Volume 27 Issue 2 April 2015
We start this issue with an article that, in imagining a noncapitalist future, draws an unfamiliar connection between two sources that have influenced profoundly our thinking about modernity. In “Reading Capital with Being and Time,” Joel Wainwright argues for reading Marx's Capital with Martin Heidegger's Being and Time. Although Being and Time is often considered an anti-Marxist work, Wainwright draws upon C.L.R. James's point that mastering Heidegger, even to reject him, provides a basis for developing and interpreting Marxism more radically. Wainwright argues that reading Marx's and Heidegger's masterworks against each other moves us beyond acceptable and easily translatable understandings of each thinker. Both works open with the task of critique, refusing to accept simple assumptions as their starting points. Just as Capital opens with the examination of “value” as something not given, Being and Time opens with an examination of the question of “being.” Both thinkers are interested in looking behind the apparent nature of things to the totality of how their particular object of inquiry (value, being) exists and indeed establishes what seems to be its “nature.” Both books, as Wainwright argues, are considered “revolutionary,” yet paradoxically neither offers a theory of revolutionary praxis. Both books allude to utopian visions: Marx mentions the expropriation of capital accumulation as well as the association of free producers, and Heidegger posits the idea of being as no longer tied to the inauthentic ordering of time. Yet the political value of reading Capital with Being and Time, according to Wainwright, is to heed James's warnings: both to avoid making socialism a science, as embraced by Friedrich Engels, and also to reopen the paradox of our time, that of conceptualizing being without capitalism.
Picking up on themes elaborated in the symposium on post-Autonomia that appeared in RM 26 (2), Mathijs van de Sande, in his article “Fighting with Tools: Prefiguration and Radical Politics in the Twenty-First Century,” provides a response to recent critiques of the prefigurative political practices associated with the Occupy Wall Street and Indignados movements. To elucidate the theoretical basis of prefigurative politics, van de Sande critically compares the political ontologies of anarchism and autonomist Marxism, specifically examining the work of Mikhail Bakunin and Antonio Negri. Van de Sande emphasizes the ways in which both Bakunin's and Negri's critiques of Hegelian dialectics create significant parallels in their understandings of political practice. In contrast with Hegel's “triadic” dialectics, van de Sande argues that Bakunin's dialectical thought is essentially “antithetic,” in that conflict is not resolved through “synthetic” reformulation but through negation and simultaneous substitution. This antithetic ontology provides the basis for Bakunin's insistence that revolutionary struggle aims not toward the mediation of the existing order but rather toward its rejection, in which the new world can only be built on the ashes of the old. Aspects of Bakunin's “antithetic” ontology, van de Sande argues, resonate with elements of Negri's early operaist thought, though Negri's later articulation of the Spinozian notion of constituent power (or potentia) provides an ontological basis for prefigurative political practices—that of “building a new society within the shell of the old.” The prefigurative politics associated with the recent occupied square movements, van de Sande argues, is not simply an “exodus” or withdrawal from representative politics, as critics often claim, but represents an adjustment of the tools of revolutionary strategy.
Reflecting on the possibilities of radical politics is also the task of the next article, which focuses on the relation of digital communicative technology to its users. In his article entitled “The Rethinking of Technology in Class Struggle: Communicative Affirmation and Foreclosure Politics,” Matthew Greaves develops a provisional theory of technology and class struggle that draws from the work of Marx, Feenberg, and Hardt and Negri as an alternative to that of Marcuse, Dean, and Fuchs. For the latter three, technology—while offering alternatives—gets subsumed under capitalism, and hence Dean's notion of communicative capitalism: although the alienation of the working class creates the conditions of a revolutionary subject, this potential is destroyed as it gets sucked into the networks of communicative capitalism. Through the incorporation of individuals into a “nominally democratic forum,” digitally networked communication in effect rids them of their potential to resist and disrupt the real sources of power, leaving unequal distributions of wealth intact and replacing resistance to real antagonisms with fantasies of such. Our inputs into a seemingly democratic forum become exchange values emptied of their use value, part of the endless and exploitative circuits of capital. Technology thus subsumed under capitalistic imperatives renders the transformative potential of the masses passive—the “one-dimensional man” of Marcuse—creating a foreclosure for radical politics. The possibility of the latter can thus only come from without, a conclusion shared by Fuchs, who argues that the democratic potential of digitally networked technology cannot be realized without a change in ownership structure in the form of a commons. Greaves in contrast argues that by going beyond the work of Hardt and Negri and developing further the ideas of Feenberg, we can deepen our analyses of the critical potential of technology as well as that of the interaction of the user with technology, in the course of which technology itself is transformed. Greaves ends on an optimistic note, claiming that political activism from below has the potential to open up the space for radical politics by transforming the line of technological development, and he points to acts of subversion by hackers and other misusers as examples.
