Historical Materialism, Volume 18, Number 4, 2010

Historical Materialism 18 (2010) 3–38 brill.nl/hima Exploring Working-Class Consciousness: A Critique of the Theory of...

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Historical Materialism 18 (2010) 3–38

brill.nl/hima

Exploring Working-Class Consciousness: A Critique of the Theory of the ‘Labour-Aristocracy’* Charles Post Borough of Manhattan Community College City University of New York [email protected]

Abstract The notion of the labour-aristocracy is one of the oldest Marxian explanations of working-class conservatism and reformism. Despite its continued appeal to scholars and activists on the Left, there is no single, coherent theory of the labour-aristocracy. While all versions argue workingclass conservatism and reformism reflects the politics of a privileged layer of workers who share in ‘monopoly’ super-profits, they differ on the sources of those super-profits: national dominance of the world-market in the nineteenth century (Marx and Engels), imperialist investments in the ‘colonial world’/global South (Lenin and Zinoviev), or corporate monopoly in the twentieth century (Elbaum and Seltzer). The existence of a privileged layer of workers who share monopoly super-profits with the capitalist class cannot be empirically verified. This essay presents evidence that British capital’s dominance of key-branches of global capitalist production in the Victorian period, imperialist investment and corporate market-power can not explain wage-differentials among workers globally or nationally, and that relatively well-paid workers have and continue to play a leading rôle in radical and revolutionary working-class organisations and struggles. An alternative explanation of working-class radicalism, reformism, and conservatism will be the subject of a subsequent essay. Keywords labour-aristocracy, imperialism, class-consciousness, monopoly, competition, wage-differentials

* The author would like to thank Robert Brenner, Sheila Cohen, Sam Farber, Mike Parker, Jane Slaughter, Teresa Stern, and Charles Williams for their comments on earlier drafts of this essay. Special thanks to Kim Moody and Anwar Shaikh for their general comments and their help with obtaining data on the weight of foreign direct investment in world- and US-investment (Moody) and on the US-profits earned abroad as a percentage of total US-profits and domestic US-wages (Shaikh). I am also grateful for the insightful comments and suggestions on an earlier draft from the editorial board of Historical Materialism, and for comments from four reviewers for the journal (Colin Barker and David Camfield, who identified themselves, and two others who remained anonymous). Finally, I would like to acknowledge the Office of Academic Affairs, Borough of Manhattan Community College-CUNY, for a faculty publication-grant that allowed me to revise this article for publication. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011

DOI: 10.1163/156920610X550596

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C. Post / Historical Materialism 18 (2010) 3–38

In the past fifteen years, there has been a resurgence of working-class resistance in the developed capitalist social formations. After nearly twenty years of employer- and government-attacks on wages, hours, working conditions and social-welfare provisions, workers in the industrialised world have begun to fight back. Starting with the French public-sector strikes against pensionreforms in 1995, through the general strikes that swept the rest of Europe and Canada in the late 1990s, to the victory of the student-worker coalition’s struggle against the French youth-employment law in 2006 and factoryoccupations against lay-offs, broad layers of workers have begun to challenge neo-liberalism in the heartlands of global capitalism. Even US-workers, often considered the least radical and militant in the industrialised world, launched a number of struggles in the 1990s – the Staley, Caterpillar and Bridgestone/ Firestone strikes of 1994–6, the GM parts-workers strike of 1996, the United Parcel Service strike of 1997, the New York City transport-workers strike of 2005, and the 2008 sit-down strike at Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago.1 Despite these manifestations of militant resistance, reformist and even outright conservative politics still grip the majority of workers in the global North. The broad outlines of Marxist theory tell us that capitalism creates it own gravediggers – a class of collective producers with no interest in the maintenance of private ownership of the means of production. The capitalist system’s drive to maximise profits should force workers to struggle against their employers, progressively broaden their struggle, and eventually overthrow the system and replace it with their democratic self-rule. Historical reality seems to challenge these basic Marxist ideas. While living and working conditions for workers in the global North have deteriorated sharply since the late 1960s, the result has not been, for the most part, the growth of revolutionary consciousness and organisation. Instead, we have seen reactionary ideas – racism, sexism, homophobia, nativism, militarism – strengthened in a significant sector of workers in the advanced capitalist countries. Since the late 1970s, nearly one-third of voters in US unionhouseholds have voted for right-wing Republicans.2 Explaining this paradox has been a crucial challenge for Marxists. For the past half-century, a widely accepted explanation of working-class conservatism has been the ‘dominant-ideology’ thesis. Put simply, the control by the capitalist class of various ‘ideological apparatuses’ – the schools and media, most importantly – has led the working class and other subordinate groupings 1. Ashby and Hawkins 2009; Kutalik 2006; Moody 2007. 2. New York Times 2004.


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to actively embrace conservative capitalist ideologies. In the work of ‘neo-Gramscian’ thinkers (whose ideas have little relationship to that of the Italian revolutionary), ruling-class ideological hegemony equals the acceptance of capitalist ideas by the vast majority of the exploited and oppressed. In the past two decades, the ‘hegemony/dominant-ideology’ thesis has been subjected to devastating and convincing criticisms.3 Recently, an older explanation of working-class conservatism has been revived among radical thinkers in the global North – the theory of the labouraristocracy. In the past decade, scholars and activists have again argued that super-profits, derived from either imperialist investment in the global South or corporate monopoly, and shared with a segment of the working class, is the source of enduring working-class racism and conservatism in the US and other industrialised capitalist societies. Rod Bush’s study of black nationalism in the US uses the theory of the labour-aristocracy to explain the persistence of white working-class racism: In the core zones (the so-called developed countries of North America, Western Europe, and Japan), which by definition has captured a disproportionate share of the benefits of the system, the upper stratum of the working class has often united with the petty bourgeoisie seeking upward mobility, while taking a defensive position toward the lower working class (as well as other low-ranking groups throughout the world-system).4

Important groups of activists, in particular those working with low-wage workers, are also drawn to the theory of the labour-aristocracy. Four members of People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER), a workers’ centre organising mostly ‘low-wage/no-wage’ workers of colour in the San-Francisco area, argued that: Another feature of imperialism that distinguishes it from earlier eras of capitalism is the imperialist powers’ creation of a ‘labor aristocracy.’ The dominant position of the imperialist nations allows these nations to extract super-profits. The ruling elite of imperialist nations use some of the super-profits to make significant economic and political concessions to certain sectors of that nation’s working class. Through higher wages, greater access to consumer goods and services and expanded social wage such as public education and cultural institutions, the imperialist elite are able to essentially bribe those sections of the working class. . . . 3. Abercrombie, Hill and Turner 1980; Scott 1985, Chapter 8. While Abercrombie, Hill and Turner present a devastating critique of the ‘dominant-ideology’ thesis, they concede – incorrectly in our assessment – that the dominant ideology partially incorporates the working class in ‘late capitalism’. 4. Bush 1999, p. 19.

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C. Post / Historical Materialism 18 (2010) 3–38 For a contemporary example of this, all we have to do is look at the 2004 presidential elections. Statistics show that working class whites in the United States voted overwhelmingly for George W. Bush in an election that could be read as a referendum of the empire’s war on the Iraqi people. An analysis that solely focuses on class would suggest that working class whites had and have an interest in opposing a war that, if nothing else, is costing them billions in dollars. But clearly that ain’t what happened. Working class whites voted overwhelmingly in support of the war on the Iraqi people. The majority of working class whites, despite their own exploitation, tie their own interests to white supremacy and the dominance of ‘America’ in the world.5

A major problem in the assessment of this theory – and perhaps one of its appeals – is that there is no unified theory of the labour-aristocracy among Marxists. Thirty-five years ago, Gareth Stedman-Jones noted:6 In most Marxist writing, the use of this idea [the labour-aristocracy – C.P.] has been ambiguous and unsatisfactory. Its status is uncertain and it has been employed at will, descriptively, polemically or theoretically, without ever finding a firm anchorage. . . . [T]he term has often been used as if it provided an explanation, without ever finding a firm anchorage. . . . But it would be more accurate to say that it pointed toward a vacant area where an explanation should be. . . . Indicative of its lack of precision is the elasticity of the stratum of the working class referred to. . . . The methods by which the labour aristocratic strata are said to have been bought off have been almost as various as the personnel included within it . . .7

Despite its diverse forms, all of the variants of the labour-aristocracy thesis agree on two key-points. First, working-class conservatism is the result of material differences – relative privileges – enjoyed by some workers. Workers who embrace racism, nativism, sexism, homophobia and pro-imperialist patriotism tend to be those who earn higher wages, experience more secure employment, and have access to health-care, pensions and other forms of the social wage.8 Second, the source of this relative privilege (‘the bribe’) is a sharing of higher-than-average profits between capitalists and a privileged labour-aristocracy.

5. Browne, Franco, Negron-Gonzales and Williams 2005, p. 46. 6. Stedman-Jones 1975, pp. 61–2. 7. Similar criticisms are made in Barbalet 1987, McLennan 1981, Moorehouse 1978 and Moorehouse 1981. 8. The social wage is provided, either through state-administered social-welfare programmes, as in most advanced capitalist societies, or through collectively-bargained ‘private welfare-states’ within unionised industries in the US.


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The three main variants of the labour-aristocracy thesis differ in their identification of the source of these ‘monopoly super-profits’. The first version, presented in a series of letters by Marx and Engels,9 argues that British capitalists accrued higher-than-average profits from their ‘industrial monopoly’ in the world-market of the mid-nineteenth century. These super-profits allowed British capitalists to recognise the skilled workers’ craft-unions and accept their restrictive apprenticeship-practices, which, in turn, enabled the labour-aristocracy to secure a rôle in supervising less-skilled workers, higherthan-average wages, and more-secure employment. In the early-twentieth century, Lenin10 and Zinoviev11 put forward the second version, arguing that a minority of well-paid workers in the industrialised countries shared the super-profits their capitalists derived from the exploitation of low-wage workers in the ‘colonial world’. The most recent version of the theory12 recognises that the volume of profits derived from imperialist investment in the global South are insufficient to explain differences in wages, benefits and job-security among workers in the global North. Instead, they locate the source of the relative privilege in super-profits derived from the workings of ‘monopoly-capitalism’. From this perspective, the higher-than-average profits earned by monopolistic corporations are shared with their workers, at the expense of workers in smaller, more-competitive firms. The theory of the labour-aristocracy is neither a theoretically rigorous nor factually realistic explanation of working-class reformism or conservatism. We will begin by examining the three variants of the labour-aristocracy thesis – the Marx-Engels theory from the mid-nineteenth century, the Lenin-Zinoviev version from the early-twentieth century, and the Elbaum-Seltzer variant from the 1980s. Our critique, which incorporates earlier Marxist arguments,13 begins with an evaluation of the claim that British capitalists’ global industrial dominance allowed the emergence of craft-unionism and a privileged layer of skilled workers in Victorian Britain. We then examine the argument that super-profits extracted from workers in the global South underwrite a bribe in the form of higher wages for a minority of the working class in the global North. Finally, we assess the claim that limits on competition flowing from industrial concentration in key-sectors of the economy produce super-profits that are shared as higher wages with unionised workers. Our critique of the 9. Strauss 2004a presents a useful summary of Engels’s writings. 10. Lenin 1970 and 1974. 11. Zinoviev 1983–4. 12. Elbaum and Seltzer 1982 and 2004. 13. See Tony Cliff (Cliff 1957), Samuel Friedman (Friedman 1983), Marc Linder (Linder 1985), Ernest Mandel (Mandel 1984) and H.F. Moorehouse (Moorehouse 1978 and 1981).

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theory of the labour-aristocracy ends with a brief review of the actual history of radical working-class activism in the twentieth century.

The labour-aristocracy thesis I – Marx and Engels For Marx and Engels, the English working class of the early-nineteenth century had produced the model of a class-conscious labour-movement. Blending together Jacobin democratic-political radicalism and workplace-militancy, the English working class had ‘made itself ’ – moving from illegal workplace-union organisation to Chartism, the first, independent, working-class political movement – in less than fifty years.14 The defeat of Chartism in the late 1840s issued in a period of working-class retreat and conservatism – ‘the un-making of the British working class’.15 By the late 1850s, Marx and Engels were trying to explain how and why the most revolutionary working class in Europe had become its most conservative in the course of a decade. In a series of letters between themselves and their supporters, Marx and Engels grappled with the growing conservatism of the British workers’ movement – the dominance of unions of skilled workers which were indifferent, if not openly hostile, to the organisation of the unskilled majority of the working class, and the craft-unions’ support for the capitalist Liberal Party rather than an independent socialist or workers’ party. In an 1885 essay, which was incorporated into new prefaces to his classic The Condition of the Working Class in England, Engels argued that the roots of the growing conservatism of the British labour-movement was the emergence of a labour-aristocracy of skilled workers in cotton-textiles, iron, steel and machine-making.16 He argued that these workers had been able to establish craft-unions, regulate the labourmarket through apprenticeship-programmes, and secure higher wages and stable employment. British capitalists’ dominance of the world-economy – their monopoly of industrial production on a world-scale in the third quarter of the nineteenth century – produced super-profits that allowed them to concede relatively higher wages and employment-security to a small minority of workers. The resulting relative privilege, especially when compared with the 14. Thompson 1963 details this process. 15. Moorhouse 1978, p. 61. 16. Engels 1892. Corr and Brown make two important points about Marx and Engels’s discussion of the labour-aristocracy. First, both Marx and Engels, despite their criticisms of the British craft-union leaders, were defenders of trade-unions and strikes – unlike most contemporary socialists. Second, while Marx tended to use the term ‘labour-aristocracy’ in a descriptive fashion, Engels attempted to provide an analytical basis – Britain’s ‘industrial monopoly’ – for the concept after Marx’s death in 1883 (Corr and Brown 1993, pp. 39–45).


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mass of poorly-paid workers who faced recurring bouts of unemployment, explained the growing conservatism of the British labour-movement. In the 1950s, Eric Hobsbawm produced a detailed, empirical study of the labour-aristocracy in nineteenth-century Britain.17 While not explicitly addressing Engels’s claims that British industrial capital’s dominance of the world-market allowed the consolidation of a layer of relatively well-paid and securely employed workers, Hobsbawm traces the development of a new labour-aristocracy of skilled workers in the second half of the nineteenth century. Older, pre-industrial crafts mechanised or experienced ‘subcontracting, putting-out and general sweating’, throwing the mass of the artisanal craftsmen into the ranks of the unskilled. A new layer of skilled workers in new industries such as cotton-textiles and metal-working ‘where machinery was imperfect and depended on some significant manual skill’18 emerged. It was these workers who were best able to establish exclusivist craftunions that used apprenticeship ‘to make their labour artificially scarce, by restricting entry to their profession’.19 Apprenticeships and other exclusionary practices allowed the labour-aristocrats to secure higher wages and more-stable employment. The relative privilege of the craft-workers in textiles and metalworking, achieved at the expense of less-skilled workers, was the social base of ‘labour-Liberalism’. In the early 1970s, John Foster expanded on Hobsbawm’s analysis of the emergence of a labour-aristocracy of skilled industrial workers in nineteenthcentury Britain.20 Following Engels, Foster argues that the ‘liberalisation’ of British capitalist rule after the defeat of Chartism in the late 1840s was founded on Britain’s global economic dominance, including an increased export of capital-goods in the form of machinery.21 British capital’s industrial monopoly promoted a radical restructuring of production and the consolidation of a new skilled labour-aristocracy in the cotton-textile industry, machine-making and mining. These workers were not only better-paid and more-securely employed, but were partially integrated into capitalist management through their rôle in 17. Hobsbawm 1964. Corr and Brown point out that Hobsbawm’s work on the ‘labouraristocracy’ was intended to provide a Marxian alternative to the mainstream sociological literature of the 1950s and 1960s which argued that the workers in the industrialised capitalist societies had become ‘embourgeoisified’ by adopting the values and norms of the middle class (Corr and Brown 1993, pp. 54–7). 18. Hobsbawm 1964, pp. 282–3. 19. Hobsbawm 1964, pp. 290–1. 20. Foster 1974, Chapter 7. 21. Foster, at times, confuses the export of capital-goods (textile-machinery) with the export of capital – the internationalisation of capitalist social-property relations through productive investment.

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supervising less-skilled workers. In particular, the rôle of skilled machinists (‘engineers’), cotton-spinners and mining check-weightman as ‘pace-setters’ in production made them co-exploiters of labour with capital. The labouraristocrats preserved their economic position through craft-unionism, apprenticeship and the exclusion of the unskilled from the labour-movement. Their embrace of the capitalist Liberal Party went hand-in-hand with the consolidation of their economic privilege and their integration into the ‘cultural orbit of the bourgeoisie’22 through Church-attendance, adulteducation, consumer-cooperatives and temperance-societies.23

The labour-aristocracy thesis II – Lenin and Zinoviev V.I. Lenin and Gregory Zinoviev’s analysis of the crisis of European socialism during and immediately after World-War I produced a new version of the labour-aristocracy thesis. Lenin and Zinoviev were shocked when the leaders of the European socialist parties supported ‘their’ capitalist governments in the First World-War. The victory of ‘opportunism’ confounded Lenin and Zinoviev, who had written off ‘revisionism’ (Edward Bernstein’s challenge to classical Marxism in 1899) to the influence of the middle classes – downwardlymobile shopkeepers, artisans and intellectuals – in the workers’ movement. They believed the orthodox Marxist leadership of the socialist parties and unions had long ago vanquished the revisionist challenge. Both expected that the European socialist leaders would fulfil their pledge, ratified at numerous congresses of the Socialist International, to oppose their ruling class’s wardrive with strikes and social disruption. Lenin and Zinoviev revived Engels’s notion of the labour-aristocracy to explain the collapse of European socialism. While Britain’s industrial monopoly in the world-market had ended in the late-nineteenth century, the new imperialism – based on the export of capital, rather than commodities – produced a new labour-aristocracy. Lenin introduced his explanation for the victory of opportunism in the socialist and labour-movements in ‘The Collapse of the Second International’: The epoch of imperialism is one in which the world is divided among the ‘great’ privileged nations that oppress all other nations. Morsels of the loot obtained as a result of these privileges and this oppression undoubtedly fall to the share of

22. Foster 1974, p. 223. 23. Morris 1988 summarises historical research published after Foster’s that tends to support the latter’s claims.


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certain sections of the petty bourgeoisie and to the working-class aristocracy and bureaucracy.24

This segment ‘represents an infinitesimal minority of the proletariat and the working masses, form an insignificant minority of the proletariat and of the toiling masses’ whose ‘adherence . . . with the bourgeoisie against the mass of the proletariat alliance with their “own” national bourgeoisie, against the oppressed masses of all nations’ was the social basis of reformism and conservatism in the working class. Lenin located the economic foundation of the labour-aristocracy in the super-profits generated through imperialist investment in the ‘colonial’ world – Africa, Asia and Latin America, what we today refer to as the global South.25 According to his 1920 preface to Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism: Obviously, out of such enormous superprofits (since they are obtained over and above the profits which capitalists squeeze out of the workers of their ‘own’ country) it is possible to bribe the labour leaders and the upper stratum of the labour aristocracy. And that is just what the capitalists of the ‘advanced’ countries are doing: they are bribing them in a thousand different ways, direct and indirect, overt and covert. This stratum of workers-turned-bourgeois, or the labour aristocracy, who are quite philistine in their mode of life, in the size of their earnings and in their entire outlook, is the principal prop of the Second International, and in our days, the principal social (not military) prop of the bourgeoisie. For they are the real agents of the bourgeoisie in the working-class movement, the labour lieutenants of the capitalist class, real vehicles of reformism and chauvinism.26

Zinoviev, in a lengthy analysis of German Social Democracy, argued ‘it cannot be denied that for a certain minority of skilled workers, for the labor aristocracy, a few crumbs may fall off from the imperialist table’.27 The majority of the ranks of German Social Democracy, the largest working-class party in the world before 1914, came from this layer of well-paid, skilled industrial

24. Lenin 1974, p. 220. 25. Lenin recognised that the vast majority of the imperialist export of capital – foreign direct investment – flowed from one advanced capitalist country to other advanced capitalist countries in the early-twentieth century, as it does today. However, his theory of the labour-aristocracy argued that the source of the ‘bribe’ was the super-profits expropriated from workers in the ‘colonial’ societies. 26. Lenin 1970, p. 667. 27. Zinoviev 1983–4, p. 182.

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workers – who ‘served the big bourgeoisie as the best means of introducing bourgeois ideas into the laboring masses’.28 Neither Lenin nor Zinoviev reduced the imperialist ‘bribe’ to higher wages alone. Both pointed to greater security of employment, and greater access to cultural resources, education, and social benefits as key-elements of the relative privilege of the labour-aristocracy. These material privileges were derived, first and foremost, from the higher-than-average profits accrued from imperialist investments in the global South. While they focused on relatively well-paid skilled industrial workers and their craft-unions as the core of the labouraristocracy in the early-twentieth century, Lenin and Zinoviev recognised that the growing full-time officialdom of the mass Social-Democratic parties and unions were also an important source of reformism and conservatism in the working class. However, they believed that the growth of the labour-officialdom was another manifestation of capitalists sharing imperialist super-profits with a small minority of the working class.

The labour-aristocracy thesis III – Elbaum and Seltzer The Lenin-Zinoviev version of the labour-aristocracy theory, with its emphasis on capitalists and workers in the global North sharing the fruits of the superexploitation of workers in the global South, faced serious empirical challenge by the 1970s. On the one hand, there were major empirical problems (see below) with Lenin and Zinoviev’s claims that higher wages and more-secure employment for a significant minority of workers in the imperialist countries comes from the super-profits earned from the exploitation of lower-paid workers in Africa, Asia and Latin America. On the other hand, the labouraristocracy could not be restricted to the declining numbers of skilled industrial workers and their craft-unions in the advanced capitalist countries. In the early 1980s, Max Elbaum and Robert Seltzer attempted to salvage the theory of the labour-aristocracy by providing a new, and more sophisticated theoretical and historical foundation.29 Elbaum and Seltzer assert that the emergence of monopoly-capitalism allowed large corporations that dominate key-branches of industry to earn super-profits, which they share with their workers in the form of secure employment, higher wages and benefits. With the consolidation of monopoly-

28. Zinoviev 1983–4, p. 168. 29. Elbaum and Seltzer 1982 and 2004. Strauss 2004b presents the same argument as Elbaum and Seltzer.


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capitalism, almost all unionised workers employed by the large corporations became part of the labour-aristocracy: . . . significant numbers of US industrial workers have stood in a position of relative privilege vis-à-vis large numbers of other workers in other countries, but also to many workers in this country. In terms of stability of employment, wage levels, access to pensions and health care, etc., the general condition of industrial workers, especially those in monopoly industries, has been much better than the condition of workers in the marginal industries, in the retail trades and service sectors, the agricultural proletariat, and among the growing numbers of permanently unemployed and underemployed.30

Elbaum and Seltzer argue that, prior to the rise of large corporations in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, capitalism was in its competitive stage. Under competitive capitalism, most branches of industry saw a large number of relatively small firms competing with one another through pricecutting. If any particular firm or industry began to experience higher-thanaverage profits because of the introduction of new machinery, it was relatively easy for its competitors to either adopt the new technology or shift investment from industries with lower profits to industries with higher profits. Through this process of competition within and between branches of production, new technology was rapidly diffused and capital easily moved between different sectors of the economy, resulting in uniform technical conditions within an industry, and equal profit-rates within and between industries. According to Elbaum and Seltzer, Marx’s analysis of the equalisation of the rate of profit31 applied to the competitive stage of capitalism: In the era of competitive capitalism, profits above the average rate, i.e., surplus profits, were generally spasmodic and temporary. They were usually derived as a result of technological advances that enabled a capitalist to reduce costs below the industry average, or entrepreneurial skills that opened new markets. However, an abnormally high rate of profit by an individual firm, or in a particular branch of industry, was soon undermined by an inflow of capital seeking the higher rate of profit or by the relatively rapid adoption of cost-cutting innovations by competitors. 32

The rise of large-scale corporations in the twentieth century created obstacles to the equalisation of profit-rates. Oligopoly – where a small number of firms dominate a given industry – replaced competition. Specifically, the enormous 30. Elbaum and Seltzer 1982, p. 85. 31. Marx 1981, Part Two: ‘The Transformation of Profit into Average Profit’. 32. Elbaum and Seltzer 2004, p. 27, n. §.

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cost of new capital’s entering these industries (automobile-manufacture, steel, etc.) – the barriers to entry – allow these firms to limit competition and sustain above-average profits in several ways. These barriers to entry prevent the rapid diffusion of new methods of production within an industry and block the movement of capital from lower- to higher-profit industries, creating superprofits for the monopoly-corporations. Finally, barriers to entry and restricted competition allow corporations to raise prices above their prices of production, securing super-profits for the largest firms in the economy. Competition does not disappear under monopoly-capitalism, but tends to operate primarily in those sectors of the economy where large numbers of relatively small firms continue to predominate. Cut-throat competition and the rapid depression of above-average profits to the average rate persist in the competitive sectors (garment, electronics, etc.) of the economy. There, the small scale of investment necessary to start a competitive firm lowers barriers to entry and allows a large number of small firms to survive. The result is a ‘dual economy’, with two distinct profit-rates: In the monopoly stage of capitalism, the tendency to form an average rate of profit still exists, since monopoly doesn’t obliterate competition in the system as a whole. But it is modified by monopoly power. Therefore, the surplus value of society is distributed both according to size of capital through inter-industry competition (which yields equal profit on equal capital as in competitive capitalism); and according to the level of monopolization (which yields monopoly super-profits). Monopolies receive both the average profit and monopoly superprofit. Consequently, there arise the phenomena of a relatively permanent hierarchy of profit rates ranging from the highest in the strategic industries with large-scale production and the strongest monopolies, to the lowest in weaker industries with small-scale production, intense competition and market instability.33

The monopoly-industries’ higher than average profit-rates allow these firms to provide higher-than-average wages and benefits and secure employment for their workers. By contrast, competitive industries earn average (or belowaverage) profit-rates and doom workers in these industries to below-average wages and benefits, and insecure employment. According to Elbaum and Seltzer, unions in the monopoly-sector of the economy, where the absence of competition creates super-profits, negotiate a ‘bribe’ in the form of higher wages, more-secure employment, pensions, and 33. Elbaum and Seltzer 2004, p. 27, n. §. While Elbaum and Seltzer do not acknowledge the source of their theory of monopoly-capitalism, their arguments bear a close relationship to the theories found in Baran and Sweezy 1966, and Gordon, Edwards and Reich 1982.


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health-insurance. Given the realities of racism and national oppression, white workers tend to be over-represented in the monopoly-sector of the economy, while workers of colour tend to be over-represented in the competitive sector. The labour-aristocracy is no longer made up primarily of skilled industrial workers, as was the case in the early-twentieth century. For Elbaum and Seltzer, the more highly-paid workers in the unionised monopoly- and public-sector constitute a contemporary labour-aristocracy, whose higher wages derive from a sharing of higher-than-average profits with their own capitalists.34

British capital’s global ‘monopoly’ and craft-unionism One of the difficulties in evaluating the labour-aristocracy theory is the various forms the relative privileges of this stratum of the working class take historically. Engels, Hobsbawm, Foster, Lenin, Zinoviev, Elbaum and Seltzer are very clear that the ‘bribe’ – the sharing of super-profits between capitalists and the labour-aristocracy – does not merely take the form of higher wages, but greater job-security and access to pensions, health-care and the like. With the exception of wage-differentials, it is difficult to quantify these other forms of relative material privilege. Thus, our evaluation of all three variants of the labouraristocracy theory will focus on whether or not wage-differentials among workers in the advanced capitalist countries can be explained either by Britain’s dominance of key-branches of global production in the late-nineteenth century, by profits from investments in the global South, or by the degree of industrial concentration. The first problem with the claims that Britain’s dominance of global industrial production created a conservative labour-aristocracy after 1850 is the difficulty in establishing the forms of their relative privilege. Foster argues that a key-element of the labour-aristocracy’s relative privilege and conservatism was its rôle in production – that skilled workers in cotton-textiles, metalworking and mining collaborated with capital in setting the pace of labour for unskilled workers. Unfortunately, there is no evidence that the rôle of skilled workers as supervisors was a new development that could explain the emergence of a labour-aristocracy after 1850. Prior to 1830, skilled workers were supervisors and pace-makers in mining, pottery, iron-working, textiles and

34. Elbaum and Seltzer 1982 presents a fairly detailed discussion of the composition of the ‘labour-aristocracy’ in the US since the Second World-War, which is essentially the same as what Gordon, Edwards and Reich 1982 labels as the ‘primary labor market’ under monopolycapitalism.

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construction.35 While engineering workers in machine-building and metalworking acted as ‘pace-making’ supervisors of unskilled workers before the 1880s, the evidence for skilled textile-workers or miners acting as task-masters is much weaker.36 In mining, the ‘check-weight man’ position – a union-miner who, independently of management, determined the amount of coal that miners produced – was in no sense a supervisory position. In cotton-textiles, employers often hired entire households, assigning skilled adult men to supervise unskilled women and children from their household. After 1850, management sought to undermine the supervisory rôle of skilled workers and consolidate the power to direct workers in their own hands in both metalworking and cotton-textiles. For Engels and Hobsbawm, the ability of craft-unions to enforce apprenticeship was decisive to winning higher-than-average wages and greater employment-security.37 However, there is considerable evidence that even the strongest unions of skilled workers in cotton-textiles and metalworking were unable to maintain control over the training and supply of skilled labour in the second half of the nineteenth century. The technological transformation of the labour-process – the introduction of new and more complex machinery – and the resultant deskilling of labour, combined with employer-hostility to the craft-union’s ‘restrictive practices’, led to a radical decline in the portion of unions that maintained apprenticeships.38 By 1900, less than one per cent of all British unions maintained apprenticeshipprogrammes.39 Nor is there clear evidence that skilled workers’ higher-than-average wages translated into higher annual household-incomes and a stable place in the labour-aristocracy. Numerous authors point out that, while skilled workers in craft-unions did earn higher-than-average wages, craft-unions were unable to secure stable, year-round employment for all of their members.40 Nor were these unions able to preserve working conditions and pensions for their members, many of whom were ‘as much . . . as . . . the unskilled worker, at the 35. Corr and Brown 1993, pp. 64–5; Thompson 1964, pp. 243ff. 36. Stedman-Jones 1975, pp. 61–9; Moorehouse 1978, pp. 69–70, 72–3. 37. Moorehouse argues that the strength of apprenticeship-programmes was not a central element of Hobsbawm’s analysis (Moorehouse 1978, p. 67). However, Hobsbawm is very clear that apprenticeship was central to the higher wages and more secure employment enjoyed by the labour-aristocracy (Hobsbawm 1964, pp. 290ff.). 38. Linder 1985, pp. 48–56, 89–91; Pelling 1968. 39. Linder 1985, p. 53. Matsumura’s 1983 study of lead-crystal (‘flint’) glassmakers in the mid-nineteenth century demonstrates that the successful defence of apprenticeship relied on employers’ inability to introduce new machinery that effectively deskilled labour. 40. Linder 1985, pp. 93–8; Moorehouse 1978, pp. 67–8; Pelling 1968.


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mercy of injury, unemployment and old age’.41 Studies of late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century working-class family-structure in Britain conclude that periodic unemployment and frequent short-range social mobility in and out of skilled employment make it impossible to identify a durable layer of labour-aristocrats.42 There is also considerable evidence that the wage-differentials enjoyed by skilled workers were declining in the 1870s and 1880s. Firstly, wages for all workers in British industry, skilled and unskilled, fell throughout the 1870s and 1880s. Secondly, wage-differentials between and within industries were also declining in this period. On the one hand, wage-differentials between industries declined as large numbers of workers shifted from ‘sweated’ nonmechanised trades to mechanised industries. On the other hand, wagedifferentials within industries also abated, as the numbers of female and juvenile workers employed in less-skilled work shrank. In sum, there is little evidence of a relatively permanent layer of workers in Britain in the latenineteenth century who enjoyed durable higher wages and employmentsecurity.43 Finally, there is little empirical evidence that British capital’s dominance of global industrial production explains the wage-differentials – no matter how fleeting and temporary – skilled workers enjoyed in the cotton-textiles and metal-working industries.44 Britain’s relative domination of the world-market ends in 1870 – at the very height of the purported political and ideological influence of the British labour-aristocracy over the British working class. After 1870, US- and German producers successfully challenged British domination in consumer-goods, iron- and steel-production, machine-making, and shipand railroad-building. More importantly, British industry’s profits from exports cannot account for the average wage-differentials of skilled metalworkers. The profits earned through the export of British machinery divided by the number of skilled metal-workers ‘would not have amounted to the average weekly wage of an engineer in Manchester in 1871’.45 Looking at the total profits from British foreign investment in 1867, Linder concludes: If the assumption is once again made that one-quarter of this amount would have been available for redistribution to a labor aristocracy, little more than eight pounds sterling would have accrued to each labor aristocrat in England and

41. 42. 43. 44. 45.

Moorehouse 1978, p. 67. Thompson 1978, pp. 125–34. Linder 1985, pp. 61–2, 89–93. Linder 1985, pp. 70–5, 78–80. Linder 1985, p. 80.

