Volume 26 Issue 3 July 2014
This issue of Rethinking Marxism opens with Lawrence Grossberg, Carolyn Hardin, and Michael Palm's article, “Contributions to a Conjunctural Theory of Valuation.” In an attempt to examine what was new and unique in the 2007 financial crisis, the authors initiate a contribution to what they describe as “critical valuation studies.” At a time when capitalism increasingly ascribes economic value to both material and immaterial entities, the authors address the fundamental question, “How does value become ‘value’?” Specifically, in contrast to explanations of the financial crisis as the commodification and circulation of risk and wealth transference, the authors examine the processes of valuation (or, alternatively, value transformation) in which finance capitalism produces and/or destroys value in such phenomena as derivatives, arbitrage, and mortgage-backed securities. The authors elaborate the initial steps of a theory of value transformation based on an ontology of obligation and the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Abstracting from the overlapping and nonlinear processes drawn from obligation, they construct a theoretical apparatus or diagram (dispositif) of value transformation. In particular, they argue that “value becomes economic precisely when it is rendered equivalent to debt,” and that processes in which debt transforms—going through stages of becoming commodities or money and thus circulatable (i.e., “deterritorialization”), becoming measurable and countable (“enumeration”), and going through processes of decoding, unitization, flow, capture, and axiomatization—serve to define capitalist relations. The framework the authors present provides a basis to examine various forms of capitalist valuation as a part of a conjunctural analysis, and they argue that such an examination is necessary to formulate practices of opposition and envision alternative economic relations.
Whereas Grossberg, Hardin, and Palm's article addresses the ontology of value, Bruce Roberts's article, “Productive/Unproductive: Conceptual Topology,” addresses the ontology of labor. Specifically, Roberts focuses on the distinction between productive and unproductive labor in the Marxian tradition. Debates concerning productive/unproductive labor have arisen in Marxian economics partially due to the fact that Marx incorporated and transformed the categories from Adam Smith but never developed a systematic explication of the concepts himself. In general terms, according to Roberts, “productive labor is human activity that produces more than is necessary for the reproduction of the performer of that labor; unproductive labor does not do so, in one or more of several potential senses.” Within a materialist conception of labor, Roberts argues that unproductive labors are dependent upon productive labors in a fundamental structural sense, in that productive labors must generate a sufficient level of surplus capable of reproducing unproductive activities. From these general definitions, Roberts provides a conceptualization of productive/unproductive activities along three axes of distinction: capitalist/noncapitalist, productive/nonproductive, and basic/nonbasic labors. Through this three-dimensional productive/unproductive dichotomy, Roberts illustrates the theoretical and political implications of such categorizations, ranging from questions of gendered labor to U.S. health care, sustainability, and finance. Without a materialist conception of surplus, Roberts argues, mainstream critics of finance such as Paul Krugman are limited by their neoclassical framework, which overlooks the structural dependence of unproductive activities on productive activities. Because of the lack of a structural understanding of finance, neoclassical critics focus on individual actors or socially dysfunctional activities, such as speculation, rent seeking, or ineffective regulatory constraints. Beyond demonstrating the limits of neoclassical economics, Roberts's typology provides ways of examining both capitalist and noncapitalist relations of production and represents ways of rethinking the creation of noncapitalist forms of productive and nonproductive labor.
The ethical dimensions of value, from control over its creation to appropriation of the surplus, are addressed in Alexander Brown's article, “Marx on Exploitation: A Kantian Perspective.” Drawing upon Immanuel Kant's ethical theory, Brown examines Marxist conceptions of capitalist exploitation. In response to debates on whether Marx's understanding of exploitation is a purely technical concept devoid of moral content or if it encompasses a moral foundation that signifies an ethical critique of capitalism, the author develops a Kantian conception of capitalist exploitation through Kant's categorical imperative: that one should never treat another “simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end.” Using this formula and the prism of Kantian ethics, Brown considers the three principal Marxian understandings of exploitation—unequal access to the ownership of the means of production; direction, supervision, and control over labor; and the appropriation and control of surplus value—and argues that a Kantian articulation of capitalist exploitation provides insights into Marxian debates regarding exploitation, establishing an ethical foundation for the critical examination of capitalist relations. In effect, Brown argues that a Kantian interpretation of exploitation provides ethical reasons for nonexploitative labor.