The conception of new forms of inclusive social interaction is one of the themes emphasized in Thomas Hirschhorn's monument series. The Gramsci Monument—which ran for seventy-seven days, from 1 July to 15 September 2013, at the Forest Houses in the Bronx, New York—was Hirschhorn's fourth and final monument devoted to a philosopher. Hirschhorn inaugurated the series in 1999 with the Spinoza Monument in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, followed in 2000 by the Deleuze Monument in Avignon, France, and in 2002 the Bataille Monument in Kassel, Germany. With this series Hirschhorn sought to create a new type of monument: not one of permanence but one of ephemerality, in which the objective is reflection over commemoration. For Hirschhorn, “Spinoza, Deleuze, Gramsci, and Bataille are examples of thinkers who instill confidence in the reflective capacities.” They force us to think and to become active. As Hirschhorn explains in his text “Why Gramsci? Why New York?,” he conceived the monuments according to four dominant themes—love, philosophy, politics, and aesthetics—with each philosopher intersecting at two points. Following this schema, Hirschhorn dedicated the Gramsci Monument to the intersecting points of politics and love. As an artwork in a public space, in both construction and form Hirschhorn conceived the Gramsci Monument as a space for a nonexclusive audience. Residents of the Forest Houses were directly involved in the construction of the monument, and the materials included common items, such as wood, cardboard, tape, and plastic tarps. The images Hirschhorn curated for this issue illustrate many of the monument's structures, which included a performance stage, computer room, art studio, radio station, newspaper room, lounge, library, food/drink bar, and museum (with objects on loan from Fondazione Istituto Gramsci in Rome and Casa Museo di Antonio Gramsci in Sardinia). The monument's program schedule included radio programs, daily lectures, and a daily newspaper, as well as weekly theater performances, seminars, poetry workshops, art workshops, field trips, and open-mic performances. As a nonexclusive space, the monument created opportunities for social interaction and reflection among the residents, the wider public, philosophers, and scholars. The precariousness of the monument also demonstrated possibilities for imagining new forms of interaction beyond the artistic space.
Some of Hirschhorn's reflections inspired by the work of Gramsci find their way into the next article. In “Reading Gramsci through Fanon: Hegemony before Dominance in Revolutionary Theory,” Noaman G. Ali examines the Gramscian concepts of hegemony and dominance with respect to subaltern political strategy in colonial and postcolonial situations. Working through the ideas of Gramsci, Ranajit Guha, and Frantz Fanon, Ali examines the ways in which decolonial subaltern movements can be understood in terms of a dialectic between dominance and hegemony. Gramsci conceived the modern democratic state as a unity of dominance and hegemony in which ruling social groups maintain power through a combination of the coercive apparatus of the state and the consent of the masses. In terms of conceiving political strategy, Gramsci argued that subaltern groups must exercise a sufficient level of hegemony prior to assuming governmental power. Drawing from Gramsci's formulation, Guha argues that British colonialism in India functioned as “dominance without hegemony,” in that the British relied overwhelmingly more on coercion than on consent to maintain power. Ali points out that Guha's reading of Gramsci focuses predominantly on state power with little attention to the dialect of hegemony and dominance with respect to subaltern strategy. On this point, turning to Fanon, Ali argues that in decolonial movements, even in conditions of dominance without hegemony, subaltern revolutionary parties must achieve a concentrated level of hegemony prior to assuming state power. To illustrate this point, Ali examines the revolutionary strategy against Portuguese colonialism used by the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO), focusing on the movement's political leadership (hegemony) prior to its addressing the coercive apparatus of the state. Ali's treatment of the dialectic of hegemony and dominance demonstrates the nuanced ways in which these concepts can be utilized in Gramscian analysis across different contexts.
