1890-1945 period, setting the stage for the longest boom in capitalist history, based on a new standard of value expressing the increased average social productivity of labor.  The reconstruction costs from World War II in Europe and Asia, however,  and the role of the U.S. in providing needed liquidity for both reconstruction and the later impressive development of Japan, Germany, France, and Italy largely concealed the problem of fictitious capital from view until the system began to sputter after 1958, and headed into real crisis after 1968 (March 1968 closing of foreign exchange markets), becoming official in 1970 (Penn Central bankruptcy and liquidity crisis), 1971 (U.S. tears up Bretton Woods) and 1973 (final collapse of fixed exchange rates and emergence of an outright dollar standard, closely related oil crisis).

Theoretical Intermezzo

Where does fictitious capital originate? It is not discussed in the “pure capitalist” model of vols. I and II of Marx’s Capital, centered for the most part on the single enterprise and the “immediate process of production”, what Marx (at the end of vol. II) calls the “abstract” mode of presentation.  It is introduced in a brief chapter in the middle sections of vol. III, and in scattered references to the fictitious nature of the state debt, etc.

Fictitious capital is also absent from the Byzantine academic debates, based on the first section of vol. III, about the so-called “transformation problem” (values into prices) and the rate of profit, a debate which abstracts entirely from the problematic set out above and specifically from Marx’s repeated admonition that

“Accumulation requires the transformation of a portion of the surplus product into capital. But we cannot, except by a miracle, transform into capital anything but such articles as can be employed in the labor process (i.e. means of production), and such further articles as are suitable for the sustenance of the worker (i.e. means of subsistence).
(Capital, vol. I, 1976, p. 727)

This means that profits derived from such sectors as luxury goods and military production, when arriving at the general rate of profit and hence the total surplus value available for expanded reproduction,  have to be treated differently than profit from the production of machine tools and bread. They cannot continue the cycle as expanded C and V, and therefore are a net deduction from the total profit available to the capitalist class for new investment. They represent objects of consumption of the CAPITALIST class; they are revenue.

In real capitalist practice, means of production and other income-producing assets are not valued in terms of their historic costs or in terms of their current replacement cost; they are valued as a CAPITALIZATION of an expected flow of income based on the asset. Capitalization means that in a general environment in which the rate of profit is 5%, an asset producing an annual profit of $5 will be “worth” $100. “Underneath” that surface, the distribution of the average rate of profit, plus or minus the higher or lower profits going to individual firms which are above or below the average social productivity of labor, does its work,  and ultimately asserts itself in crisis and recomposition.  But the capitalist class, the central bank and the capitalist state do everything in their power to preserve those capitalized—fictitious—values as long as possible, even at the price of gutting the “real” economy. The actual surplus value available to the capitalist class as a whole to support those capitalized values comes not merely from the immediate process of production but also, once again,  from non-replacement: the looting of nature, primitive accumulation of petty producer populations, and sometimes non-reproduction of C and V.

Thus it is possible to refine the definition of fictitious capital offered initially; it is not merely the paper claims (stocks, bonds,  income from the sale and rental of land and real property) in excess of total surplus value; it is the capitalized “current value” of total income-producing assets in excess of their value, defined as the socially necessary labor time of REproducing them today. The fundamental tendency of capitalism, through increased productivity of labor, is to cheapen all commodities, including the universal commodity labor power (the source of all value), while at the same time the capitalist class, central bank and capitalist state are mobilized to preserve existing capitalizations, at least for the class as a whole (while periodically sacrificing the weaker capitals) until they are overwhelmed by the next crisis.

We now get to the nub of the matter: has capitalism exhausted itself as a mode of production capable of expanding the material reproduction of humanity? Has capital, in Marx’s formulation, become an obstacle to itself?

In the era of fictitious capital, where it is the drive to preserve  existing capitalized values that dominates production rather than the expansion of production which (as in all the cycles prior to 1973) produced over time fictitious values capitalized in excess of current social costs of reproduction,  (capitalized values that then, in the crisis, collapsed down to levels reflecting real costs, allowing a new cycle to begin),  the classic cycle of boom-crisis-recomposition and new takeoff is deeply distorted. Instead of a 1929-style bust, capitalism since 1973 has undergone a “hidden depression”, with a gradual wearing down of material reproduction under the weight of the managed mass of fictitious capital.

The fundamental question is: does this post-1973 reality express the “fact” that the socially necessary time of reproduction on a global scale can no longer serve as the “numeraire”, the universal standard of exchange? Can global reproduction still be expanded in the value form? Or has global society become too productive to be contained within it? Capital since 1973 seems to be trying to recompose the relationship between surplus-value, variable and constant capital into the foundations for a new expansion, but its main result, on the global scale of social reproduction, seems to be more large-scale destruction than expansion .

The answer to the above questions is inseparable (following the Theses on Feuerbach, namely that activity is objective) from the ability of the proletariat to supersede the value form and found a new mode of production. There is always the possibility of the “mutual destruction of the contending classes” as a mode of production exhausts itself (as Marx indicated in the Communist Manifesto).

My hypothesis is that since the appearance of a communist current in the working class (1848) every “classical” crisis of the pre-1914 period (the decennial crises of 1846, 1857, then the “great depression” of 1873-1896) has been, within the “core” of the system (the most advanced production and most advanced working class) a dress rehearsal for the end of capitalism, in which the proletariat “was compelled to do” (Marx) what was necessary to dissolve its status as commoditized labor power: hence the appearance of a communist current, always a minority (1848, 1871, 1905, 1917-1921, to a lesser extent in 1968-1976). It is not an exaggeration to say that ever since 1848 every major development in capitalism (and no less true for the post-1973 period) must be understood within the framework of exorcising the “specter of communism”. (It is also important to note that three of the four major historical upsurges of the proletariat occurred as a boom was peaking: the formation of the First International in the 1860’s run-up to the Franco-Prussian War, the Commune, and the 1873 depression; the formation of the Third International that emerged from the worldwide strike wave which preceded World War I and which continued in 1917-1921, i.e. at the beginning of the “thirty-year crisis”; finally, the worldwide surge of 1968-1977 as the post-World War II boom was peaking. In counterpoint to this is the formation of the Second International after 1889, in the midst of the 1873-1896 “great depression” or “great deflation” as it is sometimes called.

Capital can only be understood in relationship to its inseparable historical counterpart, the proletariat, and the proletariat is historically important, not as passive “variable capital” in capitalism’s balance sheet, but as an ACTIVITY that tends to constitute the “class for itself”, pointing beyond the capitalist mode of production. “The working class is revolutionary or it is nothing” (Marx).

The recovery from each capitalist crisis, once again,  involves a vast “recomposition”: fictitious capital is wiped out through bankruptcy, fixed capital is devalorized (often below its cost of reproduction), and the new “numeraire”, or standard of value, unleashes commodities  cheapened by the new generalized labor productivity. The working class “bill of consumption” (V) might contract in value terms (as a percentage of the total product), yet be larger in material terms because of an overall cheapening of consumer goods. Accumulation can resume with an adequate rate of profit.

Ever since 1973, world capitalism, without resort to full-blown depression or a Third World War,  has been struggling to establish a new standard of value to supercede the exhausted one associated with the postwar boom. To do so, it must re-equilibrate the existing total paper claims on wealth (profit, interest, ground rent) with existing surplus value in a new, acceptable rate of profit, at the same time that it expands the reproduction of global society. Yet, because of the preservation of fictitious capital against devalorization,  at the expense of material production, it has failed to find this new equilibrium.

It has, of course, by opening up the Soviet bloc, China, and parts of the Third World through “globalization”, increased the total volume of production; it has cheapened commodities; it has innovated new technologies and increased the productivity of labor (although more slowly than in the postwar boom). By the unceasing demand for the “reform” (the Orwellian word par excellence of our time) and “flexibilization” of the wealthy, more “mercantilist” economies of Europe and East Asia,  it may succeed in extending this process. But it has not undergone the “clearing of the decks”—full-scale deflation of fictitious valuations in harmony with a prevailing rate of profit in the production of commodities which can “return” as expanded C and V. On the contrary, by the devastation it has wrought and is wreaking in Latin America, Africa, eastern Europe, Russia, Ukraine, Central Asia and rural China, not to mention austerity in the U.S. and Europe, it has compelled the world’s working population and relative surplus population to bear the brunt of the crisis. American world power today stands as much in opposition to a new “healthy” phase of global capitalist expansion, (assuming one is possible) as British world power did in 1900.

World Capitalism After 1973

This process is  essential to understanding the post-1973 period. One can, I think,  “write the history” of the post-1973 era around the efforts to prop up the growing mass of “nomad dollars” or “hot air” which brought down Bretton Woods and to postpone (for over thirty years!) the inevitable deflationary crash. More specifically: the 1975 U.S. reflation (under Ford and continued by Carter)  took the world into the 1979-1980 near-inflationary blowout (gold at $850 an ounce, oil at record levels after the Iranian revolution, a threatened world flight from the dollar). This was followed by the Reagan-Volcker super-austerity: U.S. interest rates hitting 20%, leading to a massive recovery of the dollar, the latter made possible by equally massive foreign lending to the U.S., particularly in the Japanese acquisition of Treasury bills. This “wringing out” of the 1970’s inflationary economy –provoking in 1981-1982 the deepest recession of the entire post-1945 period to date,–   set off the stock market boom of 1982-2000.

I contend that the U.S. stock market boom of the 80’s and 90’s was a continuation of the reflationary strategy begun in earnest with the 1968-1973 onset of crisis, a strategy which has not yet run its course (currently manifested in the mortgage refinancing boom) , and which constitutes in effect the largest “Ponzi scheme” in history. This paper boom has taken place, not in conjunction with a real global expansion as in 1945-1975 (however qualified by some of the downside mentioned earlier) but large-scale DESTRUCTION on a world scale: the deindustrialization and downsizing of the U.S., extended mass unemployment in western Europe, absolute retrogression in Latin America, Africa, much of Asia,  of Eastern Europe, and of the former Soviet bloc (both in Russia and Ukraine and even more so in Central Asia), and more recently for the 900 million Chinese peasants and workers left out of the “Chinese miracle”.  The social “balance sheet” of this paper boom is to be found in various phenomena of decay ranging from the destruction of the blue-collar world in many countries (even China has had a net loss of 22 million industrial jobs), the expansion of the parasitic FIRE (finance-insurance-real estate) sector (most recently in the preposterous world housing boom, centered once again in the U.S.), environmental destruction (most notably global warming),  the growing role of international crime (e.g. the drug trade), ongoing economically-preventable epidemics, the disintegration of 60 economic basket cases into “failed states”, and fundamentalism (Christian, Moslem, Jewish, Hindu). Having knocked down many of the economic “great walls of China” this circulation of fictitious dollars is apparent today in the growing pressure on Japan and Germany (in particular) to “financialize” on the Anglo-American model, with the same effect of gutting the “real” economy, particularly as it affects working people. The instability of this “dollarization” and “financialization” of the world economy has been apparent in the Japanese deflation (1990-present), U.S. recession and real estate collapse (1991), Mexican crisis (1994), the Asia crisis (1997-1998), the Russian default and collapse of LTCM (1998), the Brazil crisis (1999),  the U.S. dot.com collapse (March 2000) the Argentine crisis (2001) and the 35% decline of the Dow Jones Industrial average from March 2000 to September 2002.  All told, roughly $3 trillion is paper wealth was destroyed in 2000-2002. Since that time, the acceleration of “financial arbitrage capitalism” (the term is from Doug Noland, expanding on ideas of Hyman Minsky), with the mortgage refinancing boom, has preserved the “U.S. consumer” as the “buyer of last resort” in the world economy. (As one wag put it recently: “I’ve finally understood supply-side economics. Other countries supply the goods, and then they supply the money to buy them”.)

It must also be mentioned that this circulation of fictititous capital has brought into existence new productive forces as companies compete in ever-tighter markets, expressing the pull of devalorization.  In sum, on a world scale, a smaller percentage of production workers in the work force as a whole is producing a larger volume of goods, goods that have been cheapened by technological innovation. This is, as noted earlier,  part of a classic pattern of capitalist crisis and recomposition. But it must equally be stressed that, in contrast to the 1945-1975 period, where expansion of the productive forces was driving the creation of fictitious capital (on a  small scale compared to the present), today it is the necessity of circulating fictitious capital which is driving the development of production. The total deficits of the U.S. state from  American independence to 1980 totaled $1 trillion; since 1980, that total has increased to $4 trillion. (That total does not include the “off-balance” sheet sums transferred through internal accounting from the Social Security system to smooth out the reported Federal deficit.) (It is also interesting that the post-1980 U.S. government debt is almost exactly equal to the $3 trillion net indebtedness of the U.S. The U.S. government debt is the “totem” of the world system.  This difference from the historical character of earlier capitalist expansions will matter terribly when the “debt-deflation” phase hits, and capital (not to mention debt-strapped workers and other “consumers”)  will have to pay off enormous debts (at historic cost) with the greatly depressed current prices and wages expressing current costs of reproduction (and in reality well below the latter).

What has been presented thus far is basically a merely “economic” analysis, as critique of political economy.  But to understand the weight of fictitious capital in the current context, it is necessary to look beyond the merely economic to the class struggle. Despite the colossal efforts of ideology to deny or trivialize social antagonism,  everything today is shaped by class struggle, both the one-sided class struggle waged for 30 years by the capitalist class, and  even more so the potential threat of a two-sided struggle to re-emerge into the open, as it has already begun to do (Argentina 2001, Bolivia 2005, ongoing working-class ferment in China, the return of the wildcat in Italy, Germany and Britain).

The classical workers’ movement from ca. 1840 to 1945 was fundamental in pushing capital into the phase of “real domination”, above all in the century-long struggle for the 8-hour day. It had its finest hour in the 1917-1921 period, in the Russian and German revolutions, in the Italian factory occupations, a pre-revolutionary situation in Britain (January 1919), and major strike waves in France, Spain and the U,S.  But the 1917-1921 radical upsurge failed because capitalism still had a large colonial and underdeveloped world, barely under the formal domination of capital,  into which to expand, as well as significant potential for recomposition (cheapened mass consumer goods) and primitive accumulation within the advanced sector itself (50% of the U.S. and French populations, for example,  still lived in rural areas and small towns in 1918). The 1914-1945 “Thirty Years’ War” and its immediate aftermath,  through the New Deal/Keynesian welfare state (the U.S., Britain), Social Democracy (northern Europe) Stalinism and then the Third World Bonapartism that emerged from de-colonization made the classical workers’ movement, expressed most succinctly in the dominant Lassallean wing of German Social Democracy part of official society. Thereafter, in a way far more visible than in the pre-1945 period,  progress in class struggle came from the unofficial workers’ movement, most notably the growing wildcat strike wave (above all in the U.S., Britain and France) in the 1955-1973 period. A mere listing of the high points of social polarization and struggle on a world scale captures the climate of the end of the postwar boom:

U.S. 1968-1970 biggest (and largely wildcat) strike wave since 1946; black revolt; youth revolt; Vietnam debacle
U.K. 1972  flying-picket strike wave
Canada 1972 (Quebec general strike)
France 1968 (May-June general strike)
Germany 1969 (September strikes)
Italy 1969-1973 “creeping May”
Spain 1976 (strike wave at end of Franco regime)
Portugal 1974-1975 mass strikes, factory occupations, end of fascism
Poland 1968; 1970 (student movement, Gdansk-Gdynya shipyards’ uprising)
Czechoslovakia 1968 (some workers’ councils appear under Dubcek)
Chile 1973 (proto-dual power situation under Allende)
Argentina  1973 (general strike)
Uruguay 1973 (general strike)
Brazil 1968 (strike wave against the military dictatorship)
Mexico 1968 (student movement and bloodbath, October 1968)
China 1966-1969 working-class independence emerges in “Cultural Revolution”

Posed more dynamically, world capitalism in 1973-1975 confronted a general “leftward” surge expressed in this ferment, and most dramatically the working-class upsurge in Spain, Portugal and the “southern cone” (Argentina, Uruguay, Chile), the “Euro-communist” advance in western Europe, “national liberation” victories in Mozambique, Angola and Guinea Bissau (contributing to a radicalization of the situation in South Africa), a “Marxist-Leninist” coup in Ethiopia, and the Stalinist victories in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. One could add to this the ephemeral (1975-1977) Third World convergence in the United Nations demanding food, oil and debt relief.