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C. Post / Historical Materialism 18 (2010) 3–38 Wales. This sum would have represented approximately one-eighth of such a worker’s annual income and even less of total family income.46

The wage-differentials that did exist, on the basis of skill and between different branches of industry, were not unique to nineteenth-century British capitalism and can be explained without reference to a purported ‘industrial monopoly’. Wage-differentials between skilled and unskilled labour is a ‘permanent feature of the labor market under capitalism’.47 The value of the production and reproduction of skilled labour-power is greater than that of unskilled labourpower, due to the greater time and human labour required to train skilled workers. Thus, wage-differentials between skilled and unskilled workers are a feature of all capitalist industries and societies, no matter what the relative competitive position of an individual capitalist or a group of national capitalists. Similarly, different levels of labour-productivity explain intra-industry wagedifferentials – in particular between industries with different levels of mechanisation. As Linder argues, ‘rising productivity and hence profits appear to offer a much more plausible interpretation of branch-specific higher wages’.48 In fact, most profit and wage-differentials that are attributed to ‘monopoly’ in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries are the product of capitalist competition creating different levels of mechanisation within and between industries.

Imperialist investment, wages, and profits Over thirty years ago, Ernest Mandel rejected the Lenin-Zinoviev variant of the labour-aristocracy theory.49 He noted that profits earned by US-based transnational corporations in the global South ‘constitutes a negligible sum compared to the total wage bill of the American working class’. Has ‘globalisation’ and the growth of direct transnational investment in the global South changed the volume of profits from these investments? Do higher-thanaverage profits from investments in Africa, Asia and Latin America account for wage-differentials among workers in the industrialised countries today? Imperialist investment, particularly in the global South, represents a tiny portion of global capitalist investment even today, in the era of globalisation.50 Foreign direct investment made up only 5% of total world-investment prior to 2000 – 95% of total capitalist investment took place within the boundaries 46. 47. 48. 49. 50.

Linder 1985, p. 81. Field 1978–9, p. 70. Linder 1985, p. 80. Mandel 1984, p. 19. Moody 1997, Part I; Moody 2002; Moody 2004.


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of each industrialised country. Nearly three-quarters of total foreign direct investment flowed from one industrialised country – one part of the global North – to another. Less than 2% of total world-investment flowed from the global North to the global South. It is not surprising that the global South accounted for only 20% of global manufacturing output, mostly in labourintensive industries such as clothing, shoes, automobile-parts, and simple electronics. The rapid growth of transnational corporate investment in China in the last decade has changed this picture, but only slightly. Foreign direct investment as a percentage of global gross fixed-capital formation jumped from 2.5% in 1982, to 4.1% in 1990 to 9.7% in 2005. The percentage of foreign direct investment flowing to the global North fell from 82.5% in 1990 to 59.4% in 2005. However, the global South still only accounts for less than 4% of global fixed-capital formation.51 While China has led the growth of transnational capital-accumulation, the bulk of the capital invested in China remains in labour-intensive manufacturing – the low and medium end of transnationalcorporate organised global-production chains.52 Data for profits earned by US-companies overseas do not distinguish between investments in the global North and global South. For purposes of approximation, we will assume that the 25% of US-foreign direct investment in labour-intensive manufacturing in Africa, Asia and Latin America prior to 2005 earned profit-rates above those earned on the 75% of US-foreign direct investment in more capital-intensive production in Western Europe, Canada and Japan. However, it is unlikely that the profit-rate on investments in the global South is more than double that in the global North. If that were the case, much more of foreign direct investment would flow consistently to the global South. It is not unreasonable to assume that no more than half of the profits earned abroad by US-companies are earned in the global South. Assigning 50% of foreign profits of US-companies to their investments in the global South probably biases the data in favour of claims that these profits constitute a significant source of total US-wages. Even accepting such a biased estimate, the data in Table I and Graph I indicate that Mandel’s assertion that profits earned from investment in the global South make up a tiny fraction of the total wages of workers in the global North continues to be true. Total profits earned by US-companies abroad exceeded 4% of total US-wages only once before 1995 – in 1979. Foreign profits as a percentage of total US-wages rose above 5% only in 1997, 51. World Bank 2006, pp. 296–99. 52. Hart-Landsberg and Burkett 2006.

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Table I: Foreign profits as percentage of total US-profits and domestic US-wages, 1948–2003 Year

1948 1949 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975

Foreign Profits as % of Total US-profits

Foreign Profits as % of US-wages

Year

Foreign Profits as % of Total US-profits

Foreign Profits as % of US-wages

5.69% 5.73% 5.19% 5.57% 6.15% 6.07% 6.50% 6.14% 7.44% 7.95% 7.56% 6.42% 7.51% 7.77% 7.56% 7.55% 7.50% 7.00% 6.43% 6.93% 7.51% 9.01% 11.37% 10.86% 11.50% 15.91% 20.75% 14.89%

1.87% 1.80% 1.82% 1.92% 1.87% 1.72% 1.82% 2.01% 2.15% 2.16% 1.89% 1.89% 1.99% 2.04% 2.13% 2.20% 2.26% 2.23% 1.98% 1.95% 2.05% 2.11% 2.17% 2.30% 2.50% 3.30% 3.47% 2.91%

1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003

14.24% 13.73% 14.96% 22.59% 26.43% 19.40% 20.72% 17.93% 16.35% 16.02% 17.39% 18.36% 19.06% 21.00% 22.37% 20.15% 19.28% 19.12% 19.80% 21.06% 20.36% 20.98% 21.04% 24.23% 30.12% 30.56% 28.74% 29.70%

3.01% 3.03% 3.22% 4.16% 3.90% 3.06% 2.83% 3.00% 3.03% 2.87% 2.82% 3.18% 3.60% 3.60% 3.66% 3.35% 3.29% 3.57% 3.93% 4.59% 4.78% 5.08% 4.33% 4.85% 5.12% 4.55% 5.11% 6.04%

Sources: Corporate Profits from NIPA Tables 6–16 B-D: line 2, Domestic Industries; line 6, Receipts from Rest of the World; Employee Compensation from NIA Table 1.13, line 6, Compensation of Employees.

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Graph I: Foreign Profits as Percentage of Total US-Profits and Domestic US-Wages, 1948–2003 35.00% 30.00%

Foreign Profit as % of Total U.S. Profits US-Profits

25.00% 20.00% 15.00% 10.00% Foreign Profit as % of Domestic Wages

5.00% 0.00% 1948

1954

1960

1966

1972

1978

1984

1990

1996

2002

Sources: Corporate Profits from NIPA Tables 6–16 B-D: line 2, Domestic Industries; line 6, Receipts from Rest of the World; Employee Compensation from NIA Table 1.13, line 6, Compensation of Employees.

2000 and 2002, and rose slightly over 6% in 2003. If we hold to our estimate that half of total foreign profits are earned from investment in the global South, only 1–2% of total US-wages for most of the nearly fifty years prior to 1995 – and only 2–3% of total US-wages in the 1990s – came from profits earned in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Such proportions are hardly sufficient to explain the 37% wage-differential between secretaries in advertising agencies and machinists working on oil-pipelines, or the 64% wage-differential between janitors in restaurants and bars and automobile-workers.53 What is the impact of imperialist investment in the global South on profits and wages in the global North? In the third volume of Capital, Marx recognised that foreign investment was one of a number of ‘countervailing’ tendencies to the decline of the rate of profit.54 Put simply, the export of capital from the global North to the global South, especially when invested in productionprocesses that are more labour-intensive than those found in the advanced capitalist countries, tends to raise the mass and rate of profit in the North. 53. Osburn 2000, p. 36, Table I. 54. Marx 1981, Chapter 14, Section 5.

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Table II: Annual percentage change domestic and foreign US-profits, 1949–2003 Year

Change Domestic Profits

Change Foreign Profits

Year

Change Domestic Profits

Change Foreign Profits

1949 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976

–7% 20% 12% –6% 1% –3% 22% –5% –1% –10% 24% –6% 1% 14% 8% 10% 14% 7% –3% 6% –7% –19% 16% 11% 2% –19% 24% 19%

–6% 11% 18% 4% 0% 4% 17% 15% 6% –16% 9% 11% 5% 11% 8% 9% 7% –2% 5% 14% 13% 8% 11% 17% 33% 14% –14% 14%

1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003

16% 9% –13% –20% 23% –13% 25% 20% 4% –6% 12% 14% –7% –1% 6% 9% 13% 10% 12% 13% 9% –9% 0% –18% –13% 19% 14%

12% 18% 32% 3% –15% –4% 11% 11% 1% 4% 17% 18% 5% 7% –7% 4% 12% 14% 19% 9% 12% –8% 17% 13% –11% 11% 18%

Source: Corporate Profits from NIPA Tables 6–16 B-D: line 2, Domestic Industries; line 6, Receipts from Rest of the World.


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There is some evidence that foreign profits – from investments in both the global North and global South – constitute an important counter-tendency to declining profits in the US. Profits earned abroad by US-companies as a percentage of total US-profits (Table I and Graph I) have risen fairly steadily since 1948, rising from a low of 5.19% in 1950 to a high of 30.56% in 2000.55 The proportion of US-profits earned abroad jumped sharply after the onset of the long-wave of stagnation in 1966, jumping from 6.43% in 1966 to 18.36% in 1986. Even more indicative is the relationship between annual percentagechanges in domestic and foreign US-profits (Table II). In a number of years (1967–70, 1972–4, 1978–80, 1986–90, 1994–5, 1997–2001, 2003), the annual percentage-change for foreign profits was higher than the annual percentage-change for domestic profits. In some of these years (1967, 1969– 70, 1974, 1979–80, 1989, 1998, 2000–1), total profits earned in the US declined while total profits earned abroad increased. Higher profits result in higher rates of investment across the economy in the industrialised countries. More investment eventually brings a growing demand for labour (within limits set by investment in newer, more capitalintensive technology), falling unemployment and rising wages for all workers in the industrialised capitalist countries. Put simply, imperialist investment in the global South benefits all workers in the global North – both ‘aristocratic’ steel, automobile, machine-making, trucking and construction-workers, and lowly-paid clerical, janitorial, garment- and food-processing workers as well. As Ernest Mandel put it, ‘the real “labor aristocracy” is no longer constituted inside the proletariat of an imperialist country but rather by the proletariat of the imperialist countries as a whole’.56 The real labour-aristocracy includes poorly-paid immigrant-janitors and garment-workers, African-American and Latino poultry-workers, as well as the multi-racial workforce in automobilemanufacture and trucking.57 55. Clearly, US-corporations earn above-average profits on these investments. However, these higher-than-average profits are the result of the combination of low wages and labour-intensive techniques common in the global South, rather than the transnationals’ monopolistic position in the world-market. 56. Mandel 1984, p. 19. 57. Some exponents of the labour-aristocracy thesis have argued that ‘unequal exchange’ – the ability of firms in the global North to obtain raw materials, components, consumer-goods (clothing, electronics, etc.) and foodstuffs from the global South below their value – is the basis of the ‘imperialist bribe’ to the ‘labour-aristocracy’ of the advanced capitalist countries. Specifically, they argue that ‘unequal exchange’ lowers the cost of inputs (raw materials, components), elevates profit-rates in the North by lowering the cost of inputs (raw materials, components), and reduces the cost of food and consumer-goods, increasing the living standard of some workers (Emmanuel 1972). The question of ‘unequal exchange’ in the capitalist worldeconomy involves a variety of theoretical and technical-measurement questions which are beyond

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Clearly, these benefits accruing to the entire working class of the industrialised countries from imperialist investment are neither automatic nor evenly distributed. Rising profits and increased investment does not necessarily lead to higher wages for workers in the absence of effective working-class organisation and struggle. During the post-World-War II long wave of expansion, the industrial unions that emerged during the mass-strike wave of 1934–7 were able to secure rising real wages, both for their own members and the bulk of the unorganised working classes. However, since 1973, the labour-movement in the US and the rest of the industrial countries has been in retreat. In the US today, real wages for both union- and non-union workers have fallen, and are about 11% below their 1973 level, despite strong growth beginning in the mid 1980s.58 Higher-than-average profits have accrued, first and foremost, to capital, allowing increased investment; and to the professional-managerial middle class in the form of higher salaries. Nor are the benefits of increased profitability and growth due to imperialist investment distributed equally to all portions of the working class. As we will see below, capitalist competition produces and reproduces wage-differentials within the working class in the global North. The racial-national and gender-structuring of the labour-market results in women and workers of colour being concentrated in the labourintensive and low-wage sectors of the economy. The benefits all workers in the global North reap from imperialist investment in the global South are clearly outweighed by the deleterious effects of the expansion of capitalist production on a world-scale. This is especially clear today, in the era of neoliberal globalisation. Contrary to the claims of Hardt and Negri,59 industry is not ‘footloose and fancy-free’ – moving from one country to another in search of the cheapest labour.60 However, the removal of various legal and judicial obstacles to the free movement of capital has sharpened competition among workers internationally, to the detriment of workers in both the global North and South. The mere threat of moving production ‘offshore’, even if the vast majority of industrial investment remains within the advanced capitalist societies, is often sufficient to force cuts in wages and benefits, the dismantling of work-rules, and the creation of multithe scope of this essay (see Shaikh 1979 and 1980a). Granting the reality of ‘unequal exchange’, the notion that it produces benefits only for a minority of workers in the global North is not tenable. Again, all workers in the global North – from the most poorly to the best paid – would benefit from ‘unequal exchange’. They would benefit from elevated profit-rates and the resulting increase in accumulation and demand for all labour-power. Similarly, lower-cost consumer-goods and food ‘affects the standard of living not only of a minority “aristocracy of labor” but the whole of the working class of the industrial countries’ (Cliff 1957, p. 4). 58. Mishel, Bernstein and Allegretto 2005, Chapter 2. 59. Hardt and Negri 2000. 60. Post 2002.


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tiered workforces in the US and other industrialised countries. Neoliberalism’s deepening of the process of primitive accumulation of capital – the forcible expropriation of peasants from the land – in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, has created a growing global reserve-army of labour competing for dwindling numbers of full-time, secure and relatively well-paid jobs across the world. Put simply, the sharpening competition among workers internationally more than offsets the benefits of imperialism for workers in the global North.61

Monopoly, super-profits and wage-differentials Elbaum and Seltzer argue that the super-profits that account for the material privileges of the labour-aristocracy could not be ‘reduced to excessive profit gains from “overseas investment”’.62 Instead, super-profits resulting from monopoly – industrial concentration and the limitation of competition in key-sectors of the economy – produce higher-than-average wages and moresecure employment for a labour-aristocracy of unionised workers. This claim is also open to empirical challenge. During the long boom of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, certain branches of production enjoyed stable, higher-than-average profits and wages apparently because of the rise of oligopolies. However, as the long boom turned into the long stagnation that began in the late 1960s, these same oligopolistic industries faced persistently lower-than-average profits and sharpened competition both at home and abroad. By 1980, the impact on wages, employment-security, and working conditions was apparent. According to Howard Botwinick: the ‘eternal’ core [‘monopoly’-industries – C.P.] was beginning to show more and more evidence of peripheral [‘competitive’ industries – C.P.] behavior. Industries like steel and auto were experiencing serious profitability crunches and were becoming more and more interested in lowering the wages and working conditions of their primary work force. In addition to relocating to low-wage areas, core firms were successfully extracting serious concessions in wages and working conditions from their work forces. Even more distressing, a ‘secondary’ labor market was developing within the factory gates of these core firms as two-tiered wage packages were increasingly introduced on a wide scale.63

As early as the mid-1970s, statistical studies of the relationship between industrial concentration and profit- and wage-differentials began to challenge the central empirical claims of the monopoly-capitalism thesis. In the early 61. Bronfenbrenner and Luce 2004. 62. Elbaum and Seltzer 2004, p. 24. An acceptance of the notion of ‘monopoly’ mars the otherwise excellent critique of the labour-aristocracy thesis in Corr and Brown 1993, p. 49. 63. Botwinick 1993, p. 45.

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1980s, Willi Semmler reviewed the existing literature on industrial concentration and profit-rate differentials and carried out his own statistical analysis for the US- and West-German economies since the Second WorldWar.64 He found a correlation between industrial concentration and profitrate differentials before 1970. However, he also found sharp profit-rate differentials between and within concentrated industries in this period. In other words, profit-rate differentials had multiple causes before 1970 – not simply the absence or presence of competition. When Semmler examined profit-rate differentials in the 1970s and early 1980s, the correlation between industrial concentration and higher-than-average profit-rates all but disappeared. Instead, ‘differentials of profit rates are significantly related to the productivity, capital/output ratios, and unit wage costs of each industry’.65 Howard Botwinick’s study of wage- and profit-differentials reviewed the literature published since Semmler’s work was completed, and found similar patterns.66 Industrial concentration, again, could not explain profit- and wagerate differentials. Not only were factors like labour-productivity and capitalintensity of production more important in accounting for profit- and wage-differentials, but many of the highly concentrated industries that had experienced higher-than-average profits prior to 1970 were experiencing lowerthan-average profits in the 1970s and 1980s. More recent studies have confirmed the absence of a strong correlation between industrial concentration and higher-than-average profits and wages. Instead, profit and wagedifferentials were rooted in the differences in labour-productivity and capitalintensity of production.67 The empirical problems with the monopoly super-profits argument – so central to the Elbaum-Seltzer variant of the labour-aristocracy theory – are rooted in the very notions of monopoly and oligopoly.68 The claim that the existence of a small number of large firms in an industry limits competition, allowing higher-than-average profits and wages, is derived from neoclassical economics’ vision of ‘perfect competition’. For neoclassical economists, perfect competition – which allows instantaneous mobility of capital between branches of production, uniform technology, equal profit-rates and wages – exists only when a large number of small firms exist in a market. Any deviation is oligopoly – a form of ‘imperfect competition’ that creates obstacles to 64. Semmler 1984. 65. Semmler 1984, p. 127. 66. Botwinick 1993, pp. 155–70. 67. Blanchflower, Oswald and Sanfey 1996; Troske 1999; Osburn 2000; Lane, Salmon and Speltzer 2001. 68. Zeluck 1980; Botwinick 1993; Semmler 1984; Shaikh 1980b.


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capital-mobility, different techniques, and higher-than-average profits and wages. The notions of perfect competition and oligopoly/monopoly are both conceptually and empirically flawed. Perfect competition is an ideological construction – an idealisation of capitalist competition that makes the existing economic order appear efficient and just. Real capitalist competition – from the birth of capitalism in English agriculture in the sixteenth century, through the Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, to the emergence of the transnational corporations in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries – has never corresponded to the dream-world of perfect competition. Capitalist competition is fought through what Marx called the ‘heavy artillery of fixed capital’ – constant technological innovation, taking the form of the increasing mechanisation of production. Older investments in fixed capital, even if they no longer allow a particular firm to reduce unit-costs and raise its profit-margins and rates, cannot be abandoned immediately in favour of new and more efficient machinery. According to Botwinick: Given the presence of fixed capital investment, however, new techniques cannot be immediately adopted by all firms in the industry. Because fixed capital generally requires prolonged turnover periods, new techniques will be adopted primarily by those capitals that are in the best position to do so. Thus, although new capitals will enter the industry with ‘state of the art’ equipment and other existing capitals will gradually begin to replenish and expand their productive facilities with the latest techniques, older, less efficient capitals will also tend to live on for many years. This is particularly true within prolonged periods of rapid growth. . . . Rather than creating identical firms, competition therefore creates a continual redifferentiation of the conditions of production.69

Put simply, competition – not its absence – explains the diversity of technical conditions of production and the resulting differentiations of profit- and wage-rates within and between industries throughout the history of capitalism. The higher wages that workers in unionised capital-intensive industries enjoy are not gained at the expense of lower-paid workers abroad or a sharing of monopoly super-profits. Instead, the lower unit-costs of these industries make it possible for these capitals to pay higher-than-average wages. However, as we have seen over the last thirty years, only effective worker-organisation – unions that are democratic, militant and practise class-solidarity – can secure and defend these higher-than-average wages. Racial-national and gender-inequalities can also be understood in their relationship to the profit and wage-differentials created through capitalist 69. Botwinick 1993, p. 131.

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accumulation and competition. Race, nationality and gender structure the employment-queue – the order in which capitalists hire workers – in capitalist societies. White and male workers are at the front of the employment-queue, while women and workers of colour are at the rear. Different industries, with diverse technical conditions of production, profit-rates, and wages, thus recruit workers from these racially- and gender-defined sectors of the working class. In general, women and workers of colour tend to be overrepresented in labour-intensive, low-wage sectors, while white and male workers tend to be over-represented in the more capital-intensive, higher-wage sectors. Thus, race, nationality and gender do create a stratified working class as workers are distributed into branches of production that competition and accumulation – not monopoly – continually differentiate in terms of technique, profitability, and wages and working conditions.

The labour-aristocracy and working-class struggles in the twentieth century Whatever the theoretical and empirical problems with the economics of the labour-aristocracy thesis, its defenders still claim that well-paid workers have generally been more conservative than lower-paid workers. A systematic review of the history of the workers’ struggles in the global North in the past century does not bear out the claim that well-paid workers are generally conservative and poorly-paid workers are more radical. As John Kelly argued, ‘[h]istorically, the most class conscious and militant sections of the working class have often been those whose earnings, job security and status placed them in a position of relative privilege relative to many of their fellow workers’.70 Lenin himself, in one of his polemics with the Russian ‘economists’, recognised: The history of the working-class movement in all countries shows that the bettersituated strata of the working class respond to the ideas of socialism, more rapidly and more easily. From among these come, in the main, the advanced workers that every working-class movement brings to the fore, those who can win the confidence of the laboring masses, who devote themselves entirely to the education and organization of the proletariat, who accept socialism consciously, and who even elaborate independent socialist theories.71

Even the original British labour-aristocrats – the skilled cotton-textile and engineering workers – demonstrated their capacity for industrial militancy. 70. Kelly 1988, p. 165. 71. Lenin 1964, p. 283.


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Skilled workers in nineteenth-century Britain were capable of both determined (though ultimately unsuccessful) resistance to their employers and broader class-wide action with unskilled workers in the 1850s and 1860s. In the 1860s, a minority of these workers also began to tentatively embrace a politics, although not explicitly socialist, independent of the Liberals.72 Put simply, the British labour-aristocrats’ relationship with their employers and the state was not as uniformly ‘class-collaborationist’ as many accounts assert.73 The restructuring of the capitalist labour-process that began in the 1880s radically altered the social and political position of well-paid, skilled industrial workers in North America and Europe. The requirements of capitalist competition and profitability compelled capitalists across the industrialising world in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century to attack skilled work through ‘scientific management’ and the introduction of new techniques: unless the forms of capital accumulation assumed by any particular branch has been such as to render the retention of entrenched skills reconcilable with competitive branch profitability, firms have been forced to revolutionize the skill structure and, where necessary, to combat the unions resisting the transformation.74

In machine-making (‘engineering’) and other metal-working industries, skilled workers faced longer hours, falling wages and re-organisation of work that ‘had given the skilled man some control over his work environment.’75 The introduction of turret-lathes, the universal drilling machine and the grinding machine in machine-making, combined with time-motion studies and the subdivision of tasks, radically reduced the distance between the skilled ‘labouraristocrats’ and the majority of the working class in the years preceding the First World-War.76 72. Moorehouse 1978, pp. 67–8; Musson 1976, pp. 347–9. Musson 1976 goes as far as to argue that the decline of Chartism after 1848 did not mark as sharp a turning point in British labour-struggle and politics as Hobsbawm, Foster and others claim. See Foster’s 1976 reply to Musson. Corr and Brown 1993 (pp. 67–70) argue that the long boom of the 1850s and 1860s promoted the emergence of reformism in the British working class in two ways. First, it allowed for rising wages and some level of craft-union stability without threatening profitability. Second, the post-1848 expansion of capitalism and the deepening of the real subsumption of labour to capital in the production-process undermined pre-Marxian working-class radicalism that envisioned an easy return to artisanal control of production. 73. There is also substantive evidence that the skilled workers maintained a cultural independence from both the unskilled workers and the Victorian middle classes. See Crossick 1976. 74. Linder 1985, p. 110. 75. Gluckstein 1985, p. 52. 76. Gluckstein 1985, pp. 51–5; Morris 1988, p. 4.

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As the process of deskilling and reskilling continually restratified the working class in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, skilled industrial workers often led militant struggles that included the unskilled mass-workers.77 These struggles often put these skilled workers at odds with the more conservative leaders of their unions, who were committed to labourmanagement co-operation and willing to make concessions to their employers. The mainstream-leaders of the European labour- and socialist parties generally supported the trade-union leaders, facilitating the transformation of the skilled workers’ industrial militancy into political radicalism. Mitchel describes the process in Germany before the First World-War: Certainly we have evidence that on many crucial questions the working classes revealed that they were prepared to go further than the men who led them. As early as 1889, and as late as 1913, workers went on strike against the wishes of the unions, and in the interval between these two dates they had shown that they were as interested in political agitation as in promoting their economic welfare. Each time, however, both party and unions, convinced that the pursuit of Socialist aims by provocative action would be injurious and fatal, imposed restraints. On purely economic issues, workers in various industries in 1913 and 1914, including the powerful Metalworkers’ Union, were expressing profound dissatisfaction with union leadership and demanded structural reforms to give the rank and file a greater voice in decisions.78

The radicalisation of skilled industrial workers went furthest in early twentiethcentury Russia. The bulk of the membership of the Bolsheviks were the bestpaid, most urbanised industrial workers in the Russian cities – the skilled metal-workers in the largest factories. Lower-paid workers, like the predominantly female textile-workers, were generally either unorganised or apolitical (until the beginnings of the revolution) or supported the reformist Mensheviks.79 In fact, the mass-base of the left, antiwar-wing of the pre-First World-War socialist parties and of the postwar revolutionary-communist parties was relatively well-paid workers in the large metal-working industries. These workers led militant struggles against speed-up and deskilling that, after 1914, became political struggles against conscription and the War. German Communism became a mass-movement when tens of thousands of well-paid metal-workers left the Independent Socialists and joined the Communists in 77. Linder 1985, Part II; Geary (ed.) 1989. 78. Mitchel 1971, pp. 99–100. 79. Bonnell 1983, Chapters 9–10. See also David Mandel’s two-volume work, Mandel 1983 and 1984.


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1920. The French and Italian Communists also became mass-parties through the recruitment of thousands of well-paid machinists who led the mass-strikes of the postwar-period. These highly-paid workers were also over-represented in the smaller Communist parties of the US and Britain.80 Put simply, the workers that Lenin and Zinoviev believed were the social foundation of reformism in the early twentieth-century socialist movement in fact dominated the ranks of the revolutionary and internationalist wing of the labour-movement. Well-paid and often skilled workers in large-scale industry continued to play a leading rôle in mass-upsurges throughout the twentieth century. During the CIO-upsurge in the US during the 1930s, relatively well-paid, stablyemployed workers in the automobile, steel, rubber and other mass-production industries spearheaded the creation of industrial unions that united skilled and unskilled, highly-paid and poorly-paid. Well-paid and skilled workers often led these organising drives and were, again, over-represented in radical and revolutionary organisations in the US during the 1930s.81 Well-paid and securely employed workers were also in the vanguard of proto-revolutionary mass-struggles in France (1968), Italy (1968–9), Britain (1967–75), and Portugal (1974–5).82 In the US, relatively ‘aristocratic’ workers in trucking, automobile-manufacture, telecommunications, public education and the postal service were at the centre of the wildcat-strikes that shook US-industry between 1965 and 1975.83 In France in 1995, workers in telecommunications, public transport, postal services, health-care and education led the public-sector strikes that mounted the first successful workers’ struggles against neoliberalism.84 In the Autumn of 2004, automobileworkers, some of the best-paid in Germany, stood up to layoffs, defying their own union-leaders in an unofficial strike. In the US during the past decade, relatively poorly-paid workers (janitors, hotel-workers, and grocery-clerks) have engaged in strike-actions much more frequently than relatively wellpaid workers. However, better-paid workers with secure employment – from UPS-workers in 1997 to New York City transit-workers in 2005 – have not been absent from militant workplace-struggles. Nor is this pattern of militancy and radicalism among relatively wellpaid workers limited to the global North. Contrary to claims that urbanised, securely employed industrial workers in the global South constituted a labour-aristocracy allied to transnational and domestic capital, these workers 80. 81. 82. 83. 84.

Broué 2005, Gluckstein 1985, Harman 1982, Hudson 2003. Davis 1986. Kelly 1998, pp. 97–102. Brenner, Brenner and Winslow (eds.) 2010. Singer 1999.

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have often been in the lead of major anti-imperialist and anticapitalist struggles.85 In Chile between 1970 and 1973, and Argentina between 1971 and 1974, well-paid metal-workers engaged in industrial struggles and took the lead in mass-mobilisations against the military and the Right. Metalworkers in San Paolo, the highest-paid and more securely employed workers in Brazil, led mass-strikes in the 1970s that created the United Workers’ Confederation (CUT) and eventually the Workers’ Party (PT) in the early 1980s. Similarly, it was the highest-paid workers in South Africa – in mining, automobile-manufacture, steel – whose struggles in the 1970s created the radical and militant Federation of South African Trade Unions (FOSATU), and its successor the Confederation of South African Trade Unions (COSATU). It was these workers who were able to build upon workplace-organisation and power in the political struggle against apartheid in the 1980s and 1990s.86 Clearly, the industrial militancy that skilled and better-paid workers displayed in the past century cannot be reduced to a defence of the relative privileges of a narrow segment of the working class, at the expense of other workers at home and abroad. While all working-class struggles under capitalism begin with a specific group of workers attempting to defend their position against specific employers, successful battles require a broadening of the struggle to include all workers in a firm, workers in the same industry and workers nationally and, at times, globally. The experience of widening and successful economic struggles has always been the basis for a minority of workers embracing radical, revolutionary and internationalist politics.87 As Ellen Meiksins Wood argues: . . . it is profoundly misleading to impose a rigid discontinuity between the ‘lesser’ forms of ‘merely’ economic struggle and more directly political assaults on the capitalist order, not only because the larger struggles have always grown organically out of the smaller oppositions, but, more fundamentally, because both are rooted in the essential antagonism of interest between capital and labor. There is, in other words, no clean caesura, either historically or structurally, between these forms of opposition.88

By contrast, the forces in the labour-movement, in particular its full-time officialdom, that defend ‘sectionalism’ – defense of one group of workers at the expense of others, at home and abroad – have also tended to defend labour85. Arrighi and Saul 1968 first developed this analysis for Africa. See Peace 1975 for an excellent critique and Saul’s 1975 response. 86. Seidman 1994. 87. Luxemburg 1971. 88. Wood 1986, p. 185.


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management co-operation – class-collaboration – in both the workplace and politics.89 It is not surprising that relatively well-paid and securely employed workers have been at the centre of the most militant and radical workers’ struggles of the last century. These workers tend to be concentrated in large, capitalintensive workplaces that are often central to the capitalist economy. These workers have considerable social power when they act collectively. Strikes in these industries have a much greater impact on the economy than workers in smaller, less capital-intensive workplaces (garment, office-cleaning, etc.) Workers in such industries are also often the first targets of capitalist restructuring in periods of falling profits and sharpened competition. Finally, these workers often have a greater commitment to the collective defence and improvement of their jobs than the lower-paid. While lower-paid and lesssecurely employed workers have and do organise and struggle with their employers, they are more likely than better-paid and more securely employed workers to attempt to improve their conditions of life by individually seeking better jobs.

Conclusion The theory of the labour-aristocracy fails as an explanation of working-class reformism and conservatism. Firstly, the absence of competition – resulting from Britain’s global-industrial dominance in the nineteenth century, imperialcolonial investment in the global South, or industrial concentration in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries – cannot explain wage-differentials among workers nationally or internationally. Wage-differentials are the results of capitalist competition and accumulation, and reflect either real skill-differences, or, most commonly, different conditions of production – relative mechanisation. Secondly, wage-differentials cannot explain working-class consciousness and action. Attempts to read working-class consciousness from objective structures and conditions are a form of vulgar materialism: The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances and upbringing and that, therefore, changed men are products of other circumstances and changed upbringing forgets that circumstances are changed precisely by men and that the educator must himself be educated. . . . The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity can only be conceived and rationally understood as revolutionizing practice.90 89. Moody 1997 and 2007. 90. Marx 1941, p. 83.

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Put another way, the labour-aristocracy thesis not only misidentifies the source of wage-differentials among workers (imperialist or monopoly ‘super-profits’), it attempts erroneously to derive working-class reformism and conservatism from these wage-differentials. The elaboration of an alternative explanation of working-class reformism and conservatism will be the topic of a forthcoming essay. Briefly, the objective structure of capitalist social-property relations make possible varied forms of working-class conscious praxis – working-class conscious behaviour and action.91 While collective mass-struggle against capital is the basis for working-class political radicalisation, the roots of reformism can be located in the separation of workers under capitalism from the means of production. Working-class collective organisation and activity is necessarily episodic, for the simple reason that workers must sell their labour-power in order to survive, and thus cannot continually engage in struggle. The episodic character of the class-struggle produces both a layer of full-time officials within the labour-movement and prolonged periods of working-class passivity – the social foundation for reformism. The roots of working-class conservatism are found in the constant competition among workers as individual sellers of labour-power. In the absence of effective, collective class-organisation, workers are pitted one against another – on the basis of race, gender, nationality – for jobs, promotions, education and housing. This competition among workers provides the social environment for the development of racism, sexism, nativism and other conservative ideas among workers. Whether workers radicalise, accept reformism or embrace conservativism is not determined in ‘a sphere of mere contingency and subjectivity set apart from the sphere of “objective” material determinations’, but shaped by ‘the complex and often contradictory historical processes by which, in determinant historical conditions, class situations give rise to class formations.’92 In other words, which form of consciousness develops in what sections of the working class historically depends upon forms of social practice.