While the first three articles address issues of value within the boundaries of Marxism, Pär-Ola Zander's article, “Baudrillard's Theory of Value: A Baby in the Marxist Bath Water?,” examines Jean Baudrillard's early engagement with Marxian value theory and his later break away from it in an attempt to answer questions he believed could not be answered by Marx's analysis. Through a close reading of Baudrillard's texts, Zander delineates a transition from Baudrillard's engagement with Marxism—and his attempt to produce a general theory of value that combined Marxian (economic) and structural (linguistics) concepts of value and exchange—to his break with and explicit attack on Marxism. Despite Baudrillard's break from his early theorization of value, Zander demonstrates that much can be learned from his original path, especially with respect to the possibility of radical political positions being reduced to signs and icons. Baudrillard's value theory, Zander argues, provides a “cross-fertilization” between Marxist and post-Marxist paradigms, mediating between “semiotic perspectives (‘sign value’), economic perspectives (‘exchange value’), and critical-design-oriented perspectives (‘use-value’ and ‘symbolic value’).” Even though his value theory remains unfinished and largely overlooked within current scholarship, the problems that Baudrillard confronted are still being addressed within contemporary Marxism. In particular, as Zander shows, there are many similarities between the early Baudrillard and Kojin Karatani's recent work. In addition to their commitments to Marxian value theory and semiotics, both theorists address the question of the possibility of defining radical elements outside societal systems of signs and economics. Thus, for Zander, even though Baudrillard threw out the Marxian bath water, his value theory baby deserves to be saved.
With Panagiotis Sotiris's article, “How to Make Lasting Encounters: Althusser and Political Subjectivity,” we move from value theory to political theory. Sotiris addresses the issues of political subjectivity and agency in Louis Althusser's thought. In response to criticisms that Althusser's theory of ideology and his conception of history as a process without a subject undermine the formation of critical subjectivity and radical political action, Sotiris focuses on Althusser's idea of the “lasting encounter” as a way to conceive the emergence of political agency and social transformation. He admittedly recognizes the negative ways in which Althusser treats processes of subjectivation, in which the subject is conceived as being dominated by ideology and therefore in a state of misrecognition. Sotiris, however, points to the fact that social reality is itself constituted by antagonistic and contradictory processes that present displacements of political subjectivity and open the possibilities of critical intellectuality, agency, and transformation. Through a reading of Lenin's, Gramsci's, and Mao's writings on the political party, Sotiris argues that political subjectivity is conditioned by collective political agency “in a nonlinear manner that includes constant confrontation with the terrain of the struggle, the continuous production of new knowledge, and recurring processes of self-criticism and correction.” For Sotiris it is precisely this militant intervention that is necessary for the formation of new lasting encounters and, in turn, for the emergence of new social and political configurations founded on emancipation and justice.
The formulation of new social and political practices is one of the central themes of the Pedagogy Group's embrace of social engagement in arts and media programs. In their piece “Listening, Thinking, and Acting Together,” the group—which includes a network of artists, curators, writers, and activists—reflects on the emergence and limitations of social practice in art pedagogy. The group is primarily interested in how social engagement is learned and taught in conventional art training; in considering the models, subjectivities, and values being produced in such practices; and in conceiving ways to counter the valorization of competition and individual achievement in contemporary art pedagogy. Given the current state of higher education, the group is quite aware of the contradictory practices of socially focused educators who simultaneously challenge and legitimize institutions that are complicit in the commercialization of knowledge, the rapid increase of tuitions, and the explosion of student debt. Art programs themselves have largely adopted the ideas of social practice, of moving outside the studio into everyday life and the public arena, but they have failed to incorporate elements of social exchange, systemic background analysis, and sustainability into their practices. To expand the limits of social practice pedagogy, the group offers several lines of critical inquiry for classroom practice: viewing the classroom and the university as objects of investigation in themselves, exploring alternatives to dominant market and institutional practices, and committing to critical pedagogical practices of teaching and learning. In addition, the group also presents the practical exercises of asset-mapping and “threeing”—the latter drawn from video artist Paul Ryan's idea of the “three-person solution”—as ways to conceive of teaching beyond the classroom with respect to wider social, political, and economic contexts. Through these explorations, the Pedagogy Group presents possibilities for critically conceiving social engagement.