The French authors Tizon and Lonchampt are not far wrong in saying  that “ca. 1976 the top political priority of every European government was heading off the outbreak of proletarian revolution”.

Yet world capitalism managed to put out every one of these fires. But the post-1973 glaciation must be understood precisely as a response to that moment, in order to better see its depth and its limits.

These social and political developments are inseparable from the economic unraveling of those years. As in the wake of 1917-1921, world capitalism survived the late 1960’s/early 1970’s upsurges because it had further room for expansion. Once it had evolved its overall method of fictitious financialization, centered in the U.S. and to a lesser extent in the U.K., it pushed its way into the Soviet bloc, China and the semi-autarchic protected regimes of the Third World to implement its planetary leveraged buyout. The period since 1973 must be understood as one extended counter-revolution against the movements of the 1960’s and 1970’s. The Italian auto maker FIAT, which was plagued by mounting wildcat activity through the 1970’s,  spent billions to rationalize its Turin factories and de-centralize to “cottage” production around Italy, and this can be seen as pretty much a paradigm for how capital responded to the crisis globally.

Counter-revolution has taken many forms: the dismantling of the old “worker fortresses” (large blue-collar concentrations), yuppies, gentrification, real estate expulsion of working people and the poor from the world capitals and many other major cities, the unhinged development of the FIRE sector, the proliferation of the euphemistically-named “creative classes” in the growth of media, NAFTA and all free-trade zones,  (tantamount to corporate mergers resulting in downsizing and layoffs), the growth of income disparity on a world scale to dimensions unknown since the 1920’s, the growth in the gap between “developed” and “underdeveloped” countries, just-in-time, kanben, QWL committees, worker-management cooperation, the slashing of social safety nets,  flexibilization, endless calls for “labor reform”, de-regulation, dumbing down of education and culture, perfect markets=perfect democracy, surveillance through the internet and most recently “anti-terrorist” legislation,

It is instructive to look, by contrast with the late 1960’s/early 1970’s, at struggles throughout the world in recent years. In contrast to the sketch of the earlier period, it is necessary to include some vaguely defined “inter-classist” movements (e.g. anti-globalization) and the movement against the Iraq war, in addition to strike activity.
After the isolated, losing struggles against plant closings and de-industrialization in the U.S., Britain, France, Belgium and Spain in the late 1970’s and the 1980’s, we see the following:

U.S. Los Angeles riot (1992), Seattle riot (1999), anti-globalization
movement, antiwar movement (2003)
U.K. mobilization against the Iraq war (2003); some wildcats
Anti-globalization movement: Seattle, Quebec, Prague, Goteborg, Genoa
NGO movements against child labor; anti-logo; sweatshops
France: antiwar movement; April-May 2003 public employees’ strikes
Germany: wildcats, mobilization against Hartz IV
Denmark: general strike, 1998
Italy: workers’ refuse to ship Iraq war material (2003), wildcats, struggle over
pensions, education
Norway: oil workers’ strikes
Australia: longshore strike, 1998
Mexico: Zapatistas
Columbia: civil war
Venezuela: mass movements pro- and anti-Chavez
Peru: general strike, 2004
Argentina: December 2001 insurgency
Brazil: landless movement, public functionaries’ strikes
Bolivia: 2003, 2005 insurgencies
Ecuador: general strikes, 1999, 2005
Algeria: civil war, 1990’s
Nigeria: regional struggles over oil
Ivory Coast: anti-government riots, threat of civil war
Palestinian struggle; (Islamic fundamentalism)
Israel: general strikes against austerity
Uzbekistan: riots, 2005
Kyrgyzstan: riots. 2005
Tajikistan: fundamentalist movement
Georgia: US-backed liberal takeover
Serbia: US-backed liberal movement
Ukraine: “orange revolution”, 2005
China: riots, strikes
Indonesia: overthrow of Suharto (1998)
Korea: general strike, 1997
Taiwan: some labor actions
Nepal: Maoist guerrilla insurgency

Further,  Islamic fundamentalism and some terrorism, right-wing populist movements (some, as in Austria, Switzerland, France and Belgium with a significant working-class base) must also be considered struggles after a fashion against globalization (struggles having nothing in common with a radical left perspective).  One thing leaps out, in contrast to the earlier period: social issues such as the pensions crisis, globalization, the environment, immigration and anti-immigrant mobilization, international criminal activity (e.g. the Mexican drug gangs active in the U.S.),  have impinged on the working class as much if not more as the issues of the earlier period (e.g. speedup).
supra-national trade areas (EU, NAFTA, CAFTA). In North America and western Europe, most working-class struggles of the past 25 years have been defensive, whether at the point of production, or in reproduction, in the battle over the creation of the “lean and mean” state (social benefit cutbacks, in welfare, unemployment benefits, health care, pensions and retirement, environmental controls, health and safety legislation, or the gutting of education).

Program: The Determinate Negation of the Existent or the Future in the Present

Most discussion of the program on the radical left (in all its Marxist, libertarian and anarchist variants) focuses on the important question of the forms of working class rule: workers’ councils, soviets, or a political party or parties. One must of course add to this the Trotskyist transitional program, a program to be raised in capitalism on the way to revolution, understood as soviets plus the vanguard party. Few if any of these discussions look at the material reproduction (or non- reproduction) of society under capitalism, or after capitalism. The following, then, can be understood as mainly the material “content” of the forms that have been discussed ad nauseam in the past 40 years.

I propose to use the following “heuristic” device to explore fictitious capital in the world economy: imagine world production from the vantage point of a world soviet after successful world working-class revolution.

I think that the main reason for the eclipse of the type of struggles dominant in the 1960/s and 1970’s and the relative absence of such struggles today is the globalization of the stakes. There is no meaningful reformism on the level of society as a whole (in contrast to specific local and defensive struggles that can have temporary victories). That is why the word “reform” is now the slogan of reaction. If, as Marx said in 1844 “in France, it is enough to want to be something to want to be everything”, today in order to be something it is necessary to become everything.

The following offers nothing more than the bare bones of a program for the expanded material reproduction of society; it does not begin to discuss the equally if not more fundamental transformation of life, the “development of human powers as its own goal” that would be the essence of an actually communist society.

The old “imagination” of working-class revolution was a general strike or mass strike, occupation of the factories, establishment of workers’ councils and soviets, the political overthrow of the capitalist class, and henceforth a direct democratic management of socialized production. This “imagination” was based on the experiences of the Russian, German, Spanish and Hungarian revolutions and revitalized by the French May-June strike of 1968.

I think this model has lost touch with contemporary reality because capital-intensive technological development, downsizing and outsourcing has reduced the “immediate process of production” to a relatively small part of the total work force (not to mention total population), and even the production workers who remain are often involved in making things (e.g. armaments) that would have no place in a society beyond capitalism. More contemporary workplaces would be abolished by a successful revolution than would be placed under “workers’ control”.

On a world scale, the total number of production workers, as a percentage of the capitalist population (wage-laborers and capitalists),  has been shrinking even as the total global “output” has grown.

As I said, a heuristic device, but perhaps a useful one.

The first task of such a soviet would be to organize the global transition out of the production of value (in Marx’s sense of value). The world revolution will have presumably taken place when the ratio of C (constant capital) to V (variable capital), the organic composition of capital,  is already very high, meaning that value is already obsolete. But what is the basis of value? It is the social cost of reproducing the existing productive work force of the two departments I and II. The revolution would accelerate the development of the productive forces on a global scale to truly free production and reproduction from the value form.

What we need is a basic grasp of the total resources available on a world scale, in terms of existing labor power and means of production, to effect such a transition. The cost of reproducing world society in today’s terms is the “foundation” of a measure of “fictitious capital”. Here the is the minimum, “first 100 days” program:

I. abolition of the dollar standard, etc. and an “organized deflation” of the world economy

II. abolition of all socially unnecessary and noxious labor

III. retraining of the work force freed by II.

IV. global expansion to uplift world population to an acceptable worldwide standard of living

V. shortening of the working day

VI) transition out of the automobile/ steel/ oil economy; dismantling of the urban/ suburban/exurban sprawl produced by the needs of that economy;

Tentative Final Remarks

Here are further programmatic points, offering more detail witbin the above framework,  for this victorious world soviet, very tentative. They amount to “Chapter 11” bankruptcy proceedings for the capitalist system.

In abolishing fictitious capital,   we impose “global accounting standards” or
“world resource accounting” to take an “inventory” of total existing means of production and labor power, in terms of use values (The goal is pushing all production beyond the necessity of exchange, so that social “measurement” occurs neither in price nor in labor-time but is strictly in use-value terms of real goods and services produced. )

1) implementation of a program of technology export to equalize upward the Third World.
2) creation of a minimum threshold of world income.
3)  dismantling of the oil- auto- steel complex, shifting to mass transport and trains.
4) abolish the bloated sector of the military; police; state bureaucracy; corporate bureaucracy; prisons; FIRE; (finance- insurance- real estate); security guards; intelligence services.
5) taking the labor power freed by this to begin retraining and reeducation
around real needs.
6)  crash programs around energy: nuclear fusion power, solar, wind, etc.
7)  application of  the “more is less” principle to as much as possible. (examples: satellite phones supersede land-line technology in the Third World, cheap CDs supersede expensive stereo systems, etc. )
a concerted world agrarian program aimed at using food resources of the US,
Canada, Europe and developing Third World agriculture.
9)  integration of industrial and agricultural production, and the of
breakup of megalopolitan concentration of population. This implies the abolition of suburbia and exurbia, and radical transformation of cities. The implications of this for energy consumption are profound.
10) automation of all drudgery that can be automated.
11) generalization of access to computers and education for full working-class
participation in global and regional planning.
12)  free health and dental care.
13)  integration of education with production.
14) the shift of R+D currently connected with the unproductive sector into productive use
15) the great increase in productivity of labor makes as many basic goods
free as possible, thereby freeing all workers (e.g. cashiers, etc.) involved in collecting money and accounting for it.
16) global shortening of work week.
17)  centralization of everything that must be centralized (e.g use of world resources)
and decentralization that everything that can be decentralized (e.g control of labor process within the general framework)
18)    measures to deal with the atmosphere, most importantly the phasing out of fossil fuel use.

Once again, in conclusion, the usefulness of such a basic program, much of which can be quickly implemented by working-class power, is that is cuts through the appearances of the deep distortions of fictitious development since at least World War II. It cuts through the debates about “forms of organization” (party, class, councils, soviets). We don’t want soviets and workers’ councils in finance, insurance, real estate, and many of the other sectors mentioned which exist only because the system is capitalist; we want to abolish those sectors.

Related posts:

1. China, capitalism, and crisis
2. The crisis, financialization, and “cognitive capitalism”

Marxism, Politics, and Evil:  A Critical Engagement with “Ethical Marxism”

John Steele

III

In this final section I want to work through a number of topics, including the adequacy of Martin’s take on Marx’s thought, and some characteristic moves and modes of thinking in Ethical Marxism. I will be critical here, because I think these are matters that are important to get right.

Marx

Let’s go back to the opening sentence of a passage quoted above: “In Marx’s perspective, people do not question their circumstances (in general, broadly, deeply) except when motivated by material interests.” This doesn’t ring true, to my ears. Where does Marx talk about what leads or motivates people to question their circumstances broadly/deeply? And when does he talk about motivation on a broad scale by “material interests”? This is quite alien, it seems to me, to the way in which Marx approaches the question, and his conception of the relation between human activity and the materiality of their circumstances. He says, for example, in a wellknown passage, that history only poses problems for which there are solutions (“mankind…sets itself only such tasks as it is able to solve”) meaning that problems are revelatory of social contradictions which contain their own supercession, that solutions are immanent within the problems themselves. Now whether we believe that this Hegelian-derived view of history and social contradictions is on the right track or not, the relation of materiality to human practice and its possibilities is very different from the view that it is only material interests which motivate people, which I believe is really a mischaracterization of Marx.

This is an example of a view and portrayal of Marx in this book which is rather remote from the thinking of Karl Marx, to my understanding. Now I do not hold that our problems as revolutionaries would be solved or solvable if we just understood Marx or Marxism correctly. Far from it. On the other hand, it is of high importance from the standpoint of the emancipatory project to understand Marx aright, and it often looks to me that Martin does not.

A basic aspect of Martin’s delineation of Marx with which I take strong issue is his characterization of Marx as a positivist, as in the following passages.

As with the positivists, for Marx a ‘scientific’ theory of society and history would be purely descriptive, not normative…. Marx aimed to be scientific, not normative. It might even be said that Marx aimed to be scientific as opposed to normative. (34, 103)

Marx aimed to add the processes of human social and cultural development to a universal science of all material processes. The algorithms that represent (or govern) material processes that occur in different domains of the material world (the different fields of scientific investigation) are themselves related through algorithms: this is reductionism…. (411)

An algorithm is a process which will always produce the same result of a certain sort whenever it runs. (The easiest example is a set of rules for solving a problem which will invariably give the correct answer if followed precisely. Thus the process of solving a problem in long division which we all learned in grade school is an algorithm: you have simply to follow the sequence of rules, and the correct answer will be generated.) Martin represents Marx as believing that history works through an algorithmic process, and that he had discovered the algorithm of history (that is, the invariable rules governing the process, such that a certain outcome is predictable). (411, 429, 432, 479)

This is coupled (as it would have to be) with a portrayal of Marx’s view of historical processes as completely deterministic, so that the general future course of things would be determined with a great degree of inevitability. Thus Marx is described by Martin as simply talking “about the way the capitalist system works and that this systemic working would lead to things working out by and by [that is, leading to communism].” (104)

Is this Marx?

Is this a fair account of Marx’s thinking, or of Marxism? Yes, perhaps of some forms of Marxism, often dominant ones; but no, not of Marx’s thinking, and not of all Marxisms. On the one hand the sort of positivistic, utilitarian and even Hobbesian Marxism which is the object of Martin’s critique has certainly been a strand, even a prominent strand (especially within “actually existing” socialisms). But there is far more to Marx (and to the more vibrant strands of Marxism) than this, and some of Martin’s characterizations border on caricature.

So I think there is a basic inaccuracy here, a great deal of one-sidedness and misunderstanding of Marx. I’ll reiterate that Marx’s being right or wrong is in itself of not much moment. The importance of the question lies in the context of developing an adequate revolutionary thinking and theory. What is crucial is whether we have a theory or theories adequate to comprehend and bear fruit in the process of human liberation and the transformation of our social being. But then, Marx’s usefulness to this great enterprise will depend on what his thinking is, so let’s pursue that question for a moment. And here we need to make some basic distinctions.

First, there’s a differentiation to be made between the explicit statements of a theoretical program and historical schema which Marx sometimes makes (that in the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy being the most obvious and wellknown⁵), and the actual theoretical and historical work which he carries out. Thus while of course Marx does make several grand programmatic announcements, many have noted that when it comes to concrete historical studies (notably The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon and The Civil War in France), although he is certainly understanding historical events from within the theoretical framework he has developed, he does not reason from a schema, but through (in Lenin’s phrase) a concrete analysis of concrete conditions, which in turn represent complications in, and often problems for, his general program.

It’s really impossible to see how this procedure, which is entirely characteristic of Marx (including in Capital), is accurately captured by either description, or algorithm, or positivistic notions of science. These do not describe what “science” is for Marx, and they are very far from capturing the analyses that Marx actually carried out.