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brill.nl/hima

On the ‘Philosophical Foundations’ of Italian Workerism: A Conceptual Approach Adelino Zanini Department of Economics, University of Ancona, Italy [email protected]

Abstract This article explores some of the crucial conceptual dimensions of Italian workerist Marxism [operaismo], identifying both its underlying impetus and its limits in particular interpretations of Marxian concepts. Particular emphasis is placed on the manner in which the focus of workerists such as Mario Tronti and Antonio Negri on living labour, antagonism and class-composition can be understood in terms of a philosophy of subjectivity founded on a Marxian conception of difference. Keywords antagonism, class-composition, difference, Negri, workerism, subjectivity, tendency, Tronti

1. Mapping workerism This critical note may seem too ambitious. However, I would hope that the very simple aim which characterises my approach does not appear misconceived. In short, with the term ‘foundations’, I am not referring to the multiplicity of historiographical, historical, and philosophical aspects that defined the development of Italian workerism [operaismo] in all its complexity. More simply, I would like to discuss what is well-known, and, perhaps more importantly, shared or ‘common’, in workerist thought, in the period from the mid-sixties to 1979: from Mario Tronti’s Operai e capitale 1 to Antonio Negri’s Marx oltre Marx.2 Such a ‘categorial’ choice is obviously based on an historiographical assumption that would require adequate elucidation, because it concerns nothing less than the differences that qualify, in political terms, the ‘distance’ which existed between the beginning of the sixties, 1968, and 1977

1. Tronti 1966 (reprinted in Tronti 1971). 2. Negri 1979a; English translation Negri 1991a. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011

DOI: 10.1163/156920610X550604

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A. Zanini / Historical Materialism 18 (2010) 39–63

in Italy. In fact, my starting point assumes as given the ‘long’, Italian anomaly,3 which has been discussed so many times, and, for this reason, I do not intend to insist on it again. However, putting aside the Trontian interpretation of 1968 as a mere conflict about modernisation – as such, not comparable with the workers’ struggles of the beginning of the sixties4 – at least two aspects should be recalled here. Firstly, in Italy, 1968 had a long gestation and a long duration, characterised by a socially-hegemonic workers’ struggle. The latter informed and legitimised the theoretical innovation of workerism. Secondly, if it is true that the Italian ’77–movement, in political terms, represented the end of the ‘long’ seventies, it is also true that it inaugurated a new political phase, in which the workerist innovation revealed itself as no longer adequate,5 notwithstanding the fact that its instruments were able to decode the changes taking place.6 On the other hand, my choice of approach, at least in the first instance, rests upon the simple conviction according to which it would be incorrect to move from an excessively broad a posteriori historicisation, thanks to which it would then be possible to trace back to workerism everything that surrounded it. Denigrators and apologists alike have shared this error. For both, workerism 3. Zanini and Fadini (eds.) 2001, pp. 15–9. 4. Tronti 2008a, pp. 30–5. 5. To understand the social and political complexity of the events that occurred in 1977, it is necessary to consider, first of all, the chronology: the ‘long’ seventies produced, in the Italian scenario, a mix of different and sometimes contradictory tendencies which, starting from the radicalism of 1968, gave shape to a diffuse political instability. In macro-political terms, we might say that, because the demands for innovation were utterly ignored by the ruling political class, they produced a social ‘explosion’ whose clearest and most destructive (but by no means most radical) manifestation was terrorism. A new set of countercultural movements, feminism, the intersection between old, political-organisational forms and a fresh approach to the media, definitive detachment with respect to the tradition of the workers’ movement and its parties, the abandonment of their ‘values’, the apologia for the ‘absence of memory’ and the claim for the concreteness of the ‘immediate’ – all this should be considered in order to understand why the movement of ’77 constituted an unrepresentable multiverse, whose new radicalism brought the ‘long’ seventies to an end. However, in the long run, it was unable to face the situation generated by an economic context which was realising its ‘third industrial revolution’, by simultaneously utilising information-technologies, work from home, the destruction of welfare, political repression, and so on. Thus, what, in the first instance, was really a social ‘explosion’ – which could be understood in terms of the experience matured during the seventies – increasingly became an overall ‘implosion’, dominated by fear, cynicism, opportunism. That is, by the ‘ambivalence of disenchantment’ (Virno 1996). With respect to this ambivalence, the workerist approach, as well as every other political instrument belonging to the noblest tradition of ‘die “andere” Arbeiterbewegung’ (the other worker’s movement, as Karl Heinz Roth called it), turned out to no longer be adequate. 6. From markedly different vantage-points, see Negri 1976; Negri 1978; Bologna (ed.) 1978. For a more general overview, see Wright 2002.


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is characterised by a (bad) philosophy of history; it has the features of a ‘school’ rather than those pertaining to a current of thought crossed by different intersections. Consequently, its main, lasting characteristic would not consist in the capacity to forge concepts; it would seem instead to lie in a sort of hypostatisation of the mechanisms of reproduction of subjectivity. Certainly, workerism sometimes has been exactly this – but only sometimes. I do not believe that workerism ended even before the publication of the journal Contropiano; but, from that point onwards, the workerists of the first generation made reference to Marx’s thought in very different ways.7 While some of them affirmed that Marx’s actuality consisted in the possibility of transforming his critique of political economy into a direct instrument for workers’ struggle (this was the basis on which Potere Operaio8 exerted its fundamental political, and theoretical rôle), others addressed their attention directly to the great, European culture of Krisis, intended as the real turningpoint in Western thought,9 of which the tradition of the workers’ movement was assumed to be a fundamental pillar. It was not by chance that the culture

7. After the publication of the first volume of Quaderni Rossi, as a result of different judgements concerning the political significance of 1962’s big strike at Fiat in Turin, a rift in the editorial collective of the journal took shape. As a consequence, Classe operaia was founded in 1964 by those who – within and around the collective of Quaderni Rossi – had argued that the 1962 strike had opened an entirely new revolutionary path in the Italian political scenario. Not by chance, Classe operaia was not merely a theoretical journal, but a tool for political intervention. The new periodical lasted until 1967, when a new one was published: Contropiano, launched in January 1968. However, soon after the publication of the first volume, a new rift occurred among the founding editors, because of their very different political judgements about the events of ’68. From the very beginning, Mario Tronti was not directly involved in the Contropiano editorial board, thus, after Toni Negri’s withdrawal, the journal was directed solely by Alberto Asor Rosa and Massimo Cacciari (see Mangano 1989). According to Tronti (Tronti 2008b, p. 5; Tronti 2008a, p. 609), all of this served to confirm that, in actual fact, the ‘completion’ of the workerist experience had already occurred with the end of Classe operaia. 8. Potere Operaio was the political movement which, starting from 1969, organised – autonomously from and against the traditional parties of the Left – the workerist area on the basis of the so-called ‘linea di massa’ (mass-line). Of course, the new movement was only partially constituted by the workerist activists of the sixties. In the meantime, a newer and younger generation came to the fore. After the dissolution of the movement (at the Meeting of Rosolina in 1973), a part of Potere Operaio remained active – in particular in the Veneto region – and, thanks to the valorisation of the political experience developed by the Collettivi politici in the mid-seventies (see below, footnote 13), it constituted one of the pillars upon which Autonomia operaia organizzata rested. 9. Starting from 1964, thanks to the research carried out for the journal Angelus novus, Massimo Cacciari advanced a significant rethinking of the themes characterising ‘negativ Denken [negative thought]’ from Nietzsche onwards. His investigations gave shape to a concept of the ‘crisis of modern rationality’, subsequently elaborated in Cacciari 1976. See Cacciari 2008, pp. 831–5.

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of Krisis became one of the distinctive traits of Italian philosophical research during the eighties, with mixed results. As is well-known, workerism’s pre-eminence arose thanks to a variety of reasons – many of which, perhaps too many, were extra-theoretical10 – which permitted a (not always) legitimate, but very often incorrect historicisation and homogenisation, in spite of the fact that workerism, in terms of political philosophy, was far from being an homogeneous product.11 For the same reasons, a clearer, historiographical delimitation is necessary. I am not interested in identifying a supposedly ‘pure’ tradition. I am perfectly aware that we are dealing with an ensemble of common elements. But if we want to talk about a well-defined tradition of thought considered as a part – albeit a very anomalous one – of the Western Marxism of the sixties, we have to keep in mind, not only its specificity, but also the fact that we are talking about a delimited and closed tradition. A similar judgement is not intended to question the theoretical significance of workerist thought. On the contrary, I should like to underscore, for example, the relevance of its ‘method’; but its undoubted fecundity is not sufficient justification for saying that, apart from its internal ruptures and the great transformation generated starting from the end of the sixties, there is only one workerist tradition. The very development of so-called postworkerism – which is, in reality, the expression of various lines of thought – stands to confirm what I am saying. Given these premises, this critical note will simply be devoted to the discussion of some key-concepts that can be traced back to a fundamental ‘rational abstraction’: that is, difference. This latter, widely present in Marx’s work,12 characterised the complex development of Italian political radicalism. Actually, the ‘emphatic use’ of expressions such as autonomia operaia [workers’ autonomy] and soggettività operaia [workers’ subjectivity] was diffused well before the birth of collettivi politici [political collectives].13 It is not by chance 10. I am referring to the political persecution which followed the so-called ‘Inchiesta 7 Aprile’, the massive legal persecution of militants in the so-called area of autonomy (including many ex-members of Potere Operaio), named after the date in 1979 of the police raids that took place simultaneously in Padua, Milan, Rome, Rovigo and Turin, and led to the arrests, among many others, of Negri, Alisa Del Re, Oreste Scalzone, Luciano Ferrari Bravo, and Nanni Balestrini. 11. See the interviews collected by Borio, Pozzi and Roggero (eds.) 2002. 12. See Zanini 2008, Chapter 2. 13. As previously stated, after the dissolution of Potere Operaio, from 1974 to 1975, the greater part of the Veneto-activists started a debate which led to the consolidation of a new political organisation, named Collettivi Politici del Veneto per il Potere Operaio. Their politicalorganisational structure rested upon a regional territorial rooting, in which a paradigmatic rôle was attributed to the precariato [non-guaranteed workers]: that is, the labour-power employed in the new production-cycle of the so-called fabbrica diffusa [‘diffused factory’]. On the other hand,


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that those expressions were used by the same sindacato dei consigli [councils’ union]14 during the first half of the seventies – and I am referring to the unions to which workerism addressed its radical critique. From a theoretical point of view, workerism represented, first of all, a new reinterpretation of Marx, formulated without regard to the Western-Marxist tradition, and based on an innovative way of interpreting the dynamics of class-conflict in Italy after the hard transition that followed the end of the Second World-War. In that context, characterised by a severe crisis, a new political subjectivity, even less satisfied with the old rhetoric of the Italian Communist Party, was taking shape.15 The central nervous systems of these new social processes was constituted by the big industrial cities, upon which converged the transversal migratory influxes coming from the south and the north-east of the country.16 For different reasons, by that point, the political rôle of the worker-cadres who had managed the passage toward the postwar reconstruction-period was exhausted. Thus, the centre of the political scene was progressively occupied by a new class-composition, no longer linked to the practical abilities previously acquired. Thereupon, a young, migrant, unskilled, labour-power, with its generic capacity to transform its specific use-value into surplus-value, became the main actor of the new mass-production processes, in which the socialisation of labour-power was an indispensable condition.17 It was within this scenario that Raniero Panzieri and the editorial group of the journal Quaderni Rossi focused their attention,18 by showing how the socialisation of this labour-power was directly linked to its experience in the big manufacturing firms, in which labour-power perceived itself as working class. It is true that, with regard to this affirmed identity, a rift in the group soon emerged, as a consequence of a different way of understanding the sociological relevance of the same ‘workers’ inquiry’.19 Nevertheless, what was a similar political approach also characterised areas outside Veneto. Although the political nuances were sometimes relevant, it should suffice to recall the research carried out, in the Milan metropolitan area, by the journal Quaderni del territorio. 14. In Italy, at the end of the sixties, the expression sindacato dei consigli [councils’ union] referred to the new workers’ struggle organisation, whose main political structure was represented by consigli di fabbrica [factory-councils], in particular of the big factories. Factory-councils made possible new forms of political conflict, without determining an irreversible rupture in the tradition of the unions. According to workerist thought, their political limits stemmed precisely from their incapacity (autonomously) to organise workers’ autonomy. 15. Lanzardo 1979. 16. Alasia and Montaldi 1975. 17. Alquati 1975. 18. See Various Authors 1975. 19. See Rieser 1965; Asor Rosa 1965 (reprinted in Asor Rosa 1973).

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explicitly stated both by Panzieri and Tronti was the conviction that they were facing a new process of capitalist development (a ‘planned’ process),20 one of whose inescapable elements was a fresh round of workers’ socialisation. From this conviction, a judgement was derived, according to which workers’ struggle was first of all characterised by its irreversible autonomy. It was obviously given within capitalist development, but the latter was described as if it were subordinated to the dynamics triggered by the working-class struggle. In Tronti’s words: And now we have to turn the problem on its head, reverse the polarity, and start again from the beginning: and the beginning is the class-struggle of the working class. At the level of socially developed capital, capitalist development becomes subordinated to working-class struggles; it follows behind them, and they set the pace to which the political mechanisms of capital’s own reproduction must be tuned.21

Within this reverse-temporal sequence, which was defined on the basis of the theoretical experience of Quaderni Rossi, we can simultaneously observe all the merits and defects of workerism interpreted as a Marxist current of thought placed outside Marxism itself. We can also locate within this ambit the ‘posthumous’ quarrel on the ‘autonomy of the political [l’autonomia del politico]’ – as we shall see later. In short, regarding this complex scenario, I am only interested in focussing on the traits which, putting aside the reasons that caused the political rupture within the Quaderni Rossi group, the birth of Classe operaia, etc., paved the way towards a new historical and political koiné.

2. Future-past The fundamental idea from which we have to start is that of separation,22 difference; that is, we have to begin by considering the idea according to which the working class – as it is the only holder of living labour, ‘the only living, active, and productive element of the society’23 – expresses, from an historical point of view, an ab-solute (from the Latin, ‘to make separate’) interest, which cannot be mediated. 20. Panzieri 1973 (reprinted in Lanzardo (ed.) 1973); Tronti 1963 (reprinted in Tronti 1966 ). 21. Tronti 1971, p. 89. 22. Mezzadra 2000. 23. Tronti 1971, p. 19.


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Introducing Operai e capitale, Tronti wrote: The possibility and the capacity for synthesis is still in the hands of the workers. The reasons are easy to grasp. Synthesis today can only be unilateral; it can only be a self-aware class-science, the science of a class. On the basis of capital, the whole can only be understood by the part. Knowledge is tied to struggle. . . . The fact is that being on the side of the whole – man, society, the state – can only lead to a partial analysis; it can only allow you to understand detached parts, losing overall scientific control.24

Such a unilateral synthesis is understandable on the basis of a particular process, whose nature rests upon the specific ability to transform in actu what is only in potentia. If we analyse, in Marxian terms, the capital/labour-power exchange, what emerges is that the worker’s use-value is not materialised in a product, it ‘does not exist apart from him at all, thus exists not really, but only in potentiality, as his capacity [Fähigkeit]’.25 What is common to all commodities is objectified labour, and their common denominator is represented by their being exchange-values. In this sense, the only thing distinct [der einzige Unterschied ] from objectified labour ‘is non-objectified labour, labour which is still objectifying itself, labour as subjectivity’, ‘as the living subject, in which it exists as capacity, as possibility; hence as worker’.26 However, the fact that nonobjectified labour is one of the components of exchange generates a specificity that exchange cannot explain. Exchange cannot explain the anomaly according to which, as a result of the specific transaction occurring between capital and labour-power, the use-value of the latter, its potential capacity, creates a difference that cannot be recognised before its manifestation as multiplication, produced by labour-as-subjectivity [Arbeit als Subjektivität]. Therefore, between an exchange in general and the specific capital/labour-power exchange, there is an Unterschied, a difference, whose interpretation requires the unilateral synthesis mentioned above. In the exchange between capital and labour, the first act is an exchange, falls entirely within ordinary circulation; the second is a process qualitatively different from exchange, and only by misuse could it have been called any sort of exchange at all. It stands directly opposite exchange; essentially different category.27

24. 25. 26. 27.

Tronti 1971, p. 14. Marx 1993, p. 267. Marx 1993, p. 272. Marx 1993, p. 275.

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What renders the capital/labour-power exchange a qualitatively different category, a non-exchange, a merely apparent exchange, is a sort of indispensable oxymoron. It is assumed that the proprietor of the labour-power is ‘the free proprietor [ freier Eigentümer] of his own labour-capacity’, that he will always sell ‘for a limited period only’. Hence, it is assumed that the proprietor of the labour-power and the proprietor of the money are ‘equal in the eyes of the law’. At the same time, however, one should admit that the former is ‘compelled to offer for sale as a commodity that very labour-power which exists only in his living body’.28 The separation [Trennung] of property from labour appears as the necessary law of the exchange between capital and labour-power. Labour ‘is not-raw-material, not-instrument-of-labour, not-raw-product’; rather, it is ‘the not-objective itself in objective form’, that is, ‘only an objectivity coinciding with his immediate bodily existence [unmittelbaren Leiblichkeit]’: Labour not as an object [Gegenstand ], but as activity [Tätigkeit]; not as itself value, but as a living source of value. [Namely, it is] general wealth (in contrast to capital in which it exists objectively, as reality) as the general possibility of the same, which proves itself as such in action. Thus, it is not at all contradictory, or, rather, the in-every-way mutually contradictory statements that labour is absolute poverty as object, on one side, and is, on the other side, the general possibility of wealth as subject and as activity [als Subjekt und als Tätigkeit].29

What is particularly interesting to underline here is the fact that, as it is the expression of a living body [lebendige Leiblichkeit], labour-power exists as commodity. That is, not in spite of, but because it is labour-as-subjectivity. Thus, a qualitatively different process implies the natural capacity inherent to living labour, which transforms in actu what is only in potentia. Such an ability expresses a difference, upon which a historically determined multiplication [Vervielfältigen] is founded; it expresses a valorisation-process that stems from labour-as-subjectivity. Nevertheless, following some careful interpretations,30 it is important to note here a textual ambiguity in the Grundrisse (which was later removed from Das Kapital ), also because, starting from Operai e capitale (1966), the theoretical structure of workerism rested, in a significant sense, exactly upon this supposed ambiguity: namely, the identification between living body and labour-as-subjectivity. In short, workerism would have carried out a doubly equivocal interpretation of Marx: firstly, by assuming that ambiguity; secondly, by ignoring its correct solution. And all this would have led to emphasising 28. Marx 1990, pp. 271–2. 29. Marx 1993, p. 296. 30. See Bellofiore 2008, p. 28.


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the identification or, better still, the unacceptable ‘flattening’ intrinsic to the same ambiguity. Provided that the existence of such an ambiguity could be admitted, I limit myself here to observing that workerists were quite conscious of this supposed ‘flattening’,31 but they implicitly laid claim to it by famously attributing to the Grundrisse immense relevance, if not even a primacy with respect to Das Kapital. Surely an adequate re-examination of this question would require the awareness that, in saying this, we are simplifying theoretical paths which, over the years, were re-formulated and re-thought in very different ways.32 Nonetheless, what I would stress is that in the workerist interpretation, the ‘natural capacity’ inherent to ‘living labour’ is not only an aspect that characterises the labour-process as such. Living labour, its being a living body, implies labour-as-subjectivity, not only because the difference expressed by living labour transforms in actu what is only in potentia,33 but also because it is supposed immediately to be able to express its own collective, political essence within the capitalist valorisation-process. This is why workerism was charged with being a ‘philosophy of history’,34 whereas it was more precisely a political philosophy of modernity, in which capitalist development becomes subordinated to the working-class struggle.35 In this, workerism manifested its innovative character – including its limits, of course. It is exactly from here that stems Tronti’s aforementioned reverse-temporal sequence, according to which it is labour-as-subjectivity that generates capitalist development. The subjectivity of living labour appears to be adequately explicable once capitalist development has reached its apex. As Tronti wrote: The point at which the degree of political development of the working class, overtook, for a set of historical reasons, the economic level of capitalist development, remains the most favourable site for the swift opening of a revolutionary process. On condition that we are dealing with working-class and capitalist development in the scientific sense of two social classes, in the epoch of an already-attained maturity.36

This affirmation makes clear why workerist theorists argued for the paradigmatic value of US-workers’ struggles (it should be sufficient to recall their 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

This is clearly underlined by Tronti 2008a. See Negri 2008; Tronti 2008a. See Virno 1999. Tronti 2008a, pp. 601–2. Tronti 1971, p. 89. Tronti 1971, p. 23.

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numerous writings on the topic), although Tronti’s own ‘theory of the middlepoint’ relativised that affirmation, when he asserted the possibility of catching, starting from a point itself in movement, the point situated further ahead – intending this latter not as an extrinsic telos, but, rather, as the intrinsic tendency of things to come.37 It is important to note here the way in which the concept of difference shows itself as explicitly linked to the concept of tendency. Both of them give rise to a crucial relationship, on which, for example, Negri insisted repeatedly between 1971 and 1979. ‘Antagonism of the tendency’, ‘method of antagonisttendency’: these are the key-words which describe a historical hermeneutics, devoted to identifying in the ‘determined abstraction’ what is definable as ‘practically true’ 38 – that is, what tendentially comes true. In a different way, we could say that capitalist development always prefigures its own crisis, which is, in turn, constantly produced by workers’ struggle. The medium between development and crisis is represented by the money-form: it constitutes the precondition that makes it possible to acquire the specific use-value of labourpower. M–C means, first of all, ‘money as wage’, because it implies, from the very beginning, ‘the laws of appropriation or of private property’, and thus the social and historically determined exclusion reaffirmed by the ‘semblance of exchange’ between capital and labour-power.39 As a consequence, according to the workerist point of view, the commodity-form is primarily interpreted as the representation of the relationship between objective and subjective conditions of production, separate from the heuristic (but very problematic) account of the nexus between ‘theory of value’ and ‘commodity-money’. In fact, if it is true that, on the one hand, the commodity-analysis makes it possible to emphasise the particular use-value of living labour,40 on the other hand, the same analysis seems to be no more than a tacit assumption within the M–C–M' process, whose result (namely, the difference between M and M') constitutes the true starting point. This is clear in Negri’s reasoning: the contradiction that money registers is the one between labour-value as the general equivalent of commodity-exchange and the conditions of social production dominated by capital – on the one hand, money as the determination and particular measure of the value of labour-power sold on the free market; on the other, opposed to it, the social character of the production that capital has appropriated and which it has transformed into its own power over social labour, 37. Ibid. 38. Negri 1974b; Negri 1979a. 39. On this theme, the comparison with the so-called ‘theory of monetary circuit’, developed in Augusto Graziani’s seminal works, is very interesting. See Graziani 2003. 40. Tronti 1971, pp. 162ff.


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the totality of social movement become autonomous, power autonomised and standing above individuals. . . . The ‘chapter on money’ tracks this tendency until it shows that money – after having mediated its private figure in the general process of production – as the index of an antagonism which, having emerged dialectically from exchange, posited as a function of exchange and as its general mediation, is now intensified into an irresolvable, violently critical relation between the socialisation of production and the arbitrariness of its representation in terms of measure, equivalence, delegation [rappresentanza].41

Here, we can note the decisive importance of the Grundrisse in workerist thought.42 Nothing seemed to explain better than the money-form the very essence of the capitalist mode of production and, therefore, the development/ crisis nexus within the world-market. As Sergio Bologna noted, the pace of the expansion of the monetary system was faster than that of the diffusion of the industrial system, and the monetary system appeared in Marx’s eyes as the embodiment of the world-market in its concrete materiality.43 To come quickly to the point, in the crisis/monetary-form nexus, the law of value could be interpreted ‘from the viewpoint of a stage of capitalist development now in its maturity’.44 (Incidentally, it is worth noting that the most accurate analyses concerning the monetary storm of the seventies had been produced precisely by Sergio Bologna and the journal Primo Maggio, in particular with regard to the themes concerning the evolution and composition of public expenditure in Italy). As Negri wrote: The exceptional importance of this attack of the Grundrisse on money, considered as an eminent form of the expression of the law of value, is not nevertheless bound only to the immediate character of the critique. There is another point to be considered right away; it is that the social relation underlying this making extreme of the relation of value is not envisaged from the point of view of synthesis, but from the point of view of antagonism. . . . Under the form of money, the law of value is presented (1) in crisis, (2) in an antagonistic manner, and (3) with a social dimension.45

Thus, the nexus between crisis and money-form is not only fundamental, but also foundational, because it shows, starting from M–C, the crisis of the law of value intended as ‘measure’. As Tronti underlines, it is the existence of the class-relationship which makes possible the transformation of money into 41. 42. 43. 44. 45.

Negri 1974b, pp. 8, 11–2; and see Negri 1979a. See Negri 1979a. Bologna 1974 (English translation in Bologna 1993, p. 64, n. 14). Bologna 1974, p. 31, n. 13. Negri 1979a, pp. 35–6; English translation in Negri 1991a, pp. 24–5.

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capital; and this transformation entails the critical relationship between development and crisis. Nevertheless, once the issue is posed in these terms, it raises a crucial question. If it is in fact true that workerism constantly underlined the centrality of the ‘workers’ inquiry’46 – namely, the research on the organisation of the labour-process within the big manufacturing firms, from which the definition of technical class-composition was derived – how can we explain the emphasis put on the valorisation-process and political class-composition, very often stressed apart from the concreteness of the labour-process? In workerist jargon, technical class-composition was the result of the relationships between labourpower, machinery, production-times, as grasped from the workers’ point of view, in an analysis that viewed the factory-system in terms of its contradictions. Was it not that technical class-composition which had made possible a specific, political class-composition – that is, the inner relations of labour-power and the ways in which they autonomously organised themselves against the limits and constraints of capitalist production – as a result of the workers’ struggles that had matured within the Fordist firm? Surely, we can explain the ever-more explicit emphasis put on the valorisation-process and political class-composition by taking into account workerism’s insistence on the so-called ‘high points’ of capitalist development, which would be characterised by the presence of a labour-power directly conceived as working class (it was from here, not by chance, that derived the endless dispute about political and organisational forms, and, as a result, the repeated emergence of different evaluations of the Leninist tradition). Although this insistence may seem simplistic – in particular, when it is founded on the primacy of Marx’s unpublished works as against his published ones – it is perfectly consistent with the rôle played by the money-form in workerist theory, in particular in what concerns the monetary character of the non-equivalent exchange between capital and labour-power. In short, all this requires a specific way of understanding the immediate, political significance of the struggle against wage. Tronti wrote: Therefore for Marx it is beyond doubt that the class-relation already exists in-itself [an sich] in the act of circulation. It is precisely this which reveals, which brings out, the capitalist relation during the production-process. The class-relation [Klassenverhältnis] precedes, that is to say provokes and produces, the capitalist

46. As Sergio Bologna wrote: ‘Romano Alquati is the main figure behind a Marxian approach to workers’ enquiry. He laid down the methodology of conricerca [joint research] with Romolo Gobbi and Gianfranco Faina.’ (Bologna 2003, p. 135.)


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relation [Kapitalverhältnis]. Or rather: it is the existence of the class-relation that makes the transformation of money into capital possible.47

From an historical point of view, the class-relation is the result of so-called primitive accumulation. As Marx points out, the ‘capital-relation presupposes a complete separation between the workers and the ownership of the conditions for the realization of their labour. As soon as capitalist production stands on its own feet, it not only maintains this separation, but reproduces it on a constantly extending scale’.48 According to Tronti, this is a crucial point: Because usually Marx is made to say exactly the opposite, and it is in current ‘Marxist’ usage to say the opposite: that is, that only from the capitalist relation of production there emerges the contrast, the antagonism of classes . . . so it is capital that makes classes, or rather, that transforms the old classes into contrasting agglomerates that are at once new and always the same. . . . Is it therefore as sellers of labour-power that waged workers constitute themselves for the first time into a class? We believe it is possible to answer ‘yes’.49

In sum, ‘a social mass forced to sell its labour-power is also the general form of the working class’.50 All this had already been explained in the first book of Capital, starting from the twofold character of labour-power51 given that ‘the first antagonistic figure taken by the worker is that of seller of labour-power; but it also true that in this figure that of producer of surplus-value is already presupposed’.52 Hence, within the capitalist process of production – as Marx points out – the ‘process between things’ manifests itself for what it is: a relation of exploitation of living labour on the part of dead labour – the capitalist form of commodity-production.53 The labour-process is no longer distinguishable from the valorisation-process, as the labour socially necessary to pay the wage is fused, from the beginning, to an additional quantum. The capacity of labour-power makes possible what in the interaction between objective and subjective conditions is only in potentia. The potential capacity of labour-power generates a valorisation-process that is historically determined, as a result of the subjectivity of living labour. This is a ‘multiplication’ constituted by ‘one single, indivisible labour process. Work is not done twice, once to produce a useful product, a use value, to convert the means of 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53.

Tronti 1971, p. 149. Marx 1990, p. 874. Tronti 1971, p. 149. Ibid. Tronti 1971, p. 123. Tronti 1971, p. 148. Cf. Tronti 1971, pp. 162–8.

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production into products, and the second time to produce value and surplusvalue, to valorise value’.54 Here, two different results are simultaneously reached, through a singular labour. Obviously, the ‘twofold nature of the result [Doppelseitigkeit]’ can only be explained by the twofold character [Doppelcharakter] of labour:55 There is, however, the following specific distinction [spezifischer Unterschied ] to be pointed out here: Real labour is what the worker really gives to the capitalist as equivalent for the part of the capital that has been converted into wages, for the purchasing price of labour. It is the expenditure of his life force [Lebenskraft], the realisation of his productive capacities, his movement, not the capitalist’s. Viewed as a personal function [ persönliche Funktion], in its reality, labour is the function of the worker and not of the capitalist. Viewed from the point of view of exchange, the worker is what the capitalist receives from him in the labour process, not what the capitalist represents towards him in the same process. This therefore stands in contrast to the way the objective conditions of labour, as capital, and to that extent as the existence of the capitalist, confront the subjective condition of labour, labour itself, or rather the worker who works, within the labour process itself.56

The expenditure of vital energy, its movement, its being a personal function, are so because the living labour ‘is a fluid magnitude, in the process of becoming – and therefore contained within different limits – instead of having become’.57 The juxtaposition between objective and subjective conditions subsequent to the exchange generates the subsumption of a fluid-magnitude, which is the manifestation of the vital function [Lebensäußerung] of labourpower. What in the labour-process is a means to a determined aim, in the valorisation-process becomes a means that subsumes the vital manifestation of labour-power: It is not a matter of living labour being realised in objective labour as its objective organ, but of objective labour being preserved and increased by the absorption of living labour, thereby becoming self-valorising value, capital, and functioning as such. The means of production now appear only as absorbers of the largest possible quantity of living labour. Living labour now appears only as a means for the valorisation and therefore capitalisation of existing values.58

54. 55. 56. 57. 58.

Marx 1975, p. 400. Marx 1990, p. 307. Marx 1975, p. 391. Marx 1975, p. 393. Marx 1975, p. 397.


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The objective conditions are not mere passive instrumenta, but, rather, the means that command living labour. They make possible its involvement in the process of its objectivation; but to the extent that past labour valorises itself, it becomes a process in itself. To the extent that past labour sets living labour to work, it becomes a process in itself, it valorises itself, it becomes a fluens that creates a fluxion. This absorption of additional living labour is past labour’s process of self-valorisation, its real conversion into capital, into self-valorising value, its conversion from a constant magnitude of value into a variable magnitude of value, value in process.59

In this process, the manifestation of the vital energy of living labour and its movement manifest themselves as capital. ‘Only through the conversion of labour into capital during the production process is the pre-posited quantity of value, which was only δυναμει capital, realised as actual capital ’.60 The transformation of money into capital (M–C–M') is therefore possible as the result of a specific transformative action that the use-value of living labour – an ensemble of physical and intellectual attitudes – exerts upon the dead labour that, in turn, from thing becomes process, a fluxio within the sphere of the valorisation-process, since it is the result of the manifestation of the vital function of living labour. Therefore, we can trace back to the workerist interpretation of this theoretical passage in Marx the different questions concerning the relationship between technical and political class-composition. Certainly, this relationship has very often been simplified, if not hypostatised. In particular, it generated the endless discussion that, inside and outside the workerist line of thought, followed Negri’s definition of ‘social worker’,61 at the moment in which, after 1973, massive layoffs of labour caused a global disarticulation of the previous technical class-composition and a consequent territorial redistribution of valorisation-processes. Surely, Negri’s definition disregarded many of the causes and effects which followed a well-defined, historical defeat of the Western working class. However, his definition interpreted, although in a very forced way, an incipient and genuine tendency, which, in subsequent years, would be widely discussed – even if in a very different way and, it goes it without saying, apart from any ‘subversive’ ends. At any rate, if we attribute to the same old cattivo maestro [bad teacher] every merit and blame, we will never understand the question. Regarding this, 59. Marx 1975, p. 402. 60. Marx 1975, p. 423. 61. Negri 1979b.