One of the commitments of Rethinking Marxism has been to open up theoretical space for a more flexible Marxism to question those conceptualizations of society that privilege one determinant over another. One such long and enduring tradition within Marxism regards ownership as the key determinant of class. As the title “State Capitalism vis-à-vis Private Communism” indicates, Catherine Mulder challenges this conceptualization, contending that state ownership does not necessarily imply communism, that private ownership likewise does not indicate capitalism, and focusing on the class structure of the British Broadcasting Corporation Symphony Orchestra (BBC-SO) and the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) through the theoretical lens of the overdeterminist class analysis pioneered by Wolff and Resnick. For Mulder, the BBC-SO functions just like a capitalist firm, producing music as commodity, in the course of which production the musicians in the orchestra, as the direct laborers, produce surplus labor that is appropriated by the executive board of the orchestra, which then distributes portions of this surplus in the form of subsumed class payments to those such as the lawyers, publicists, and accountants who provide some of the necessary conditions for the orchestra to exist. Equally important is the fact that the musicians, as the creators of surplus value, have no say in the decisions about its distribution. Mulder argues that the LSO, which grew out of a rebellion and the consequent desire to build a cooperative orchestra, provides the model of a communist orchestra, in which the musicians who produce the surplus value are also its appropriators deciding collectively how it gets distributed. Mulder notes that while the salaries of the musicians in the two orchestras are similar, the ability of those in the LSO to have a voice in decisions that affect their life conditions creates profound differences.
Contending Economic Theories: Neoclassical, Keynesian, and Marxian—coauthored by Rick Wolff and Steve Resnick, who are among the founding members of this journal—has already left a significant mark on economics and the teaching of economics and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. In this issue's symposium, former students of Wolff and Resnick reflect on the contributions of this book to the broader discipline as well as to their lives as economists and professors.
After his detailed reading of the contributions of the book's chapters, the one question that David Ruccio raises as a concern is over what he calls the “determinism of the theoretical presentation itself.” For instance, the neoclassical theorists arrive at their conclusions because of the particular conceptual entry point and logic that they use. Whereas, Ruccio argues, we make choices along the way, so too, he argues, neoclassical economists’ negligence over issues such as poverty and unequal distribution of wealth is also determined by the ethical choices they make, and not so much by the imperative consequence of their analyses. This holds true for all theories and theorists.
Carole Biewener focuses especially on the chapter on “Late Neoclassical Theory,” cowritten by Yahya Madra, and expands on how the notion of overdetermined subjectivity goes beyond traditional notions of the autonomous and rational subject, thus making connections between diverse perspectives such as feminism and postcolonial theory as well as making engagements with other disciplines such as sociology, psychology, and evolutionary biology so much more productive. Biewener further contemplates the overdeterminist class analysis of the work of Wolff and Resnick, arguing that the kind of Marxism developed by them has liberated not only economics, by pushing a pluralist agenda, but also Marxism itself, as class—being one but by no means the single or most important aspect of society—should not be used to silence other processes such as gender or race in society.
In his own reading of the book, as well as his response to the comments by Ruccio and Biewener, Yahya Madra elaborates on the concept of entry point in Wolff and Resnick's work. He argues that, far from keeping a “relativist distance” from different positions, Wolff and Resnick's position in fact pushes theorists to explain their choices. Madra claims that their theory of subjectivity, locating the many determinations of the past and present and thus always changing and hence in need of being recovered, marks a radical break from the theoretical humanisms of the field. He concludes that the impacts of the work have been profound and diverse, among which has been the breaking down of the omnipresence of a Capitalism that has played a significant role in the defeatist politics of the Left in the past. By pointing to a heterogeneous economy comprising not only capitalist but also noncapitalist class relations, we tear up the veil that has covered our eyes for many decades, opening possibilities for the future but also pointing to the future that exists in the current environment already. Revolutions do not always belong to the future but may already be happening here and now. Communism does not always belong to the future but may well be here with us—for instance, in the form of the London Symphony Orchestra, as Mulder reminds us.