This issue of RM concludes with two book reviews that focus on the issue of political subjectivity in Marxian thought. Antonio Negri reviews Marcello Musto's Karl Marx's Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Critical Economy 150 Years Later. In marking the anniversary of the Grundrisse, Musto's volume examines the important concepts developed in the text, the context of Marx's writing, and the dissemination and reception of the Grundrisse throughout the world. In addition to discussing his interaction with the Grundrisse in his studies as a Communist but not yet a Marxist, Negri discusses how Louis Althusser and Eric Hobsbawm grasped the significance of the Grundrisse. According to Negri, the “notable contribution” of Musto's volume is the antideterminist presentation of the Grundrisse, from its approach to crisis to its development of method. Interestingly, Negri also reveals his view of the text as a critique of “revolution from above” and an affirmation of “revolution from below.”
The affirmation of the democratic constitution of the people also arises in Christopher Holman's review of Miguel Abensour's recently translated book, Democracy against the State: Marx and the Machiavellian Moment. Holman provides a critical analysis of the main elements of Abensour's contributions to both Marxian political theory and democratic theory. By returning to Marx's allusion to “true democracy” in the Critique of Hegel's “Philosophy of Right” and through a radical democratic interpretation of Machiavelli's theorization of the political, Abensour proposes a theory of “insurgent democracy,” which can be understood as the body of the people arising against the body of the state, proceeding to encompass the whole demos as the “true subject.” According to Holman, Abensour's critical welding of Marx and Machiavelli provides four significant contributions to Marxian democratic theory; it recognizes the essence of the political as founded upon the people's struggle for liberty, the self-objectification of the demos in the process of political constitution, the prevention of political alienation through the continual process of the democratic self-institution of society, and the notion that true democracy is radically distinct from all previous forms of state. Despite Holman's reservations that Abensour ambivalently defines the terms of institution-division-state, Holman nevertheless believes that Abensour's conception of insurgent democracy affirms the creative and inventive power of the demos, providing a significant contribution to Marxian political thought. Precisely in the period of the post-2008 crisis, the development of horizontal radical movements around the globe demonstrates the ideals of “insurgent democracy,” not as a political regime but as the demos’s attempt to reconfigure the political realm itself through radical democratization and political agency.
At the time this issue was in production, we received the very sad news of the passing of Stuart Hall in February and Ernesto Laclau in April. Both thinkers were members of the RM Advisory Board and made major contributions to Marxian theory. Drawing from the works of Gramsci and Althusser, Hall developed a materialist analysis of cultural studies that deepened understandings of hegemony, race, media, and neoliberalism. In his 1992 RM article “Race, Culture, and Communications: Looking Backward and Forward at Cultural Studies,” Hall wrote that “cultural studies insists on the necessity to address the central, urgent, and disturbing questions of a society and culture in the most rigorous intellectual way we have available.” His approach to understanding culture essentially defined and transformed the field of cultural studies. Like Hall, Ernesto Laclau made several groundbreaking contributions to Marxian theory and politics. He made important interventions in the modes-of-production debate in the 1970s. His widely influential Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (1985), coauthored with Chantal Mouffe, defined debates concerning hegemony, radical democracy, and new social movements. Later, Laclau shifted his focus to populism. At the 2006 RM conference at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Laclau delivered a plenary talk on “Imperialism and the Fantasies of Democracy.” Both Stuart Hall and Ernesto Laclau were significant to the RM project; their work and presence will be deeply missed, as will their warm, friendly, and compassionate personalities.
—The Editors |