The adequacy of this sort of conception of Marx’s thinking is made even more implausible when we take into consideration the various phases of his thought. Marx, in company with most great thinkers, goes through several discernible stages in his thought. Everyone is familiar with the distinction between early and mature Marx (the 1844 MS, on the one hand, and Capital on the other, say). But there are differences here too; for example The German Ideology, usually cited as if it were an instance of Marx’s later thinking, expresses a rather crude and somewhat positivistic programmatic standpoint, which is almost completely absent from Capital. (Martin at one point says that Marx has an affinity with John Stuart Mill on the basis that “both claimed that their work could proceed on a ‘purely empirical basis’,” [362-3] drawing these words from The German Ideology but also claiming that Marx repeats the claim elsewhere, which I do not believe is the case (at least not in works later than German Ideology).⁶)

It is true that while the theory and program of Capital are certainly not positivistic, there is an expression in several places of a rather deterministic historical scheme. But this too becomes no longer characteristic given the changes that occur in Marx’s thinking in the 1870s, as he came to grips with the three phenomena of the Paris Commune; the growth of the workers’ movement in Germany and its associated Marxism (of which Marx was very critical); and the increasing study of Marx in radical Russian circles, and the questions raised for the application of Marx’s schema in this situation. All of these raised questions as to the projections which could be drawn from Capital (not to mention the earlier programmatic statements of the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy), and Marx’s responses to these newly arisen occasions (Class Struggles in France, Critique of the Gotha Programme, and his reply – and its various drafts – to Vera Zasulich) sketch a much more open and undeterministic stance and theory than is to be found earlier. (Martin does mention the correspondence with Zasulich [275-77], but only to criticize Marx’s failure to raise “the question of place.”)

There is far more that could be said in relation to this question – about the explanatory structure underlying Capital (which bears no relation to a descriptive positivistic idea of science), about Marx’s explanations of contemporary history, etc., and quite a bit has been written on these topics – but what I’ve said is probably enough to make my point.

Reverse implication to origins

Continuing for a moment the discussion of Martin’s picture of the figure of Karl Marx and his thinking, let me cite what I find to be some quite astonishing statements:

One of the paradoxes of Marxism is that Marx by himself is not so interesting or exciting…. (360)

For Stalin, but perhaps even for Marx, Engels, and Lenin, intellectual ferment was not a good thing. (352)

…for Marx, all you need to know about agriculture is that it represents an outmoded form of production. (274)

I term these statements astonishing in that I find it difficult to believe that these judgments, peppered through the book on a diverse array of subjects, could come from a straightforward reading of Marx and an attempt to understand his thinking. Perhaps we simply differ in what we find in Marx. But my guess is that glosses on Marx like these arise from a bent towards reading Marx through the history of Marxism, and in particular reading Marx (and Engels and Lenin) through Stalin – or rather, through a fear of Stalinism. This becomes clear, I think, in a passage like that on 189-90, where Martin argues for a strong link between “Marxism’s resistance to the ethical ‘as such’, and Marxism’s tendency, an inherent tendency I would argue, toward economism.” This passage continues,

Indeed,…the difficulty is that Marxism (or simply the thought of Karl Marx, to be direct about this) entails a critique of reification, and yet Marxism, especially when it becomes only a structural “science” of the causality of things and interests…seems itself to reify. In practice, especially in the practice of Stalin in the Soviet Union, but not only there, this orientation has had, again, dire consequences. (190)

This reasoning, along the lines of holding that the seeds of Stalin were planted by Marx, is an example of an all-too-common mode of argument in Ethical Marxism, one of “reverse implication” from the characteristics of a phenomenon back to the attribution of those characteristics to its origins.

The sort of move I mean is exemplified in some of Martin’s arguments concerning human meat consumption, as well as with reference to 20^th century or contemporary imperialism, where he will begin by pointing to modern industrial meat production, or to imperialism. Having taken it as clear that this is obviously wrong (“the immense cruelty done to animals in the current food-production system and through human participation on that system is a great wrong that calls us to ethical action” [213], for example), he will generalize or hypostasize the basis in either case: carnivorism as the basis of industrial food production, or commodity-production as the basis of capitalist imperialism. Finally, the conclusion is drawn that, given that the final form (industrial food production, imperialism) is clearly wrong or evil, this basis must be ethically wrong.

The argumentative move, in other words, begins from the wrongness (evil) of a phenomenon, X; the basis of X is then generalized; this generalized or hypostasized basis (carnivorism, commodity production) is then projected back to a beginning or seed of X, which is then itself presumed to be wrong or evil.

This beginning is often characterized by Martin as the crossing of a boundary or threshold by human beings, a step that brought them into the territory of evil. If this sounds a lot like myths of the fall of man and the original sin, he has no problem with such similarities: “My own view…is that myths of a human fall point to a time when humans first began to eat inhuman animals on a regular basis.” (87) And “the fall into alienation is the emergence of the commodity form and the process of commodification” (266). On a different subject: “a threshold had to be crossed which allowed one half of a population (male) to understand the other half of the population (female) as objects of domination.” (236)

To draw this out a little more: The argument is that commodity-production, with its concomitant reduction (Martin believes) of everything to a “mere thing,” marks the threshold after which “all bets are off” ethically: “If you will do this, what will you not do? If you will cross this line, what line will you not cross?” (245)

There is a similar line of reasoning in relation to the animal question, and in this case Martin holds that the step into carnivorism was also the threshold of commodity production as well:

At some point in this transition, there must have been a moment when a fundamental distinction between animals and humans began to be made, as regards cruelty and some sort of basic standing in the world, and here we can see the roots of reification…. We can see the beginnings of commodity production. (260)

The projection backward presumes, for its argumentative legitimacy, a causal process leading from this threshold beginning to the present form. And Martin clearly believes this to be the case:

The first forms of commodity production initiate humanity into a world of things. The emergence of capitalism places the reification of humanity on a purely calculative basis, and from there all human relationships are brought under the brutal cash nexus. (250)

Bad reasoning

There are many aspects of this form of reasoning which are both untenable and disturbing. It is also, we should note parenthetically, not very congruent with Martin’s opposition to “inevitablism.” For here he appears to presuppose a deterministic unfolding from that beginning point, indeed a sort of teleological determinism – the end (industrial meat production, imperialism) is presumed to be in the beginning (the “fall” into carnivorism, commodity-production).

The form of Martin’s reasoning here also has a disturbingly close similarity to that which is often used by opponents of abortion, who project backward, beginning from the wrongness of killing a person, to the threshold whose crossing results in a complete human being (the moment of conception is the obvious line-crossing boundary), and conclude that wrongness can also be imputed to any deliberate ending of life following the crossing of that threshold.

And in fact the form of reasoning employed in this sort of reverse implication to origins (as I’m terming it), has nothing to recommend it.

It certainly does not generally follow, from the fact that a certain characteristic is true of the end result of a process, that the same characteristic can be attributed to the origin or beginning of that process. If this were the case, then the properties of a fully grown oak tree would be true of the acorn which was its seed — a very unsound inference. To reason in this way is to ignore real changes which occur in the development of any phenomenon, and the emergence of new and unique characteristics at new levels of development.

In Ethical Marxism, the idea of a threshold, a fall, the original evil of commodity production and an increasing evil with capitalism, involves a great deal of romanticization of pre-capitalist societies (see 102, 130, 149). Agricultural society “keeps people sane,” Martin says, while industrialization and mechanization “destroys human sanity” (55)

The ‘cell-form’ in Marx

The idea of a boundary or threshold is also related by Martin to another concept, that of the “cell-form” of a phenomenon, drawing this term from Marx:

The cell-form of a world that is upside-down is the commodity.…we might draw a line between [that is, connecting] the present functioning of systems and the cell-form of which Marx wrote. (250, 256)

In the Preface to the first German edition of Capital (Vol. 1), Marx analogizes the role of the commodity in capitalism to that of the cell of an organism, and terms the commodity-form the “economic cell-form.” (This is his only use of the term, to my knowledge.) He makes this analogy by way of explaining both why he begins with analysis of the commodity-form (although “to the superficial observer, the analysis of these forms seems to turn upon minutiae”) and why previous investigators have not done likewise (“because the body, as an organic whole, is more easy of study than are the cells of that body”).

Martin, however, identifies this term with his own idea of the seed from which the present system grows, and attributes this to Marx and Engels:

One could argue that, for both Marx and Engels, part of what it means for there to be a given social system is that there is a prefiguration of the present in a “cell-form,” and that this cell-form can be seen in a threshold that is crossed by humankind. (239)

He then goes on to identify the “cell-form,” not only with his notion of a threshold, but with the irremediable fall of humanity:

…there is with Marx’s conception of the “cell-form” the notion that the first forms of commodity production let the cat out of the bag and there is little or no chance of putting the cat back in the bag. …there was a conjuncture, in prehistory, where the seeds of patriarchy, private property, commodity production, and even the state…and eventually capitalism were planted, in a single go. (243, 239)

It should be clear that the uses Martin makes of it have nothing to do with Marx’s use of this phrase. Indeed, looking to the analogy drawn in this metaphor to the cells of an organism, it’s clear that the cells of an organism only exist within the context of the whole organism; likewise with the relation of the commodity to the “organism” of capitalist society, from which Marx’s analysis proceeds by abstraction. (Continuing the comparison to the analysis of organic cells, Marx says, “In the analysis of economic forms, moreover, neither microscopes nor chemical reagents are of use. The force of abstraction must replace both.”)

This point is important not chiefly because it represents a misreading of Marx, but principally for the light it sheds on the character of the difference between Marx (and Marxism) and the manner in which Martin proceeds and the theory which he builds. For Marx the commodity is reached and known through abstraction from the whole of capitalism, and this “cell-form” in turn serves as a means of understanding the working of the whole at the most basic level of analysis. It is out of the sort of understanding of the present illustrated here that Marx draws his historical remarks (the path to the present) and – most importantly – his vision of future possibilities.

For Marx, communism is an inherent possibility of the present configuration of human society, of its contradictory social dynamic; his analysis points to this possibility. Communism is not for Marx, as it is for Martin (often), an ethico-religious vision, derived in some sense prior to any social analysis. And for Marx, I would argue, the ethical judgment on (that is, against) capitalism derives from the reality of this possibility or possibilities, not from an absolutist and logically prior judgment of capitalism or commodity-production as evil.

Obviously to say that Marx’s thinking differs in this way from Martin’s is not to decide the issue, but the way in which it differs does complicate both the picture drawn of Marx in Ethical Marxism and the use to which Martin often wants to put Marx’s “science.” For if Marx is to be simply used instrumentally for the achievement of a prior ethical project, then what is used will not really be Marx. Further, if we read Marx in this way, many of the sharp dichotomies set up by Martin – between fact and value, history and morality, etc. — fall away, at least within the ambit of Marx’s thinking.

One more thing

On the very first page Martin gives his approval to the thesis (pioneered in a neo-Aristotelean vein by G.E.M. Anscombe) “that there are basic ethical questions about which nothing can be said, and that it would be a violation of ethics to presume to give an ‘explanation’ as to why it is wrong to do certain things…that the violation occurs even in the idea that certain situations might become questions, brought into the discursive realm.” (1) At several points in the book, Martin’s judgment concerning a phenomenon is a simple “it is evil” or “it is wrong” (see for example 27, 43, 44, 353), and at one point he describes his aim as being “to establish the place of evil in social theory.” (33)

There are several problems, as I see it, with this way of proceeding. Most obviously, this sort of thesis would seem to lend itself all too easily to the confirmation of parochial prejudices of a particular time, place, or culture. But more broadly, such a stance seems to pose itself, as a matter of principle, against investigation and discussion of certain issues, to say in effect, “This is obviously wrong; end of discussion.”

This is not to say that it’s  sometimes not be appropriate to make this sort of simple judgment (“it is wrong”); but this is a matter of context, not of principle. And what makes this principle particularly problematic in the circumstances of this book, is the way in which it can interrelate to the “reverse implication” method described above. For here the end-phenomenon, from which the “reverse implication” begins, is first made the subject of a categorical judgment. The beginning “cell form” or boundary point is then also supposed to be subject to the same judgment. (“This is evil.”) But if the initial judgment is not itself supposed to be liable to any further discussion, then the reverse-implication procedure becomes even more dangerous.

In conclusion

To recapitulate the general thesis of Ethical Marxism in a very simplified form (and which I hope is not a caricature), Martin’s stance is that a moral impulse is needed as the beginning point of the revolutionary project, and that a more fully developed ethics is needed as both continuing impetus and guide toward a possible future “redeemed world,” the vision of which stems from “the religious perspective.” The role of Marxism is to provide a description of the lineaments of the present and to help map out the means toward this future (means which must themselves be evaluated ethically). If this is a fair, albeit extremely bare-bones, account, then there is a strong similarity here to a very familiar picture of a dichotomy of fact and value, of description and prescription, in this case with Marxism describing the facts and ethics supplying the values. Such a bifurcation seriously under-represents the role of explanation, which is certainly not strictly factual or descriptive, and the ways in which all of these – describing, explaining, valuing – interrelate and interpenetrate as aspects (moments, if you will) of an overall process which Marx terms (human) practice.

In fact I think we have to begin at least from this point, from a picture of human life and social activity in which thinking, evaluating, projecting, theorizing, and acting are aspects of a continuous social process, in which all social life is understood as essentially practical, and “all mysteries which lead theory to mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and the comprehension of this practice.” (Thesis 8)

This may seem too much like the “work from what exists in the world and everything will work out bye and bye” stance which Martin criticizes strongly in Marx. But where else can we begin than from the existing world, understood not in a flat, descriptive, positivistic way, but in its dynamic motion, self-cleavages, differentiating processes, and the idealizing and idea- and truth-processes which human practice (praxis) creates – and of course with no guarantee or promise that it will all work out?

If I end here on what is in a sense all-too-familiar ground — an evocation of praxis, and of a particular strain of Marxism⁷ – this is surely an indication of the limitations in my own attempts to rethink the revolutionary project. I certainly hold by the above sketch as a minimal orientation, but, as may be obvious, the critical examination of Ethical Marxism put forward here has not been carried out from the vantage point of any worked out solution to the problems which Martin has attempted to solve.

*******

This is a strong aspect of wandering, even meandering, in the development of themes and topics in Ethical Marxism, and the book’s order is generally associative and train-of-thought rather than by topic and development or logical deployment of argumentation. Themes are dropped and then picked up later but in a different key, arguments are left undeveloped, and emotive expression sometimes seems to overwhelm the cognitive development of content. As anyone knows who’s read his work, this is Martin’s style, and it has its strengths and its charms; but it’s not a style of writing and intellectual construction which make it easy to be certain that one has, in a paraphrase or account such as I’ve attempted, captured exactly what he intends. If I haven’t captured his meaning, though, I trust that others will set me right.

More importantly, the question at issue in this book and in my engagement with it, is the shape of the communist project in the present era. Bill Martin has been striving (here and in previous and subsequent writings) to explore and put forward a view of what that project must encompass. I’ve indicated the ways in which I think the approach he wants to take is seriously flawed. But I’m conscious, too, of how incomplete are my own views and how pressing is the necessity of collective work on this urgent political and intellectual and practical task.

Notes

Related posts:

1. Marxism, politics, and evil, part 2
2. Marxism, Politics, and Evil, part 1
3. Ethical Marxism: some themes and questions

Marxism, Politics, and Evil:  A Critical Engagement with “Ethical Marxism”

John Steele

II

In some sense Ethical Marxism is a long meditation on the crying need for liberation from the brutalities and morass of today’s world, but also the need to surpass Marxism-as-it-has-been. Indeed, Martin’s point is that these needs are crucially interrelated and that fulfillment of the former depends upon accomplishment of the latter. I think this is true and important – in fact I could not agree more. But when we come to the question of how we are to surpass the now-dead Marxism of our fathers, we have some differences. Most basically, I do not believe that the most essential thing, in order for Marxism to become an emancipatory theoretical structure, is that it be reoriented around “the ethical moment” as its basis. I believe that an ethics is founded upon the revolutionary project, rather than founding it, as Martin argues. Rather than morality being the core or foundation of a truly revolutionary politics, as Martin argues, I believe that the political is more basic, and that ethics finds its foundation within larger human projects, including that of an emancipatory politics. Obviously this is a basic point, and thrashing it out (or at least indicating a direction of argument) is one basic aim of the remainder of this paper.