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it suffices to recall the debate that followed the Italian translation of Harry Braverman’s Labour and Monopoly Capital.62 For much of the Italian Left, that book seemed to be a very decisive work, which deserved the greatest approval; in workerist eyes, vice versa, it appeared as a clearly dated book – the very idea of monopolistic capital seemed inadequate – unable to understand the rôle of workers’ subjectivity.63 Briefly, the limits of Braverman’s book were traced back to the underlying interpretation of the ‘degradation of labour’ intrinsic to the capitalist labour-process; a perspective from which it became impossible to explain, within the valorisation-process, the ‘feedforward-function’ played by the workers’ struggle. Put differently, when we admit the identity between living labour and the working class, notwithstanding some relevant interpretative differences, the primacy of the valorisation-process follows. The rôle played by the labourprocess is not disregarded. More simply put, it is affirmed that the functioning of the capitalist production-process as a whole requires, not so much the degradation of labour (implied by the labour-process), as the socialisation of labour (implied by the valorisation-process). From the same reasoning is also derived the political character of the antagonistic relationship between relative surplus-value and the relative wage; a relationship which, following in the footsteps of Roman Rosdolsky’s interpretation,64 played a fundamental rôle in workerist thought.65 Thus, fundamental is the conceptual deepening that such a relationship requires and that only the theory of surplus-value as ‘a measure of difference’ allows one to spell out. The evaluation of this ‘measure’ is possible only on the grounds of expanded reproduction, which involves what Marx defines as the derealisation-process of labour [der Entwirklichungsprozeß der Arbeit]. It is here where living labour ‘posits itself objectively, as its own not-being [als ihr eignes Nichtsein] or as the being of its not-being [oder als das Sein ihres Nichtseins] – of capital’.66 In short, there is a strict interconnection between difference and excess; and this connection is established by a separation, a division inherent to a specific social relation of production. This explains why Marx insisted upon the fact that ‘the laws of appropriation or of private property, laws based on the production and circulation of commodities, become changed into their direct opposite’. In effect, the semblance of exchange between capital and labour-power – its being mere form [bloße 62. 63. 64. 65. 66.

Braverman 1974. Gambino 1979. Rosdolsky 1968. Negri 1974a; Negri 1979a. Marx 1993, p. 454.


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Form], non-exchange [Nicht-Austausch] – is not only confirmed, but it confirms, in turn, that the fundamental precondition of the social relation of production can only be represented by the separation between property and labour.67 When this social relation is traced back to the relationship between relative surplus-value and the relative wage, the latter shows its antagonistic nature. For the same reason, according to workerist theory, the law of value expresses, not a measure, but a dismeasure. Since its essence is political, it establishes a pure and simple command. This is clearly stated by Tronti: ‘Explicating how the law of value imposes itself ’: according to Marx’s indications, this remains the task of working-class science [scienza operaia]. On one condition: that this explication not be ensnared in the phoney contradictions of economic science. How the law imposes itself is a problem of the political organisation of the class-relation.68

Similarly, Negri wrote: But, having reached certain scales of accumulation, this process [the relative wage] is no longer measurable, its parameters are no longer based on the law of value but on the times and forms of its extinction. . . . [C]apital is forced to nullify proportion, that is to determine it only through its command. All the other ‘objective’ determinations of the setting of the wage fall away . . . only command remains.69

The wage-struggle, sustained by the mass-worker’s refusal of work, becomes political struggle. Let’s be clear, we’re not speaking here of the general tendencies that the understanding of necessary labour impose upon capitalist development in the direction of the fall of surplus-value. We’re speaking of a surplus of refusal to directly valorise capital which today can be identified in a general manner . . . from within class-behaviour.70

The reference to Marx’s ‘Fragment on Machines’ is fundamental here and, at the same time, very problematic.71 Nevertheless, at least for the first generation 67. Marx 1990, p. 729. 68. Tronti 1971, p. 225. 69. Negri 1974a, pp. 134–5. 70. Negri 1974a, p. 123. What in this text was only sketched out – self-valorisation – would later become crucial for Negri. See Negri 1978. 71. See Zanini 2008, pp. 191–200.

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of workerists, the Marxian ‘Fragment’ was, first of all, if not merely, a fragment on machinery interpreted as fixed capital; and its importance derived from the problems raised by the relationship between development (of fixed capital) and crisis (of the law of value). The ‘general intellect’ itself was essentially understood as the outcome of a manifest ‘disproportion’ in the organic composition of capital, a catastrophe, even as communism in the making,72 but always following the hermeneutic path disclosed by Panzieri (albeit neglecting his own perplexity and circumspection).73 Hence, the basic ‘motto’ (and, according to the most severe critics, the ‘epitaph’) of the first generation of workerists was the following statement from the Grundrisse: The theft of alien labour time, on which the present wealth is based, appears a miserable foundation in face of this new one, created by large-scale industry itself. As soon as labour in the direct form has ceased to be the great well-spring of wealth, labour time ceases and must cease to be its measure, and hence exchange value [must cease to be the measure] of use value.74

Therefore, taking in due account the limits of this critical note, we may summarise the historical-analytical path of workerism in two main points. i) As it is the only holder of living labour, the working class manifests an ‘absolute’ or separate interest, a unilateral synthesis, the only one which is, historically, thinkable. This foundational statement legitimises the workerist insistence on the so-called ‘high points’ of capitalist development, characterised by the presence of a labour-power that is already working class, since classrelations exist already in the sphere of circulation, an sich, in themselves, given that, in Tronti’s words, which we have already cited, ‘a social mass forced to sell its labour-power is also the general form of the working class’. As a result, nothing better than the evolution of the money-form (M–M') can unravel the essence of capitalist class-relations, and, consequently, the nexus between development and crisis. ii) If it is true that labour-power exists as a specific commodity since it is a living body, this happens, not in spite of, but because it is labour-as-subjectivity. Therefore, the identity between living labour and the working class seems to be a fortiori correct. From the same deductive chain descends the primacy attributed to the valorisation-process and political class-composition, starting from the money-form. And, once this primacy is synthesised in the relationship between relative surplus-value and relative wage, the (dis)proportional nature 72. Negri 1971, pp. 27–9. 73. Panzieri 1964, pp. 285–6, n. 76 (reprinted in Lanzardo (ed.) 1973). 74. Marx 1993, p. 705.


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of the latter reveals its antagonistic political essence. As a result, the law of value is codifiable as simple political command. Albeit with different nuances, both Tronti and Negri would come to this conclusion. Subsequently, the story would turn out to be a different one. Were one to say that, only from this point onwards, workerist theoretical research was focused on the ‘problem of the state’ – and I am referring, of course, to the Italian events following 1977 and the debate devoted to political repression, etc. – this statement would be partial, if not incorrect. Let us simply recall the earlier works concerning the crisis of the planner-state,75 Keynesianism, and the constitutionalisation of labour.76 And, even before that debate, one would have to consider that, in the workerist tradition in the midseventies, a pivotal rôle was played by the discussion concerning the relationship between the new class-composition, public expenditure, and wage-form;77 a discussion that followed the territorial redistribution of the valorisationprocesses generated by the great layoffs mentioned above.78 From then on, in fact, the wage-form was related, no longer to the refusal of labour expressed by the mass-worker, but, rather, to the right of income-as-revenue claimed by the growing number of non-guaranteed workers.79 Nonetheless, if it is true that the Italian ’77-movement, in political terms, represented, simultaneously, the end of the ‘long’, Italian seventies and the beginning of a new political phase, it is also true that all this gave rise to ‘another story’, because the experience of the first workerist generation had, in the meantime, already ended. Nevertheless, although with a little strain, one could affirm that there was a point of synthesis, which represented also a sort of obligatory, although ‘posthumous’, passage.80 I am referring here to the comparison between the so-called ‘autonomy of the political’ – as theorised by Tronti at the beginning of the seventies81 – and the ‘autonomy of the social’, theorised in the meantime by Negri. Whereas the first concept of ‘autonomy’ – coherently with the prior idea of ‘entryism’ in the Italian Communist Party (PCI) – affirmed that the working class, and thus its difference, should have had to transform itself into the leading class within the capitalist state (to become-state, farsi Stato); the latter, on the contrary – through the idea of ‘displacement of subject’82 –

75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82.

Negri 1974b. Various Authors 1972; Negri 1977, pp. 27–98. See Zanini 2009. Negri 1978, pp. 31–5. Magnaghi 1976. Bologna (ed.) 1978; Various Authors 1981. Tronti 2008a, pp. 15–6. Tronti 1977 (the texts collected in this volume were written in 1972). Negri 1979a, and Negri 1980a.

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pursued the social radicalisation of the same class-autonomy.83 Surely, considering the transformations that had occurred in class-composition, that ‘displacement’ ran the risk of producing an entity devoid of any relationship – as Negri himself acknowledged soon afterwards.84 Nonetheless, from the Trontian perspective, and within the relationships now established between party and class, the rôle of ‘class-autonomy’ appeared absolutely undetermined. What did it really mean to ‘put politics in command’? Did it mean the postponement of the ‘economic’ with respect to the ‘political’, in order to achieve a political hegemony over capitalist innovation? Undoubtedly, what was under discussion was not (only) the old question concerning the rôle of the PCI, but, rather, the possible articulations of different political meanings of ‘class-autonomy’ after the ‘long’ Italian 1968. Whilst Tronti reasserted that the transformation, via the PCI, of working-class autonomy into class-leadership was the ultimate, only and positive way out from the siècle ouvrier 85 – because a different, political escape appeared as unthinkable and working-class defeat seemed more than probable – Negri, by insisting on the transformation of the ‘mass-worker’ into the ‘social worker’, was outlining, in terms of self-valorisation, the last step to be reached by a political class-composition formed within/without the final scenario of the Fordist big firm. Both perspectives tended to define a coherent outcome for an idea that, in reality, had only remained the same until the mid-sixties. In fact, afterwards, the meaning of ‘class-autonomy’ was understood in very different ways – as testified by the fragmentation that characterised the evolution of the groups comprising the extra-parliamentary Left, including Potere Operaio.86 For this reason, in my opinion, we may see in this final contrast the ‘posthumous’ closure of the experience of the first workerist generation, at the moment in which the outcomes of the capitalist counter-revolution were mature, and the historical defeat of the Italian working class accomplished.87 It is not by chance that, from here on, Negris’s Spinozist concept of the multitude88 became, firstly, synonymous with the ‘displacement of subject’, and, secondly, ended up by absorbing and substituting it.89 All this paved the way for a new conceptual story, fierce in its continuity, but unavoidably different. Here, we 83. Negri 1980a. 84. Negri 1980b. 85. It is important to recall here the works published by Tronti, beginning in 1980: Tronti 1980; Tronti 1992; Tronti 1998. 86. See the critical remarks by Bologna 2008, p. 728. 87. Polo and Sabattini 2000. 88. Negri 1981. 89. See Zanini 1982, pp. 71–87.


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may surely find the wealth of a ‘long’ tradition of thought: the workerist style.

3. A political philosophy of modernity In a very synthetic form, and on the basis of the periodisation proposed herein, I think it is reasonable to assert that, starting from the concept of difference, the theoretical evolution of the thinking of the first workerists may be understood according to three Marxian conceptual couplets: namely, commodity-form/money-form, labour-process/valorisation-process, and relative surplus-value/relative wage. The interpretation of living labour as working class (which expresses the Marxian labour-as-subjectivity) makes it then possible to introduce a fresh, conceptual couplet: technical and political class-composition. Taking into due account the Italian historical scenario, what emerges is an argumentative line, that, starting from the money-form, reaches the wageform. The focal point of this argumentation is represented by the valorisationprocess, expressed by a changing, political class-composition, which characterises the core of the ‘high points’ of capitalist development. Given the above, the law of value is nothing other than a form of command, because the valorisation-process consists of a process of exploitation of the specific difference that qualifies labour-power. This exploitation involves the de-realisation of labour. It is here that living labour ‘posits itself objectively, as its own notbeing or as the being of its not-being – of capital’.90 However, all this does not compromise the ‘essence’ of living labour itself, which is necessarily assumed, by capital itself, as a living body, as an epochal, political subject: the working class. Thus, the point of arrival reasserts the starting point – and the parabola of the first workerist generation is accomplished. It is not by chance that in the middle of the events of 1977 – an historical context very different if compared with the city-factory theorised by Tronti in the sixties – at the moment in which the reasoning about the new forms of social conflict required an explicit, fresh, political stance, the cleavage within the old workerist group went well beyond the well-known divergences stemming from the entryist strategy.91 What appeared to be untenable was the previous interpretation of the concept of difference when compared with the new class-composition, within which

90. Marx 1993, p. 454. 91. Grotesque, and exactly for this reason absolutely significant, is Asor Rosa 1977.

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the working class was no longer the Trontian ‘rude razza pagana [rough pagan race]’. Regarding the workerist tradition of thought, can we talk about ‘philosophical foundations’? In spite of everything, my answer is positive, even if it may seem contradictory. In fact, if it is true that workerism was, first of all, a well-defined, historical form of political militancy, both radical, as well as intellectually sophisticated; nonetheless, it produced and solidified a non-contingent, modern, political philosophy of social conflict. This is the reason why its intellectual influence has been and remains so long-lasting; just as it has been able to change over the years, evolving and becoming a globally acknowledged theoretical and political point of reference. What is the key-point in this matter? I think it is represented by the constitution of an antagonistic philosophy of subjectivity (not of the subject), based on an immanent concept of difference, non-reducible to ‘an(other)’ history of philosophy. There is nothing better than Tronti’s recent retrospection to clarify the point in question: Panzieri accused me of ‘Hegelianism’, of ‘philosophy of history’. This reading, and the accusation that underlies it, will often return; after all, Hegelianism was a real factor, it was effectively there, always had been; while this idea of a ‘philosophy of history’ absolutely did not. . . . Ours was not a theory that imposed itself from outside on real data, but the opposite: that is, the attempt to recover those real data, giving them meaning within a theoretical horizon.92

Therefore, those ‘real data’ were not traced back to an impossible ‘philosophy of the working class’, but to the contingency that characterised the figure of the mass-worker,93 to its historically determined difference, interpreted according to a particular reading of Marx, freed from historicist fetters, drawn from a specific, but epochal, historical context, maintained and generalised, although that concept eventually faded away. Possibly, all this may sound today like yet another way of chanting the ‘magnificent and progressive fortunes’ of the ‘Working Class’ intended as the ‘Hegelian Spirit’. In reality – Tronti says – the mass-worker was not a ‘bearer of history’, but of politics. The ‘difference’ stemmed from here. Nonetheless, according to many critics, this philosophy of subjectivity would later reveal the ambiguity of workerist thought, regardless of its lasting (dis)continuity: from Fordism to post-Fordism, from the working class to the multitude. This is not my opinion, provided that one recognises, first of all, 92. Tronti 2008b, pp. 601–2. 93. Tronti 2008a, p. 10.


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that, starting from a certain point in time, we are faced with a many-faceted thought: not only because workerism has never existed as a monolithic group, but also because it followed different theoretical paths over the years. A serious and balanced assessment has to evaluate to what degree workerism constituted a radical, political action founded on a truly innovative Marxist perspective. And in doing so, one also has to consider that fifty years ago, a large part of Italian Marxism was indeed a ‘dead dog’, which an injection of generous Gramscianism would not have been sufficient to revive. Exactly for this reason Panzieri’s work has shown itself to be so fundamental, just as – from a philosophical, political, and economic point of view – an updated concept of difference remains absolutely.

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Magnaghi, Alberto 1976, ‘Il territorio nella crisi’, Quaderni del territorio, 1: 15–29. Mangano, Attilio 1989, Le culture del Sessantotto. Gli anni sessanta, le riviste, il movimento, Pistoia: CDP. Marx, Karl 1975 [1864], ‘Results of the Direct Production Process’, in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Collected Works, Volume 34, London: Lawrence and Wishart. —— 1990 [1867], Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1, translated by Ben Fowkes, Harmondsworth: Penguin. —— 1993 [1939/53], Grundrisse, edited and translated by Martin Nicolaus, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Mezzadra, Sandro 2000, ‘Operaismo’, in Enciclopedia del pensiero politico, edited by Roberto Esposito and Carlo Galli, Rome: Laterza. Negri, Antonio 1974a, ‘Partito operaio contro il lavoro’, in Bologna, Carpignano and Negri 1974. ——1974b, Crisi dello Stato-piano. Comunismo e organizzazione rivoluzionaria, Milan: Feltrinelli. —— 1976, Proletari e Stato, Milan: Feltrinelli. —— 1977, La forma stato, Milan: Feltrinelli. —— 1978, Il dominio e il sabotaggio, Milan: Feltrinelli. —— 1979a, Marx oltre Marx. Quaderno di lavoro sui Grundrisse, Milan: Feltrinelli. —— 1979b, Dall’operaio massa all’operaio sociale. Intervista sull’operaismo, edited by Paolo Pozzi and Roberta Tommasini, Milan: Multhipla. —— 1980a, Il comunismo e la guerra, Milan: Feltrinelli. —— 1980b, Politica di classe: il motore e la forma. Le cinque campagne oggi, Milan: Machina libri. —— 1981, L’anomalia selvaggia. Potere e potenza in Baruch Spinoza, Milan: Feltrinelli. —— 1991a, Marx beyond Marx: Lessons on the Grundrisse, translated by Harry Cleaver, Michael Ryan and Maurizio Viano, edited by Jim Fleming, London: Pluto Press. —— 1991b, The Savage Anomaly: the Power of Spinoza’s Metaphysics and Politics, translated by Michael Hardt, Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press. —— 2008, ‘A Class-Struggle Propaedeutics, 1950s–1970s’, in Casarino and Negri 2008. —— 2009, Il lavoro nella Costituzione, Verona: Ombre corte. Panzieri, Raniero 1964, ‘Plusvalore e pianificazione’, Quaderni Rossi, 4: 257–88. —— 1973 [1961], ‘Relazione sul neocapitalismo’, in Lanzardo (ed.) 1973. Polo, Gabriele and Claudio Sabattini 2000, Restaurazione italiana, Rome: Manifestolibri. Rieser, Vittorio 1965, ‘I “Quaderni Rossi” ’, Rendiconti, 10: 270–88. Rosdolsky, Roman 1968, Zur Entstehungsgeschichte des Marxschen ‘Kapital’, Frankfurt-Vienna: Europäische Verlagsanstalt-Europa Verlag. Trotta, Giuseppe and Fabio Milana (eds.) 2008, L’operaismo degli anni Sessanta. Dai ‘Quaderni Rossi’ a ‘Classe operaia’, Rome: Derive Approdi. Tronti, Mario 1963, ‘Il piano del capitale’, Quaderni Rossi, 3: 44–73. —— 1966, Operai e capitale, Turin: Einaudi. —— 1971, Operai e capitale, Second Edition, Turin: Einaudi. —— 1977, Sull’autonomia del politico, Milan: Feltrinelli. —— 1980, Il tempo della politica, Rome: Editori Riuniti. —— 1992, Con le spalle al futuro, Rome: Editori Riuniti. —— 1998, La politica al tramonto, Turin: Einaudi. —— 2008a, ‘Saggio introduttivo’, in Trotta and Milana (eds.) 2008. —— 2008b, ‘Testimonianza’, in Trotta and Milana (eds.) 2008. Various Authors 1972, Operai e stato, Milan: Feltrinelli. —— 1975, ‘Raniero Panzieri e i Quaderni Rossi ’, aut aut, 149–50: ??–??.


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—— 1981, Crisi delle politiche e politiche nella crisi, Naples: Pironti. Virno, Paolo 1996, ‘The Ambivalence of Disenchantment’, in Radical Thought in Italy: A Potential Politics, edited by Michael Hardt and Paolo Virno, Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press. —— 1999, Il ricordo del presente. Saggio sul tempo storico, Turin: Bollati Boringhieri. Wright, Steve 2002, Storming Heaven: Class Composition and Struggle in Italian Autonomist Marxism, London: Pluto Press, 2002. Zanini, Adelino 1982, Filosofie del soggetto. Soggettività e costituzione, Palermo: Ila Palma. —— 2008, Economic Philosophy: Economic Foundations and Political Categories, translated by Cosma E. Orsi, New York: Peter Lang. —— 2009, ‘La costituzione del lavoro. Una discussione con l’autore’, in Negri 2009. Zanini, Adelino and Ubaldo Fadini (eds.) 2001, Lessico postfordista. Dizionario di idee sulla mutazione, Milan: Feltrinelli.


brill.nl/hima

Le Capital Amoureux : Imaginary Wealth and Revolution in Jean Genet’s Prisoner of Love Duy Lap Nguyen Department of Comparative Literature, University of California, Irvine [email protected]

Abstract This paper explores the relationship between revolution and corruption in Jean Genet’s accounts of the Palestinian movement in his final work, Prisoner of Love. For Genet, corruption does not simply expose the actions of a revolutionary subject as an empty impersonation, performed for the actual ends of acquiring personal power and fortune. Rather, it exposes the ‘pretension’ inherent in the revolution it undermines as well as in the accumulation of value (for which the revolution is betrayed). For Genet, the misappropriation of money by the Palestinian leadership makes manifest the imaginary character of both devotion to a revolutionary cause and greed for the commodity-fetish (value). Corruption, in other words, betrays revolution as well as the ‘imaginary wealth and power’ which the ‘game of revolution’ attempts to destroy. Keywords J. Genet, Prisoner of Love, Palestinian movement, commodity-fetishism, performativity

In Prisoner of Love, Jean Genet describes revolution, as well as its agents, as the products of an ‘imaginary activity’, a collective fantasy about the destruction of an ‘imaginary wealth and power’ that exists only in the daydreams of the dispossessed, a dispossession that is itself imaginary, insofar as it is defined against the image of privilege and luxury: Because they never owned anything, the fedayeen imagined the luxuries they wanted to rid the world of. That’s what I meant – what I wanted both to say and to conceal – by the ‘quiet periods’ . . . the daydreams people have to work off somehow when they’ve neither the strength nor the opportunity to make them come true. It’s then they invent the game of revolution. . . . Then our preoccupation with merely imaginary wealth and power is supposed to help us to create weapons with which to destroy real wealth and power when we meet them. . . . Some of the fedayeen asked me to bring them the works of Karl Marx back from Damascus. In particular Das Kapital. They didn’t know he wrote it sitting on his backside on pink silk cushions – wrote it in fact to fight against the soft pink silk, and soft © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011

DOI: 10.1163/156920610X550613

D. L. Nguyen / Historical Materialism 18 (2010) 64–84

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mauve silk, and against little tables and vases and chandeliers and chintz, and footmen and portly Regency commodes.1

Like all revolutionary daydreams, Capital, according to Genet, is directed against an imaginary (as opposed to a real) object. Whatever the historical accuracy of Genet’s account of the conditions under which Marx produced Capital, his remarks draw attention, nevertheless, to a central inconsistency, if not contradiction within the text: the apparent persistence of a concept of revolution as a moment of demystification and historical awakening, in which a mass of individuals, dispossessed from the land as well as the traditional bonds which once determined its distribution and use, is ‘at last compelled to face with sober senses [its] real condition of life, and [its] real relations with [its] kind’;2 the persistence, in other words, of a conception of revolution as a moment of objective recognition, in the context of a critical analysis of the commodity, money and capital as forms of ‘imaginary wealth and power’,3 as the products of a practical misrecognition – ‘necessary illusions’4 in which ‘the definite social relation between men . . . assumes . . . the fantastic form of a relation between things’.5 This paper attempts to pursue this paradox (of which Marx himself was well aware)6 – in which dispossession figures as a condition for both the emergence 1. Genet 2003, pp. 119–20. 2. The Communist Manifesto, in McLellan (ed.) 1977, p. 223. 3. ‘The price or money-form of commodities is, like their form of value generally, quite distinct from their palpable and real bodily form; it is therefore a purely ideal or notional form. Although invisible, the value of iron, linen and corn exists in these very articles: it is signified through their equality with gold, even though this relation with gold exists only in their heads, so to speak. . . . Since the expression of the value of commodities in gold is a purely ideal act, we may use purely imaginary or ideal gold to perform this operation.’ Marx 1990, pp. 189–90. 4. Balibar 1995, p. 60. 5. Marx 1990, p. 165. 6. In a letter to Engels, for example, Marx describes his characterisation of capitalism – as tending, historically, toward the inevitable expropriation of the capitalist class by the expropriated ‘mass of the people’ – as a ‘subjective’ and ‘tendentious’ conclusion, one which he was ‘perhaps bound and obligated to assume in view of his party position and his past’. According to Marx, this ‘ultimate outcome . . . of the present social process’ (the expropriation of the class of expropriators by a revolutionary subject, radicalised by its dispossession) ‘bears absolutely no relation to [the] real development’ of the analysis in Capital, a critical analysis which, in Marx’s words, ‘sounded the death-knell to all socialism by the book, i.e. to utopianism, for evermore’ (McLellan (ed.) 1977, p. 493). What this suggests is that, for Marx, the concept of a revolutionary subject, constituted on the basis of the recognition of its objective condition (dispossession), is inconsistent with a critical analysis of social relations in capitalism as objective ‘forms of appearance’ (Marx 1990, p. 677). According to Étienne Balibar, this inconsistency accounts for the virtual disappearance of the ‘proletariat’ from the text of Capital. Marx’s use of the term (notably in the dedication to Wilhelm Wolff and the section on the ‘Historical Tendency of

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of a demystified political subject, as well as the mystification of the commodityfetish itself – through a reading of Genet’s reflections on the Palestinian fedayeen. In Prisoner of Love, the paradox appears, in a particularly striking manner, in Genet’s discussion of ‘corruption’ among the Palestinian leadership as an act in which ‘devotion’ to the ideals of a revolutionary movement is ‘betrayed’ by a desire for money (the universal form of the commodity-fetish itself, the material image of an ‘imaginary wealth’ which Marx referred to as ‘value’). For Genet, corruption does not simply expose the acts of a revolutionary agent as an empty performance or pretence, staged for the actual purpose of accumulating personal fortune or power. Rather, it reveals what Genet describes as the inherently ‘imaginary’ nature of the act of revolt, as well as the exchange of commodities. Corruption, in other words, exposes the ‘pretense’ inherent in the revolution it appears to betray, as well as in the accumulation of value or wealth, for which it betrays it. For Genet, what the misappropriation of money by the Palestinian leadership makes manifest, therefore, is the imaginary character of both commitment to a revolutionary cause (‘proven’ as real through a life-and-death struggle which, for Genet, proves to be difficult to distinguish from thrill-seeking or ‘playing’ with death), and the exchange of commodities (through which the identical value of incommensurable objects, in Marx’s words, is legitimately ‘proven’ or ‘earned’). Corruption ‘betrays’ revolution as well as the ‘imaginary wealth and power’ which the ‘game of revolution’ seeks to destroy. This paper begins with a reading of Genet’s account of revolution as an imaginary activity, performed by a ‘natural sham’, or spontané simulateur, playing the rôle of a revolutionary subject. It proceeds, in the following section, to a discussion of Marx’s analysis of the exchange of commodities, interpreted as another form of imaginary behaviour, based on what Marx describes as the ‘self-evident’ ‘absurdity’ of an imaginary substance of wealth (value) which makes incommensurable objects comparable (and therefore exchangeable). This section of the paper will also examine Genet’s conception of the spontané Capitalist Accumulation’), despite its apparent incompatibility with the critical method employed in Capital, suggests a symbolic gesture of solidarity toward a political movement which Marx could neither completely endorse nor betray, publically, in his writing. In Balibar’s words, the references to the proletariat in Capital constitute a ‘symbolically affirmed continuity’ with the Communist League: ‘[T]he term ‘proletariat’ is the ‘bridge’ which makes it possible to quote significant passages of the Manifesto and The Poverty of Philosophy in the footnotes. Thus, such references constitute the beginnings of what, from 1870 on, will become “historical materialism”. However, on account of this very fact, the references to the “proletariat” accentuate the difficulty in holding together, without aporia or contradiction, historical materialism and the critical theory of Capital, although these “two discoveries” . . . constantly interfered with each other’ (Balibar 1994, p. 127).


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simulateur in relation to Marx’s analysis of value, as a practical fiction which underlies the actions of agents or subjects in the process of exchange. I argue that Genet’s account of revolutionary subjectivity, as a ‘spontaneous simulation’ between persons, should be understood with reference to Marx’s conception of the commodity-fetish, as a ‘fantastic . . . relation between things’ in which objects ‘come on stage’, and perform as agents or actors in place of human subjects. For Marx, the commodity constitutes a form of mystification which serves, paradoxically, to ‘demystify’ social identity (or subjectivity), thereby rendering its inherently imaginary character apparent, practically as well as historically. The final portion of the paper proposes an interpretation of Genet’s reflections on ‘corruption’, as an act involving the entanglement (or mutual ‘betrayal’) of revolutionary struggle and commodity-exchange, one that exposes the different forms of ‘spontaneous simulation’ which constitute the revolutionary subject as well as the ‘imaginary wealth and power’ which it opposes.

Prisoner of Love : revolution as imaginary performance In Prisoner of Love, Genet provides an account of revolt and revolution that implicitly calls into question the ‘myth’ of class-consciousness, an account which underscores what Étienne Balibar has described as ‘the irreducible split between a class condition and a mass movement’.7 For Genet, ‘man’ is a subject that is opaque to itself, defined by a lack of self-transparency that engenders a ‘need to create not only signs but [to] complete and compact images masking a reality that may consist in absence of being. The void’.8 Sex, even before it emerges into consciousness, is probably the most widespread phenomenon in the living world. . . . Another perhaps less universal function is the desire, more or less conscious in every man, to create an image of himself and propagate it beyond death. . . . From Greece to the [Black] Panthers, history has been made out of man’s need to detach and project fabulous images, to send them as delegates into the future . . .9

7. Balibar 1994, p. 179. According to Balibar, the ‘myth’ of class-consciousness assumes a ‘mimetic relation’ between the proletariat conceived as subject and object, as the ‘proletariat’ and the ‘working class’, a correspondence between an objective condition and a collective consciousness of that condition. 8. Genet 2003, p. 302. 9. Genet 2003, p. 301.

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‘Man’, according to Genet, is an image-creating animal, a subject which spontaneously constitutes itself through the production of spectacle, a spontané simulateur. This subject, however, is never identical to the images it produces, a non-identity or ‘absence of being’ which gives rise to the desire to propagate images. The relation between subjects, therefore, is defined implicitly by Genet as a circulation of images which ‘masks’ a ‘void’, a lack of a self-image that is constitutive of both the subject and the object of the exchange (and this includes, of course, Genet’s relation to his own literary object in Prisoner of Love, as an individual whose life is ‘nothing but a blank sheet of paper . . . folded into something different’, providing an account of events that are ‘written on the void, an artifice superimposed on nothingness, and is the white page . . .’)10 Revolutionary movements, Genet suggests, emerge when an image assumes a ‘social function’, ‘detaching’ itself from ‘the man concerned and from any group or act’, and becomes ‘exemplary (that is, unique) and active’, not as ‘a source of imitations, but as a starting point for actions’.11 The image becomes a ‘Name’, an image that has become unique, ‘exemplary and active’, and that can project itself across time and space; ‘a surname, a first name, a family tree, a country, an ideology, a party, a grave . . .’12 Like the image from which it is derived, the ‘Name’ is not a mask that conceals a subject, but rather a ‘reality that may consist in absence of being’. The names of revolutionaries circulate as the ‘starting point for actions’, masks which are used in what Genet describes as theatrical stagings of revolt and rebellion, worn by nameless actors and performers; a circulation of revolutionary noms de guerre: The number of noms de guerre was astonishing. False names were originally intended to conceal a fighter; now they adorned him. His choice was a pointer to his fantasies, which were paralleled by such designations as Chevara (a contraction of Che Guevara). . . . Every name was a thin, some times transparent, mask beneath which there was another name, another mask . . . through which could be glimpsed a further name . . .13

The nom de guerre, then, is a kind a revolutionary equivalent to the nom-dupère, a ‘paternal signifier’ that conceals ‘a void [in the subject] that exceeds every possible symbolic identification’;14 a mask that does not distinguish or

10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

Genet 2003, p. 5. Genet 2003, p. 302. Genet 2003, p. 71. Genet 2003, p. 36. Žižek 1993, p. 79.


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disguise, but rather designates the place of an empty political ‘meaning-tocome’ (‘a pointer to his fantasies’),15 a revolutionary daydream that recedes into the horizon of the past and the future. The nom de guerre is not a personality or a persona, but an expectation, an aspiration, an image animated by a desire ‘project[ed] into a future no less absent than the present’.16 The ‘name’, then, does not simply produce the person; rather, it is assumed by the subject in a performative manner, as the object of an ‘anticipatory identification’.17 The subject ‘becomes what it already is’ by assuming a ‘symbolic mandate’ given by the paternal signifier.18 But not only does the subject ‘overtake’ itself in its ‘anticipatory identification’ with the revolutionary image it will become, it also precedes itself by ‘retroactively grounding its own reasons’, positing its own genealogy, its own revolutionary origins in a kind of inverted and circular act of parentage or procreation.19 The revolutionary assumes the revolutionary ‘mandate’, fulfilling an obligation to the dead, an imaginary ancestry that is simultaneously honoured and ‘revealed’ in the very act of revolt: What I saw at once was that every ‘nation’, the better to justify its rebellion in the present, sought proof of its own singularity in the distant past. Every uprising revealed some deep genealogy whose strength was not in its almost non-existent branches but in its roots. So that the rebels springing forth everywhere seemed to be celebrating some sort of cult of the dead.20

Images projected into the past and the future, then, provide ‘proof ’ of the existence of a ‘nation’ in the present; the circulation of images establishes a genealogy, an imaginary relation to the dead, to a virtual (revolutionary) ancestry that confers the mandate of rebellion upon the living, imposing a revolutionary project which creates a revolutionary subject in the place of an 15. Žižek 1993, p. 78. 16. Genet 2003, p. 302. 17. For Genet, then, the revolutionary subject is not simply assigned a place within an already-established revolutionary tradition; in Lacanian terms, the revolutionary does not, in Žižek’s words, merely ‘wait for a symbolic place to be allotted to [it]’. ‘The image’, as Genet explains, is not ‘active as a source of imitations, but as a starting point for actions which, though they’ll be thought to be through and for it, will in fact be against it’ (Genet 2003, p. 302). 18. ‘[B]y means . . . of the signifier which “means” only the presence of meaning, we are able as it were to “overtake” ourselves and, in an anticipatory move, establish our identity not in some positive content but in a pure self-referential signifying form alluding to a meaning-to-come. Such is, in the last resort, the logic of every ideological Master-Signifier in the name of which we fight our battles: fatherland, America, Socialism, etc. – do they not all designate an identification not with a clearly defined positive content but with the very gesture of identification?’ (Žižek 1993, p. 78). 19. Žižek 1993, p. 74. 20. Genet 2003, p. 37.