If the existence of communist class processes has to do, among other things, with people's ability to control their own life circumstances, the next article is a reminder of a contrasting situation in which people's inability to transform their lives has had tragic consequences. Japan has one of the highest suicide rates in the world. Tony Mckenna, in his “The Suicide Forest: A Marxist Analysis of the High Suicide Rate in Japan,” provides us with a class-analytic backdrop to this phenomenon. While it is true that neither Shinto nor Buddhism, the two religions practiced in Japan, condemns suicide in the way Abrahamic religions do, Mckenna believes that there are additional factors, and for these he draws on Durkheim's distinction between regulation—as the “extent and intensity of external rules imposed on the individual”—and integration—as the “inward internalization of the mores and ethical life of society”—and places them in the context of the particularity of Japanese capitalism, with an economic system that was transformed along capitalist lines over the course of the Meiji Revolution while yet leaving the political culture of the feudal class intact. Capitalism, Mckenna notes, requires a high level of regulation, while older social forms encourage integration, but the peculiarity of the Japanese model of capitalism has exposed its citizens to contradictory influences: excessive regulation and a lack of integration on the one hand while on the other hand there remain relics of excessive integration in the form of shafu, “company spirit.” These pressures prove unbearable for many, who end their suffering by killing themselves. Marx's vivid depiction of the violence of early capitalism is often identified with the developing countries of today, but the violence capitalism inflicts is varied and is also part of life in advanced countries, as Mckenna's article clearly demonstrates.
In yet another piece that reflects on the cruelty meted out by the changing forms of capitalism, Jan Rehmann analyzes U.S. incarceration rates—which have skyrocketed from the late 1970s onward—in an article entitled “Hypercarceration: A Neoliberal Response to ‘Surplus Population.’” Rehmann is struck with the observation of what he calls a paradox of neoliberalism: while emphasizing the centrality of individual freedom, neoliberalism has built a massive bureaucratic system whose function is to deprive large sections of the population—disproportionately comprised of people of color—of their personal freedom. With the dismantling of the welfare state in the neoliberal era, with subsequent deindustrialization leading to an increase in what Marx called the “surplus population,” and with an onslaught against the achievements of the civil rights movement, Rehmann's argument explains that the increase in mass incarceration is a response to increased social insecurity more than it is to criminal insecurity. Those among the exhausted, marginalized, indebted classes—the “precariat”—are increasingly the main targets of the regime of incarceration under neoliberal capitalism, not only as the economic and political outcome of the policies of the last three decades but also as “theater” that threatens and fascinates its audiences at the same time.
As demonstrated by the first of two book reviews in this issue, the exceptional influence of Antonio Gramsci on Marxism and other schools of thought can be said to be growing over time. Gramsci perhaps more than any other Marxist thinker has proved resilient to the neoliberal onslaught, proving the relevance of his work in multitudinous ways. Mursed Alam and Anindya Sekhar Purakayastha review Massimo Modonesi's book, Subalternity, Antagonism, and Autonomy: Constructing the Political Subject, which is the fourth text to appear in Pluto Press's Reading Gramsci series. Modonesi, as Alam and Purakayastha explain, provides an explication of the concepts of subalternity, antagonism, and autonomy, drawing from the work of Gramsci, Antonio Negri, Cornelius Castoriadis, and Henry Claude Lefort so as to provide a conceptual synthesis for understanding contemporary subalternity and resistance movements. As Alam and Purakayastha explain, Modonesi provides a scathing critique of subaltern studies’ deradicalization of Gramsci's theoretical core, positing a post-Marxist understanding of subalternity. In returning to a Gramscian understanding of subalternity, Modonesi argues that all classes that are subservient to capital are subaltern, as subalternity constitutes the processes of everyday experience. Overall, Alam and Purakayastha argue that Modonesi provides a conceptual nexus for understanding processes of political subjectivation, resistance, and emancipation.
In this issue's second review, Manuel S. Almeida examines Norberto Bobbio's (1909–2004) posthumously published Scritti su Marx: Dialettica, stato, società civile. Bobbio was one of Italy's leading political theorists and philosophers during the twentieth century, writing on democracy, liberalism, liberty, ethics, and the political divide between the Left and the Right, among other topics. This anthology brings together Bobbio's unpublished works on Marx. Though Bobbio was not a Marxist, Almeida argues that this collection provides an important addition to Bobbio's oeuvre, for it represents his critical engagement with Marx, Marxism, and Marxists. Bobbio's oeuvre is a powerful reminder to Marxists that engagement with non-Marxisms is an imperative whose theoretical and political importance is growing in time.
Finally, with this issue we would like to thank Peter Tamas, who has been a member of the RM editorial board since 2008. In addition to his editorial work, Peter was instrumental in setting up the RM and AESA websites. We wish him well in his future endeavors. We would also like to welcome Claude Misukiewicz and Cecilia Rio, two longtime AESA members, to the editorial board. We are thrilled to have you.
—The Editors |