There are also some matters of detail relating to Ethical Marxism which have their own importance, and which will also consume much of the space in what lies below. My concern is with several characteristic ways of arguing and framing things that Martin makes use of, which I believe are unfruitful or worse, and will not take us very far in terms of the discussion we need to be having. (These will be the subject of Part III of this essay.)

The movement from Is to Ought

Martin often tends to pose issues in terms of dichotomies (science/ethics, interest-based vs. ethical motivation, etc.); one of the most pervasive and basic in his thinking is the contradiction he proposes between a politics based on what at one point he calls “real ethics,” and a politics based “mere utilitarianism and calculation based on interests.” (211-12) Now one could question the adequacy of this and others of the dichotomous contrasts Martin sets up (and I’ll touch on this below), but for the moment I want to explore some of the tensions and problems that arise in Martin’s argument from it.

I’ll start from the following passage:

In Marx’s perspective, people do not question their circumstances (in general, broadly, deeply) except when motivated by material interests. Interests are experienced differently in different strata of society…; for there to be a larger change in society, however, there has to be a more general crisis, indeed a crisis felt by all sectors of society. In Lenin’s memorable description, the crisis has to be such that people cannot any longer live in the ways in which they have been living, and the ruling class cannot any longer rule in the ways in which it has been ruling. The Marxist perspective is that, short of an actual deep crisis in the social system, people do not (again – generally, broadly, deeply) go into motion against the existing order. People do not set themselves against the existing order simply because it is an unjust order. (187)

On the one hand it seems that Martin accepts that this is the case. Although he does not say so directly, contextual indications are that Martin believes this to be so – that people generally do not go up against the established order in ordinary circumstances (in “times of ‘normal functioning’,” as he puts it), even though it is an unjust order. (And how would it be possible not to believe this? It seems quite clear that it’s the case.)

On the other hand, at several points throughout the book Martin advances the thesis that without ethical/moral motivation and intention, a better world cannot come to be: that moral motivation is necessary to a revolution which is not merely a ‘reaction formation’. And as noted above, Martin believes that “…the Kantian thesis is right: a significant part of humanity (a critical mass) has to intend to defeat the existing, evil form of society and it has to intend to create a better form of society, in order for a better form of society to come about.” (392)

So it almost seems that Martin has, on the one hand, set up a problem which he believes must be solved, in order for any revolution to be truly a step in the actual liberation of humanity: The revolution must be made out of a moral motivation. But at the same time he also seems to believe that this is not (is never?) the case: “People do not set themselves against the existing order simply because it is an unjust order.” So he has set a problem for any revolution, it seems, which must be solved but which has not been solved and perhaps cannot be solved.

I do not mean to give an argument simply based on this contradiction of phrases. But I do want to ask what it indicates. It is very much as if Martin’s position is that although people broadly do not make revolution out of moral motivation, they ought to do so. Clearly this reproduces the is/ought gap at a higher level (the meta-level): why should we be moral? But when it is posed this way it is clear, I think, that Martin does not provide a way of bridging this gap.

Why should we be moral?

Martin proposes that, in addition to the Marxist description of the structure of the present world, only ethics can bridge the gap between the wretched present and what he sometimes calls the “redeemed world” of a possible future. Suppose we accept that ethics can perform this function. There would still remain the problem of: why take up this ethical stance? Ethics can’t itself provide the reason, or the motive, to be ethical, or to take the ethical bridge to the future. We might answer that it’s necessary to begin from “the ethical moment” because that’s the only way to reach “the redeemed world.” But that would presuppose that we already have the impetus toward that redeemed world – yet it was precisely this impetus which ethics was supposed to be necessary in order to provide in the first place.

I don’t want to seem unnecessarily paradoxical or logic-chopping here. The problem that Martin runs into, as I see it, can be described more simply from another angle. He has written a book which is addressed, in the main, to Marxists and to those who believe in the great desirability or necessity of gaining or moving toward the “redeemed future.” And he is arguing that Marxism does not provide the resources for reaching this possible future, but that a revamped theory, with ethics at its core, an Ethical Marxism, is necessary if such a future is to be reached. Martin believes, moreover, that moral feeling is the actual basis of people’s entering into revolutionary practice or oppositional political engagement in the first place, and his claim is that this “ethical moment” has not been theorized, and must be. (That, at least, is one of the lines of thinking in this book.) In this context the “why be moral?” question does not arise, given the assumption that those addressed already operate, in their basic political outlook, from a moral motivation.

But Martin also believes that, not only must this moral basis be realized and made explicit within the consciously revolutionary ranks, but it must also form the basis, very broadly among the people, in a mass revolutionary upsurge. “Ultimately, people have to want to create a good society, or else they won’t.” (155)

I think it actually is true that a problem has been set which cannot be solved within the terms in which it is posed. But perhaps the quandary stems from these terms as they are understood in Ethical Marxism. I want to pursue this thought by exploring briefly some of the central concepts or markers which Martin deploys – ethics/morality – politics – Marxism and Marx’s thinking – all of which I believe should be understood or taken (along with their interrelations) differently than he does.

Ethics and politics

This is a large and important topic, in my view, and there’s far more to be said about it than I can possibly say here, or that I’m capable of saying generally. This should be a topic of discussion among all who work for human liberation, or want to. But I think I can say enough to make clear why I believe that Martin’s approach to the question will not lead very far.

Let’s begin from the following passage in Ethical Marxism:

Yes, the new society has to be against the ancien regime, but even more it has to be for the future and future possibilities…. It could be said that the dialectic of negativity is essential, but it is also in danger of becoming purely reactive without the notion of an underdetermined, redeemed future…. The dialectic of negation and the (shall we say) necessarily open dialectic of redemption have to work together; the bridging principle is, in my view, the ethical impulse. (379-80)

Let us accept (as I do) that we need both of these dialectics, as Martin describes them, that we will be lost unless the necessary negation is interwoven with a striving toward the open redeemed future. The question is whether ethics is necessary to provide a link or bridge between the two, and whether ethics is adequate or sufficient to link them. (The question is not, it should be clear, whether “Marxism is ready, in a new synthesis, to accept that ethical questions are real questions” [256]; to deny that ethics is necessary for the “bridging” function is not to deny that ethical questions are real.)

Early in the book Martin talks about “the call of the future,” which he links with the concern expressed by Kant for “the most distant future generations,” and which he characterizes as an ethical demand. “In some sense,” he goes on to say, “my only argument in this book is the concern itself is the ground of the ‘science’, of systematic theorizing. That is the essence of Ethical Marxism.” (27)

Here the ethical demand embodied in a concern for the future is seen as both motive-force and ground for the sort of theorizing that Marx gave us. Sometimes this “call of the future” is characterized in terms of vision. In order for this better world to come into existence, there is “the question of what vision can galvanize the popular understanding that the existing society needs to be overthrown and a new form of society needs to be created. This ‘vision thing’ is not an optional add-on, and the argument of this book is that this vision has to have the question of the ethical at its core.” (160)

Unless this sort of ethically-motivated vision motivates and frames the intentions of those who are involved in making a new future, Martin believes, a “redeemed future” will not come about. (“Ultimately, people have to want to create a good society, or else they won’t.” – 155)

Ethics-based vs. interest-based?

It’s true, I think, that without a vision of the future, no popular uprising or revolutionary upsurge will change the social fundamentals of class society. Both a vision of communism (in a general way) and the conviction that it is possible are necessary to a coming about of a communist future. But why must this vision be founded, independently from the social and historical process, and even independently of a communist political project, in an ethics or morality? Martin’s predominant line of thinking, as I understand it, is that this sort of independent ethical basis is necessary if a would-be revolutionary politics is not to become an interest-based realpolitik. But his argument for it crucially depends on a series of dichotomous bifurcations: fact/value, history/morality, interest-based and ethically-based actions (as well as on a strictly Kantian-derived definition of the ethical), as in the following passages:

Either I take the core of moral theory to be the treatment of the other as an end-in-herself or -himself, or I simply take it as realpolitik that I find myself in the midst of a war of all against all…. (69)

It can…be argued that, without an “ethical grounding”…, “politics” can only mean a set of tactical considerations concerning the machinations and mechanisms of power, and not a “thinking of the polis,” particularly a thinking of the just polis…. (391)

The hold of these sorts of bifurcations on Martin’s thinking can be seen in his claim that Lenin’s internationalism should be seen as ethically-based. Why? Because “it goes against the grain of the existing society, and it does this on the basis of principle,” a principle “not based on a narrow conception of interest.” (164)

Do these alternative bases for a politics, interest-based and ethically-based, exhaust the field? To see how this may not be the case (and I don’t think it is), I want to look at a couple of observations by Mao Zedong, whom Martin characterizes as having “restitched” the ethical into Marxism. (391).

Mao said, speaking of his youth, “First we were revolutionaries, and as a result we became Marxists.” That captures very well what I am trying to capture with the idea of Ethical Marxism: first we see that there is something very wrong about the way that society is set up, and as a result we look for a systematic understanding of society that will allow us to move forward and try to make things right.”\ (340-41)

Martin takes it that becoming a revolutionary, that is, one who becomes dedicated to the systematic restructuring of social relations, must be based upon a primary insight which is ethical in character, and which provides guidance in the enterprise and a linkage to the “redeemed future” in this intial insight that “something is very wrong.”

There are a couple of things to be said initially about this schema. First, note how this passage brings out again the dual function which Martin depends upon the ethical to perform: both beginning and bridge, providing both the initial impetus which brings the actor into revolutionary practice, and the linkage to the redeemed future (the vision of which is to be provided by the basically untheorized religious dimension).

At the same time, it is clear here why Martin needs the “bridging” function. For there is no reason why an initial perception that “something is very wrong” will not go in a sort of revenge direction, or toward what Martin calls a reaction-formation. But if this is true, what justifies calling the initial perception ethical? We seem to be in the same position, whether we say that the initial impetus to revolutionary politics is ethical insight or an interest-based motivation. In either case we need (on Martin’s set-up) a more fully-fledged ethics to act as “bridge.”

The role of practice

We seem to be consistently drawn into conceptual and logical tangles as we trace the implications of what’s said in Ethical Marxism. I think this should be taken as a marker of some basic inconsistencies or jumbles in the theory advanced in this book. I hope to point to some possibilities in the way of emerging from this thicket. I want to proceed by way of one more quotation, both from Martin and from Mao.

…many of [Mao’s] popular formulations have a distinctively “categorical imperative” ring to them – probably most of all the famous statement, “Marxism consists of thousands of truths, but they all come down to one thing: It is right to rebel against reactionaries.”  (194)

Let’s start from a fuller quotation of Mao’s famous statement in its original context:

The immense complexity of Marxism can be summed up in one sentence: ‘It is justifiable to rebel’ For centuries people have been saying: ‘It is justifiable to oppress or to exploit people, but it is wrong to rebel’. Marxism turned this thesis upside down. That is a great contribution, a thesis established by Marx from the struggle of the proletariat. Basing their action on this thesis, people have shown defiance, struggled, and worked for socialism.³

In making an interpretation here, a lot turns on a question of priority. Should the Marxism put forward by Mao in this passage be understood as beginning from a primordial ethical judgment (rebellion is right, justified)? Or should rebellion be seen as the primary action, generating a for-or-against field, with Marxism beginning from affirmation of the rebellion, putting oneself on the side of those who rebel? In the latter case, which I’d argue for, the justifiability is not an abstract (or an a priori) judgment, but a practical one which is simultaneous with ranging oneself with those who rebel.

Putting this together with the “first revolutionaries, then Marxists” statement, we can see how (as I see it) the basic movement is from rebel or revolutionary practice to Marxism as the affirmation and comprehension of that practice within a larger, deeper context, and then movement forward from there. This primacy of practice is essential for Mao, as for Marx and a revolutionary Marxism. Ethics in this conception is formed upon and around a basic practical orientation. (The movement here is similar to Badiou’s sequence of event, subject and truth-process, where it is the recognition of the event which founds both subject and truth-process, with an ethics following out of this nexus.⁴)

What is primary is the movement in the world, practice, and it’s this which generates the need which is not only what has led, historically, to taking up Marx, but which is also necessary in order to come at Marx in such a way as to see his theory as an understanding of the present which shows a different future as possible. At that point, in coming to grips with the revolutionary political vista thus opened up, there are many problems to be solved, including ethically. None of this movement from practice to theory guarantees anything, of course, and certainly not a good or fruitful understanding of Marx. The point is not a sure-fire method of getting everything right, but a conceptual relationship and construal of what’s going on.

The point in all this is not, of course, justification through quotations from Mao or l’explication du texte. But it is significant that these statements can (and I think should) be understood differently than they are taken by Martin.

But as well, I do believe that something along the lines of the above is how we need to understand the relation, not only between ethics and Marxism, but ethics and an emancipatory politics, and between each of these and a primary social stirring in the world.

Let us sketch the differences by way of a few questions. Are we, principally, Marxists because we are revolutionaries, or revolutionaries because we are Marxists? I think it is clear that the primacy must go to the first: Marxists because revolutionaries.  But how about the question with a closer relevance to Martin’s argument: Are we revolutionaries due to our ethical principles (ethical stance, an ethical insight or vision), or is there an ethics which crucially follows upon the taking up of the revolutionary project, which stems from an emancipatory political project? I believe the latter is true.  And finally, is politics an autonomous field of human social practice (or of truth-processes, as Badiou argues), or does it require to be founded upon a religio-ethical vision, as Martin believes? Here my own answer is less certain (I am not sure whether, or to what extent, the political field should be seen as autonomous), but I would not see it as needing to be founded in ethics or religious vision.

Thus I am arguing that both our taking up Marxism (and the sort of Marxism we take up), and our ethics (and the character of this ethics) follow upon and stem from our primary step in practice, which must be understood politically. There is no automaticity here, that is, it is not the case that anyone who takes up a revolutionary project thereby takes it up in the best way or draws the right conclusions. There is plenty of scope, and necessity, for thinking, argument, and investigation. And the whole matter is far more complex than the schemata I’ve offered might seem to indicate. On the one hand there are many ways and even degrees of “being a revolutionary”; and on the other, there are many types and aspects of ethics, for ethics are associated with overarching projects (understood in the Sartrean manner), and there is more than one project in any human life.

Without going into these complications, though, I hope to have said enough to indicate a different way of coming at the questions of ethics, politics, and Marxism.

Notes

Related posts:

1. Marxism, Politics, and Evil, part 1
2. Marxism, politics, and evil, part 3
3. Ethical Marxism: some themes and questions

Is Marxism, or revolutionary politics generally, sufficient for human emancipation? In Ethical Marxism, Bill Martin argues that Marxism requires ethics as the necessary foundation of any politics which may actually be capable of leading to this goal. Following is the first part of an essay critically examining this book and this thesis. The entire piece will appear in three parts,  over the next few days.

Khukuri features several essays by Bill Martin, and he is a participant in the Kasama Project, with which both this site and Kasama are associated. He is the author of a number of books, including Matrix and Line: Derrida and the Possibilities of Postmodern Social Theory, The Radical Project: Sartrean Investigations, Listening to the Future: The Time of Progressive Rack, 1968-1978, and (with Bob Avakian) Marxism and the Call of the Future: Conversations on Ethics, History, and Politics, as well as others.

This is the second engagement with Ethical Marxism to appear on this site. The first, by Vern Gray can be found here.