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‘absence of being’. In the act of revolt, images ‘joined together . . . make up both memory and history’. For Genet, then, ‘the Palestinian revolution was no ordinary battle to recover stolen land’, it was a ‘metaphysical revolt’, waged by a people whose revolutionary condition, whose dispossession, was produced by the very struggle to reverse it: ‘as far as I could see, their land – Palestine – was not merely out of reach . . . it never existed. Vestiges of it remained, very distorted, in old people’s memories’.21 In that sense, revolution, for Genet, does not arise out of a moment of demystification, in which a subject recognises itself in its own condition of oppression and struggles to acquire the means to abolish both its oppression and itself. Rather, it is a moment of misrecognition, in which a revolutionary consciousness emerges in the attempt to realise a revolutionary image it mistakes for itself. Revolution, in other words, is a moment of fantasy or selfmystification, a collective ‘daydream’ rather than a moment of historical awakening.

Amorous capital: commodity-exchange as imaginary activity Marx’s analysis in Capital suggests a shift in perspective from his earlier writings: from a critique of capitalism from the point of view of a potential revolutionary class-subject (the proletariat) – from the standpoint, in other words, of the ‘real conditions’ and ‘relations’ to which this subject is reduced as a result of its dispossession, of the ‘decompos[ition of ] the old society throughout its depth and breadth’22 that accompanied the expropriation from the land – to an analysis articulated from the perspective of what would seem to be ‘the old society’ itself; an analysis, moreover, in which the ‘real conditions’ and ‘relations’ – or more precisely, the categories of political economy that form the basis for the historical-materialist conception of history (productive labour, exchange, etc.) – become the very objects of the analysis itself. Marx, in other words, appears to turn away from a mode of analysis in which ‘religious and political illusions’ are unveiled from a demystifying, ‘materialist’ perspective, toward a critique of the ‘mystical character of commodities’, as viewed from the apparent vantage-point of a premodern society,23 one to which Marx returns by means a kind of imaginary journey back in time: 21. Genet 2003, p. 125. 22. Marx 1990, p. 928. 23. I do not mean to suggest here that Marx, in his later writings, adopts the normative standpoint of a premodern society. Marx emphatically insists, in both the Grundrisse and Capital, that a critical perspective on capitalism requires a criterion immanent to capitalism itself. Nevertheless, Marx’s analysis seems to imply that such an immanent perspective is consistent, in


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Let us now transport ourselves . . . to the European middle ages shrouded in darkness. Here, instead of the independent man, we find everyone dependent. . . . Personal dependence here characterises the social relations of production. . . . But for the very reason that personal dependence forms the ground-work of society, there is no necessity for labour and its products to assume a fantastic form different from their reality. . . . No matter, then, what we may think of the parts played by the different classes of people themselves in this society, the social relations between individuals in the performance of their labour, appear at all events as their own mutual personal relations, and are not disguised under the shape of social relations between the products of labour.24

In this section, Marx not only brackets the question of class, but presents a description of the commodity (the ‘fantastic form’ assumed by labour and its products in capitalism) from something like the perspective of a visitor from the past, in particular, from a society in which class (or more precisely, forms of ‘personal dependence’, or domination and exploitation) form the actual basis of the society itself (the hypothetical feudal society to which we have been transported). From this perspective, social forms in capitalism appear as ‘relations between men’ that assume the form of a ‘relation between things’, in which ‘personal’ domination and exploitation – the Hegelian relation of lordship and bondage – is ‘disguised under the shape of social relations between the products of labour’; or, to borrow Marx’s phrase from the Manifesto, in which the ‘religious and political illusions’ which once ‘bound man to his “natural superiors” ’, appear as ‘illusions’ that now ‘bind’ objects to each other in the exchange of commodities. Just as the sovereignty (or ‘independence [Selbstständigkeit]’) of the lord appears as the latter’s natural attribute in relations of ‘personal dependence’, so, in the act of exchange, value appears, not as a relation, but as an intrinsic property of objects, or, more precisely, of the commodity that serves as an equivalent to another (that is, the commodity that, in the exchange-relation, ‘reflects’ the value of another commodity):

some ways, with the perspective of non-capitalist societies, in particular, that of ancient and feudal societies.This is evident from the fact, for example, that Aristotle is referenced, in Capital, as a source for the very distinction between use- and exchange-value, as well as the ‘syllogisms’ that appear in the chapter on the circulation of commodities (C-M-C, M-C-M', etc.) (Marx 1990, pp. 253–4, 267). Marx’s analysis of machinery, moreover, opposes the perspective of nineteenth-century political economy on the division of labour (which ‘is only able to view the social division of labour . . . as a means of producing more commodities [and] . . . accelerating the accumulation of capital’) to that of Plato, Xenophon and Aristotle (‘who are exclusively concerned with quality and use-value’) (Marx 1990, p. 486). For a discussion of the relationship between Marx’s critique of capitalism and ancient philosophy, see Meikle 1995 and McCarthy 1990. 24. Marx 1979, p. 77.

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D. L. Nguyen / Historical Materialism 18 (2010) 64–84 [Equivalent forms] in general, called by Hegel reflex categories, form a very curious class. For instance, one man is king only because other men stand in the relation of subjects to him. They, on the contrary, imagine that they are subjects because he is king.25

The value of objects – like the sovereignty or self-worth [wert] of an individual – is the product of an imaginary relation in which the value of one object is ‘reflected’ in the ‘bodily form [naturalform]’ of another, as the result of a process of misrecognition: In a certain sense, a man is in the same situation as a commodity. As he does not enter into the world in possession of a mirror . . . a man first sees and recognizes himself in another man. Peter only relates to himself as a man through his relation to another man, Paul, in whom he recognizes his likeness. With this, however, Paul also becomes from head to toe, in his physical form as Paul, the form of appearance of the species man for Peter.26

For Marx, then, ‘identity and alienation are strictly correlative’.27 The imaginary identification of objects that occurs in the act of exchange rests on a practical misrecognition of their qualitative differences – an ‘equation of the incompatibles’ – in which one object ‘sees’ its value in another. Objects, in other words, can be identified (and hence, exchanged) only by overlooking their physical non-identity, in a relation that mediates only by masking, or that masks in order to mediate. The exchange of commodities, therefore, involves a kind of practical suspension of belief – a ‘self-evident’ ‘absurdity’ that, according to Marx, is nevertheless adhered to in practice – an intentional fiction or falsehood which organises ‘real’ social practices.28 To borrow Genet’s expression, subjects, in the act of exchange, are ‘charmed’, but not ‘convinced’, by the value of objects, ‘attracted but not blinded’ – they behave, in other words, like prisoners of love.29 The notion of the subject implied in Marx’s analysis of the commodityform, then, is similar to what Genet refers to as the spontané simulateur ; not only as a figure whose alienation is a condition of its identity, but also as a subject whose constitutive lack of identity necessitates its own self-alienation. In Genet’s terms, the spontané simulateur is a subject defined by a ‘void’, a ‘hollowness’ that gives rise to a need for self-alienation, to a desire ‘more or less 25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

Marx 1979, p. 139, n. 1. Marx 1990, p. 144, n. 19. Žižek 1994. p. 25. Marx 1990, p. 169. Genet 2003, p. 217.


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conscious in every man, to create an image of himself ’, in order to mask a ‘reality that may consist in absence of being’. The spontané simulateur, then, is an impostor. Its inherent lack of identity, however, makes its imposture ‘natural’ or ‘spontaneous’. Its spontaneous production of false (self-)images is the basis of its ‘real’ identity. As in the exchange of commodities, moreover, it is precisely the lack of identity, constitutive of the spontané simulateur, that motivates its imaginary identification with others. Hence Genet describes his own relationship with the Black Panthers and the Palestinians not in terms of a kind of a convergence of revolutionary ideals (‘how can you make a comrade of an ideology?’),30 but, rather, as an identification with ‘impersonations’, false (self-)images that reveal a mutual lack of identity (and hence a common need for ‘impersonation’), irreducible differences mediated by an imaginary relation, subjects bound together by the reciprocal recognition of a shared ‘absence of being’, masked by spontaneous simulations of self: If the Black Movement was regarded as a sort of impersonation . . . and if I entered into it as simply and naively as I’ve described . . . then it was because I was recognized as a natural sham [spontané simulateur]. . . . [W ]eren’t [the Palestinians] too more or less openly recognizing me as a natural sham? Even if I risked annihilation by being present at actions of theirs which were only shams, wasn’t I already non-existent because of my own hollow non-life?31

As Genet points out, moreover, the imaginary relations, established by the simulateur, are practical in their effects. Or, more precisely, perhaps, they produce practical effects because they are explicitly imaginary, because they compel others, in practice, to recognise their imaginary character: Changing sex doesn’t consist merely in subjecting one’s body to a few surgical adjustments: it means teaching the whole world, forcing upon it, a change of syntax. Wherever you go people will address you as ‘Madame’ or ‘Mademoiselle’; they’ll stand aside to let you go first, the driver will hand you out of your cab . . .32

The transsexual does not produce immediate changes in other people’s behaviour, but, rather, forces a ‘change in [the] syntax’ of behaviour; the simulateur imposes an awareness of its imaginary character, by compelling others to establish a relationship in practice with an ‘impersonation’. The transsexual forces others to behave in a manner contrary to their conscious 30. Genet 2003, p. 307. 31. Genet 2003, p. 172. 32. Genet 2003, p. 173.

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awareness of ‘her’ fictional status; that is, to act ‘as if ’ the impersonation or performance were real. The transsexual compels others to impersonate, to ‘play along’, and hence to become themselves impersonations, and thereby to see themselves as spontaneous simulations. Like the exchange of commodities, then, relations between subjects in Prisoner of Love are based on a fiction which organises ‘real’ social practices, a ‘self-evident absurdity’ that mediates other and self on the basis of a practical misrecognition.

The demystification of identity and value But if identity and value for Marx arise out of similarly imaginary processes, forms of practical misrecognition, these processes do not, in Marx’s analysis, exist independently of each other. ‘Economic’ processes are not merely analogous to inter-subjective relations. Capital is not a comparison of identity and value, but rather, in a sense, a critique of the latter from the standpoint of the former; a critique of one type of social (and imaginary) relation from the perspective of another kind of social relation, one that is, in some sense, incompatible with the other; an analysis of a ‘social relation between things’ from the perspective of ‘relations between men’, in which the predominance of the former precludes the predominance of the latter, or, more precisely, in which one type of imaginary relation operates in lieu of the other (‘For the very reason that personal dependence forms the ground-work of society, there is no necessity for labour and its products to assume a fantastic form different from their reality’).33 As Marx explains, moreover, the predominance of one relation (and hence its obviation of the other) also has the effect of ‘demystification’ – of ‘revealing’ or making apparent the fictional or imaginary character of the other relation (or, better perhaps, of making the other appear imaginary). Hence, according to Marx, the ‘inequality of men’ in Greek society prevented Aristotle from recognising the equality of things (their common value), as well as that of the labour which produces them;34 the predominance of a relation of ‘inequality between men’ (‘relations of personal dependence’) precluded a relation of ‘equality between things’, and hence the fetishism of commodities: for Aristotle, ‘[s]uch an equalisation [of unlike things] can only be something foreign to their real nature, consequently only “a makeshift for practical purposes” ’.35 33. Marx 1979, pp. 81–2. 34. Marx 1990, p. 152. 35. Marx 1979, p. 152. Emphasis added.


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What this implies, however, is that ‘demystification [Entgötterung]’ cannot be understood as a process of recognition (of the ‘real conditions’ and ‘real relations’), as a transition from a state of illusion (religious, legal, political, moral, etc.) to the state of objective awareness. Rather, for Marx, ‘demystification’ designates a process of displacement and transposition, in which one form of misrecognition is projected onto another, or rather, in which one form of misrecognition occurs in the place of another ; a kind of shift of the burden of illusion, from impersonation to an anthropomorphism in which the products of labour ‘come on stage [auftritt]’, and perform as actors in the place of men.36

Imaginary revolution and wealth In his reflections on corruption among the Palestinian leadership, Genet considers what might be described as the disorienting effects and consequences that result from the convergence and collision of these two types of imaginary relations, in which their opposing aims, motivations and objects become entangled, or, more specifically, in which a desire for (social) recognition – the effect of a ‘relation between men’ – is confused for a desire for value – the effect of a relation between things: It’s natural that . . . some of [the] leaders [of the fedayeen] should be corrupted through handling kilos of unused greenbacks. When a revolutionary movement meets with success, such things become proof that one was in on it from the start. It’s difficult to distinguish total devotion to a cause from a quest for position, ambition for money and power.37

For Genet, corruption is not an act that exposes the ‘real’ motives of the Palestinian leaders, a moment of unmasking in which the latter’s devotion or self-sacrifice is at last revealed for what it was ‘from the start’ – a cover for selfinterest or greed. Rather, Genet describes the effect of money as a kind of belated ‘change of syntax’: the misappropriation of money retroactively transforms or recodes the original aims and intentions of the revolutionary movement, making it ‘difficult to distinguish total devotion to a cause from a quest for position, ambition for money and power’. In that sense, money essentially creates the motive (greed) that it appears simply to expose; it determines what it pretends merely to define, simultaneously 36. See Derrida 1994, pp. 125–76. 37. Genet 2003, p. 139.

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producing the very lack or desire that it expresses, reveals or represents. In Marx’s terms, money, for Genet, is ‘not only the object but also the fountainhead of greed’.38 ‘Corruption’, then, entails a kind of transposition, the projection of a ‘particular form of the drive’ (greed)39 onto past actions and behaviours – actions that were motivated by different aims and intentions – such that ‘greed’ now appears to precede the very object that produced it, as always-already subtending the ‘original’ aims and intentions of the movement; intentions which seem, in retrospect, as so many ‘official statements’ or excuses. The new desire, then, comes to occupy the place of the ‘original’ while transforming the latter into a mask, an image or ‘pretense’ which disguises an ‘ambition for money and power’. What this suggests is that, for Genet, greed is not an originary drive, lurking in the interior of the subject, and waiting for an appropriate object through which finally to disclose its existence. Greed is not a primordial instinct, whose deferral, misrecognition or sublimation is the ‘cause’ of revolutionary ‘daydreams’ or ideals – ideals that can then be unmasked in order to arrive at the more primary human motivation, such that self-sacrifice can be reduced to self-interest, ‘total devotion to a cause’ to ‘ambition for money and power’, a desire for recognition (from the other) to a desire for objects. Nor is greed understood as a destructive individual impulse which must be harnessed or curbed by a social movement in order for it to accomplish its collective aims and objectives. Rather, Genet’s account would appear to conform to Marx’s description of greed as the ‘product of a definite social development, not natural [but] historical ’.40 The object of this historical drive, moreover, is no less the result of the deferral, misrecognition or sublimation of human desires than devotion to a political purpose. For Marx, money is an imaginary object (the ‘representation of wealth’) ‘which possesses all pleasures in potentiality’, but for which the ‘subject must sacrifice all relationships to the objects of particular needs, must abstain, in order to satisfy the need of greed for money as such’.41 Like the revolutionary ‘cause’, therefore, money is a social (and hence imaginary) object, in which the subject misrecognises its own desires. Revolutionary ideals, therefore, are not betrayed by human nature (or the inability to suppress it). Rather, for Genet, ‘corruption’ is the betrayal of 38. 39. 40. 41.

Marx 1973, p. 222. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid.


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revolutionary ideals for other ideals, for other images, the ‘corruption’ of one image or ‘daydream’ by another: What made the fedayeen supermen was that they put the predicament of all before their own individual wishes. They would set out for victory or death. . . . It must have been then that they were beset by the temptation to betray, though I think they almost always resisted. . . . When I thought of the wealth accumulated by many of the Palestinian leaders it struck me that all that furniture, all those carpets and dresses were really a kind of glossy magazine, the kind with photographs of country houses and antique armchairs that people day-dream over. Is it treachery to flick through a magazine? . . . And what if you only do it a few times a year?42

For Genet, then, it is not the desire for wealth that undermines revolutions, but, rather, the desire for the image of wealth. Greed is as imaginary as the ‘total devotion’ it betrays (or rather that it ‘reveals’ as imaginary). The desire for revolution on the part of the Palestinian leaders (a revolution which is ‘in danger of becoming unreal through rhetoric, images on screen’, of becoming a ‘spectacle’ of itself that exists only ‘to produce more stories and pictures’ for newspapers and magazines)43 is betrayed by a desire, not for material possessions or things, but rather for their material image in the form of money and glossy photographs. The desire for one type of image (the image of objects) supplants another (the image of recognition or status). By exposing devotion as a disguise for greed, money, therefore, merely exposes a mask which conceals another mask; one ‘sham’ is unmasked by another. By altering the meaning or perception of the motives and drives which animate the revolution, money, Genet suggests, also transforms, retroactively, the ‘syntax’ of revolutionary struggle itself, transforming the character of the process or practice through which the latter’s object (or ‘cause’) is achieved. ‘Heroic deeds’, carried out in the name of the revolution, become a ‘pretense, a good or bad imitation that unobservant eyes [take] for the real thing’,44 while the ‘Name’ (status or recognition) that these deeds confer upon the agents who perform them (the martyrs and revolutionary heroes) is reduced to a ‘brand-image’.45

42. Genet 2003, pp. 313–14. 43. Genet 2003, p. 317. 44. Genet 2003, p. 171. 45. ‘Was the [Black] Panthers’ failure due to the fact that they adopted a “brand image” before they’d earned it in action?’ (Genet 2003, p. 97).

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Genet describes this process by means of a comparison between two types of ‘misappropriation’: the misappropriation of identity and the misappropriation of money. Is that worse than thinking yourself a fedayee when you’re only one by your own choice, wearing the appropriate costume and keffiyeh and even soul for no more than a few hours in a lifetime? Isn’t a Westerner amusing himself in that way much the same as a warrior taking his ease in a country mansion that to all intents and purposes exists only on glossy paper? To be a fedayee for a moment when you haven’t had to endure a fedayee’s woes is like wearing a forged medal. . . . What about those who misappropriate money in order to ward off the temptation to betray, while remaining in the revolution, with all its responsibilities and risks? Which is worse? The man who diverted money in order to divert the temptation to betray, or the one who chose wealth for its own sake?46

Genet, the ‘Westerner’, assumes the identity of the fedayee ‘by choice’, rather than ‘earning’ it through a necessary or unavoidable life-and-death struggle (‘victory or death’), a struggle which, according to Hegel, must be endured in order for the subject to ‘prove [Bewähren]’ its existence (to earn its recognition as an independent subject), both to itself and the other (‘[T]hey must enter into this struggle, for they must bring their certainty of themselves.’);47 a struggle which, in the case of the fedayeen, is ‘designed to prove to both themselves and to the Jewish Zionists that even though they were only Palestinians they really were turning into creatures of flesh and of spirit . . .’48 But, to acquire recognition (from the Other) without ‘risking one’s life’ (without assuming the ‘responsibilities and risks’ that come with it), without ‘proving’ oneself, is, in Genet’s words, ‘like wearing a forged medal’ – an aim that is not the object of ‘total devotion’, but rather an object of ‘love’ (not the revolutionary ‘cause’ itself, but the ‘glare given off by all rebellions’),49 an object to which Genet is ‘attracted but not blinded’, ‘charmed’ but not ‘convinced’: I didn’t belong to [the revolution], never was in it, my body was in it; my spirit was in it. Everything was in it at one time or another; but never my total belief, never the whole of myself.50

But, as Genet points out, to identify in this manner is also to ‘betray’. To identify (or rather to misappropriate an identity) is to impersonate; not only to 46. 47. 48. 49. 50.

Genet 2003, pp. 313–14. Hegel 1977, pp. 111–19. Genet 2003, p. 321. Genet 2003, p. 86. Genet 2003, p. 105. Emphasis added.


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enjoy a recognition that one does not deserve, but also to make to a mockery of the identity that one assumes, to transform recognition into an image or an imitation of itself, a copy or a counterfeit which depreciates the value of the original. In the case of the corrupt Palestinian leaders, meanwhile, the misappropriation of money (money that has not been ‘earned’) has the effect of transforming an unavoidable life-and-death struggle into something like a freely-chosen enterprise or adventure. Money provides the leaders with the ‘choice’ of either ‘remaining in the revolution, with all its responsibilities and risks’, or pursuing ‘wealth for its own sake’ – of earning recognition or earning money. The lifeand-death struggle, then, is reduced to a form of ‘amusement’ or thrill-seeking (‘Revolution seen as a sort of speleology, or an expedition up an unclimbed face of the Jungfrau’),51 driven by other ‘reasons for rebellion’ which undermine the very ‘cause’ to which the revolutionaries still pretend to adhere: ‘a love of physical confrontation, together with an underlying desire for self-slaughter, for glorious death if victory was impossible’.52 The struggle, then, is no longer a struggle for recognition, but becomes, on the one hand, a struggle for the sake of struggle (a struggle for its own sake), and, on the other, a struggle for the very ‘negation’ of recognition itself: ‘[D]eath is the natural negation of consciousness, negation without independence, which thus remains without the requisite significance of actual recognition’.53 As such, for the Palestinian leaders, the status or recognition that the struggle confers becomes another ‘forged medal’ or ‘brand-image’. Hence, for Arafat (in Genet’s representation at least), the aim of the revolution is the establishment of a Palestinian homeland, a country in which, were it to exist, he would probably never choose to live: [T]he revolution is in danger of becoming unreal through rhetoric, images on screens. . . . Our battles are in danger of turning into poses – they look heroic, but in fact they’re performed. But what if our play were interrupted, forgotten[?] . . . But aren’t you in the revolution to get your land back? I’ll probably never live there . . .54

51. 52. 53. 54.

Genet 2003, p. 313. Ibid. Hegel 1977, p. 112. Genet 2003, p. 317.

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Impersonation and counterfeit money One striking feature of Genet’s comparison, however, is its apparent lack of symmetry; if social recognition is depreciated by its misappropriation, one might expect for the misappropriation of funds to, in some way, devalue money, rather than diminishing the rôle or the position of the individual who misappropriates it. The parallel that Genet establishes, in other words, seems to imply a missing term, a counterpart to the ‘forged medal’ that would not merely be the image of money (photographs of expensive furniture and country-mansions); for while money and medals are both objects that, in Marx’s words, measure the ‘worth of individuals’,55 medals, unlike money (to use Marx’s description of precapitalist forms of material wealth) presuppose ‘an essential relation between the individual and the [object], in which the individual in one of his aspects objectifies himself in the thing, so that this possession of the thing appears at the same time as a certain development of his individuality’.56 Money, on the other hand, ‘does not at all presuppose an individual relation to its owner . . .’ (Hence, as Genet points out, the money, misappropriated by the Palestinian leaders, could just as well as have been deposited in Swiss bank-accounts instead of being converted into conspicuous country-mansions.) Money is the ‘possession of what lacks individuality, since this social [relation] exists at the same time as a sensuous, external object which can be mechanically seized, and lost in the same manner’.57 But, in that sense, money, unlike recognition, cannot be diminished by its misappropriation. Money that is ‘mechanically seized’, rather than ‘proven’ or ‘earned [Bewährt]’ through the practice of exchange, remains money.58 What seems to be missing, therefore, is something like a pecuniary equivalent to the practice of ‘impersonation’, an ‘impersonation’ that would devalue the object (rather than the subject) that it imitates; a monetary version of the simulated struggle, or the revolutionary thrill-seeking that Genet describes, a fictitious act of exchange in which an imaginary currency changes hands.

55. Marx 1973, pp. 230–1. 56. Marx 1973, pp. 221–2. 57. Marx 1973, p. 222. Also see Marx 1973, p. 210. 58. ‘The subjects in exchange exist for one another only through these equivalents, as of equal worth, and prove themselves to be such through the exchange of the objectivity in which the one exists for the other . . . as equals, at the same time also indifferent to one another; whatever other individual distinction there may be does not concern them; they are indifferent to all their other individual peculiarities . . . Although individual A feels a need for the commodity of individual B, he does not appropriate it by force, nor vice versa, but rather they recognize one another reciprocally as proprietors, as persons whose will penetrates their commodities.’ (Marx 1973, pp. 242–3.)


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Such an exchange, in fact, appears in another section of the book, one in which Genet recounts two stories which take place during the Israeli invasion and occupation of Lebanon in 1982, both of which involve encounters between the different parties engaged in the conflict. The first is an account of an Israeli spy who disguises himself as a Palestinian madman in order to infiltrate the Muslim area of West Beirut. The impersonation is a convincing one: He spoke Arabic with a Palestinian accent. . . . The kids who made fun of him and the parents who pitied him all called him the Madman. . . . He stank all over. . . . He’d sleep anywhere so long as it was out of the wind, wrapped up in a single blanket. He begged, and when he swore he said a lot of nasty things about the Israelis . . . Early on 15 September 1982, Israeli tanks entered West Beirut. . . . [T]he people of Beirut were surprised to see the Madman in the leading tank.59

In the second story, a group of Lebanese truck-drivers discover a cache of counterfeit dollars in an underground-workshop built by the Palestinians, money which the drivers use to bribe Israeli soldiers to allow them to cross the border into Lebanon: At the time the [Israeli] military patrols wouldn’t let Lebanese trucks through to the north – to Beirut, for example. . . . And so the fun began. A Lebanese truck driver would show the soldier on duty a bundle of dollars, the soldier would say a firm ‘no’, the driver doubled the bundle . . . the soldier snatched the dollars and pocketed them, then turned his back so as not to see the truck drive off. So thousands of forged dollars crossed the frontier, to the delight of the soldiers, the lorry drivers, and the people of Beirut. . . . The imitation dollars went into the real pockets of real Israeli soldiers, who wound up either as prosperous citizens or in prison . . . The enemy allowed a certain amount of collusion. It wasn’t anything positive. It was a lull in which each party thought it had got the better of the other.60

The two stories are not simply different examples of ‘impersonation’. While the first is an account of an impersonation – in which a relation is established between the different parties in the conflict on the basis of a misrecognition (an imaginary relation with practical effects), in the second, forgery essentially ‘diverts’ the need for impersonation; a fictitious act of exchange takes place instead of a struggle for recognition, objects ‘impersonate’ in the place of people.

59. Genet 2003, p. 167. 60. Genet 2003, p. 170.

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The transaction between the truck-drivers and soldiers is conducted without a mutual acknowledgement of identity (the soldier ‘turned his back so as not to see the truck drive off ’). The soldiers ‘see’ (or rather, misperceive) the money while ignoring the (national) identity of the drivers. A misrecognition of things (the counterfeit money) occurs instead of a misrecognition of persons (as in the case of the Israeli spy). Rather than a confrontation between (political) subjects, a life-and-death struggle through which the recognition of a sovereign-territorial boundary is imposed, what occurs instead is a transaction that is carried out largely in silence (‘A Lebanese truck driver would show the soldier on duty a bundle of dollars . . .’), in which objects speak on behalf of their owners, an imaginary dialogue that Marx records in Capital: If commodities could speak, they would say this: our use-value may interest men, but it does not belong to us as objects. What does belong to us as objects, however, is our value. Our own intercourse as commodities proves it. We relate to each other merely as exchange-values.61

In this ‘natural intercourse’ between objects, money ‘earns’ its recognition as ‘the lord and god of the world of commodities’,62 ‘proving’ its exalted position among the products of labour by becoming their universal equivalent; or, in the case of the counterfeit money, by becoming the image of, and thereby commanding, the services (and loyalty) of the Israeli soldiers. An imaginary struggle between objects mediates and obviates a struggle between subjects, a relation between things is established in lieu of a ‘relation between men’. Unlike the earlier account of corruption (among the Palestinian leaders), moreover, the exchange between the drivers and the soldiers not only uncovers the latter’s devotion as a pretence or a disguise (unmasked by their collusion with the enemy), it also reveals the imaginary character of the objects that mediate the exchange (the counterfeit dollars), or, rather, the imaginary character of the object which the latter impersonates (‘real’ money). An anthropomorphism, which exposes an act of impersonation, is itself exposed by a forgery. What this forgery discloses, however, is not money as a ‘mask’ for productive labour (labour as the ‘secret identity’ of money), since the latter, in this case, is simply a mask for another mask: an impersonation of ‘honest work’ – forgery and treason – activities that are not only ‘unproductive’ (that is, do not produce ‘value’), but which, in fact, diminish value through the circulation of fake 61. Marx 1990, pp. 176–7. 62. Marx 1973, p. 222.

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D. L. Nguyen / Historical Materialism 18 (2010) 64–84 Greed

e ng ha c Ex

Money

le gg u r St “Love”

Recognition

N

“Corruption” (Diverting money to divert betrayal)

le gg u t -s on N

“Forged Medal”

Devotion

ge an h xc -e on

Counterfeit Money

Figure 1

coin: not the ‘exchange of labour for labour’, but an exchange of non-labour for non-labour.63 The forgery, then, does not reveal a content (labour), disguised beneath a form (money, value) (the ‘discovery’ of which, as Marx explains, ‘by no means banishes the semblance of objectivity possessed by the social characteristics of labour’),64 but, instead, foregrounds the imaginary character of the process that produces the disguise, a practice through which incompatible objects and activities are equated, ‘proven’ to be equal, and which produces ‘self-evident’ ‘absurdities’ like the identification of counterfeitmoney and collusion, impersonation and forgery. If the exchange of a forgery for an act of collusion or treason does not, in Genet’s words, represent ‘anything positive’, in terms of a political solution to the situation of the expropriated and the oppressed, neither does it condemn the inevitable failure of revolutionary ideals. Rather, such imaginary performances, for Genet (in which the misrecognitions underlying political struggle and economic exchange are ‘diverted’ by being themselves misrecognised), seem to indicate the possibility of different kind of political practice of the dispossessed – a politics of ‘corruption’ and ‘love’ that would neither be ‘proven’ in the political struggles that constitute the identity of a nation or a people, nor ‘betrayed’ by the appropriation of money which has not been ‘earned’ through the equal exchange of commodities. Such a practice, perhaps, would be one in which dispossession would figure neither as a presupposition for the emergence of a demystified political subject, nor as a 63. See Marx 1990, p. 197. 64. Marx 1990, p. 167.

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condition for the mystification of the commodity-form. In contrast to the aims and objectives of a revolutionary movement, its possibility would lie not in a ‘future no less absent than the present’, but rather in the ‘quiet periods’ which give rise to the revolutionary ‘day-dreams’ of the dispossessed – ‘lulls’ in the ‘game of revolution’ and commodity-exchange in which the objects of greed and devotion alike are ‘betrayed’ by their misrecognition. For Genet, such practices, finally, seem to offer the image of another kind of political community, based neither on a relationship between men nor a social relation between things – a community of ‘collusion’, composed of impersonations and forgeries, prisoners of love, daydreaming of an imaginary revolution and wealth.