Marxism, Politics, and Evil:  A Critical Engagement with “Ethical Marxism”

John Steele

In this essay I’ll be attempting to come to grips with Ethical Marxism: The Categorical Imperative of Liberation, a major effort by Bill Martin to map out the sort of theory he believes to be necessary in the 21^st century for revolution and human liberation. I’ll first try to lay out Martin’s principal claims and lines of thought, followed by some questions and critique.

This is a large book which brings a number of themes, subjects and questions into play. I will only be dealing with the essential line of argument and thought, concerning Marxism, politics and ethics. Specifically, I will not be able to enter into some concrete questions which Martin casts as ethical and to which he devotes a large proportion of space in the book: imperialism, animals and the human consumption of meat, and the question of place. These are major parts of the book, not only in bulk but conceptually too, as attempts to both configure political questions ethically (imperialism) and to situate ethical questions (meat-eating) within a Marxist context. But although this study does examine some of the forms of argument which emerge in these areas, I have not been able to consider the substance of these questions, as they are framed in Ethical Marxism.

As will become clear, I think the theory sketched in Ethical Marxism is seriously flawed, and I will often be sharply critical. But I want to salute at the outset Martin’s attempt at the great and necessary task undertaken here, the refiguration of Marxism in the light of past impasses and present needs. I hope I’ll succeed in making clear the ways and extent to which I believe that the questions and problems which Martin is attempting to solve by means of this approach are very real and unresolved problems for all revolutionaries in this era.

I

The principal and overall thesis of Ethical Marxism (EM) is that ethics and politics need each other, that neither by itself is sufficient – sufficient for a just society, for revolution, for the emancipation of humanity, for the redemption of the world. On the one hand “ethics does not have, by itself, what it takes to be ethical” (25; numbers in parentheses refer to page numbers in EM). That is, ethics in itself does not have the power to make effective its own insights and conclusions, cannot of itself bring the good and the right into being in the world: “to make these things a real force in the world, we also need something like Marxism” (26). On the other hand, neither does politics (or history or economics) have what it takes to be other than realpolitik, another way of regulating or taking part in the scramble among human beings and groups in pursuit of self-interest.

Martin argues that there is a “kind of vision that is absolutely necessary for the transformation of society and yet is underdetermined by systematic study of the ‘social evidence.’ In terms of modalities, the vision is necessary for the transformation, but the vision does not represent the necessity of the transformation itself.” (x) This vision springs, Martin believes, from what he calls “the religious perspective.

Since the vision of the future does not spring directly or necessarily from a study of the present, but yet this vision does not represent or imply its own necessity, there is still a gap, which Martin proposes to bridge through ethics: “There are gaps in the world, and there are gaps in whatever telos [end or goal] might be constructed on the basis of history and economics alone and only the intervention of the ethical can begin to bridge these gaps.” (49)

Martin relates these three aspects or moments – scientific description/explanation, ethical prescription, and future-oriented vision – to the three questions, which Kant thought encompassed the concerns of reason: What can I know? What should I do? What may I hope? He also seems to relate them, as Kant did, to what he sees as three discontinuous discourses: science, ethics, and religion. (Although at one point Martin makes ethics central, as well, to vision: “…the argument of this book is that this vision has to have the question of ethical relation at its core” [160]. In general the emphasis throughout is on the discontinuity of science from both ethics and “the religious dimension,” with little or no theorization of differences between the latter two.

Thus “this book is about how the ethical point, or what I sometimes call the ‘ethical moment’, is indeed needed, and along with it intentionality and responsibility (and agency) and even a discourse that partakes of transcendence and theology.” (4) Such a perspective, he argues, is vitally needed in order to strengthen Marxism to enable it to “become a more powerful instrument for guiding humanity in going from an unjust and unsustainable world to a global community of mutual flourishing.” (4)

On the one hand this is posed as an external critique, in that it is grounded outside of Marxism as such, in both religious and ethical perspectives. (In the latter case Martin takes Kant to be the definatory figure.) But on the other hand Martin believes he is pointing to something that is present but unacknowledged and untheorized, both in Marx (“Marx’s work is permeated with moral concepts” – 2) and in the life of revolutionary movements. In pointing to the need for “the ethical moment” he is reaching for “a conception that is at work in actual revolutionary processes, and that would play an even greater role in human emancipation and critical emancipatory theory if it were clarified and embraced for what it is.” (14)

Although at one point describing the project of the book as one of making explicit and fleshing out what is already implicit or taken for granted in Marx (230), generally and on the whole Martin seems to be working from the conception of a Marx and Marxism which has no place for ethics (or intentionality either), but only for the description and projection of material forces.

Martin’s most basic thesis, then, is that Marxism and revolutionary theory generally, on the one hand, and ethics and the religious dimension, on the other, need each other in order to fulfill their own most basic aims and functions. The aspect that receives by far the most attention in this book is the need that Marxism has for ethics. This is a work addressed chiefly to those who see themselves as within or deriving from the Marxist tradition, arguing for the necessity of “the ethical moment.”

(Although the religious perspective would appear to be equally important to Martin’s overall conception, this aspect receives little sustained focus here, although it does make a reappearance in the book’s Conclusion, where religious narratives are described as “stories that people themselves tell in the living of their lives under specific conditions, but under the twin imperatives of mortality and the possibility of redemption,” a sort of story and language which is “both near and far from Marx.” [397])

Argument

The argument for Ethical Marxism in a nutshell is that the creation of a ‘social society’ has to issue both from a political-economic analysis and a moral recognition of what is morally wrong about the antisocial form of society. (179)

This is one of Martin’s most succinct statements of what he aims to show (it’s not actually an argument). In the process of attempting to show this, the principal argument of the book is that Marxism has not and cannot in itself generate the ought which is necessary for a process which is truly revolutionary and emancipatory, and that Marxism’s attempted theorization of a revolutionary imperative in terms of interests is radically insufficient and must be supplemented by a separately-based ethical imperative.

Obviously this depends on the supposition that Marxism posits a purely interest-based motivation and imperative for revolution. We’ll return to this important question, which is related to Martin’s conception of a Marxism which positions itself as a positivistic science. But first let’s look at how the argument of Ethical Marxism develops.

At one point Martin lays it out along the following lines:

The most pressing ethical concern is the hardest thing not only to accomplish, but even to thematize, even to begin to get people to grapple with….Certainly there are ways in which power and ‘things’ work, and…even while these workings have to be studied and understood and grappled with from a strategic perspective, it is precisely the reduction to causal ‘thingness’ that is the essence of economism, or, to put the point the other way around, it is the complete setting aside of any consideration of the thing that ought to be done in some matrix of pure causality and interest that is the essence of economism. Lenin saw this, in his critique of economism, and yet, out of the orthodox Marxist refusal of the ethical, did not thematize the point this way….This refusal has had consequences, indeed dire consequences [and] overcoming this limitation is absolutely essential for any future Marxist project. (189)

(The “dire consequences” here would seem to refer to events in the Soviet Union during Stalin’s ascendancy, and indeed Martin later points to the Stalin period as “probably the main reason why there has to be a way of articulating the ethical with Marxism – or else it would probably be better not to have Marxism any more.” [302])1

Martin’s analysis is that Marxism, conceived simply as a science which describes and explains the dynamics of capitalism and projects an historical sequence, offers at best the sort of interest-based politics which follows from its explanation of history in terms of class struggle, and that such a politics will be equivalent to a realpolitik power-politics and can easily (or perhaps is bound to) issue in the perversions of the revolutionary process seen in the Soviet Union under Stalin. For Marx, he holds, “it is only a happy by-product that socialism and ultimately communism would be good for humanity…; instead, these social forms are inevitable… these forms are simply what will occur in the objective unfolding of the material dialectic of history.” (392)

Just the realization that more is needed, or the merely implicit exemplification of this realization (as seen, Martin believes, in the example of Lenin’s polemic against economism in What Is To Be Done) – this is quite insufficient. The only remedy is the explicit “thematization of the ethical” and the bringing of the ethical into politics, for “…a significant part of humanity (a critical mass) has to intend to defeat the existing, evil form of society and it has to intend to create a better form of society, in order for a better form of society to come about.” (392)

Materialism

One concern in pursuing this thesis (which takes Martin in many directions) is to maintain a philosophically materialist outlook:

The aspect of the struggle to overcome capitalism that has to do with justice and the aim of creating a good society remains subordinate and epiphenomenal [in Marx]. My argument in this book is that, if there are not at least key moments when these terms are not explicitly thematized and pursued in their own right, then this struggle cannot be carried through. The question remains how this thematization and motivation can be understood within an historical materialist framework, but my hope is that it can…. (155)

Obviously the concern here – what Martin at times calls “the ethico-ontological problem” (220), is to ground ethics immanently, that is, in this world, as opposed to an other, transcendent, world. Martin, it seems clear, wants to remain on the materialist ground of Marxism; but he wants to expand the meaning of that materialism. But although this is clearly his desire, it can’t be said that he is able to resolve the ethico-ontological problem, how to explain the genesis and status of the ethical within a general materialist ontological framework. At best he expresses a hope (as above), or points to a need, as in the following passage:

…there ought to be an argument for the material role that the ethical, and the discourse of the good, needs to play in creating a good society. In other words, if economics, politics and history cannot do what they were supposed to do, then we had better consider the materiality of the ethical – which means grappling with the materiality of evil. (48)

He does, though, point to indications that there must be some sort of materiality of the ethical, or indications that he thinks imply this. He points to what he believes to be gaps, gaps which can only be bridged by the ethical: “There are gaps in the world, and there are gaps in whatever telos might be constructed on the basis of history and economics alone and only the intervention of the ethical can begin to bridge these gaps” (49), and “…there are gaps in Marx’s analysis that can only be addressed in irreducibly normative terms” (103).

Gaps

Over the course of the book, Martin describes several gaps of different character, in each case only bridgeable, he believes, by the ethical. These gaps could be grouped under the following headings:

Most obviously, there is the gap between description and prescription, the gap between description/explanation and normative prescription which is demonstrated, he says, by “the irreducibility of vocabularies (the causal and the value-driven)” (403).

This is clearly the underlying thread of the book: that no amount or depth of description and explanation of the workings and dynamics of capitalism and imperialism, such as Marx and Marxism gives us, will generate the sort of moral imperative, the “ought,” which is necessary both to overthrow this system and to go beyond a “reaction formation” to build a genuinely different society. Further, that this gap is made larger and more pressing by the phenomena of colonialism, and in the 20^th century (and the 21^st) by imperialism. (See 102 – 155 or so, within the section of the book on “Imperialism as the Ethical Problem of Our Time”; “reaction formation” is introduced on 121.)

There is also the gap between necessity and possibility, between what must happen and what may potentially be brought into existence. This is the argument that historical necessity would obviate human freedom and particularity. But, given that the necessity of Marx’s historical template is questionable today in any case, we face the question (present in any case but brought home by the failure of Marxist inevitabilism) of how to understand the generation and actualization of possibilities. (At one point Martin describes his aim as “a ‘postinevitablist’ Marxism that is reconfigured in terms of ethical themes” – 191.) Such an understanding, he believes, must centrally involve the ethical.

His argument runs along the following lines:

Such a scheme presented as inevitability is either theology or strategic audacity; it is only in such a scheme presented as possibility, however, that the history and possible future of humanity actually matters….We are back into the problem of theodicy…in which case ‘redemption’ is not really redemption, this life is not a ‘real fight’ (James), there are no actual people who actually matter involved in history, but only the god of historical inevitability…. (158)

Rather than laws necessarily generating certain results, the laws of history “ought to be understood instead as ‘laws of possibility’, ways of theorizing where the openings might occur in the existing society that would allow for something different and better to arise,” thus introducing “an irreducible element of normativity.” (160, 268)

In order for this better world to come into existence, there is “the question of what vision can galvanize the popular understanding that the existing society needs to be overthrown and a new form of society needs to be created. This ‘vision thing’ is not an optional add-on, and the argument of this book that this vision has to have the question of the ethical at its core.” (160)

The question of vision is also conceived by Martin as invoking “the religious dimension.” and it’s worth pausing a moment to ask how he conceives the relation of ethical and religious. At one point he speaks of a confidence that is needed which “holds central faith in the principles that exploitation, domination, and oppression are wrong, that we are ethically compelled to struggle against every form that these things take, and that another world is possible.” (409) He believes such a confidence is not only ethical but also religious in the sense that it is a faith both in these ethical principles and in the possibility of a different world.

The “vision thing” also brings us to the gap between destruction and construction. Revolutions involve both, but there is a danger of a construction which is merely a “reaction-formation,” a new which will not be qualitatively different or better because it is simply built through a negation of or reaction to the old. Only ethics, once again, can bridge the gap between revolutionary negation and destruction, and the vision of a redeemed future (a vision whose source he finds in “the religious dimension” of human existence).

The dialectic of negation and the (shall we say) necessarily open dialectic of redemption have to work together; the bridging principle is, in my view, the ethical impulse. (380)

Now these gaps are supposed to show, not only the necessity of the ethical, but to imply its materiality (see above). The argument for this would be along the following lines (this is strongly implied, I think, in Martin’s account, although not quite stated as suchⁱⁱ): If there are lacunae and gaps in Marx’s schema of explanation and projection, such that the gaps can only be bridged normatively, then (a) there is a need for the normative in order to make Marx’s account complete or coherent, and (b) if Marx’s account is overall materialist, then whatever it takes to fill these gaps must have some material status.

Presuming that I’ve correctly captured Martin’s argument, it’s a troublesome one logically, and I don’t think it really goes through very well. For one thing, although it’s asserted that this is so, it is never really demonstrated that only the ethical or normative can bridge these gaps. Why cannot there be some other way of filling these gaps? (In fact I believe there are other ways, as I’ll try to indicate below.)

Even more bothersome from a logical point of view is the status of (b): from the fact that there are gaps in a materialist account, it’s hard to see why it would necessarily follow that whatever is needed to fill the gaps must also be material. Take, as a rather highly charged parallel, the anti-evolutionist argument that there are irreducible gaps in the Darwinist (materialist) theory of evolution, which can only be bridged by a divine creative force. Suppose we granted that argument, would it follow that this “divine force” is therefore material? Of course the creationists and others who put this forward believe, on the contrary, that the “argument from gaps” shows the incompleteness of a materialist explanation, which must therefore be supplemented by an independent spiritual reality. But if materialism is ones axiomatic basis then presumably the argument would simply mean that the “divine force” is actually material: if there is an explanatory gap in a theory, then the presumption would be that whatever is necessary to bridge that gap will have a material status. But if materialism is already presupposed, it’s hard to see how the “argument from gaps” can be an argument for the materiality of ethics.

Sometimes Martin takes a different tack, which, at least as I see it, is more promising as a way of finding a basis for an ethics in human social materiality. Proposing “flourishment” as a translation of the Greek eudaimonia (an important term in Aristotle’s ethical discussions), Martin says that “even if flourishment might be understood in different ways in different times or places, or even if it is barely understood at all, we humans are good at recognizing what is not flourishment, and in knowing we need something else,” and that even if this sense may be little more than a bare feeling or reaction, “it is from this feeling that normative social theory develops.” (59) The overall human project, in which human good is based, would then be “to create possibilities for human flourishment.” (64: he calls it “the Aristotelian answer,” but it seems clear, at least during these pages, that it is also Martin’s answer.) Although these ideals of flourishment would differ historically, the notion would provide a common (formal) criterion of the good, with evil occurring “when possibilities for flourishment are cut off through the efforts of some human agency….” (63)

This seems, as I say, more promising, both with regard to the material rooting of morality and as a conception which can be integrated with Marxism, or which it might be argued is something presupposed by Marx. But although this line of thought is taken up by Martin over the course of ten pages or so at one point, it is not pursued systematically in the book.