References Balibar, Étienne 1994, Masses, Classes, Ideas: Studies on Politics and Philosophy before and after Marx, translated by James Swenson, London: Routledge. —— 1995 [1993], The Philosophy of Marx, translated by Chris Turner, London: Verso Books. Derrida, Jacques 1994 [1993], Specters of Marx: the State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International, translated by Peggy Kamuf, London: Routledge. Genet, Jean 2003 [1986], Prisoner of Love, translated by Barbara Bray, New York: New York Review of Books. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 1977 [1807], Phenomenology of Spirit, translated by A. V. Miller, Oxford: Oxford University Press. McCarthy, George 1990, Marx and the Ancients: Classical Ethics, Social Justice, and NineteenthCentury Political Economy, Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield. McLellan, David (ed.) 1977, Karl Marx: Selected Writings, First Edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Meikle, Scott 1995, Aristotle’s Economic Thought, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Marx, Karl 1973 [1939/53], Grundrisse, edited and translated by Martin Nicolaus, Harmondsworth: Penguin. —— 1979 [1867], Capital: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production, Volume 1, edited by Frederick Engels, translated by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling, New York: International Publishers. —— 1981 [1894], Capital, Volume 3, translated by David Fernbach, Harmondsworth: Penguin. —— 1990 [1867], Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1, translated by Ben Fowkes, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Žižek, Slavoj 1993, Tarrying with the Negative, Durham, NC.: Duke University Press. —— 1994, ‘How Marx Invented the Symptom’, in Mapping Ideology, edited by Slavoj Žižek, London: Verso Books.


brill.nl/hima

Moral Dilemmas and Broken Promises: A Historical-Philosophical Overview of the Nonviolent Movement Domenico Losurdo University of Urbino (Italy) [email protected]

Abstract Great historical crises oblige us to choose not between violence and nonviolence, but between two different forms of violence. Nonviolent movements are no exception to this rule. In the US, with the outbreak of the War of Secession, the Christian-nonviolent movement was obliged to choose between the violence of the Union-army (which ultimately imposed on the South an abolitionist revolution from above) and the violence of slavery. With the outbreak of World-War One, Lenin chose revolution, while, in India, Gandhi became the ‘recruiting agentin-chief ’ for the British army. At that moment, he struggled not for the general emancipation of colonial peoples, but only for the co-optation of the Indian people under the ruling races, and this co-optation was to be gained on the battlefield. While in the past, in spite of their mistakes and oscillations, the protagonists of nonviolence (Gandhi, Tolstoy, Martin Luther King, etc.) were an integral part of the anticolonialist movement, today nonviolence is the watchword of imperialism, which tries to discredit as violent its enemies and challengers. Keywords anticolonialism, co-optation, emancipation, imperialism, nonviolence, violence

1. War, revolution and the ‘seriousness of the negative’1 A festive atmosphere marked the outbreak of the First World-War, especially in Germany. Photos from the time show young people hurrying to enlist with the same enthusiasm usually reserved for an erotic encounter. The appeal of this ‘great and wonderful war’, to use Max Weber’s definition, was also felt by leading intellectuals and broad sections of the population. One highprofile witness, Stefan Zweig, described the spiritual climate in Vienna on the 1. This essay contains some of the themes and reflections subsequently collected and developed in my book, La non-violenza. Una storia fuori dal mito (Losurdo 2010). © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011

DOI: 10.1163/156920610X550622

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D. Losurdo / Historical Materialism 18 (2010) 85–134

days immediately after the outbreak of war as follows: ‘each one was called upon to cast his infinitesimal self into the glowing mass, there to be purified of all selfishness. All differences of class, rank and language were swamped at that moment by the rushing feeling of fraternity.’2 As the country had to face an arduous challenge, it became necessary to unite the people in one voice, creating a fusion of existences and consciences that had never previously been attempted. Soldiers everywhere hastened to the front willing to sacrifice their lives, but, in Germany, more than in any other country, the dominant philosophy and culture celebrated ordeal-by-combat and death-defying acts as spiritual exercises with the power to release the individual from the banality and vulgarity of everyday existence. While the War was still in its infancy, and before Italy became involved, Benedetto Croce expected it to lead to ‘a regeneration of present social life’. However, when everyone realised that what was really awaiting them in the trenches was mud, strict regimentation and death, the harrowing massexperience that followed put paid to this spiritual climate. It is true that, on the other side of the Atlantic, immediately after the end of hostilities, Herbert Hoover, an important representative of the American government and future president, said that the recently terminated conflict had served to carry out the ‘purification of men’, but this was a late and largely contrived revival of an idea that was, by now, a distant echo in the conscience of men.3 Not even the initial triumphal victories of Hitler’s Blitzkrieg twenty years later managed to revive the same level of enthusiasm as in July–August 1914. To the satisfaction of postmodernists, committed to deriding the concept of progress, the frequently tragic nature of major historical experiences means that they leave deep-set marks and teach lessons learnt to varying degrees. We need to insist on the highly tortuous nature of historical processes, but, in the final analysis, use of the term ‘progress’ implies recognising both man’s ability to learn and the irreversibility of historical time, the fact that it is impossible to return to a time predating the historical experiences which marked entire generations of men. The spellbound atmosphere of July–August 1914 will never be repeated, as disenchantment intervened and left its mark. War can no longer be welcomed as a celebration or spiritual exercise, or as a necessary positive step in the shaping and development of men. To borrow an expression from Hegel, the experience of the ‘seriousness of the negative’4 can no longer be erased. 2. Zweig 1943, p. 173. 3. For Germany, see Losurdo 1991, Chapter 1; for Croce and Hoover, see Losurdo 1997, Chapter 2, Section 3. 4. Hegel 1969–79, p. 24.


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The same can be said for the Russian Revolution. At the time, the fall of tsarism and the February-Revolution were heralded as a form of resurrection, which Christian circles and influential sectors of Russian society expected to lead to total regeneration. They foresaw the emergence of a closely unified community, the breakdown of the division between rich and poor, and even an end to theft, lies, gambling, blasphemy and drunkenness. The same phenomenon repeated itself a few months later. ‘This is the very realisation of the fourth psalm of the Sunday vespers, and the Magnificat: the powerful cast from their throne and the poor man lifted from his hovel’ is how one fervent French-Christian observer (Pierre Pascal) welcomed the October-Revolution, while, outside Russia, a young Ernst Bloch predicted the collapse of ‘merchant morals that praise the evilest aspects of human nature’, and the ‘transformation of power into love’.5 The collapse of an old régime that had become universally hated, and the end of a period of bloodshed that had become intolerable to everybody in October awakened a naïve form of enthusiasm. However, this could not withstand the emergence of contradictions and bloody conflicts within the new order. Here, too, the experience of the ‘seriousness of the negative’ left an indelible mark. The beginning of the twentieth century was characterised by wars and revolutions that all promised to achieve a state of perpetual peace by implementing their different methods. In other words, violence was used to guarantee the eradication of the scourge of violence once and for all. Although marred by massacres, the joint expedition by the major powers to repress the Boxer-Rebellion in China in 1900 was celebrated by the French General Frey as the materialisation of the ‘dream of idealist politicians – a United States of the civilised world ’, the advent of a world no longer delineated by national boundaries and characterised by conflict between states.6 In reality, although the horrors of the First World-War were still fresh in the collective mind fourteen years later, this was not the reason why the influence of the ideology we have just outlined declined. In Italy, Gaetano Salvemini used the following idea to petition Italy to enter the recently launched war: ‘it is necessary that this war kill war’. It was not acceptable to desert ‘the war for peace’, to borrow the expression used as the title of the article cited here.7 This was the same ideology of entente that would later be consecrated by Wilson for

5. See Losurdo 2008, pp. 56–7, 67. 6. Cited in Lenin 1955–70c, p. 684. 7. ‘La guerra per la pace’, originally published in L’Unità, 28 August 1914. See Salvemini 1963, p. 361.

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US-intervention (and which is still proclaimed by the White House in a slightly modified form). Lenin rejected such rallying cries, and had no trouble showing how they clashed with reality to a formidable extent. However, he did advocate revolution against war and also promised to achieve a state of perpetual peace, albeit at the end of a different process starting with the global removal of the socio-political system in which the phenomenon of war had become deeply rooted. When analysing the tragedies that characterised the twentieth century and the promises that both wars and revolutions failed to deliver, the words of Karl Valentin, cabaret-artist and friend of Brecht, spring to mind: ‘Even the future was better in the past’.8 The future no longer seems radiant enough to be able to justify the violence (whether in the form of war or revolution) required to achieve it. We should stress that we are not witnessing the collapse of ‘grand narratives’. Although the way that postmodernists challenge the idea of progress is somewhat contradictory, actual progress is really no more than a myth. An infuriating present-day narrative states that perpetual peace can be achieved by spreading democracy, which destroys the foundations of war once and for all on a global scale, even if this is to be accomplished through military strength. It is in the name of such an improbable prospect that devastatingly bloody ‘international police-operations’ are launched. However, although these wars are promoted and transfigured by a huge, sophisticated multimedia-network, they are no longer able to command the massenthusiasm of the past. There is one further aspect to consider. The disappointment caused by the development of events in the twentieth century has led to a frame of mind and outlook which could be summarised as follows: instead of postponing the practice of nonviolence to a somewhat problematic socio-political future, would it not be better to start practising it on an individual basis in the present? It is easy to understand this ‘conversion’, but it is unfortunate that it has not been preceded by a serious historical overview. We know all about the blood and tears that have tarnished plans to transform the world through war or revolution, implemented with a range of different methods and results, but what do we know about the difficulties, defeats and full-blown tragedies experienced by the movement inspired by the ideal of nonviolence?

8. In Magris 2007, p. xii.


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2. ‘Nonviolence’ and fluctuations in the definition of violence: the American Peace Society Groups embodying this predilection first emerged in the United States in 1815, perhaps on the wave of tiredness caused by the recently finished war with Great Britain or, more generally, by the long cycle of wars resulting from the conflict between the old régime and revolutionary-Napoleonic France. These groups united in 1828 to found the American Peace Society and the even more radical New England Non-Resistance Society. The main manifesto of this pacifist-Christian movement was expounded in a book, War Inconsistent with the Religion of Jesus Christ, published some years before by David L. Dodge. The position assumed was clear: ‘The spirit of martyrdom is the true spirit of Christianity’ and any act that contradicted the Gospels should be considered ‘criminal’, therefore including any form of violence.9 The institution of slavery, which played a fundamental rôle in Southern states, was also condemned on the same grounds as the expression of violence and violent oppression by man against man.10 This stance is hardly surprising, as slavery had long been justified on the basis of the right of war that the victor exerted over the defeated party (Grotius was especially relevant in this respect). In opposition, writers such as Rousseau spoke out against slavery precisely because they saw it as the continuation of the state of war. On the basis of these premises, the pacifist movement went hand-in-hand with abolitionist agitation for some time in the USA. The indissoluble bond between the two causes was cemented by the war that the United States had waged against Mexico shortly before the mid-nineteenth century; after conquering Texas and annexing it to the North-American Republic, the victors reintroduced slavery, which had been abolished during the War of Independence against Spain. This was a moment of glory for the American Peace Society, as events seemed to bear out their political manifesto and ideology in full. However, the first symptoms of crisis appeared just a few years later, when a stance had to be adopted on the revolution that had spread across Europe in 1848. With regard to France, the upheaval led to the definitive abolition of slavery in the colonies and the advent of a republic in the cities, committed to relaunching the hopes and promises of perpetual peace dating back to the French Revolution in 1789. However, unlike on the occasion of the war between the USA and Mexico, there was a parting of the ways between 9. Ziegler 1992, pp. 3, 21, 30–1. 10. Ziegler 1992, p. 48.

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pacifist and abolitionist forms of commitment, as a violent revolution was required to sanction the abolition of slavery and raise the peace-flag. Unsettled by this new situation, the American nonviolence-movement resorted to subterfuge. This consisted of welcoming the results without assuming a position on the revolution that had produced them. The reasoning was that the American Peace Society had been founded in the first place to avert wars between states, while the wave of disorder raging in Europe took the form of a series of civil wars.11 Dismissed to the best of their abilities in 1848, these political and moral dilemmas reappeared in more acute form nine years later. After the Sepoys, the colonial troops of the British Empire in India, had rebelled, the government in London responded with repressive measures that were no less fierce, or perhaps even fiercer, than the original rebellion. However, the dominant ideology focused exclusively on denouncing the ‘horrors’ of the rebels. Tocqueville provided a good example of this by feeling that a return to ‘barbarity’ in India ‘would be disastrous for the future of civilisation and for the progress of humanity’. The leading country in the West at the time was therefore called upon to act forcefully to re-establish public order in the colony: ‘in our day almost nothing is impossible for the English nation, if it employs all its resources and all its will’.12 Another leading exponent of the liberal tradition, Thomas B. Macaulay, went even further: The cruelties of the Sepoy natives have inflamed the nation to a degree unprecedented within my memory. . . . There is one terrible cry for revenge. . . . The almost universal feeling is that not a single Sepoy within the walls of Delhi should be spared; and I own that is a feeling with which I cannot help sympathising.13

Marx’s reaction to the ‘catastrophe’ was quite different. While recognising that the rebels were responsible for some horrendous acts, he derided the one-sided moral indignation that proponents of colonialism and superior western civilisation indulged in: ‘However infamous the conduct of the Sepoys, it is only the reflex, in a concentrated form, of England’s own conduct in India’. The English were seen to continue to exercise a remorseless ‘power of life and death’, and often boasted of the foul deeds they were responsible for in their letters: ‘Not a day passes but we string up from ten to fifteen of them [non-combatants]’ or ‘we hold court-martials on horseback, 11. Ziegler 1992, pp. 112–26. 12. Letters to Henry Reeve, 2 August 1857 and 30 January 1858, in Tocqueville 1954, pp. 230, 254. 13. See Losurdo 2005, Chapter 10, Section 3.


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and every nigger we meet with we either string up or shoot’. The ‘fun’ that all this procured is quite clear. On the other hand though – as admitted in a letter published in The Times – ‘the European troops have become fiends when opposed to natives’.14 What position did the American Peace Society adopt? The majority reasoned along these lines: even if British rule in India had illegitimate origins, the governors were nevertheless obliged to maintain order and ensure compliance with it. In other words, the rebels were in the wrong for resorting to violence, for not obeying the laws in force and, in the final analysis, for being outlaws and criminals. It was therefore not a question of war, but, rather, a clash between common delinquency and the forces of law-and-order. Consequently, lending support to the latter did not jeopardise the pacifist cause or the cause of a movement founded with the aim of fighting a specified form of war, namely armed conflict between countries. This may seem like a repeat of the stance adopted in 1848, and there was indeed an element of continuity in the refusal to include civil and colonial wars in the definition of war. At the same time, it is also important to highlight a strong element of discontinuity. While the revolutionary movement had been seen in a favourable light nine years previously, although support had been somewhat reticent, in 1857 there was open declared support for the forces of repression, responsible for a form of violence that, at least in keeping with Marx’s critique, was perhaps even more ferocious and less justifiable. Not surprisingly, the result was a painful split; the sister-organisation set up in England, the London Peace Society, did not identify with the American Peace Society’s stance. In disassociating themselves, the term ‘war’ was used quite explicitly to describe the conflict in India, therefore denouncing the violence committed by the English government too.15 This was certainly a more balanced position, yet although their position of impartiality and neutrality also condemned certain elements of colonial rule (the brutality of repression) together with the rebellion, colonial rule itself was still not included in the category of violence. The analysis of this chapter in the history of the nonviolent movement is extremely enlightening: as proclamation of the unconditional ethic of love made it difficult to assume a position in the series of conflicts that occurred, those guided by the general principle of nonviolence tended to focus their criticism on the violent rebellion of the oppressed.

14. Marx and Engels 1955–89d, pp. 285–7. 15. Ziegler 1992, pp. 127–8.

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3. ‘Nonviolence’ and the intensification and increase in violence: the American Civil War This first crisis in the pacifist movement that developed on both sides of the Atlantic was followed by another, far more serious quandary. The Fugitive Slave Law was passed in the USA in 1850, allowing Southern masters to recover slaves who had taken refuge in the North. It meant that even free black people risked being forced into slavery if they were accused of being fugitive-slaves. When the forces of law-and-order attempted to implement this law, they clashed with a resistance-movement that included the abolitionists, resulting in fairly serious riots where blood was sometimes shed. The dilemma faced by the American Peace Society was as follows: how far can nonviolence go against a law which may be reprehensible but was nevertheless enacted by a legitimate authority, and how much support can be given to black slaves trying to escape slavery by taking refuge in Canada? In other words, what position should be adopted on the matter of a civil war that started off latent but became evident just a few years afterwards in Kansas? This time the clash between partisans and opponents of the institution of slavery did not stop halfway, and both parties resorted to violence. Adherence to the principle of nonviolence started to waver even among followers of the American Peace Society. The situation came to a head with the outbreak of the American Civil War. Initially, some members of the pacifist movement petitioned the Union to abstain from resorting to arms and tolerate the ‘peaceful’ secession of the slave-states (their critique of violence focused more on the war than on the institution of slavery). However, after the Battle of Fort Sumter, when the Confederation started hostilities by launching a military attack and conquering the Union-emplacements positioned in the area, the American Peace Society largely restored its unity by firmly siding with Lincoln. Even in this case, a movement dedicated to spreading the cause of nonviolence justified its choice by resorting to a familiar reasoning strategy: the conflict was not seen as war, but as rightfully repressing a criminal rebellion. Rather than soldiers in the true sense of the word, the soldiers of the Union were viewed as policemen acting to serve public order. The irony of this perspective is that it was a ‘police-operation’ on a scale never seen before, with the participation of hundreds of thousands of men and battles that raged on for years over a huge area of the country and involved an enormous amount of bloodshed. We can now add that, although it was not deemed worthy of war-status, it was nevertheless a conflict that produced more American victims than the two world-wars put together.


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It is, however, perhaps better to focus on another paradox. The worry about loyalty to the principle of nonviolence prompted the majority of members of the American Peace Society to see the expedition against the South merely as an attempt to re-establish public order. Therefore, if the Union-soldiers were just policemen, it followed that the Confederate soldiers were common delinquents who had to be punished by the justice-system even after the armed conflict had finished. It thus came to pass that the pacifist movement rejected any measure of clemency towards the defeated party, especially towards the President of the Confederation. Nonviolence had somehow been turned around, transformed into an even worse, extended form of violence. This dialectic sometimes assumed greatly disturbing proportions. Let us return to the dilemmas that emerged on the eve and at the start of the American Civil War. They were a cause of particular torment to Charles Stearns, one of the most fascinating and uncompromising figures in the nonviolent-abolitionist movement. He refused to join the militia in 1840, and even refused to pay the fine imposed on him for evading his duty, thereby ending up in prison. Unlike other exponents of the movement who were more flexible or pragmatic, Stearns considered it to be unacceptable, not only to resort to violence in the strict sense of the word, but also to use any kind of ‘non-injurious physical force’; he countered the legitimation of war in the Old Testament with the ethic of loving your enemies in the New Testament. However, a profound dilemma emerged in 1856, after the enactment of the law on runaway-slaves, and above all after the clashes in Kansas: could the nonviolence-followers look on without reacting to the expansion of slavery, the capture of runaway-slaves or the enslavement of free black people, not to mention the wounding and death of those who tried to oppose all of this? Stearns decided to pass the point-of-no-return, even though he felt that he had not done so. He maintained that a violent response to violence had become inevitable and was indeed already underway, and that, in any case, the Union’s target consisted of totally abhorrent individuals: in the final analysis, they ‘are not men but wild beasts’, who need to be confronted and eliminated in the same way as ‘lions and tigers’.16 As we can see, the worry regarding loyalty to the principle of nonviolence against human beings was resolved by dehumanising the enemy. It may have preserved the formal coherence of the cause, but did nothing to reduce the amount of violence. Stearns did not seem even remotely aware that similar concepts to the ones he used were employed in the genocide of Native Americans. 16. In Ziegler 1992, pp. 116–17.

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However, not everyone in the American Peace Society agreed. Others more frankly acknowledged the inevitability of the use of violence under those circumstances, along with the violation of the general principle of nonviolence. As the situation that had developed was exceptional, a sharp contradiction emerged between two equally hard-and-fast and similarly indispensable principles, one of which had to be chosen. This reasoning was taken up by a woman from a Quaker-background, Angelina Grimke, who took a stand on the law regarding runaway-slaves and the resulting intense conflict by observing: Although the shedding of human blood is utterly abhorrent to my mind . . . yet the tame surrender of a helpless victim up to the fate of the slave is far more abhorrent. . . . In this case, it seems as though we are compelled to choose between two evils, and all that we can do is take the least, and baptize liberty in blood, if it must be so. . . . I now entirely despair of the triumph of Justice and Humanity without the shedding of blood. A temporary war is an incomparably less evil than permanent slavery.17

The difficulties and dilemmas that the profession of nonviolent faith always encounters as soon as it has to face a major historical crisis have come to the fore once again. Here, however, it might be better seen as a paradox: inasmuch as it rejected all compromises and refused to rethink its principles, the nonviolent movement eventually criminalised and even dehumanised the figure of the enemy, with the result that it gave even more impetus to violence and, moreover, a form of violence bereft of rules.

4. Gandhi: between nonviolence and imperial loyalty Current supporters of nonviolence take their inspiration from Gandhi more than from anyone else, so it is worth moving our focus on to him. During his life, the leader of the Indian independence-movement had to contend with three main wars. The first of these was the Boer War from 1899 to 1902, which saw troops from the British Empire clash with the Boers, Dutch settlers in South Africa. Although their rôle was limited to rescuing and transporting wounded English soldiers, Gandhi and his Indian supporters took part in the conflict as volunteers and were even awarded military decorations. Starting from the premise that English rule was beneficial on the whole, Gandhi declared: ‘Our ordinary duty as subjects, therefore, is not to enter into the merits of the war, but, when war has actually broken out, to 17. In Ziegler 1992, p. 134.


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render such assistance as we possible can’. He felt that ‘inaction’ by the Indians would have been ‘criminal’ and would have distanced the prospect of achieving independence with the blessing of the British government.18 It should be added that although Gandhi’s rôle was limited to supporting the British army without ever directly taking up arms, at the same time he also proudly noted that ‘a large and splendid Corps composed of nearly eleven hundred Indians left Durban for the front’, in order to help the British army, which at least in the initial stages of the War suffered ‘reverse after reverse’.19 It is difficult to consider such an attitude as a model of nonviolence! Indeed, it was so far removed from it that Gandhi expressed admiration, not only for the military virtues of the English, who ‘were fighting valiantly on the battlefield’, but also for those of the enemy: ‘Every Boer is a good fighter’ and ‘they do not need elaborate drilling, for fighting is a characteristic of the whole nation’. Similarly, when they see their liberty threatened they are ready to ‘fight as one man’ ‘valiantly’. The women were also described as ‘brave’, and demonstrated that they ‘were not afraid of widowhood and refused to waste a thought upon the future’.20 Therefore, instead of being condemned for what it was, as soon as violence became a synonym for bravery and heroism, it was valued independently from the war-objectives pursued (even though it was violence committed or supported by an entire population, including the women). It is a short step from this to Kriegsideologie, the ideology of war adopted by Germany during the First World-War . . . Ignored by Gandhi, the terrible onslaught of violence that characterised the policies of both the Boers and the English in different ways was instead highlighted by Rosa Luxemburg. She saw the former as representatives of ‘out-dated slavery on a petty scale’,21 engaged in deporting, enslaving and even killing the native population, while the latter posed as protectors of the natives, but did not hesitate to sacrifice them in their alliance with the Boers after achieving their real goals of accumulating capital and expanding the British Empire. Therefore, a comparison between Gandhi (a champion of nonviolence) and Luxemburg (who did not hesitate to justify revolutionary violence) produces an unexpected result: the former legitimised war-violence on both sides, or at best viewed it indulgently, while the latter condemned it virulently and denounced it as the continuation of a policy that was synonymous with horrible violence long before the outbreak of the Anglo-Boer War.

18. 19. 20. 21.

‘Satyagraha in South Africa’ (1928), in Gandhi 1969–2001b, pp. 62–3. Gandhi 1969–2001c, pp. 65, 67. Gandhi 1969–2001c, pp. 17–18. Luxemburg 2003, p. 393.

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When the First World-War broke out some years later, Gandhi undertook to recruit five hundred-thousand men for the British army and went about it with such fervour that he wrote to the Viceroy’s private secretary: ‘I have an idea that, if I became your recruiting agent-in-chief, I might rain men on you’.22 Similarly, when addressing fellow countrymen who were reluctant to go off to fight and die to serve the interests of the occupying colonial power, he said: ‘We are regarded as a cowardly people. If we want to become free from that reproach, we should learn the use of arms’. Otherwise, he said, ‘if the empire perishes, with it would perish our cherished hopes’.23 Far from adhering to policies of nonviolence, here Gandhi encouraged completely unsuspecting country-folk to participate in a conflict taking place thousands of kilometres away, which was seen as a senseless massacre by the diverse supporters of the anti-military revolutionary movement that he was assembling. The champion of nonviolence thereby made a major contribution to the strengthening and consolidation of the United Kingdom’s warmachine: ‘in the autumn of 1914, around a third of British forces in France were from India’, and, by the end of the War, a million Indians had fought after completing a long journey. Thanks also to Gandhi’s preaching, these soldiers ‘were not reluctant conscripts; they were in fact all volunteers, and enthusiastic volunteers at that’. In short, out of the three multi-ethnic armies deployed in the War by Russia, the Hapsburg Empire and Britain, only the latter managed to maintain basic discipline until the carnage came to an end.24

5. War as a test of ‘manhood’, or carnage: Gandhi and the Bolsheviks During the course of both the Anglo-Boer War and World-War One, Gandhi encouraged people to contribute to the war-effort by adopting a rhetoric which needs to be analysed. He took a hard line against those who were reluctant to line up against the Boers in case they eventually came out victorious, maintaining that such considerations were simply a sign of ‘effeminacy’.25 The same tough approach was adopted during the First WorldWar towards compatriots who expressed doubts over the sense in taking part in a massacre carried out by a movement that advocated nonviolence: ‘there can be no friendship between the brave and the effeminate’, while those who 22. 23. 24. 25.

Letter to J.L. Maffey, 30 April 1918, in Gandhi 1969–2001b, p. 12. ‘Appeal for Enlistment’, 22 June 1918, in Gandhi 1969–2001b, pp. 83–4. Ferguson 2004, pp. 255–6. ‘Satyagraha in South Africa’, in Gandhi 1969–2001c, p. 63.


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were ‘utterly unmanly’ were considered a breed apart. He felt it was necessary to obtain ‘the ability in the fullest measure to strike’26 before renouncing it. By taking part in the large-scale war – continued Gandhi – ‘we help the Empire’ and at the same time, ‘learn to defend India and to a certain extent, regain our lost manhood’.27 The aim was therefore to shake off the ‘reproach of effeminacy’ once and for all. It was felt that this result could not be achieved unless the spirit of sacrifice inspired the whole community as well as the combatants: ‘To sacrifice sons in the war, ought to be a cause not of pain but of pleasure’. Women were also called to adhere to the vision as follows: ‘they should not be alarmed by this appeal but should welcome it’. When thinking of their sons, they should never lose sight of one essential point: ‘If the recruits die on the battle-field they will make themselves, their village and their country immortal’, and their example would be followed straightaway afterwards by other recruits.28 There is some similarity between this appeal to parents to sacrifice their sons and the previously-seen praise for Boer women who ‘were not afraid of widowhood’, which brings us back to the matter of ambiguous motives in the ideology of war in the West. Tucholsky presented them as follows in 1927: ‘The evangelical pastors were flanked in the war by another human species that never tires of sucking blood: a certain social class, a certain type of German woman’. While the massacre assumed increasingly terrible proportions, she sacrificed ‘sons and husbands’ and complained that there were not ‘enough [of them] to sacrifice’.29 The condemnation of violence on principle can only be seen with regard to the relationship between the Indian people and the British Empire. Indian peasants became conscious of this duplicitous attitude to some extent – as the Gandhi-biography that I am referring to here reveals – and a few days after being ‘urged to be nonviolent even against the most brutal British officers’, they mutinied when they heard the appeal to enlist in the British army.30 This made no impression on Gandhi. He recognised that he was ‘recruiting mad’, but did not back down at all: ‘I do nothing else, think of nothing else, talk of nothing else and therefore feel ill-fitted to discharge any presidential function, save one on recruiting’.31

26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

Letter to S.K. Rudra, 29 July 1918, in Gandhi 1969–2001b, p. 159. ‘Appeal for Enlistment’, in Gandhi 1969–2001b, pp. 85–6. Gandhi 1969–2001b, pp. 86–7. Tucholsky 1985, p. 267. Chadha 1997, p. 230. Letter to B.G. Horniman, 12 August 1918, in Gandhi 1969–2001b, p. 190.

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Although Gandhi welcomed the First World-War as a test of virility and an essential part of development and growth for both the individual and the entire population, it was condemned and branded with language more pungent than ever by a wide variety of supporters of the revolutionary movement inspired by Marxism and communism. To give just a few examples, Stalin spoke of ‘wholesale slaughter of the man-power of the nations’, Bukharin of ‘an enormous death-dealing machine’, and Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht of ‘genocide’. For a final consideration, we will quote Trotsky, who felt that ‘the work of Cain of the “patriotic” press’ of the two opposing sides was ‘irrefutable proof of the moral decadence of bourgeois society’. Indeed, the concept of ‘moral decadence’ could not be ignored, when humanity was seen to be sinking back into ‘blind, shameless barbarism’. The result was the spread of a ‘contest of bloodthirsty madness’ to use the most advanced technology for war-related purposes. It was ‘scientific barbarism’ that used humanity’s great discoveries ‘only to destroy the foundations of civilised social life and annihilate mankind’. All the good things that had produced civilisation descended into bloodshed and muddy trenches: ‘health, comfort, hygiene, familiar everyday relations, friendly contact, professional duties and in the final analysis the seemingly indestructible rules of morality’. For some time, soldiers on the two opposing sides tried to counter all this by practising fraternisation, which was warmly received by both Lenin and Stalin, with the latter in particular claiming that it was ‘mass-fraternization on the battle-fronts’ and the ‘new ties of fraternity among the peoples’ that put an end to the war and carnage.32 It seems that Gandhi was not concerned with the idea of fraternisation, which, in any case, would have clashed with his commitment to recruit soldiers and provide cannon-fodder for the British government.

6. An expansion of the concept of violence and loss of direction Instead of stopping Gandhi from actively and effectively promoting participation in a terrible war, the ideal of nonviolence became an extreme and extended form of the concept of violence in his hands. This is what emerged from a well-known piece of writing at the end of 1909, which pointed an accusing finger at ‘cursed modern civilization’ or ‘wretched modern civilization’, a ravenous ‘tiger’ that could not stop devouring men, a

32. On ‘fraternisation’, see Lenin 1955–70b, p. 328; for a general overview, see Losurdo 2008, pp. 242–5.


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‘monster’ that was now threatening India too.33 It was an indictment that spared nobody, not even the British parliament, which was seen as having done nothing to remedy a tragic situation rife with violence. Instead, dominated as it was by the selfishness of the privileged classes and mercantile spirit, the British parliament was likened to a ‘prostitute’. The electoral base had been broadened in 1833 by granting political rights to sectors of the population that had previously been excluded, but Gandhi felt that this result had been ‘obtained by using physical force’, ‘violence’, and even ‘brute force’.34 This is the first expansion of the concept of violence: it is true that the 1833 Reform Bill had been preceded by Chartist unrest, but it is not really appropriate to speak of ‘violence’ or ‘brute force’. However, Gandhi’s expansion of the concept of violence went further than this: the railways, industry, the use of cars, urbanisation and the destruction of traditional rural society all became synonymous with subjugation, enslavement and violence. Not even medicine was safe from his virulent condemnation and was seen as pernicious, given that by striving to cure men it killed ‘thousands of animals’ in experiments and even practised ‘vivisection’.35 His final verdict was that modernity was significantly worse and more violent than the world that had preceded it. With its religious wars or wars fought in the name of religion, and violence committed by thugs in robbing and murdering their victims, the dark side of traditional society was seen as minimal compared to the barbarism spreading from the West and threatening to swallow up India too. ‘There is no end to the victims destroyed in the fire of [modern] civilization’ by its ‘scorching flames’.36 On the basis of this overview, reiterated ten years later (with just the removal of the word ‘prostitute’ to refer to the British parliament),37 and on the basis of this undifferentiated condemnation of the ‘violence’ intrinsically embedded in modern civilisation, it was difficult for Gandhi to find his bearings in the contradictions and conflict that characterised the twentieth century. This explains the ingenuity and uncertainty that he demonstrated with regard to fascism and Nazism. His letter to Romain Rolland on 20 December 1931 is enlightening in this respect. The opinion expressed about Mussolini is especially eye-catching: ‘many of his reforms attract me’; he is particularly impressed by ‘his opposition to super-urbanization’ and his measures ‘for the 33. 264. 34. 35. 36. 37.

‘“Hind Swaraj” or Indian Home Rule’, in Gandhi 1969–2001a, pp. 280, 285, 255, Gandhi 1969–2001a, pp. 256, 287. Gandhi 1969–2001a, p. 278 and passim. Gandhi 1969–2001a, pp. 265–6. Chadha 1997, p. 165.

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peasant class’, inspired by a ‘passionate love for his people’. This benevolence is explained by the fact that he saw fascism as synonymous with a return to rural life and a rejection of the much-hated modern industrial civilisation. However, this was not the main issue. Although forced to recognise the ‘iron hand’ that Mussolini used, Gandhi immediately added: ‘violence is the basis of Western society’.38 The expansion of the concept of violence and the condemnation of violence on principle have made it difficult or impossible to assess different forms of violence separately. This was confirmed by the fluctuations that Gandhi demonstrated during the course of the Second World-War. On 2 July 1940, while the threat of Nazi-invasion was hanging over England, he wrote an open letter, ‘To every Briton’: I would like you to lay down the arms you have as being useless for saving you or humanity. You will invite Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini to take what they want of the countries you call your possessions. Let them take possession of your beautiful island, with your many beautiful buildings.39

Are we witnessing a rejection of violence now characterised by rigour and coherence, an about-turn from the stance taken during the Anglo-Boer and First World-Wars? In actual fact, in a letter to the Viceroy dated 27 July 1944 – in the meantime, the fortunes of the War had swung round in the intervening four years, turning decidedly against the Third Reich – Gandhi explicitly offered ‘full cooperation in the war effort’ of Great Britain, provided that the latter issued an immediate statement in favour of Indian independence.40 The key to understanding Gandhi’s attitude in these years lies in the disappointment he felt as a result of the fact that Indian involvement in the First World-War had made little contribution to promoting the cause of national independence. Indeed, just after the victory-celebrations had died down, in the spring of 1919, Great Britain was responsible for the Amritsarmassacre, which not only cost hundreds of unarmed Indians their lives, but subsequently led to terrible nationwide racial degradation, such as the fact that inhabitants of the city were subjected to the ‘humiliation of crawling on all fours to and from one’s home’. This abasement ‘was not to be forgotten’.41

38. 39. 40. 41.

Gandhi 1969–2001d, p. 297. Gandhi 1969–2001e, p. 387. Gandhi 1969–2001h, pp. 239–40. Brecher 1961, p. 38.