Notes

Related posts:

1. Marxism, politics, and evil, part 2
2. Marxism, politics, and evil, part 3
3. Ethical Marxism: some themes and questions

The political issue is not what is new or old, but rather to always search for new weapons.

Micro-Politics of Capital: A Review

by Nate Hawthorne

Jason Read, The Micro-Politics of Capital: Marx and the Prehistory of the Present (State University of New York Press, 2003)

Jason Read’s book admirably covers a wide range of thinkers in The Micro-Politics of Capital. He engages structural Marxists like including Althusser; former Althusserians like Balibar and Ranciere; autonomist Marxists like Negri, Tronti, and Virno; and post-structuralists like Foucault and Deleuze. Given the range of thinkers Read deals with, it is no surprise that there are tensions running through the book, in a fashion similar to what Read calls “the tension between different logics in Marx’s writing.” [Read, 16]. This review first provides an overview of the book then turns to one of the book’s central tensions, with regard to time and historical epochs.

Marx once noted that production requires a prior distribution of productive relations [Grundrisse, 96].  Read identifies this distribution as simultaneously the production and product of subjectivity.

The actively productive and yet historically produced character of subjectivity problematizes the distinction between subject and object, as well as attempts to point to one or the other as sole source of causal determination. This means”[e]very effect is equally and at the same time a cause”, that is, “[e]lements of the capitalist mode of production that would appear to be its effects […] must equally be thought of as causes and elements of its functioning” [Read, 32]. Althusser called this immanent causality, part of the problematization of the concept ‘mode of production,’ which must be rethought as “a production of subjectivity and social relations rather than simply things” [Read, 110]. Mode of production is not simply an economistic ‘objective’ matter, because subjectivity has an objectivity and enters into economy.

In the first chapter Read focuses on subjectivity in relation to two moments of Marx’s writings, the section in Capital, volume 1, on primitive accumulation and the Grundrisse notebooks “Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations.” Subjectivity appears as a negative moment when Marx critiques capital’s apologists by uncovering capital’s’original sin’, the bloody expropriation of the commons deployed to produce the ‘free proletariat’ which became the laboring subject required by the capital relation. Read finds a positive moment in the Grundrisse selections, which emphasize the active role subjectivity plays – not only a product but also producer of social relations. Read thus underscores Althusser’s point that the reproduction of the social relations of production is the presupposition needed for production to continue.

Subjectivity, of course, does not exist in itself, but rather always exists as modalities of subjectivity. In chapter two, Read attempts to sketch aspects of the specific changes in the mode of subjectivity bound up with the transition to capitalism. Read defines capital as embodying an antagonistic logic. Struggles and conflicts between the subjects of the capital relation – and, on the part of the working class, struggles against subjectification in the role demanded by capital – are the constitutive process of the capitalist mode of production as it changes over time. Understanding the history and the present of the mode of production is a question of understanding changing and mutable relations of power, subordination, and refusal.

In the final chapter, Read turns to the most recent period of capitalism, discussed by authors such as Antonio Negri under the term Post-Fordism. It is in this chapter that tension around temporality, present throughout the book, fully manifests. Read uncritically accepts a historical periodization drawn from Negri, based on the distinction of formal and real subsumption. Formal subsumption is the imposition of capitalist command over prior forms of production, while real subsumption is direct intervention into the forms of the labor process by capital. In Negri’s writings, real subsumption is a historical epoch. For Negri, it is under the era of real subsumption that capitalism becomes biopolitical and subjectivity is set to labor. For Read, however, every mode of production and every moment in the history of capitalist production is bound up with the antagonistic production of subjectivity. As such, it is not clear on what grounds Read accepts the Negrian historical narrative of formal/real subsumption.

Taken to its logical conclusion, Read’s critical analysis of the concept of mode of production renders a number of received distinctions and categories – those between production and reproduction, society, politics and economy, subject and object, to name a few – highly fluid and unstable. A central task for thought is to trace the relations named by and the modalities of subjectivity bound up with which these distinctions and categories as they exist in history, as well as the struggles constitutive of them. If these distinctions and categories cease to be useful then new analytical tools must be sought. Read states as much, and provides philosophical resources for this process. It is a pity, then, that Read does not similarly subject the categories of formal and real subsumption to interrogation and render them fluid as he does to other categories. The tension between these perspectives is the temporal tension in Read’s book. This tension can be phrased in simple question: when is Jason Read’s book true? Different moments of Read’s work imply different answers to this question.

The Micro-Politics of Capital is peppered with phrases that operate in two distinct relations to time. The first is an eternal time, a meta-historical time. For example: “social relations are prior to, and determinate of, the technological relations.” [Read, 52] This phrase refers to social relations as such, and thus, if true then it is true any mode of production whatsoever and at the very least is true of the capitalist mode of production for the entirety of its history. This implies a critique of positions, like parts of Marxism, which see technology as politically neutral or as objectively determining history. Read’s arguments – producing a conceptual fluidity in our understandings of production, reproduction, society, economy, and so forth – operates at this same temporal register. This temporal register is the same that Marx discusses in this passage from the Grundrisse:  “[A]ll epochs of production have certain common traits, common characteristics. Production in general is an abstraction, but a rational abstraction in so far as it really brings out and fixes the common element and thus saves us repetition. Still, this general category, this common element sifted out by comparison, is itself segmented many times over and splits into different determinations. Some determinations of [production] belong to all epochs [of human history], others only to a few. [Some] determinations will be shared by the most modern epoch and the most ancient.”

There is a second temporal register in Read’s book, as when Read state that ours is “an age in which capital has extended beyond the walls of the factory to encompass all of social space.” [Read, 14] This statement occupies or produces a time of the present as transition, an event horizon between a determinate past and a rapidly approaching future. The time in this type of statement – which occurs throughout the writing of Negri, from whom these aspects of Read’s work are largely drawn – has a paradoxical effect.

Read states “it is no longer possible to separate capital, as the producer of goods and commodities, from what used to be called the superstructure,” an apparent claim about the present [Read, 2]. The heart of the matter, however, is the “it is no longer possible.” That phrase marks a strong disjunction between past and present, and implies a narrative about the past in which it used to be possible to separate capital from the superstructure. To say “it is no longer possible” to distinguish economic base and cultural superstructure means that it once was possible to correctly make such a distinction. And yet, a large portion of Read’s argument implies that the conceptual division of base-superstructure – or politics-economics, production-reproduction, etc – was never correct.

Furthermore, to say “capital has extended” beyond the factory means that capital’s command and resistance against capital occurs not only in designated workplaces but throughout the social field, such that the industrial working class is not the privileged political or historical agent which some Marxists have taken it to be. Here too Read implies a historical narrative. To say “has extended” implies that this is only now the case, such that privileging of the industrial working class was correct until recently. Much of Read’s argument implies that the exclusive focus on the industrial proletariat was both a theoretical and political error. That is, there is an implied critique here of the thought and strategies pursued put forward by many Marxists and working class movements for much of history (and still advocated by some today). The historical narrative of overcoming – “capital has extended”, “it is no longer possible” – serves on the one hand to discourage critical engagement with key political issues within the tradition and with history, and on the other obscures this lack of engagement.

Read restricts his philosophical work to the present, a present with qualities which he suggests have only recently come into being. As such, Read limits his own ideas’ critical force and utility for Marxian historiography. Worse yet, by defining the present in distinction to a falsified past – a definition of the past which is all the more strange in that it is undercut by a substantial part of the rest of his argument – Read risks producing the mere image of an understanding of the present. This image consists in speaking of general historical conditions of production as if they were specific only to the present. To paraphrase Deleuze, the political issue is not what is new or old, but rather to always search for new weapons. Read unfortunately blunts the theoretical weapons he offers by entangling them in mistaken periodizations. If readers set aside Read’s historical claims, his work offers powerful tools for reading Marx and understanding reading contemporary capitalism.

Related posts:

1. What is the meaning of Marx’s theories?

All three authors teach political economy at York University in Toronto. Panitch and Albo are co-editors of the Socialist Register; Gindin was research director of the Canadian Auto Workers Union for many years. Sasha Lilley is author of the forthcoming Capital and Its Discontents: Conversations with Radical Thinkers in a Time of Tumult.

This interview was originally published in The Bullet.

An Interview with Leo Panitch, Sam Gindin, and Greg Albo

by Sasha Lilley

Lilley: Liberals and leftists alike argue that the economic crisis was caused by a lack of state regulation over the banks and financial markets. Consequently, they conclude that we just need new regulation to keep the financial sector in line. Why don’t you think that’s the case?

Leo Panitch: Well, the cause of the crisis was certainly related to competition in the financial sector. But that competition was to some extent the product of state regulation. The American financial system is certainly the most regulated financial system in the world, and probably in history, if you measure it in terms of the number of pieces of legislation, the number of regulatory agencies, and the massive amounts of regulation to which finance is subject.

So, yes, there were changes that allowed for more competition in finance, although those changes were only a matter of closing the barn door after the horse had bolted. It was already the development of finance that made the old New Deal regulations impossible. The state then removed those limits and encouraged further competition in finance. So it’s just a misunderstanding of what’s really going on. There’s a sense that the state didn’t do its job in constraining markets. And there’s a confusion about what a capitalist state is.

A capitalist state responds to and sponsors and facilitates markets. The notion that it’s there to restrain markets, to restrain capitalism, that if only it would do that it would remove the contradictions of competition in capitalism, is simply a cockamamie way of seeing the world. Although unfortunately it’s the way in which it’s ideologically presented to us.

Sasha Lilley: Much of this may appear counter-intuitive since the dominant narrative on the left is that over the last quarter century the state has retreated and let markets run unfettered. Could you give us some concrete examples of the ways the state actually facilitates markets?

Leo Panitch: At the most basic level, you couldn’t have contracts. You couldn’t have property without all of the things that the state does in the form of law, in order to guarantee to one side of a contract, or to one capitalist to another, that their deals can be validated. So at the most basic level the state is in there.

But more than that, states are oriented to facilitating accumulation on their own terrain. And some of them, the imperial states like the American, are oriented to facilitating capital accumulation and the spread of markets to do that around the world. They do that in a myriad of different ways. People think the New Deal regulations were brought in to constrain finance. Yet in many ways the Glass-Steagall Act that separated commercial from investment banking, for instance, was adopted in order to stabilize finance and to nurture it back to health. Through the whole of the post-war period there was a very close corporatist relationship between the banking sector and the regulators. The regulators were oriented to nurturing finance, not only back to health, but to a new stage of development. And that’s what began to happen by the 1960s.

Some of the old constraints that were put on the separation between commercial and investment banking then began to make less and less sense as finance was now very powerful and expansive and spreading around the world. And you got some removal of those. The big example was the 1975 New York Big Bang where New Deal price-ceilings on what brokers were allowed to charge for buying and selling stocks for people broke down. They were mainly broken down because pension funds and other institutional investors were buying very large blocks of them and they wanted discounts.

Another example is the removal of the Glass-Steagall Act, the separation of commercial and investment banking, which allowed commercial banks to be involved with derivatives and acting as brokers and selling insurance and so on. But that had already broken down. It was never applied internationally and it had broken down domestically in the United States since the early 1980s. So it was really changing the legislation after finance had already expanded in the way it had.

Sasha Lilley: Coupled with the notion that deregulation is the cause of our current economic woes is a belief that finance is simply a parasite on the real economy. What you argue, however, is that although part of finance is obviously speculative, finance actually plays a crucial role for accumulation in general. Can you explain why?

Leo Panitch: Finance is speculative and, yes, it is very much about trying to make money by trading on money. There isn’t the kind of Marxist connection between money commodities – money in the classic sense of producing a thing, a good. I think that’s where the misconception comes from.

But no production takes place with out the provision of credit. And increasingly no production takes place with out the provision of credit to consumers. And finance has been crucial to the dynamics of expanded production. Especially in terms of globalization and financing the means of integrated production right around the world.

So when people for instance speak of derivatives as simply speculation, there certainly is speculation involved, but you couldn’t have somebody, say Wal-Mart, contracting with a supplier in China to produce something that will be on Wal-Mart shelves in the United States next winter, unless both parties were able to find financial intermediaries that would allow them to hedge the difference in the exchange rate between what the dollar and the renminbi is now and what it will be next winter. Or do the same with what transportation costs will be at that time. Or do the same with what interest rates will be at that time. So these derivatives are means of buying insurance in relation to fulfilling a contract for the delivery of things that are produced.

You simply couldn’t have global production with out the role that finance plays just in this respect, and I’m not even getting into the role that finance plays in terms of venture capital, which was very important in terms of the development of information and technology revolution we just lived through; and for the role it plays in facilitating investment. You could do the same for the kind of role that finance plays in terms of making indebted consumers into viable consumers. And you see that through credit cards and many, many other aspects of the role that finance plays. And that even has to do with the role that finance played in housing, which led to subprime crisis. People were taking out second mortgages in order to sustain their consumption in part. Now you can go even further to look at the role that finance plays via channeling workers savings into pension funds and the role those pension funds play in investing in stock markets, investing in derivatives, and so on, which has to be traced through how that links to production.

It’s an illusion to imagine that finance is out there in some greedy Gordon Gecko world and that is “bad capitalism,” rather than what GM does which is somehow “good capitalism” and why GM was in the tank was because of the Geckos of this world. Not at all. This is capitalism and both productive capital, in the sense of industrial corporations or retail firms like Wal-Mart, and the big banks are part of the totality and we need to understand them in terms of the way they link with one another.

Sasha Lilley: Various Marxist critics have argued that the financialization of the economy is capital’s means of addressing the underlying stagnation of the “real economy,” of industry in decline. The argument goes that the current crisis is part of a long downturn starting in the 1970s and capitalism’s ill-health has been masked by a shift into profit-making through all sorts of incomprehensible derivatives and forms of speculation. You three see things quite differently. How so?

Sam Gindin: To elaborate a little more on what Leo was saying: part of the role of finance – once you see it in terms of capitalism – is to discipline and restructure the so-called real economy. It’s been fundamental to that, imposing discipline on every factory to be more competitive or finance will go somewhere else, to reallocate capital across several sectors, venture capital, but much more generally. So finance has been fundamental to that.

The other way that finance has been absolutely crucial too, is to understanding capitalism in terms of its imperial dimension. It’s been fundamental to capitalism actually penetrating other countries, imposing certain conditions if they want the finance, putting the United States in a position where the American state is responsible for managing capitalism more generally; and for integrating the working class – in addition to them using credit in the macro sense that it keeps the economy going – the involvement of workers in the circuits of capitalism in terms of housing and pensions and their assets rising. It’s also been a socialization of workers.

Now in terms of specifically the question of decline, if you leave aside looking at specific numbers for a second and just think about what’s happened over the last quarter of a century, it actually looks like one of the most dynamic periods from a capitalist perspective – not from a worker perspective, but from a capitalist perspective. It’s a period in which you’ve penetrated China. You’ve penetrated the former Soviet Union. You’re now penetrating the enormous potential of the Indian market. You’ve seen a powerful commodification of things that used to be seen as part of the Commons. Part of what government provides has been privatized as sources of accumulation. You’ve seen very radical breakthroughs in technology over this period in terms of that kind of dynamism.

And when you actually look at the numbers, what you do see is that profits have actually recovered from the lows that they were. They’re not at the peak they were at in the 1960s, but that was a unique period. And the restructuring of the economy has been very dramatic across sectors. If you’re looking at the American economy, it has restructured geographically. It has restructured in terms of what sectors are dominant right now. The importance of business services has become a very fundamental part of the economy, especially in terms of the American global role. High tech in the U.S. has grown dramatically. The U.S. has been importing a lot but it has also been exporting a lot.

So I don’t think there’s been a lot of credibility to the argument of the American economy having declined. The real problem we have is that all this restructuring has gone on and workers have basically been pretty passive victims. They’ve accepted this. They haven’t in any way been acting as a barrier in terms of putting other social goals or social values on the agenda. And that’s allowed capitalism – American capitalism in particular – to restructure at will. And it’s done really well in terms of accumulation.

Sasha Lilley: You mentioned that finance has allowed the U.S. to play a particularly imperial role. How does the U.S. exercise its imperial hegemony, as you see it?

Sam Gindin: The way we’ve been trying to think about it is, yes, there’s direct involvement in terms of occupation, there’s direct involvement in terms of transforming so-called failed states when there’s no other mechanism of doing this. But the crucial point about the American empire is that unlike national empires of the past, which actually carved up the world, this empire is trying to create a global capitalism and is acting on behalf of global capital and penetrating through capitalist institutions. That’s the important element of this empire’s penetration.

If more American investment is going abroad and less is in the U.S., if the U.S. share of global production is going down, that’s often interpreted as a symbol of decline. But in fact what it is signifying is the spread of capitalism, its penetration into other societies, transforming social relations in those societies, transforming the states in those societies so those states actually take on responsibility for supporting global accumulation, including American accumulation within their own borders. You’re creating a global capitalism within which the American state and American capital have a structural power. The structural power comes from the fact that the U.S. is still the dominant country in terms of technology. It’s increasingly playing a crucial role in terms of what I raised before – business services, accounting, legal consulting, engineering, and of course finance. There’s more concentration of American power in finance then there is in other sectors. So it’s very important not to see imperialism as being only about territorial intervention. And it’s very important to understand that this kind of empire grows through actually spreading production, in a sense sharing production globally in a particular way.

Sasha Lilley: Clearly, the type of economic regime of the last quarter century is now in crisis. Is the neoliberal model, in which the U.S. was in some ways the lead player, now dead?

Greg Albo: I think it’s very hard to claim, given the way that the crisis unfolded, that neoliberalism is over or dead. Certainly we’re entering another phase of it where many of the contradictions that have been internal to neoliberalism from the beginning have compounded and are now taking on a different form. One could begin, of course, with financialization and the role of financialization in neoliberalism from the beginning and financial crises being one of the elements of the developmental model of neoliberalism. And clearly the way that some of those characteristics of finance had developed in the last decade, some of the unregulated forms of collateralized debt obligations are mutating into something quite different and we’re likely to see some new regulatory forms in and around many of those markets. But we’re unlikely to see those markets abandoned. We can see the way that the regulatory reform issue in Congress is going forward that these aren’t radical interventions in overturning the forms of financialization that have been central to neoliberalism. I think that’s one contradiction or problem that has been present that is still there.

We see the same thing with inequalities. Wage inequalities, income inequalities, the lowering of transfers to people on welfare, and so on have been another aspect of the developmental model of neoliberalism. In many ways, that’s at a crisis with the rates of unemployment higher, the rates of people on welfare are higher, and the income inequalities keep on expanding. There are some pressures from below to address those. But as a whole, without a larger political movement we can see also the way that the crisis is unfolding that that is also not fully on the agenda – it’s not on the political agenda to start overturning the income distribution dynamic of neoliberalism. In fact, the way the austerity packages are moving through the various capitalist states of the world, the workers and the poor are the key people who are paying for the crisis.

Similarly, we can see some of the tensions in and around the balance of payment issues and current account differences. There are some tensions that have been always internal to neoliberalism between the current account surpluses of certain zones of the world and the current account deficits of other parts of the world, particularly the U.S., and there’s some tension in and around that. There has also been no real route out of it as of yet, with Europe in problems and not being able to move into a major importing zone and the countries of East Asia not wanting to reverse themselves either. It’s likely the situation of the current account deficit of the U.S. will be continuing and some of the asymmetries in the world payment system, those are likely to continue. So in many ways, we’re definitely in another phase of neoliberalism as a result of this crisis. Certainly, its clear that the political forces in no part of the world have been able to break out of the neoliberal political policies or the balance of power that has backed neoliberalism, that is, the way that finance and industry have supported neoliberal policies at the level of the state.

Sasha Lilley: So is this, then, an impasse based on a crisis of ideas on the part of elites? Or has neoliberalism still not yet run its course as a viable engine of accumulation?

Greg Albo: Neoliberalism is linked to a particular policy framework within capitalism toward a certain balance between the state and market, but as Leo was pointing out, not necessarily a withdrawal of the state, but the market playing the leading role in the determination of where investment is allocated and how incomes are formed. And within that general framework the ideas of neoliberalism can adapt to a new moment, particularly if there are no other political forces on the agenda, the ideas will be generated and something will come up and this model of capitalism will continue.

I think there’s a real bankruptcy of ideas among liberals and social democrats. I think that’s where the key flaw is – in the hopes that somehow state power can simply be reasserted over and finance constrained as a key way that an alternative of reform could come forward and, alongside that, an expansion of various regulatory structures. I think modern social democracy has failed not only at the political level, but also fails to understand many of the dynamics of contemporary capitalism.

I think the problem on the left actually is not a question of ideas as many people often put forward. I think there are many ideas on the left on how to address the crisis – from work-time reduction to various ideas about green conversion, the traditional ideas on the left on expansion of the social sector. There are many, many interesting new ideas about restructuring the state and planning. The problem really on the left is one of political and organizational capacities right now. That it is just not present, so the left really isn’t on the political stage as a political force, both at the level of unions and social movements. Certainly in North America, we’re nowhere near having an adequate political force that is capable of offering an alternative vision, an alternative agenda, especially being inventive about how new social forces might be organized.

Sasha Lilley: As you are suggesting, there’s clearly more than one route out of the crisis. How would you envisage a route that would benefit the working class? I was going to ask what route would not benefit them, but presumably that’s what we’re seeing right now.

Greg Albo: Why don’t I start with the route that is not benefiting them? Clearly, the route that is being put forward right now is that of the capitalist class and the existing states have had a complete sway in setting the agenda. The initial responses that had emerged with some strike responses, some housing occupations, have largely fallen to the side, although I’ll come back to the Greek case in a second. They’ve had a quite wide swath to cut in setting a new agenda and they’re doing this with minor reforms around regulatory structure. Particularly, what they’re managing to do is paying for the financial crisis and offloading so much of the bad debt into the state sector and the state sector’s emergency response in terms of expansion are now focused on what the International Monetary Fund has called for as a decade of austerity. Meaning that transfers to the poor are to be cut back. Public sector wages are being cut back in the order of 5-10 per cent. Income transfers are being cut back. Other forms of social programs are being cut back. And this is being backed around the world by both conservative governments and social democratic governments. They’ve had complete opening to set that agenda.

There has been little response. The only response that has occurred has been in the Greek case so far, which has generated a large number of walkouts and general strikes, days of action, and in some of the other Mediterranean countries as well. But they haven’t been able to push aside the move by those governments to implement these really draconian austerity packages. Right now the route out of the crisis is particularly being set by the capitalist class, in our view within the framework of neoliberalism – although neoliberalism has taken many forms, maybe we’ll want to call it something different – but it was within that agenda.

It is very difficult to see any social democratic response at the moment emerging, that is, some alternative reflationary strategy that would have the tax burden shift more onto the capitalist class through various kinds of crises taxes or taxes on financial speculation of a major kind; not the small transaction taxes being discussed as basically a backstop for future financial crises.

So what you’re left with is largely the question of whether you can begin engaging the union movement, the social movements, and radical political parties in a new project of organization and challenging capitalism. In an initial sense, I think that’s a big question more along the lines of organizing, than per se a reform response to the crisis. It has a lot to do with new forms of attempting to organize unions and allowing much participation of workers in unions. A whole range of issues is involved there.

There are policies of reform that could be put forward now; there’s all kinds of things that could be for it in the context of building such a counter movement: one could be arguing for campaign around free public transit, as a way to respond to the crisis in terms of a green alternative that would have the popular resonance among both ecologists and workers and poor people. Work time reduction should be on the agenda as another response. It would be relatively easy to begin campaigns for a crisis tax – that is, a special levy on high-income groups and on the financial sector – and so on. It’s easy enough to come up with a range of programs or reforms that we could struggle for. Many of our movements are putting forward some of those across North America, particularly in the major cities where there are a lot of struggles around urban reform and the whole range of housing issues as a consequence of the crisis. The question really is building a renewed left with a much different political capacity.

Sasha Lilley: Sam, what have been the impediments to organizing a robust labour movement and left under neoliberalism that are obstacles in renewing the left now?

Sam Gindin: One of the problems is that the argument that ‘there is no alternative’ is a serious one – that if we don’t actually get more radical, it’s hard to imagine alternatives in the middle. One impediment is not wanting to put forth radical demands, thinking that it’s better to be moderate at this time. In other words lowering our expectations. I think that’s been a mistake.

The other mistake has been to think that we’re going to build a movement by always predicting that capitalism is going to decline or that it will fall apart or break down. We have to be able to articulate the argument that capitalism is bad even when it’s working well, that capitalism is now a barrier to human development.

And the third thing I think, which relates very much to what Greg was getting at, is we have to understand that under neoliberalism it wasn’t just a question of the working class being under attack, but it was also integrated into neoliberalism in certain ways. Significant sections of the working class actually increased their consumption through working longer hours and through debt. They’re very much more individualized. Inequality has fragmented the working class.

When we think about all those kinds of things, what we recognize is that the working class has been shaped and formed and reformed through neoliberalism. And if we’re going to overcome that, we’re going to need some kind of organization that actually builds the working class. There’s nothing inherently radical about the working class. It just has the potential to be radical. There are all kinds of potentials to mobilize around, from the legitimacy questions you raised, to the volatility in finance that Leo emphasized, to everything that Greg talked about. So the potential is there but the question is how do we actually build the working class into a class.

I come back to what Greg said: a critical point is that we recognize that we’re fighting capitalism and we recognize how crucial building our own capacities for analysis, for understanding, for acting democratically internally – how crucial that question is.

Sasha Lilley: How do we challenge the integration of the working class into capitalism through credit card and mortgage debt? What kind of politics could address that crucial dimension of the position of the working class over the last several decades?

Sam Gindin: I think the poor are going to have more trouble getting credit, but the answer shouldn’t be to make it easier for them to get credit. The answer should actually be to talk about things like public housing. But for the rest of the working class, I think there’s going to be revival of dependency on credit, on pension funds, on trying to survive by retiring later, which there will be a lot of pressure for.

Sasha Lilley: Presumably that’s already happening. Consumption is up again and presumably that must be consumption based on debt.

Sam Gindin: All of this is going to continue and get stronger. I think the kinds of things we have to talk about is actually thinking about breaking out of this by raising issues that may not be on the agenda tomorrow, but if we don’t start talking about them now they’ll never be on the agenda.

One of them is to start talking about nationalizing the banks. Another thing is you can actually look at a specific crisis. If you look what’s happened in the auto industry, without the left putting things on the table what unions end up doing is demanding we save our company, we become more competitive, which essentially means: let somebody else be laid off. And the kind of things we have to talk about is to say: the issue isn’t about saving the company; it’s about saving our productive capacity which can actually make useful things. It’s saving our communities. The issue isn’t to be competitive, it’s actually to make useful things and start thinking about making democratic planning.

And if we link that to the environment for example, if we said that the environment means that everything is going to be changed about how we produce things, how infrastructure works, how we communicate, transportation etc., then the question is why can’t we mobilize around plants closing in the auto industry that have the equipment, that have these great skilled workers, and start thinking about using that in a socially useful way and converting it? If you had those kinds of structures in place, you would see workers saying, our company isn’t investing or our company is starting to disinvest and move some place else – let’s take it over. Let’s insist it is converted to some useful ends here.

One of the issues we just have to recognize is that there’s logic to it. It seems commonsense in a lot of ways. But it isn’t going to emerge through unions. Unions are still going to be defensive. They still think in a very sectionalist way – in other words, they represent their members or they represent workers at a particular company. That’s why we have to build something that goes beyond the unions. It has to have its feet in the unions as well; unions are still important institutions. But unless we can start thinking about how we build the kind of organization that’s really a cultural change and changes expectations and can actually say, this is what we have to talk about and it involves doing something immediately, which will raise contradictions because the other side is going to respond, and then we’ll have to think about how we go further. If we can’t build those kinds of spaces – which are psychologically crucial, because it makes people feel like they are part of something, that if it isn’t going to win tomorrow there’s actually a way of fighting back and getting some place – I don’t think we can get anywhere. Because people will just return to saying, I have to survive and the way I can survive is by working more hours, going into more debt, hoping the stock market recovers, hoping that they fix this rotten system so that I can benefit from finance, etc.

Sasha Lilley: Why do you think work-time reduction is important not simply for people’s wellbeing but politically? And why you think that it is an achievable demand to make at a time when workers often have very little leverage to shorten their hours at pay that they can survive on?

Sam Gindin: That’s a terrific question. I think if you look at the formation of the trade union movement, a critical demand was around work-time. I think this is generally true, but I know it’s especially true in Canada. The importance of it was that workers actually wanted time to read and to do other things. And I think that’s of crucial importance of work-time today. That the workforce has changed. Workers used to be able to be active by exploiting the partner who would take care of the other chores at home. That’s to some extent foreclosed right now. If people can’t find time to be active and to read and to think and to learn, we can’t build a political movement. So politically, reduced work-time I think is one of the most important demands. If the only reason you’re getting reduced work-time is so that you can get another job, that of course is a different thing.

The question of why is it possible: it’s only possible by building the kind of movement that can win it. It’s possible technically, as we’re living through this incredible period of productivity growth. Productivity has been phenomenal. Productivity growth in manufacturing is much higher than it was in the golden 1950s and 1960s. So the technical potentials are there. The question is how you organize for it. That’s one question.

I think a lot of that means you can’t just think about winning this in your own workplace. We don’t have that kind of strength. It does mean thinking about how do we actually win these things by building the class in terms of making it a class demand and thinking of the class more broadly. And that we’re actually mobilizing the community and making the argument that this is about sharing good jobs. But in terms that this is a general demand – it shouldn’t just be for workers who have collective agreements. It should be a general demand.

The other thing we have to think about – and is very difficult, but we really have to address it – is that it also poses the question how much do we want to consume and what kind of consumption and what we think about our living standards. I’m convinced that if we only think of this in terms of, we want to keep consuming more in the sense of more of the present structure of consumption but have reduced work-time, that we won’t go anywhere. That won’t win. We have to think in terms of wanting a different kind of life, where we can enjoy life in all kinds of different ways in terms of public consumption and different forms of consumption. But it can’t just be the assumption that we can all just keep having more as individual consumer and have less work-time and have a different life.

Greg Albo: It should actually be one of the top things in our demands for addressing global climate change as well, because it has a lot to do with changing consumption. It’s probably the most equitable way of dealing with climate change issues.

Sasha Lilley: At the start of this crisis, as government stepped into rescue failing banks, you called for the nationalization of the banks, pointing out that such nationalization had partially taken place. At this further phase of the crisis, do you think a renewed left should still champion this demand?

Leo Panitch: Yes and I actually think that the condition of achieving everything that Sam and Greg were talking about is in fact that. It’s not the only condition of it, but it is a necessary condition of it – necessary in the sense that the decisions about what is produced and what is invested and how its produced and where its invested need to be democratic ones. They need to be made in a social, planned way. That can’t happen unless the portion of the surplus, if I can use that term, that passes through the financial system and gives us the funds for credit in capitalism is transferred to a public decision-making process and a planned one, whereby we use the little extent to which the state is now democratized to begin a process of democratizing the economy – and in that process also much further democratize what we now know as governments or the state.

What happened with this financial crisis was there was an enormous opportunity to turn banks into public utilities. Instead we did get the nationalization of some banks – although to some extent we just got public funds put into banks without even a degree of repayment or public control. But we didn’t get them changed. On the contrary, when money was put in, governments said we want to be paid back in full, we want the tax-payer to be treated as though he or she was an investor, so we want the highest return possible. Which means that you’re pushing the banks to be commercially competitive. In that sense, you could say as someone in the next Socialist Register writes, it wasn’t so much the Treasury that nationalized the banks, it was the Treasury that got privatized by the banks, insofar as their interest becomes one of getting a high return for the tax-payer – and then of course giving the banks back to private ownership.