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This explains Gandhi’s tendency to assume a neutral or fence-sitting stance during the Second World-War, as there were no concrete concessions from the British government: ‘I do not wish well to India at the expense of Britain as I do not wish well to Britain at the expense of Germany’, or ‘I do not wish that the British should be defeated, nor do I wish the defeat of the Germans’.42 Gandhi did not appreciate the British Empire’s claim that it was representing the cause of liberty in the fight against the Third Reich: ‘I assert that in India we have Hitlerian rule however disguised it may be in softer terms’, as well as: ‘Hitler was “Great Britain’s sin”. Hitler is only an answer to British imperialism.’43 In addition to the indignation over the hypocrisy and ingratitude of the British government, these judgements were also influenced by a profound misunderstanding of the phenomena of fascism and Nazism. This can be seen most notably in two letters written in May 1940: ‘I do not want to see the Allies defeated. But I do not consider Hitler to be as bad as he is depicted. He is showing an ability that is amazing and he seems to be gaining his victories without much bloodshed . . .’, while Hitler ‘might even have been a friendly power as he may still be’.44 This statement is even more surprising if we consider firstly that the invasion of France was in full swing at the time, and, above all, the fact that the systematic elimination of Polish intellectuals and the operation sometimes termed the ‘Polish holocaust’ had been raging for months. We can now try to sketch out an overview of the second chapter in the history of the nonviolence-movement after the first one featuring the American Peace Society. Gandhi’s loyalty to his professed principles was far more fleeting than the American pacifists’, but, by contrast, the Indian leader never developed the inauspicious dialectic that led to the criminalisation and even the dehumanisation of the enemy in an attempt to comply with the principle of nonviolence right to the end. Nevertheless, there were also some perverse effects: given that ‘war [was] itself a crime against God and humanity’, it followed that ‘Roosevelt and Churchill are no less war criminals than Hitler and Mussolini’.45 This is further demonstration of the rule whereby

42. Letter to The Times of India of 10 February 1941, in Gandhi 1969–2001f, p. 61; ‘My Sincerity’, January 1942, in Gandhi 1969–2001g, p. 479. 43. ‘Answers to Questions’, 25 April 1941, in Gandhi 1969–2001f, p. 200; interview given to Ralph Corriston in April 1945, in Gandhi 1969–2001i, p. 223. 44. Letter to Amrit Kaur, 15 May 1940, in Gandhi 1969–2001e, p. 219; letter to Lord Linlithgow, 26 May 1940, in Gandhi 1969–2001e, p. 253. 45. Interview given to Ralph Corriston in April 1945, in Gandhi 1969–2001i, p. 223.

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the outright condemnation of violence makes it difficult or impossible to distinguish between its different manifestations and modalities. Herein lies the paradox: while Gandhi resolutely undertook to support Great Britain during the 1914–18 imperialist war, sometimes doing so enthusiastically, he was uncertain about the legitimacy of the use of violence at precisely the time when the need to use it should have been clear, as it was a question of tackling an explicit plan to decimate and enslave the ‘natives’ of Eastern Europe and the ‘final solution’ of the Jews. Once the War was over, Gandhi atypically went as far as to indirectly justify armed combat against English colonial rule by paying tribute to Subhas Chandra Bose, who was prepared to fight alongside the Axis-Powers if it meant achieving independence: Subhas was a great patriot. He laid down his life for the country. He was not by nature a fighter but he became commander of an army and took up arms against a great empire. The soldiers of that army included Hindus, Muslims, Parsis and Christians. He never considered himself only a Bengali. He had no use for parochialism or caste distinctions. In his eyes all were Indians and servants of India. He treated all alike.46

In this case, even violence committed by those who had fought alongside Hitler was condoned!

7. Tolstoy and Gandhi At a certain point in his life, Gandhi came across Tolstoy and sent him a letter in October 1909, thereby starting a series of correspondence that ended abruptly the following year when the great writer died. The two figures are often juxtaposed, but how far is this comparison valid? Let us see how Tolstoy described the national resistance of the Russian people against the Napoleonic army. Peasants would rather burn hay than sell it to the occupying troops at an advantageous price. Already generally suffering from hunger, the French soldiers were hit from behind in a series of rapid ambushes. An unequal asymmetrical struggle developed: The fencer who demanded a contest according to the rules of fencing was the French army; his opponent who threw away the rapier and snatched up the cudgel was the Russian people. . . . Napoleon felt this, and from the time he took 46. ‘Speech at Prayer Meeting’, 23 January 1948, in Gandhi 1969–2001j, p. 293.


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up the correct fencing attitude in Moscow and instead of his opponent’s rapier saw a cudgel raised above his head, he did not cease to complain.47

Not surprisingly, the peasants and country-folk turned out to be less sophisticated than the well-mannered officers and soldiers in the invading army. This made no impression on Tolstoy, though, and instead he paid a passionate tribute to the resistance-movement: And it is well for the people who . . . at the moment of trial, without stopping to ask what rules others have observed in similar cases, simply and nimbly pick up the first cudgel to hand and deal blow after blow until the resentment and revenge in their souls give way to contempt and compassion.48

With War and Peace, Tolstoy undoubtedly provided us with the finest and most effective literary text for understanding armed resistance and asymmetrical warfare, organised by a population, above all the peasant-class, against a more powerful, better-armed occupying army (at the time, Napoleon had one of the most formidable military machines around). Although Tolstoy converted to nonviolence in 1880, some years after the publication of War and Peace, certain fundamental differences between these two frequently-compared figures still persisted even after this date. As he died in 1910, four years before the outbreak of the First World-War, the latter cannot be used to compare the Russian writer to Gandhi, an active large-scale recruiter of his fellow countrymen to the ranks of the British army. However, on the occasion of the 1905 Russo-Japanese War, Tolstoy’s reaction was a far cry from the patriotic (or imperial) loyalty that Gandhi would show ten years later. Instead, he condemned the War and imperialist dispute, and, in a certain sense, welcomed the Russian Revolution of 1905, whose origins stemmed from the fight against the War and which he called on to ‘destroy the existing order’, although ‘not by force’, but ‘by disobedience’.49 Later in his essay, ‘The Meaning of the Russian Revolution’, Tolstoy appealed directly to Indians not to ‘submit to the Power which demands their participation in deeds of violence, always connected with the taking of human life’, not to enlist and not even to pay any ‘taxes to be used for violence’.50 This was advance criticism of the stance taken by Gandhi during the First World-War. 47. Tolstoy 1978, p. 1216 ? 48. Tolstoy 1978, p. 1216. 49. Tolstoy 1985, p. 541. On his reaction to Russia’s defeat to the Japanese, see Tolstoy 1985, pp. 537–8. 50. Sofri 1985, p. 60.

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We can pause here to make a more general observation. Although Lenin criticised Tolstoy heavily for not having supported the Russian Revolution in 1905, he also gave him credit for having expressed in his works ‘the desire to get rid of the past’ and, more specifically, ‘the striving to sweep away completely the official church, the landlords and landlord government, to destroy all the old forms and ways of landownership, to clear the land, to replace the police-class state by a community of free and equal small peasants’.51 It would be difficult to make the same assertion with regard to Gandhi, who, as we have seen, would have sought to leave untransformed premodern Indian society. Lenin criticised ‘Tolstoyan’ ideas for being synonymous with ‘abstention from politics’ and personal retreat aimed exclusively at ‘moral self-perfection’.52 Although the term ‘Tolstoyan’ had already become a byword for ‘antimilitarist’ in the years and even decades before the First World-War,53 it became synonymous with ‘defeatist’ (and therefore almost with ‘Bolshevik’) immediately after the February 1917 Revolution, when, for example, the defeat of the ‘Tolstoyans’ was welcomed by those in France who hoped that the Russian Republic was going to intensify its war-effort.54 A short time afterwards, the West also became aware of the extent of the crisis and the exhaustion caused by war in the huge country that had overthrown tsarist autocracy, and in Il Popolo d’Italia on 17 June 1917, Mussolini expressed his indignation over the fact that ‘the Russian revolution’ had ‘fallen under the close influence of Lenin and distanced itself from Tolstoy, a monopoly of the “peacemongering” Soviet from Petrograd’.55

8. Gandhi, Bonhoeffer and the young Lukács Although Tolstoy and Gandhi’s professions of nonviolent faith had a different background of cultural references and were practised to varying degrees of coherence, their stances were both strongly motivated by religion. It may therefore be interesting to compare them with other figures who were, in some way, prompted to reject violence by their religious consciences. We have already mentioned Angelina Grimke, a fervent Quaker-militant and pacifist who took a firm stand in support of the Union and its army during 51. 52. 53. 54. 55.

Lenin 1955–70a, pp. 203, 201. Lenin 1955–70a, pp. 200–3. See, for example, Roosevelt 1901, pp. 27–8. In Ferro 1980, p. 24. Ferro 1980, p. 23.


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the American Civil War, as she realised that making a choice between two different kinds of violence had become unavoidable. The great Protestant theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer reached a not-dissimilar conclusion in Germany during the Second World-War. It was not an easy choice for Bonhoeffer to fight Hitler with any means available, including a plot to kill him: ‘Baldwin was right when he said that there was only one greater evil than violence and that this was violence as a principle, as a law and a standard’. The onset of the Third Reich and its expansionist frenzy created a situation of danger quite without precedent. Therefore: ‘The extraordinary necessity appeals to the freedom of the men who are responsible’ and so individual ‘responsibility’ needed to be assumed, given that ‘in either case man becomes guilty’.56 Jesus was seen as having been fully aware of all this: He is able to enter into the fellowship of the guilt of men and take the burden of their guilt upon Himself. Jesus does not desire to be regarded as the only perfect one at the expense of men; He does not desire to look down on mankind as the only guiltless one while mankind goes to its ruin under the weight of its guilt. . . . He does not wish to acquit Himself of the guilt under which men die. . . . As one who acts responsibly in the historical existence of men Jesus becomes guilty.57

The imitation of Christ may therefore involve the choice of violence if the circumstances are tragic. There is a clear contrast here with Gandhi, who, at more-or-less the same time, invited the British people to welcome Naziinvaders with open arms, before committing himself to the practice of nonviolent resistance! Bonhoeffer adopted objectively contentious words against this attitude and those who ‘find a place of refuge in a private virtuousness’.58 In reality, ‘it is only at the price of an act of self-deception that he can safeguard his private blessedness against contamination through responsible action in the world’. This is the attitude – insists the Protestant theologian – of the ‘fanatic’, who ‘believes that he can oppose the power of evil with the purity of his will’.59 In conclusion he said:

56. 57. 58. 59.

Bonhoeffer 1995, pp. 208, 209. Bonhoeffer 1995, pp. 209–10. Bonhoeffer 1995, p. 49. Bonhoeffer 1995, p. 48.

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D. Losurdo / Historical Materialism 18 (2010) 85–134 If any man tries to escape guilt in responsibility he detaches himself from the ultimate reality of human existence. . . . He sets his own personal innocence above his responsibility for men.60

It is worth noting that the young Lukács argued in a similar way when he decided to support the Bolshevik October-Revolution, influenced by the horrors of the carnage of the First World-War. In asserting the inescapable nature of ‘guilt’ and in appealing to ‘seriousness [Ernst]’, ‘conscience [Gewissen]’ and the ‘sense of [moral] responsibility [Verantwortungsbewußtsein]’, he declares with Hebbel that: ‘Even if God had placed sin between me and the deed enjoined upon me – who am I to be able to escape it?’.61 As a result of the conviction regarding the inescapable nature of guilt, the young Lukács embraced the revolutionary struggle against the socio-political system that he accused of being responsible for the carnage, while Bonhoeffer plotted against Hitler’s régime and met his end on the gallows.

9. Anticolonial revolution, nonviolence and appeals to the dominant power Gandhi made a different choice, but can it be explained exclusively in nonviolent terms? On the occasion of each of the three wars that the Indian leader had to contend with, we have seen him either support the British Empire in one way or another without ‘enter[ing] into the merits of the war’, as he himself underlined, or declare that he was ready to support it if the British government promised to grant India independence. The picture is now starting to take shape. If we examine the history of the colonial debate in the West, we see the emergence of three different positions. On one side, there were those who supported the civilising mission of the big powers, and, on the other side, there were the few who supported nationalliberation movements even in the colonies. There was, however, a third position which called for reform from on high in order to eliminate the ‘abuse’ of colonialism and smooth the way for the subsequent independence of the colony. It is this third position, with the changes made necessary by the move from the West to India and the colonial world, that found its ultimate expression in Gandhi. Indeed, he underlined the largely beneficial nature of English rule and could not think of independence without approval from London, approval 60. Bonhoeffer 1995, p. 210. 61. Lukács 1973, p. 11.


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that needed to be earned through a combination of persuasion and pressure. Therefore, while, on one hand, there was participation in the Empire’s wareffort (aimed at persuading the rulers that Indian people deserved home-rule because of their loyalty and bravery), on the other hand, there was an emphasis placed on pressure from below. The latter, however, could never be stretched to breaking point, and, therefore, forms of violent conflict had to be avoided. Although the pressure-phase rejected violence against the British government, the persuasion-phase contemplated the use of violence as long as it was not carried out against Britain, but, rather, alongside Britain against the enemies of the Empire. We must now pose a question: to what extent was this political line successful? In other words, was Indian independence really the result of the movement dedicated to nonviolence? Britain’s capitulation and relinquishment of its Empire must be seen against a backdrop of huge upheaval that started with the Second World-War, in particular the defeat inflicted by the Red Army on the Third Reich’s plan to build what Hitler often termed the ‘German Indies’ in Eastern Europe. The premature end to the ‘German Indies’ sounded the death-knell for the ‘British Indies’ too. In addition, the anticolonial movement found further support as a result of the rivalry between the major imperial powers. During the War, Japan supported the cause of the independence-movement, in the shape of Bose’s Indian National Army (INA), in order to weaken Britain. It is also interesting to see what happened after the defeat of Japan. The British government wanted to punish the ‘traitors’, the Indians who had fought alongside the Japanese enemy, but did not manage to do so for the very simple reason that: ‘for all Indians, regardless of their political orientation, INA soldiers were real heroes’.62 However, we have already seen how Gandhi paid tribute to Bose, the leader of the armed revolt that won over ‘no fewer than 20,000 men from the Indian soldiers captured by the Japanese following the surrender of Singapore’. We can therefore understand why the British wanted to punish those who had betrayed their oath of loyalty to the Empire, but, by then, ‘the British were no longer able to punish a direct rebellion, not even in the vital sector of the armed forces’. This is backed up by another serious episode: ‘On 18 February 1946 in Bombay, sailors in the Indian navy mutinied, took possession of the majority of warships in the port and, while the city was under threat from the cannons on their ships, a group of mutineers went

62. Torri 2000, p. 604.

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ashore and attacked the English soldiers in the garrison’. In this case too, ‘the English were forced to promise impunity to the mutineers’.63 Granting India independence, therefore, became an inevitable step, all the more so because Britain could not count on the support of any allies; even America was impatient, partly because it was involved in removing the final obstacles hindering the creation of a world-market under its leadership, and partly because it feared the emergence of an independence-movement broadly influenced by communists and socialists. This fear became even more acute as the revolution led by Mao Zedong spread across China. Therefore, the conquest of independence by India cannot be separated from the unrelenting liberation-movement of colonial peoples in general. This developed on a global level and had an especially strong influence in Asia, spurred on by the defeat inflicted on Hitler’s plan to create the German Indies, and more generally by the defeat suffered by the three countries (Germany, Italy and Japan) that had been most committed to the relaunch and radicalisation of the colonial tradition. In this way, Stalingrad and the Long March contributed far more to Indian independence than Gandhi’s nonviolent initiatives. Even if we overlook the huge shows of military strength on an international level to focus exclusively on the British Indies, we should ask whether the transformation really happened without violence or bloodshed. Unfortunately, with the outbreak of the conflict that eventually led to the formation of India and Pakistan, the end of British rule ‘proved just a curtain-raiser to the war of extermination which began after independence on both sides of the border, when refugee trains sometimes arrived carrying just bodies’,64 and ‘the biggest example of forced migration at worldwide level in the century’.65 In a clearly self-interested way, Churchill even spoke of a ‘frightful holocaust’.66 Gandhi admittedly did his best to stop or limit the violence, but he ended up as a victim of it. Therefore, a serious historical overview of the movement he inspired and led cannot adopt an abstract approach to this catastrophe, just as it cannot fail to analyse the defining features of the country of which Gandhi was the founding father. The India that resulted from ‘nonviolent’ agitation was most definitely not a country that stands out for its pacifism. It inherited the Anglo-Indian imperial army and, immediately after the declaration of independence, deployed it or threatened to deploy it in order to annex the regions and 63. 64. 65. 66.

Torri 2000, pp. 600, 605. Sarkar 1989, p. 434. Torri 2000, p. 606. Churchill 1974, p. 7722.


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principalities which wanted to maintain their independence or be incorporated into Pakistan. Even before the assassination of Gandhi, India sent ‘airborne troops to the Kashmir valley’, to ensure control of it against the express wishes of the local population.67

10. From Gandhi to the Dalai Lama? Nonviolence as an ideology of war For a long time, the liberal West saw Gandhi in a far-from-favourable light. Above all, we can see the contempt in which Churchill used to speak about the ‘seditious fakir’, a ‘miserable little old man who had always been our enemy’, an ‘old rascal’,68 who wants to take possession of what Churchill feels belongs to Britain and ‘stands for the expulsion of Britain from India’ and ‘the permanent exclusion of British trade from India’.69 The customary imperial arrogance was also sometimes loaded with racist overtones, best shown by this outburst from 1931: It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well-known in the East, striding halfnaked up the steps of the viceregal palace, while he is still organising and conducting a defiant campaign of civil disobedience, to parley on equal terms with the representative of the king-emperor.70

Regardless of whether the independence-movement used violence or nonviolence, Churchill felt that it was important to adopt any means necessary to combat it. In 1932, he welcomed the implementation of measures in India that were more drastic than any that had been required ‘since the Mutiny’,71 referring to the Sepoy-rebellion and bloodthirsty repression that had aroused Marx’s indignation. Even in the present day, Churchill’s trademark-tone has still not disappeared completely. One historian-journalist, who uses the columns of leading newspapers in the USA and the West in general to welcome the return of colonialism (‘Colonialism’s Back – and Not a Moment Too Soon’),72 expresses the following opinion of Gandhi: ‘He was a year older than Lenin, with whom he shared a quasi-religious approach to politics, though in sheer 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72.

Torri 2000, pp. 621–5. In Ferguson 2004, p. 276, and in Chadha 1997, p. 388. In Chadha 1997, p. 302. In Chadha 1997, p. 300. In Chadha 1997, p. 323. Johnson 1993.

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crankiness he had much more in common with Hitler, his junior by twenty years’.73 When compared to Lenin, the leader of the Indian independencemovement receives the same treatment reserved for Bolshevism, which, from the perspective of conformist historians and journalists, is closely associated with Nazism. However, the main trend in the dominant ideology is now very different. At the beginning of the Cold War, after the hate and contempt nurtured in particular by Churchill for the ‘subversive’ ‘oriental’ enemy of the British Empire and Western civilisation had been forgotten, Gandhi rose to the rôle of apostle of nonviolence to counter the revolutionary liberation-movements of colonial peoples that were spreading throughout Asia and the rest of the world. In this way, Gandhi quite unexpectedly became the antithesis of Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Castro and Arafat. A further, more decisive, move in the realm of Realpolitik then took centrestage. Gandhi’s legacy as the champion of non-violence has been embraced in the present day by the fourteenth Dalai Lama, as shown by an incessant multimedia-campaign. Indeed, in his struggle for the independence or semiindependence of Tibet, he not only declares that he wants to adhere to the principle of the sacred nature of life, but he also makes explicit use of Gandhian concepts, for example when he advocates transforming Tibet ‘into a zone of “Ahimsa”, a Hindi term used to mean a state of peace and nonviolence’.74 This statement was made before the Committee for Human Rights at the US-Congress in 1987, and two years later the fourteenth Dalai Lama was awarded the Nobel Peace-Prize. The recognition which Gandhi was never granted has already been achieved by his presumed heir. What, however, is the real story? This emerges clearly from two books written or co-written by two CIA-officers (of varying degrees of seniority). The first of these worked with the Dalai Lama for decades and expresses his admiration and devotion to the ‘Buddhist leader preaching nonviolence’. He expresses the point of view embodied by his hero in the following terms: ‘If there is a clear indication that there is no alternative to violence, then violence is permissible’. As a consequence, it becomes necessary to distinguish between ‘method’ and ‘motivation’: ‘In the Tibetan resistance against China the method was killing, but the motivation was compassion, and that justified the resort to violence’. Similarly, the Dalai Lama, as quoted and admired by the CIA-officer, justified and even celebrated American participation in the Second World-War and Korean War, as they were conducted ‘to protect 73. Johnson 1983, p. 521; on Paul Johnson, see Losurdo 1996, Chapter 3, Section 9. 74. Dalai Lama 2008.


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democracy, liberty, and freedom’. These noble ideas continued to inspire Washington during the Vietnam-War, even if, on this occasion, the results were unfortunately not on the same high plane as the intentions.75 On this basis, there is clearly perfect harmony with the CIA-officer, who makes a point of being photographed with the Dalai Lama in a friendly, affectionate pose. Indeed, he is keen to point out that he is not a fan of ‘firearms’, just like the venerable Buddhist master, but is resigned to approving and promoting the use of them only when it becomes inevitable to do so.76 Therefore, when reread in light of the teachings of the Nobel Peace-Prize winner, nonviolence would appear to have become the doctrine of inspiration of the CIA! The myth of the Dalai Lama was finally debunked by officers from the same agency feared all over the world. He fled from Lhasa in 1959, marking the achievement of ‘an objective of American policy for almost a decade’. When he crossed the border between China (Tibet) and India, he appointed one of the Tibetans who helped him escape as general, while two others used the radio provided by the CIA to send the agency an urgent message without further ado: ‘send us weapons for 30,000 men by airplane’.77 However, although the Tibetan rebellion had already been prepared before 1959 with the launch of weapons and military equipment in the most inaccessible areas of Tibet,78 it was destined to fail. This was despite the sophisticated training provided to the guerrillas, the fact that they had an ‘inexhaustible arms warehouse in the sky’ (the weapons parachuted down from US-planes) at their disposal and the opportunity they had to make use of a safe area behind the frontline over the Chinese border in the Mustang base (in Nepal). Consequently, the commandos who infiltrated from India achieved results that were ‘generally disappointing’ and ‘found little support among the local people’. In short, the attempt to sustain ‘a large-scale guerrilla movement by air in Tibet had proven a painful failure’ and ‘[b]y 1968 the guerrilla force at Mustang was aging’ and was unable to ‘recruit new men’. As a result, the USA was forced to abandon the undertaking, which disappointed the Dalai Lama bitterly: ‘He ruefully noted that Washington had cut off its support for political and paramilitary programs in 1974’.79 It is therefore difficult to see the Dalai Lama as Gandhi’s successor. The only vague analogy that can be drawn is with the Gandhi of the First World-War, who undertook to recruit Indian soldiers for the British army 75. 76. 77. 78. 79.

Knaus 1999, pp. x, 313. Knaus 1999, pp. x, 274. Knaus 1999, p. 178; Conboy and Morrison 2002, p. 93. Knaus 1999, pp. 225, 154–5. Knaus 1999, pp. 281, 235, 292, 312; italics author’s own.

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with the hope of earning gratitude from London. India has inherited the ambition to remove Tibet from China in some way from Great Britain:80 grouped together in a purpose-made corps (the Special Frontier-Force), Tibetan guerrillas fought under the leadership of the Indian army during the brief Sino-Indian Border-Conflict in 1962 and then during the IndoPakistani War a few years later. In two photos taken in June 1972 we see the Dalai Lama, together with Indian general Sujan Singh Uban, go over and harangue none other than the Special Frontier-Force, after having given his ‘approval’ regarding its involvement in the war against Pakistan just a few months before.81 The Dalai Lama’s support of the Indian nuclear-armament policy can be seen in a similar light. The collaborative relationship with the USA has played an even more important rôle. In addition to the brutal embargo imposed by Washington and the persistent sabotage or terrorist-operations launched from Taiwan, the Tibetan revolt formed part of the CIA-strategy as a way of ‘forcing Mao to divert his already stretched resources’ and to provoke the collapse of the People’s Republic of China. Although their main objective was not achieved, China was nevertheless weakened, and, in addition, the United States ‘benefited from the intelligence gathered by the [Tibetan] resistance forces’. Furthermore, the CIA and American army were able to experiment with ‘new kinds of equipment – aircraft and parachutes, for example’ and ‘new communications techniques’, as well acquiring valuable experience. As a result, the ‘the lessons learned in Tibet’ could then be put into practice ‘in places like Laos and Vietnam’.82 Therefore, far from adhering to nonviolence, the fight inspired by the Dalai Lama, or, in any case, carried out in his name, served as a general rehearsal for one of the most barbaric wars in the twentieth century. So how can the current prevalent myth be explained? Once again, the CIA-officer that spent decades in contact with the leader of the Tibetan independence-movement helps to provide the answer. After the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, the CIA received instructions to conduct, not only ‘paramilitary operations’ against China, but also ‘psychological warfare’.83 The plan underwent further fine-tuning following the 1959 revolt; the ‘psychological strategy group’ invited the Eisenhower-administration to ‘keep the rebellion going as long as possible and give it maximum emphasis in all public 80. 81. 82. 83.

Knaus 1999, p. 256. Conboy and Morrison 2002, pp. 247–8. Knaus 1999, pp. 215, 316; Conboy and Morrison 2002, p. ix. Knaus 1999, p. 63.


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information media’ and ‘the CIA had hired a public relations firm to help the Tibetans publicize their case’.84 The basic orientation of this psychological warfare had already been expounded in the first years of the Cold War, and its aim was ‘to rally Asia’s Buddhists against Chinese Communist expansion’.85 As Communism was associated with violence, it was opportune to counter it with Buddhism and its nonviolent connotations. From this moment on, a ‘screen’ of nonviolence started to surround the figure of the Dalai Lama.86 However, it was not only the leader himself that underwent a dazzling transformation, but also the whole world that he embodied. Premodern, prerevolutionary Tibet thus became a magical place, where slavery, servitude, the violence of the ruling class and indeed all forms of violence disappeared. In reality, far from being an idyll, Lhasa in the ‘good old days’ was more similar to ‘Florence under the Borgias’, featuring violence intertwined with plots and intrigue.87 In all this there is not even the slightest trace of the current dominant myth; psychological warfare, public-relations companies and Hollywood (which had already played a pivotal rôle during the Cold War) are deft hands at performing miracles. Following in the Dalai Lama’s footsteps, but with a decidedly more radical stance, the Tibetan Youth Congress advocated the use of arms and a return to guerrilla-warfare, duly unleashed with help from Washington. Gandhi was still held in high esteem though, and they quoted the stance he adopted against cowards.88 Finally, by drawing inspiration from both Gandhi and the Dalai Lama, groups that profess to be left-wing – such as the Transnational Radical Party in Italy led by Marco Pannella – not only label national-liberation movements (like the Palestinian resistance) as bloody and bloodthirsty, but go even further. In order to counter these movements, unaware of the lesson of nonviolence and falling prey to homicidal totalitarian inclinations, the same self-styled ‘radicals’ regularly support wars promoted by Washington to export ‘democracy’, with particular emphasis on wars waged by Israel against its Arab neighbours, above all the Palestinians. Does lending support to the American-Israeli wars contradict the principle of nonviolence? The ‘radicals’ once again find an easy source of inspiration in Gandhi, who supported the war-effort of the British Empire and silenced his opponents by accusing them of being cowardly and even ‘effeminate’.

84. 85. 86. 87. 88.

Knaus 1999, pp. 181, 204. Knaus 1999, p. 88. Knaus 1999, p. 236. Knaus 1999, p. 24. Goldner 1999, p. 386.

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‘Nonviolence’ has now been transformed into an ideology of war (albeit a cold one, for the time being), but this is not all. For an entire period of history, the criticism of violence has been closely linked, although sometimes in a contradictory way, to criticism of the West. This was the case for the American Peace Society, who denounced the enslavement of black people perpetrated by the West, and for Tolstoy, who condemned ‘imperialism’ and warned against the rearmament-race among major powers, which soon led to the catastrophe of the First World-War. The same can also be said for Gandhi, who, at times, did not hesitate to liken Churchill to Hitler, thereby comparing British and Nazi-‘imperialism’. Nowadays, however, the proclamation of the ideal of nonviolence goes hand-in-hand with a celebration of the West, which stands as the guardian of man’s moral conscience and therefore feels empowered to unleash ‘humanitarian’ embargoes and wars all over the world.

11. Nonviolence and the inability to identify and limit violence Fortunately, on other occasions compliance with the ideal of nonviolence has continued to be taken more seriously and seen less as a self-serving undertaking. Recently, Fausto Bertinotti (former leader of the Communist Refoundation Party and President of the Chamber of Deputies) adopted the concept of nonviolence in an attempt to emphasise how much has changed since the days of twentieth-century communism. In his eyes, terrorism and war are two sides of the same coin (violence), so it follows that all armed acts of Iraqi or Palestinian resistance should be included in the category of terrorism, even in the case of military targets. Are we now witnessing a coherent vision? Bertinotti positions his profession of nonviolent faith in a context of the philosophy of history that it is worth exploring further: It was said that ‘God died in Auschwitz’. This was a way for believers and nonbelievers alike to say that a repeat of such violence was unimaginable. However, Hiroshima followed soon afterwards, a form of violence practised by those who had defeated Nazism. This transformation was both dramatic and terrible, as violence aimed at beating death led to even more death. So was Hiroshima legitimate? We can say that it was, because it was less destructive than Auschwitz and Nazism, and because Nazism basically consisted of destruction, systematic oppression and the general use of violence. Auschwitz is its cathedral, its true colours in the form of genocide. Hiroshima is not. This is the difference and it is an important one. The objective of Hiroshima was not annihilation. Instead, it was a terrible violent way of opposing it.89 89. Bertinotti 2004a, p. ii.


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This is really twisting what happened in terms of both history and logic. In this way, the atomic bombings, carried out when the War in Europe was already over and Japan was about to surrender, become a ‘way of opposing’ Auschwitz. However, the most important aspect is the legitimisation, however circuitous it may be, of the annihilation of Hiroshima (and Nagasaki), thereby legitimising an act now considered to be ‘terrorist’ by leading American historians and at the time branded as ‘barbarous’ by one of the most senior officers in the American military administration, Admiral Leahy.90 Therefore, a supporter of nonviolence turns out to be even more unscrupulous than a war-professional! However, our intention here is not to direct irony against a single figure. Instead, it should be noted that, once again, the nonviolent movement has not managed to keep its promise to renounce violence unconditionally and steadfastly. In this case, the promise is sensationally ignored at precisely the moment when a historical overview is being drawn. Let us now turn our attention to the present and take the example of a country subjected to military occupation after having been attacked and invaded in violation of the UN-Charter (such as Iraq). What does it mean in concrete terms to fight on two fronts, against the war on one side and against armed resistance (a synonym for terrorism) on the other? The condemnation of the war is clearly linked to the past (it is an act which has already been carried out and has turned into military occupation), while the condemnation of armed resistance is instead linked to the present, branding as terrorists those who practise it in order to rid themselves of military occupation. It is a position that acknowledges what has happened, namely the fact that violence has already been committed. In the final analysis, the category of violence features armed resistance to occupation more prominently than the occupation itself, even though it is only the continuation of violence and terror unleashed by war. If we now turn our attention to Palestine, we see that those who proclaim the principle of nonviolence tend to target most of their criticism at the victims. Instead, the decades of military occupation and the process of expropriation and colonisation of the victims’ land, which is still in progress, protected by a formidable military apparatus lurking in the shadows, are either ignored completely or pushed into the background. Moving beyond the confines of the Middle East, let us take a look at the overall international situation. The great philosopher Thomas Hobbes observed that: ‘the nature of War, consisteth not in actual fighting; but in the known disposition thereto, during all the time there is no assurance to the

90. See Losurdo 2007, Chapter 1, Section 3.

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contrary’.91 In light of this consideration, it is as if the USA had declared war on an unspecified number of countries, which must endure daily terror inflicted by a superpower explicitly laying claim to the sovereign right to attack them and even annihilate them. Let us now change our focus from a military to a strictly economic framework and peruse Foreign Affairs, the unofficial magazine of the Department of State. After the collapse of ‘real socialism’, in a world united under American hegemony, the embargo in Iraq constitutes the perfect weapon of mass-destruction. Although it was officially imposed to prevent Saddam from having access to weapons of mass-destruction, it ‘may have contributed to more deaths during the post-Cold War era than all the weapons of mass destruction throughout history’ put together.92 Therefore, in the current international situation, Washington can decimate the population of an enemy-country without needing to fire a single shot. With things as they are, the perspective that only identifies violence in openly-declared war and ‘terrorism’ comes across as inadequate and misleading. However, the definition of terrorism seems to be equally inadequate and misleading, as it is only identified with ambushes or desperate acts carried out by the Iraqi or Palestinian resistance-movements. There has been a clear regression since the time of Marx. We have understood nothing about his theory of violence if we limit ourselves to seeing him as a philosopher who argued that violence is inevitable for a given period of history. This is only one aspect, so let us also consider the other: In the history of the real world, as everyone knows, conquest, subjugation, robbery, murder – in a word, force – play leading roles. But the gentle science of political economy has always clung to idyllic notions.93

These ‘idyllic notions’ first need to be unmasked to understand the framework of violence that runs throughout the system, both in terms of home-affairs and international relations. Only after this has been done can we understand why Gandhi has become a member of the self-righteous brigade even after having physically repulsed the champion of the British Empire and Western civilisation. Thanks above all to the support he gave to the British government during the First WorldWar (conducted by the Triple Entente as a war to expand democracy and uproot the roots of war once and for all), Gandhi is now put forward as a 91. Hobbes 1996, pp. 88–9. 92. Mueller and Mueller 1999. 93. Marx and Engels 1955–89f, p. 742.