That was a tragedy. It was to be totally expected due to the reasons Sam and Greg talked about in that we didn’t have the kind of political alignment that would conceivably have led to what I’m describing taking place – banks being turned into public utilities and the whole process of investment being democratized. But that is what is needed.

It’s a lot to take on, but the way we need to link the kinds of demands that Sam and Greg were pointing to with that very much larger issue of taking the banking system into the public domain and democratizing it, is to say we can’t really have public transit, and free public transit, unless the state can get hold of at the municipal level at the state, at the federal level, can get hold of those funds that pass as credit through the banking system and transform the uses to which that’s put. There’s absolutely no reason rationally why we need to think of funding this only through taxation, rather than through the savings that we all are part of. Right now, pension funds are invested in all kinds of things related to financing capitalism. Pension funds, workers savings, we could have a universal pension plan which is directed toward funding government deficits beyond simply the tax system.

There are all kinds of ways in which we can make people see how these things are linked. Nationalizing the banking system isn’t something out there. But it’s something intricately related to the kinds of reconstruction of production, the conversion of production, that Sam was pointing to. That people are going to be able to say, we’re not just losing this company, we’re losing the enormous resources that these workers have as mechanics, tool and die makers, accountants, teachers, you have it. What we need to be able to do is turn the savings of our society toward the kinds of production that is socially useful, rather than is commercially driven, the way it now is.

Sasha Lilley: Leo, you’ve stated that we’re possibly living through the fourth crisis of capital in a global sense. What were the other crises and how did their resolutions affect the degree to which capitalism extended itself globally?

Leo Panitch: This arguably is the fourth. The first great crisis of capitalism was from 1873-1896, it’s often argued. The second was the Great Depression of the 1930s. The third was the crisis of Keynesianism and of profits in the 1970s. And we may be entering the fourth. Each of those crises had different causes and different outcomes. They are not all caused by the same thing and they don’t all lead to the same type of outcome.

The first one produced an orientation toward internationalizing capitalism, but within the framework of competing capitalist empires. That eventually led to World War One. The second one actually broke down and stopped capitalism’s internationalizing tendencies and you got the kind of beggar my neighbor protectionism that led to World War Two. Out of World War Two, you got the American state in particular becoming the kind of empire that was determined to get the globalizing tendencies of capitalism back on the agenda. It succeeded in that. But that led to contradictions by the 1970s, which ushered in the profit squeeze of the 1970s, partly having to do with the way which workers were strengthened under the commitment to social welfare and full employment reflecting the power of democracy that had developed within capitalism in the 20th century. That then led to, in a sense, workers being too strong for capitalism. And it led to a profit squeeze and was resolved largely through the defeat of the working class, the defeat of trade unionism, and the further expansion of capitalist competition at a global level.

This crisis certainly no one could say was caused by workers being too strong. If anything it was caused by workers being too weak – too weak in the sense that they were still very much tied into capitalism, as Sam said, they were trying to be consumers by being indebted consumers. They were trying to look to their retirement by engaging in speculation, whether through their pensions or expecting that their homes would increase in value, the main asset that many workers own in a capitalist housing market. So in a sense, the kinds of contradictions in finance that pertain to the workers’ side of the equation reflected the weakness of workers, their individuation, their fragmentation, their incorporation as Sam said into capitalist finance and capitalist competition.

I think that, however, these are very, very contradictory processes and it isn’t impossible – and you see in California the evidence of this – for indebted workers and indebted students to rise up and begin to realize what that means for them, what that means for their lives, in terms of having to pay off these debts in a way that keeps them tied in almost as debt slaves to the system. In California, a campaign by students to have their student debt forgiven or to allow there to be no penalties for a default on that student debt would now be a very important element in the kinds of struggles that are taking place in the educational system. But insofar as that were to be viable, it would have to be connected to the much larger issues that I was talking about in terms of economic planning and the taking over of the financial system. And that’s a very big political agenda.

Sasha Lilley: You three have been speaking about the ways that neoliberalism has made it difficult for workers to organize in their interests, to have the time to engage in radical politics, or politics at all. Looking at the other side of the equation, what are the vulnerabilities that this system has that radicals should exploit?

Leo Panitch: There are so many that we could go on talking for weeks and months. The vulnerabilities are of the kind that produced the great unionization movements and the social movements and socialist parties that emerged out of the first crisis from 1873-96. They’re the types of contradictions that led people to break with the AFL unions in the 1930s and form the industrial unions that brought in everybody that was in a particular plant, whether they were highly skilled tool and die makers or whether they were janitors into the same organization. They’re the same type of contradictions that led to the crisis of the 1970s, being also the moment at which the new social movements were at their height. So there are all kinds of opportunities. And to be very specific the kinds of struggles in which students and teachers are engaging in California provide an enormous opportunity to make connections between the cutbacks that are taking place, the way in which the public sector in California is being made to bear the cost of what was a crisis not at all caused by the public sector, that the link should be made between that struggle and what we’ve been talking about doesn’t seem to me to be too far a stretch.

It doesn’t at all seem to me impossible that we should be talking today about taking the example of the 1930s and the creation of a new type a trade unionism and, to pick up what Sam was saying, the need for the type of labour organization now, which isn’t confined to a given industry but sees itself as a much broader class organization and sees the struggle for free public transit as important to the retention of their jobs – but in the way that would involve the conversion of their workplaces in a massive way. One could look at the suicides in China that recently led to a wage increase being given by Honda in their plant there as part of a much broader set of struggles for a working class that has grown in numbers enormously in this period of neoliberalism.

There has been massive proletarianization around the world. One could look forward, it seems to me, to enormously heightened level of class struggle of the kind that would be immitated and encouraged by looking at what’s going on in one place and what’s going on in another. It’s not impossible that the strikes that are taking place in Greece that Greg was referring to can have an exemplary effect. We need to do all we can to make them have an exemplary effect. So, yes, I think there are enormous opportunities. What we need much more of, as Sam was saying, are the kind of organized political forces which can intervene in a productive way to encourage that, to sustain it, to give it a broader focus. As Greg was saying, the old parties, the social democratic parties, the left of the democratic party, etc, and also those old Marxist formations that either were powerful or looked like they might be in the 20th century and have now passed into history – we need to find substitutes and alternatives to them.

The anti-globalization movement was a very, very exciting development from Seattle on and hopefully people in it will begin to see that we need more than protests at IMF meetings and more than annual World Social Forums. Those are useful, but we need to organize out of them. They shouldn’t be a substitute for building permanent organizations that can contest for power. There’s been too much of a tendency in the movements of the last decade to be afraid to do that and to believe that it’s enough to simply protest.

Sasha Lilley: There was a very interesting editorial in the Financial Times by the historian of the French revolution, Simon Schama, worrying that this year may be the moment where people go to the streets. He made a parallel with the French revolution and the lag that often occurs between when people are hit by a crisis and when they respond. Just looking around us during this summer, perhaps, of our discontent, there is a crisis unfolding in Europe, which of course looms over the United States and North America, and in the Gulf of Mexico there is an absolutely horrendous oil spill, which is hard to fathom except through the lens of the profit motive and private capital’s relation to the state. Sam, do you think that there are opportunities now, despite the weakness of institutions of the left and labour, which we might be hopeful about?

Sam Gindin: Yes and not just in terms of what’s happening now. This is going to continue. There’s going to be more volatility. There’s going to be more pressure on people to pay for the exit to this crisis. Insecurity isn’t going away. Inequality isn’t going away. People see what’s happening in the Gulf, they see the kind of resources the state can mobilize when it’s trying to save the banks and they can contrast it to the state’s intervention in other ways. They’re cynical. They’re skeptical. I don’t think you have to convince people that capitalism is wonderful. You just have to convince them that there is something they can do about it.

My sense is that these things explode in unpredictable ways. But then the question is always how do you sustain it. So the opportunities are there and it’s encouraging whenever you see a struggle someplace that you can learn from or be inspired by. And then there are local things that are going on. In Toronto we’ve all been involved in the creation of something called the Greater Toronto Workers’ Assembly. It was really an attempt to say: let’s just not have another protest against the crisis; let’s actually talk about the fact that none of the things we do right now in the movements, or in the unions, or on the left actually match what we’re up against. And we need to get together on a class-based way that actually speaks to capitalism, that’s actually rooted in the community, in a sense of organizing here. We’re focusing on free transit as a class issue. We’re focusing on how does the public sector respond in a time of austerity. And we’re arguing it can’t just respond by trying to get higher wages and isolating itself. It has to actually say: we have to put the level and quality of administration of public services on the agenda and lead in the transformation of public services or we’re going to be killed. These things evolve and they’re hard to do, but they’ve got people speaking and finding spaces to address these things. So I’m optimistic, but not in a sense of being ready to predict that it’s about to happen. But the opportunities are there definitely.

Sasha Lilley: I want to end by asking Greg that same question – what do you see as the opportunities in this moment despite the obstacles that you have laid out?

Greg Albo: I think there are four. One is that the American and NATO single war across the Middle East is fracturing in many ways, from Palestine to Afghanistan, through some of the problems in Iraq. So I think some defeats and some even positive movement, particularly in Palestine, will be very positive for the global social justice movement.

Secondly, I think the continuing momentum and the breakthrough in the Andean countries as challenges to neoliberalism – not that either Bolivia or Venezuela have managed to break-through neoliberalism, but they have been combining, developing new political forces with anti-neoliberal and anti-capitalist political agendas – is helping to reform the left across the continent of Latin America and it’s a very positive development globally. I would put alongside those the developments that have occurred in both Nepal and Thailand. Obviously the Thai case is very ambiguous in some senses, with the leadership of the Red Shirts, but on the other hand it was an incredibly moving display by peasants and workers in the city demanding democracy.

As Leo pointed out, the developments in Europe are still unpredictable. They can still open up from Greece to Portugal with a more radical left putting demands on what is quite clearly an unworkable solution that has so far been put forward in dealing with the Greek crisis. The political momentum developing in Europe is quite unpredictable and could start making some linkages with the fights in France and Britain and Germany as the austerity packages start moving through those countries. So I think that’s very positive.

I would identify, like Sam, a lot of the developments that are occurring largely in urban cities in North America, both in Canada and the U.S., which are finding new ways to connect organizing between unions and migrant rights struggles, and with community fightback initiatives, which I think are forming a different kind of left than we’ve had for a long time. It’s forming a left that is more open for new political initiatives, is more open to longer term organization-building, and I think is breaking from the lock that has been on the left both in Canada and in the U.S. of trying to fight our politics either through the Democratic Party or similar combination of the Liberal Party and New Democratic Party in Canada. I think that’s very positive for us being able to build a new left in North America over the next couple or years.

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It seems to me this is a real question, and Doug Henwood’s speculations seem hardly adequate. I’m hoping some who read khukuri might propose, or discuss, some reasons for this phenomenon.

Reprinted from the recent Left Business Observer #128.

Jonesing for a slump

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Consider Me a Fan:

Brief Review of Toscano’s Fanaticism: On the Uses of an Idea

Jason Read

The current age could be described as one that is opposed to fanaticism. Fanaticism is the name that we have given our enemy in the current “war on terror,” but the contemporary opposition to fanaticism goes beyond the specific spectre of Islamic terror. Fanaticism is the generic name of what must be opposed at all cost. This is the lesson that seems to have been drawn from the previous century: the various crimes of the past, Stalinism, Fascism, and Nazism, have been stripped of their specific political and historical conditions and reduced to the original sin of fanaticism. In order to get some sense of this opposition to a generic an unspecified fanaticism, one only has to read some of the critiques of neoliberal policy (and neoconservative ideology), which do not focus on its disastrous effects or ill-conceived philosophy, but on the “fanatical” dimension of its adherent’s belief. Fanaticism is a criticism of the way one holds their ideas, and not the ideas themselves: as such it can be applied to any idea.

What emerges from this general critique of fanaticism is a particular ethos, an ideal of having no ideals. One should be tolerant, flexible, open to debate, and, above all, not a fanatic. (It is worth noting that this “opportunism” is precisely what the current labor market demands: ideas and convictions are bad business). Albert Toscano’s Fanaticism: On the Uses of an Idea is best understood as an intervention in this particular ideological consensus, an intervention that, as the vaguely Nietzschean title suggests, takes the form of a genealogy. As with most genealogies, the point of the historical examinations is to take us back to a point where our established conceptual coordinates, such as the one between fanaticism and enlightenment, fall apart. If the current era is one that often juxtaposes the Enlightenment, understood as tolerance and respect for individual rights, to fanaticism, then part of Toscano’s analysis is to demonstrate how this opposition falls apart in the face of history. The figures of the Enlightenment, most notably Kant, were at once critics of the excesses of dogmaticism and criticized for their fanatic commitment to the abstract ideals of freedom and right. In this respect “anti-fanatics” include not just famous conservatives like Burke, but all defenders of given customs; defenders of slavery and other established dominations saw themselves as defenders against the excesses of fanatical reason. Toscano cites Dominic Losurdo on this opposition to the fanaticism of ideas in Kant:

“The refusal of theory is the refusal of any project of radical transformation, a project which is either judged empty and abstract because of its transcendence vis-à-vis the existing social-political system, or is ruinous and appalling because of its pretense to realize concretely, even through harsh struggles, a new social-political order.”

Toscano’s project is not a simple revalorization of fanaticism; in fact, it is the strength of his book to argue both against the anti-fanatic consensus and the various revitalizations of subjective commitment, or fidelity, on the part of Badiou and Zizek. Ultimately, Toscano’s focus is to argue that what is lacking in the anti-fanatic consensus, in which the label “fanatic” is bandied about to various ideals and religions, and everyone claims to be opposed to the fanaticism of the other, is an understanding of the different modalities of abstraction in society. Fanaticism always relates to an abstraction, to an ideal, but as such it is situated against other abstractions, those of religion (in the case of enlightenment) and the everyday abstractions of capitalism. An understanding of fanaticism must grasp how it functions in these other abstractions. Toscano demonstrates this by countering the facile but persistent claim that Marxism is a religion with an examination of Marx’s critique of religion and the religion of everyday life in capitalism.

It is on this last point that I would offer not so much a criticism, but a rejoinder of sorts. Toscano argues that part of his project is to help philosophy escape from its long cold war, “which vies unconditional conviction and principled egalitarianism with horror or contempt.” It seems to me that doing so means overcoming, or at least examining, the current opposition between the abstractions that are ideals, universality, equality, etc., and the abstractions that are directly lived, without taking the form of ideals. Toscano does some of this in his discussion of Marx, and I know from having read his work on “real abstraction” that he, more than nearly anyone, is aware of the complexity of abstraction in capitalism. As Toscano writes, “Whether we are dealing with money or with religion, the crucial error is to treat real abstractions as mere ‘arbitrary products of human reflection.” So, all I am really doing here is trying to connect to lines, connecting the critique of the critique of fanaticism with a critique of the real abstractions of everyday life. Failing to do so leads back into the morass of anti-fanaticism. This is my criticism of those who criticism neoliberalism as “Market Stalinism,” as a dogmatism of the market (which Toscano does not do). What such criticism misses is that outside of Friedman, Rand, and their acolytes, commitment to neoliberal practices is produced, naturalized, as it were, by the micro-politics of everyday life, by the axioms of the market. Escaping the cold war entails not just overcoming the consensus against “fanaticism,” that hangs over every egalitarian ideal, but the less overt reproduction of the existing order without conviction or passion as simply the way of the world.

Final unrelated note: Alberto Toscano and Jeff Kinkle are apparently writing a book about “Cognitive Mapping.” They have set up a blog called Cartographies of the Absolute to post some of their research. It is not only good reading, it is also proof that at least three people think that the world needs a Marxist reading of Wolfen.

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