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champion of democratic interventionism (for example by the Radical Party in Italy), and therefore also a champion of the export of armed ‘democracy’. However, the centrist stance he assumed with regard to the colonial question and the ambiguous nature of the principle of nonviolence he advocated also form the starting point for those today, even on the Left, who want to weaken or eliminate the struggle against colonialism and imperialism. The development of events on two recent occasions are a good illustration of this. In the summer of 2007, a large number of British universities called for a cultural boycott of Israel as a mark of protest against the permanent oppression inflicted on the Palestinian population, while, at the beginning of 2008, Palestinian writers and various organisations incited a boycott of bookfairs in Paris and Turin because they had decided to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of the foundation of Israel. These two pacifist initiatives were launched in support of a population that has become the epitome of a martyr-people, subjected to this condition by a country increasingly often compared to racist South Africa (even by figures such as Brzezinski and Carter). However, the champions of nonviolence stood out for the explicit stand they took against the boycotts: the Dalai Lama in the case of the initiative by English universities94 and Bertinotti on the occasion of the Turin BookFair. Finally, it is also important not to neglect another detail: branding any form of armed resistance against occupation (whether in Iraq or Palestine) as terrorism means placing indiscriminate violence against a civil population on the same level as armed resistance against the aggressor’s occupying troops, which is perfectly legitimate in terms of international law and the UN-Charter. Therefore, while the oppressor’s violence is simply sidestepped, the rallying cry of the general unconditional rejection of violence is not even able to curtail the violence inflicted on the oppressed. These are the fundamental limits of the nonviolence-movement as it stands, limits that have already clearly emerged with some regularity in the first two chapters of its history.

12. A doctrinal view of major historical crises The condemnation of violence on principle presupposes a doctrinal view of major historical crises, as if they allowed time for reflecting calmly over the advantages and disadvantages of armed conflict and pacifism. Real life is 94. See the International Herald Tribune’s coverage of 4–5 August 2007.

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quite different from this, as the example of the October-Revolution in Russia clearly shows. It put an end to a war in Russia, during which attempts to fraternise by soldiers on opposing sides were suppressed by force, as all of them were expected to either be ready to kill or be killed under any circumstances. Deserters were handed over to the firing squad, or, rather, the firing squad was already there waiting to execute offenders, even targeting military units that had showed a poor level of combative spirit and had demonstrated insufficient zeal in killing and laying themselves open to the risk of death. Despite the lack of ammunition, the Russian General Staff did not hesitate to order the artillery to act against units suspected of cowardice. Even on the other side of the Atlantic, in Canada, the machine-gun was called into action to suppress an uprising by ‘deserters’ protesting against forced conscription with pistols and rifles.95 The origins of the OctoberRevolution lay in the need to make a choice. However, this choice was not between violence and nonviolence, but, rather, between the violence of the imperialist war on one side and the violence of the revolutionary war against imperialism on the other. A year later, the same tragic choice was imposed on those who took their inspiration from the Bolshevik Revolution to end the War in Germany and Austria, and depose the Hohenzollern and Hapsburg dynasties, who were still resisting or refusing to comply with this solution. The same dialectic reappeared on the occasion of the Second World-War, where Italy provides a good example. Partisan-resistance was fuelled by young people who refused to enlist in the Salò-army and took to the mountains. In this case too, a choice between two different types of violence became necessary: they could either act as cannon-fodder at the service of Mussolini’s republic and, above all, the Third Reich, or fight by taking up arms to eliminate Nazism and fascism. These dilemmas continue to present themselves to varying degrees even in the present day. In an issue of the International Herald Tribune from December 2003, we can read an extremely enlightening description of the last war against Iraq. When the occupying forces encountered major difficulties in controlling the situation, they decided to ‘make clear to ordinary Iraqis the cost of not cooperating’ (through terrorist-style bombings and other similar revengetactics).96 Let us analyse the wording used by the American newspaper: the

95. Losurdo 1996, Chapter 3, Section 3. 96. Filkins 2003; on this matter, see Losurdo 2007, Chapter 1, Section 5.


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strikes are not only against military or political opponents of the new régime, but also against ‘ordinary Iraqis’ going about their everyday lives. The latter are not targeted because they are real or suspected supporters of the resistancemovement, but because they have not helped the invader to eliminate it. In these circumstances, some form of co-operation with violence becomes inescapable, whether it is deployed by the occupying forces or perpetrated by the resistance-movement (which often develops spontaneously). This is even more relevant in Palestine, where people are forced to pay an even higher price for ‘not co-operating’ with the policies of expropriation, colonisation and military occupation pursued by Israel. The doctrinal nature of the condemnation of violence on principle is confirmed by the fact that, during major historical crises, even fervent supporters of the principle of nonviolence often end up acknowledging the need to compromise with regard to its absolute nature. This is what happened in the USA when the law on the capture of runaway-slaves was enacted and the American Civil War was launched. At a time when a choice had to be made between the violence that enslaved and tormented black people and the violence aimed at defeating the slave-states, and potentially at abolishing slavery, Angelina Grimke, the militant Quaker from the American Peace Society that we have previously encountered, came out clearly in favour of the second option in the tragic moral dilemma. We have also seen how a leading Christian theologian conspired to organise an attempt to assassinate Hitler during the Second World-War. Bonhoeffer saw this violence as the only way to put an end to an even bigger and more deadly form of violence, namely the war unleashed by the Führer to decimate and enslave the ‘indigenous population’ of Eastern Europe. Our conclusion is that historical crises of varying degrees of acuteness have forced people to choose between different forms of violence. The real nature of the dilemma can be denied by asserting the absolute and unconditional character of the principle of nonviolence, but this is only possible by indulging in contradiction and abstraction. Throughout his life, Gandhi shrank away in horror from any suggestion of armed uprising by the Indian people against colonial rule, but did not see the support he gave or promised to the end under certain conditions for the wars conducted by the British Empire as a contradiction of the principle of nonviolence. Furthermore, when India was granted independence, Gandhi did not consider dismantling the army or the police-force, as their actions were not even included in the category of violence.

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13. Resentment, violence and catharsis The far-from-flattering overview of the history of the nonviolent movement outlined thus far does not mean that we are avoiding a task that is now overdue. The more acute awareness of the ‘seriousness of the negative’ acquired through tragic experience in the twentieth century has forced us into a major rethink on the issue of violence. Which methods should be adopted in this rethink? Let us start by rereading Marx. When he stated that ‘revolution is the locomotive of history’ and ‘violence is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one’,97 we were essentially being presented with a statement of fact. Tocqueville had already explained ‘why great revolutions will become more rare’ in the title of a central chapter in Book Two of ‘Democracy in America’, but, if we look at the century or century-anda-half following the year in which the French liberal made this claim (1840), we realise that it could well have been the period with the biggest number of revolutions in the history of the world. Indeed, it was precisely all this upheaval that changed the face of the world so radically at such an astonishing speed. Eight years after the aforementioned text was published, the ‘Manifesto of the Communist Party’ forecast and aspired to proletarian revolution (or ‘bourgeois revolution’ liable to be transformed into ‘proletarian revolution’), ‘agrarian revolution’ and ‘national emancipation’ against a system that exuded violence, not only because it had been founded on social and national oppression, but also because it raised the danger of ‘the industrial war of extermination between nations’.98 At least as far as this point is concerned, it is clear that Marx and Engels had a far-sighted view. On the other hand, the following extract from The German Ideology seems more questionable: ‘this revolution is necessary, therefore, not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew’.99 Once again, the idea of a show of arms as a formative moment for man seems to be emerging, albeit in a different way. Here, we see the collapse of the ‘seriousness of the negative’, which is also an intrinsic factor for revolution, as the history of the twentieth century confirmed in such a tragically eloquent way. Sorel’s works were characterised by decidedly disquieting tones, but his Reflections on Violence, published in 1908, was more influenced by Nietzsche, 97. Marx and Engels 1955–89c, p. 85; Marx and Engels 1955–89f, p. 779. 98. Marx and Engels 1955–89b, pp. 492–3, 485. 99. Marx and Engels 1955–89a, p. 70.


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and above all by Bergson, than by Marx. The positive rôle played by violence in history was not underlined with regard to Jacobinism (severely condemned by Sorel, thus following in Tocqueville’s footsteps), or the revolution in Russia that had broken out a few years earlier, or even with regard to the uprisings that were raging in the colonial and semicolonial worlds (such as the Mahdi in Sudan, the Boxers in China and the national movement in the Philippines that tried to shake off American rule after having overthrown the Spanish). Indeed, all this was absent from Sorel’s work. He made theoretical references to a future proletarian revolution, but, in practice, the violence he advocated was an expression of intolerance towards mediocrity and the anonymity of a world marked by the advent of the masses and mass-political parties. In this way, a typical leitmotif of anti-socialist culture was revisited and reinterpreted in a ‘revolutionary’ key. Admittedly, when the fourth edition of his book was published eleven years later, Sorel derided the philistine nature of the Triple Entente for having imposed a deadly embargo on Soviet Russia and, at the same time, having branded the Bolsheviks as barbarians and heirs of the ‘Nordic’ barbarism of William II’s Germany. However, this did not alter the terms of the problem or modify the overall meaning of Reflections on Violence. Violence played a very different rôle for Marx and Engels. To understand how, let us start by posing a question: how should the most advanced Western culture react to the horrors of colonialism? In the second half of the eighteenth century, two Enlightenment-philosophers, Raynal and Diderot, saw revolution as the inevitable consequence of the increase in the phenomenon of runaway-slaves, and described it thus: [A]ll that the negroes lack is a leader courageous enough to carry them to vengeance and carnage. Where is he, this great man, that nature owes to its vexed, oppressed, tormented children? . . . He will appear, do not doubt it. He will show himself and will raise the sacred banner of liberty. This venerable leader will gather around him his comrades in misfortune. More impetuous than torrents, they will leave everywhere ineffaceable traces of their just anger. Spanish, Portuguese, English, French, Dutch, all their tyrants will fall prey to iron and flame. The American fields will be transported with drunkenness from the blood that they have been awaiting for so long, and the bones of so many unfortunates, piled up for three centuries, will shake with joy. The Old World will join its applause to that of the New. Everywhere people will bless the name of the hero who re-established the rights of the human species, everywhere monuments will be erected to his glory. Then the Code Noir will disappear, and the Code Blanc will be terrible, if the victors consult only the law of revenge!100

100. Raynal 1981, pp. 202–3.

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Some years later, when welcoming the uprising of black slaves in Saint Domingue, Percival Stockdale, an English abolitionist, included a poem first published in a 1773 pamphlet, calling on slaves to ‘rush with resistless fury on their foes’ and ‘of their pale fiends exterminate the race’.101 It is difficult to find such an appeal for ‘resentment’, ‘retaliation’ and ‘revenge’, which completes the process of ‘carnage’ and the extermination of the oppressors and becomes inebriated on their ‘blood’, in the tradition that takes its cue from Marx and Engels. In any case, there do not seem to be other examples of this view, whereby revenge by the oppressed does not entail destroying the slave-system but, rather, overturning it to the detriment of the oppressor, substituting the ‘white code’ for the ‘black code’. In order to be successful, a revolution must be able to identify its main enemy and build the broadest possible front against it so that immediate feelings of ‘retaliation’ and ‘revenge’ can make room for reasoning and rational analysis of the forces in play and the methods and objectives of the revolution. As Gramsci said, revolutionaries cannot achieve their aims without going through a process of ‘catharsis’.

14. Hannah Arendt and her critique of Fanon, Sartre and the anticolonial revolutions Let us start by looking at a negative model. In 1969, when underlining the great ‘successes’ achieved by ‘politics of nonviolence’ in the USA, ‘especially in the field of civil rights’, and regretting the fact that ‘the adherents of nonviolence are [now] on the defensive’,102 Hannah Arendt felt it necessary to redress the balance with regard to the paean to the liberating violence of oppressed, humiliated colonial peoples presented in the writings of Fanon and Sartre. As well as effectively highlighting and eloquently pillorying the ‘rhetorical excesses’ of the two authors,103 and instead of targeting individual authors and figures, this harsh critique attacked the anticolonial revolutions themselves on the basis of Mao’s oft-quoted statement that ‘political power grows out of the barrel of a gun’.104 Its meaning should be clear: the army plays a central rôle in the state-system, so a colonial people who want to establish themselves as an independent national state have to construct an independent army. In Arendt’s view, however, the protagonists of the massive 101. 102. 103. 104.

In Geggus 1982, p. 127. Arendt 1970, p. 14. Arendt 1970, p. 20. Quoted in Arendt 1970, p. 11.


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struggle that led an ancient civilisation (and more than a fifth of humanity) to throw off the colonial or semicolonial yoke became proponents of a blind, indiscriminate form of violence. This interpretation appears to be even more unfounded if we reflect on the fact that Mao insisted on the importance of economic advancement even before winning power, as Washington wanted to reduce China to a state whereby ‘her only way out is to live on U.S. flour’, and thus ‘to become a U.S. colony’.105 Consequently, military victory would have been fragile and inconclusive without victory in the struggle for agricultural and industrial production. The repudiation of the Chinese Revolution formed part of a broader context. According to Arendt, little could be expected from the victory of ‘National Liberation Movements’. She arrived at this conclusion by looking at history: ‘The rarity of slave rebellions and of uprisings among the disinherited and downtrodden is notorious; on the few occasions when they occurred’ they became ‘nightmares for everybody’.106 It would be easy to remember the epic black slave-revolution in Saint-Domingue led by Toussaint Louverture and the decisive rôle it played in dismantling the institution of slavery in the American continent, but, for Arendt, a grassrootsrevolution launched by the slaves themselves or the peoples enslaved by colonialism was something which was either impossible or pernicious. It is true that Arendt condemned American intervention in Vietnam, but the basis of her critique was not recognition of an oppressed people’s right to conduct a revolution, but, rather, realisation of the cost and far-reaching damage caused by the War in the imperialist metropolis itself. Her following statement is extremely significant: If you look at the history of revolutions, you will see that it was never the oppressed and degraded themselves who led the way, but those who were not oppressed and not degraded but could not bear it that others were.107

Together with the struggle of colonial peoples in the strict sense of the term, the struggle of Afro-Americans was also viewed with mistrust or detachment. The nonviolence-movement for civil rights emerged in 1958–9, demanding, among other things, the desegregation of schools and imploring the federal authorities to intervene to achieve this objective. Arendt objected to this and said that: ‘enforced integration is no better than enforced segregation’,108 on 105. 106. 107. 108.

Mao Zedong 1969–75, p. 453. Arendt 1970, p. 21. Arendt 1972, p. 167. Arendt 2000, p. 235.

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the grounds that integration established by law and obtained through the intervention of federal troops in the South was in itself an act of violence. Protest started to take on an increasingly radical form. This was already evident in Martin Luther King’s famous 1963 speech, when he evoked the ‘dream’ of racial integration and equality. Although he passionately professed his nonviolent faith, he also denounced the ‘appalling condition’ of black people and the ‘unspeakable horrors of police brutality’.109 In the following years, the more radical sectors in the movement started questioning the problematic balance of this stance, but this was not only because of the persistent violence of state-institutions and social relations. The burden of the war in Vietnam became an increasingly pertinent issue and begged the question of how commitment to nonviolence could be coherently upheld in a situation with forced conscription, compelling young men to fight in a far-off country and kill or be killed. Arendt, however, had no doubts: ‘Serious violence entered the scene [in the USA] only with the appearance of the Black Power movement on the campuses’.110 Let us move forward to 1969. Relying on the account published in a leading Western newspaper, this is the kind of treatment that black people were still subjected to in the USA in this period: In the 60s more than 400 black men in Alabama were used as human guinea pigs by the government. These syphilis sufferers were not treated as the authorities wanted to study the effects of the disease on a ‘sample of the population’.111

President Clinton was forced to apologise for this episode in 1997. However, according to Arendt’s claims, the only people responsible for the violence were the Afro-Americans themselves, or at least the most radical Afro-American militants. As we can see, the critique of violence here is really a critique of revolutions and anticolonial movements. At this point, the attack on Fanon and Sartre can be seen in a new and disturbing light. Arendt completely ignored the fact that the paean to the liberating violence of oppressed, humiliated colonial peoples was, in fact, a response to the theory and practice of dehumanisation and decimation or annihilation of colonial peoples inflicted by colonialism.

109. In Hofstadter and Hofstadter (eds.) 1982, pp. 450–1. 110. Arendt 1970, p. 18. 111. Cited in Losurdo 2007, p. 118.


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15. Recognition or co-optation? A comparison between Gandhi and Fanon Is the catharsis implicit in the theory of revolution inspired by Marx and Engels no longer present in the work of Fanon and Sartre? Arendt focused more on the latter, but special reference should instead be made to the former. This is because Fanon provided Sartre with a source regarding the issue of the liberating violence of colonial peoples. Fanon wrote: ‘Racism, hatred, resentment, and the “legitimate desire for revenge” alone cannot nurture a war of liberation. . . . [H]atred is not an agenda’.112 As we can see, the moment of catharsis had not been forgotten, but Fanon also provided us with an extremely crude statement: ‘At the individual level, violence is a cleansing force. It rids the colonized of their inferiority complex’.113 It would, however, be hasty to see Fanon as a proponent of the redeeming effectiveness of violence in itself. For a start, he did not indiscriminately target the colonised for being naturally attracted to the cause of anticolonial revolutions: ‘Some members of the colonialist population prove to be closer, infinitely closer, to the nationalist struggle than certain native sons’.114 However, national-liberation movements that really want to succeed not only have to clearly limit the target of their revolutionary violence, but also, at a certain point, have to know how to orchestrate the transition from the military phase to the political-economic phase of the struggle. Therefore, in order to provide a real economic and political context for the independence won by military strategy, the newly-independent country has to escape from its state of underdevelopment. Dedication to work and production therefore take the place of bravery in battle, and the figure of the worker, whether skilled or not, supersedes that of the guerrilla. In capitulating, it is as if the colonial power was saying to the revolutionaries: ‘If you want independence, take it and suffer the consequences’, and in this way ‘the apotheosis of independence becomes the curse of independence’. It therefore becomes necessary to know how to respond to this new challenge, which is no longer military in nature: ‘It requires capital, technicians, engineers and mechanics, etc.’.115 In other words, to some extent, Fanon foresaw both the stalemate in many African countries that did not manage to move from the military phase to the economic phase of the revolution and the turnaround that occurred in

112. Fanon 1967, p. 89. 113. Fanon 1967, p. 51; on this matter, see Balibar 2001, pp. 1303–4 (English translation in Balibar 2009), Bertinotti 2004a, p. iii, and Bertinotti 2004b, p. 284. 114. Fanon 1967, p. 95. 115. Fanon 1967, pp. 54, 57.

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anticolonial revolutions in China and Vietnam, to name but two. Once again, we can reiterate the consideration previously made with reference to Mao: the indiscriminate celebration of violence for its own sake is still a long way off. Therefore, we are left with the crude and, at first sight, even repugnant formulation that we have already seen. How can this be explained? The answer lies in the experience of the long, interminable period of colonial rule with its dehumanising practices. Thanks to their crushing military superiority and total control over the ideological system, for a long time the oppressors managed to drum a sense of irreparable inferiority and impotence into their victims, and the white supermen appeared to be surrounded by an aura of invincibility. Precisely for this reason, rather than attempting a rebellion which would have been doomed to fail from the start, for a long time black slaves preferred to inflict violence on themselves: the practice of suicide and the killing of newborn babies were major episodes in the ordeal suffered by black people for centuries. On other occasions, the victims imagined that a merciful divinity could make them invulnerable to the firearms of the invaders and white masters. As a result of this illusion, between 1889 and 1890 the Native Americans managed to make a final gesture of resistance, even though they were on the verge of annihilation. The same misconception explains how, around ten years later, and thousands of kilometres away in China, the Boxers squared up to their ultra-powerful and otherwise unstoppable enemy, who had invaded, overpowered and humiliated their country. These phenomena can still be seen today, albeit in a slightly different form. Examples are the practice of suicide-attacks (historically very familiar to slaves), above all in Palestine and the Middle East, and the fact that these ‘martyrs’ expect to achieve immortality and reach heaven (a variation on the invulnerability that Native Americans and Boxers thought they could obtain by practising magic).116 Fanon’s claim that violence ‘rids the colonized of their inferiority complex’ should be read in this historical and anthropological context. Terrible acts have been committed recently in Iraq and Palestine by both sides, with disrespect occasionally shown towards the corpses of fallen enemies. This is clearly a practice which must be condemned unconditionally. However, it does not mean that we cannot adopt different approaches to analyse the ideological, political and even existential backgrounds to these abhorrent acts, which vary on a case-by-case basis. It might be useful here to recall some of Marx’s writing: when answering accusations levelled at the 116. See Losurdo 2007, Chapter 1, Section 11.


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‘incendiarism’ committed by the Paris Commune, he made a distinction between ‘the vandalism of defence in despair’ and ‘the vandalism of triumph’.117 The considerations he made regarding the Sepoy-Rebellion are also especially relevant. Marx noted that in China and India acts of infamy had been committed by both the colonial power and the people subjected to aggression and military occupation. However, while, on one side, the colonial troops practised ‘mere wanton sports’, using violence as a form of entertainment to find confirmation of their pre-eminence and superiority over the natives, on the other side, there was an explosion of ‘wars of insurrection, of nationalities, of races, and above all of religion’ unleashed by oppressed peoples. They practised a blind, savage form of violence in a desperate attempt to erase the mark of inferiority stamped by the dominant colonial power and achieve the recognition tenaciously denied to them.118 Let us now return to the Middle East in the present day. On one side, we have the victors in the framework of a regular army, looking down on the Untermenschen with boundless contempt, and treating them as inferior subhuman beings from the height of their technological and military superiority and the conviction that they represent a superior civilisation. A song sung by an American soldier eloquently bears witness to this attitude. It was widely available on the internet, but I am quoting it from Corriere della Sera. It praised the killing of an Iraqi girl and a small crowd was seen applauding: ‘The blood sprayed from between her eyes. And then I laughed maniacally’. This is because the Arabs ‘should have known they were fucking with a Marine’.119 On the other side, we have the Iraqis and Palestinians outside the framework of a regular army, giving vent to the long series of humiliations they have had to suffer as presumed Untermenschen by sometimes attacking fallen American or Israeli soldiers. Violence directed at an enemy-corpse is barbarism under any circumstances. The fact remains, however, that, in one case, it is the expression of the desire to reduce the colonised people to the status of Untermenschen, while, in the other, it constitutes a crude, primitive attempt by the colonised people to wipe out this dehumanising inequality. In the former case, blind uncontrolled violence is the negation of recognition, while, in the latter case, it is the warped, desperate form that the struggle for recognition assumes. A mature revolutionary movement must condemn ignoble, degrading practices right across the board, but the maturity of the movement is also measured by its

117. Marx and Engels 1955–89e, pp. 358–9. 118. Marx and Engels 1955–89d, pp. 285–86. 119. See Losurdo 2007, Chapter 1, Section 9.

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ability to evaluate barbaric violence in a different way, while continuing to condemn it unreservedly. It is interesting to draw a comparison between Gandhi and Fanon with regard to the relationship between violence and the struggle for recognition. Grouping them together may seem paradoxical and even provocative, but, upon careful examination, common ground shared by the two authors clearly emerges. Gandhi wrote that: ‘The British have the great vice of depriving a subject nation of its self-respect’,120 while Fanon observed: ‘The colonized . . . took up arms not only because they were dying of hunger and witnessing the disintegration of their society but also because the colonist treated them like animals and considered them brutes’ and that the oppressor instils ‘in the exploited a mood of submission and inhibition which considerably eases the task of the agents of law and order’.121 On a more strictly military level, the colonised people are branded as cowards. Therefore, in order to achieve recognition, they are forced to throw off this accusation too, one which has now been internalised and has thereby become an obstacle to the recovery of self-respect. Gandhi continued as follows: Only equals can be partners. There can be no partnership between the cat and the mouse, between the ant and the elephant. . . . With this cowardly fear in us, how can we be the equals of the British?

Therefore, ‘as long as we are not free from the fear of the military, so long we cannot be regarded as equal partners with Englishmen’.122 This is why Gandhi invited his compatriots to insist on enlisting in the imperial army during the First World-War, even in the event of the British government interposing obstacles. This is an essential point: ‘The British are a nation of heroes. They will recognise heroism’,123 the heroism of a people who, as we know, Gandhi called on to shed their ‘effeminacy’ once and for all and demonstrate their male courage and ‘manhood’. Using different language, Fanon spoke of the revolutionary ‘violence’ of the colonised as ‘the absolute praxis’.124 Both Gandhi and Fanon saw violence as the way to earn recognition, through active and even heroic participation in war. However, while the former felt that violence should target the enemies of the Empire from which

120. 121. 122. 123. 124.

‘Appeal for Enlistment’, in Gandhi 1969–2001b, p. 86. Fanon 1967, pp. 89, 4. Gandhi 1969–2001b, pp. 80, 83. Gandhi 1969–2001b, pp. 85, 82. Fanon 1967, p. 44.


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recognition was desired, the latter felt it was a question of attacking the coloniser. How can this difference be assessed? The stance assumed by Gandhi can be placed in the context of a very precise tradition, which was defined above all by events in the USA after the end of the nineteenth century. Subjected to all kinds of humiliation, discrimination and persecution in the South, Afro-Americans tried to gain recognition by fighting on the frontline during the Union-Wars. As a result, certain groups started to pay tribute to the bravery shown by black soldiers in the Battle of Wounded Knee.125 This idea became increasingly prevalent in subsequent larger-scale wars. In this way, Afro-Americans aimed to achieve emancipation by accepting to become cannon-fodder for objectives which were not theirs or, in the case of Wounded Knee, even by implementing a policy of disemancipation and annihilation to the detriment of the Native Americans. In this sense, we should speak about an ambition to co-opt rather than a struggle for recognition (recognition sought and earned to the detriment of others). On the occasion of the Anglo-Boer War, Gandhi spoke about the Boer people with great fondness and emotionally underlined the ‘indescribable sufferings’ to which Boer women were subjected, locked up by the English in ‘concentration camps’. Nevertheless, he invited his fellow countrymen to line up alongside the British Empire, ‘not to enter into the merits of the war’ and to demonstrate their ‘manhood’ and even their ‘heroism’.126 Emancipation was pursued to the detriment of a third party, a people whom Gandhi had also openly admired. Furthermore, on the occasion of the First World-War, he called upon India to ‘offer all her able-bodied sons as a sacrifice to the Empire’, the same Empire ‘of which we aspire, in the near future, to be partners in the same sense as the Dominions overseas’.127 The aim was to follow the statute of the white dominions and enjoy the same home-rule that they did, but a general emancipation-plan was notable by its absence. For example, there was no reference to African or Middle-Eastern colonies, or any reference to the fact that by liberating the white community from any form of external control and obstruction, home-rule in Australia and New Zealand had given rise to the extermination of the indigenous people. In terms of a general emancipation-plan, there was also no general critique of colonial rule or violence. This is the radical difference with respect to Fanon (and the communist movement).

125. Litwack 1998, p. 463. 126. Gandhi 1969–2001c, pp. 18, 63. 127. Gandhi 1969–2001b, pp. 7–8.

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In the final analysis, Gandhi’s policy was a request for co-optation addressed to the British government for the benefit of the Indian population. Not by chance, he had proclaimed his ‘faith in the British Empire’ since the time of the Anglo-Boer War and constantly put forward the figure of the Englishman as an example to his fellow countrymen. He dismissed doubts over participation in the war against a heroic people who might, in the end, even have been victorious as follows: Would an Englishman think for a moment what would happen to himself if the English lost the war? A man about to join a war cannot advance such an argument without forfeiting his manhood.128

Although Gandhi’s approach became more radical in later years, he never fully overcame this initial fundamental limit. This explains the peculiar phenomenon that is currently in full swing in India, whereby strong fundamentalist movements recognise the legendary Indo-Aryans as the original population of the country and call on people to recover and reassert their genuine identity by throwing off any established external influences. Identification with the Englishman has thus turned into identification with the Aryan ideology he professed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

16. An ambiguous watchword unable to keep its promises The main feature that emerges from the historical-philosophical overview we have outlined is the extreme vagueness of the concept of nonviolence. Is it synonymous with an appeal to all nations to disarm completely and dismantle their armies and police-forces? An appeal for nonviolence has little meaning unless it attacks the state-run bodies that are qualified to inflict violence. However, even if they are attacked, the appeal is in fact no more than an invitation to every nation to abandon its nation-status. Weber’s classic definition of a state as the entity that possesses the monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force is well known. However, the difficulty is not even overcome if condemnation of violence is limited to targeting wars between nations and the armies that fight them; we have seen how major figures and groups in the American Peace Society considered the American Civil War to be a simple police-operation. On the other hand, colonial wars have often been presented as international police-operations throughout history, and the wars launched by the United States to uphold its global 128. Gandhi 1969–2001c, p. 63.


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Empire maintain this tradition. Indeed, they have an even greater need for this ideological cover. The current most prominent advocates of nonviolence are members or associates of left-wing groups. Should we therefore ask Cuba to dismantle its army? It would hand victory to the violence inflicted in the past in the Bay of Pigs Invasion and still in progress today, not only through sporadic attempts at terrorism, but, above all, through a deadly economic embargo and threatening military pressure. This pressure is already a form of warfare, as we saw previously by drawing on Hobbes’s accurate analysis. Therefore, an appeal to Cuba for disarmament would really constitute a form of support for the military, diplomatic and economic pressure and the American war-inprogress. Nonviolent militants may well be satisfied with the purity of their conviction from an ethical point of view, but, if we conduct analysis based on the ethics of responsibility (the reference-set of ethics for understanding the field of political relations and conflict), they come across as anything but innocent and pure in moral terms. The significance of the spread of the theory of nonviolence on the Left is different from how it first appears. A book whose title invites us to Change the World Without Taking Power129 has recently enjoyed great success in left-wing circles. Upon more careful analysis, the watchword ‘nonviolence’ takes shape as the renunciation of conquest and power-management. The unilaterally catastrophic overview of twentieth-century Communism has thus prompted an escape from history and politics and a conversion to a religion disguised to varying degrees. There is no need to set all this against Lenin, but it is worth returning to Bonhoeffer at this point: Political action means to perceive responsibility. It cannot happen without power. Power enters the service of responsibility.130

Does the religion of nonviolence at least manage to limit violence in emancipation-movements, even if it does not manage to do so with imperialist and reactionary violence? The answer is that it does not. We have seen how major figures and groups in the American Peace Society salvaged their good ‘nonviolent’ consciences in the mid-nineteenth century by respectively criminalising and dehumanising the rebelling Indians and participants in the secession of the Southern slave-states. This dialectic, whereby the unconditional condemnation of violence has the final effect of boosting and worsening it, was also evident throughout the twentieth century. It is worth noting that current 129. Holloway 2002. 130. Bonhoeffer 1958–74, p. 477.

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watchwords have recaptured the most emphatic illusions of the communist movement, which for so long promised a society where all forms of violence and power would disappear after a transition-phase of dictatorship, and where the ‘transformation of power into love’ would occur, to repeat the young Bloch’s previously-seen formulation. However, this vision, which even brands a constitution-plan as bourgeois (by implying the permanence of the state and therefore also of violence and power) and automatically devalues any idea of limiting power, played such a destructive rôle in Soviet Russia and the ‘socialist field’ that it extended and in the end exacerbated both the state of exception and the violence in it.131 In addition to reaffirming an oppressed people’s right to make an autonomous choice over the methods of their struggle for emancipation, a move away from the messianic expectation that all forms of physical force will disappear is also an essential requirement for placing an effective restriction on violence and power. Translated by Frank Gordon.

References Arendt, Hannah 1970, On Violence, New York: Harcourt, Brace and World. —— 1972, ‘Thoughts on Politics and Revolution: a Commentary’, in Crises of the Republic, New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company. —— 2000 [1959], ‘Reflections on Little Rock’, in The Portable Arendt, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Balibar, Etienne 2001, ‘Gewalt’, in Historisch-Kritisches Wörterbuch des Marxismus, Volume 5, edited by Wolfgang Fritz Haug, Berlin: Argument. —— 2009, ‘Reflections on Gewalt’, Historical Materialism, 17, 1: 99–125. Benjamin, Walter 2007 [1955], Immagini di città, New Edition, Italian translation by Marisa Bertolini, Turin: Einaudi. Bertinotti, Fausto 2004a, ‘La guerra è orrore’, Liberazione, ‘Il documento’, 4 January: i–iv. —— 2004b, ‘Agire la nonviolenza’, in Agire la nonviolenza, Milan: Punto Rosso. Bonhoeffer, Dietrich 1958–75, Gesammelte Schriften, Volume 3, edited by Eberhard Bethge, Munich: Christian Kaiser Verlag. —— 1995 [1949], Ethics, translated by Reinhard Krauss, Douglas W. Stott and Charles C. West, Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Brecher, Michael 1961, Nehru: A Political Biography, Boston: Beacon Press. Cesare, Bori Pier and Gianni Sofri 1985, Gandhi e Tolstoj. Un carteggio e dintorni, Bologna: Il Mulino. Chadha, Yogesh 1997, Rediscovering Gandhi, London: Century.

131. Losurdo 1997, Chapter 4, Section 10, and Chapter 5, Section 6; Losurdo 2008, Chapter 2.


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Churchill, Winston 1974, His Complete Speeches 1897–1963, New York: Chelsea House. Conboy, Kenneth and James Morrison 2002, The CIA’s Secret War in Tibet, Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. Dalai Lama 2008, ‘Five Point Peace Plan’, available at: . Fanon, Frantz 1967 [1961], The Wretched of the Earth, translated by Constance Farrington, New York: Grove Press. Ferguson, Niall 2004, Empire: The Rise and the Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power, New York: Basic Books. Ferro, Marc 1980, L’Occident devant la révolution soviétique, Brussels: Editions Complexe. Filkins, Dexter 2003, ‘U.S. Gets Tough with Iraqi Town’, International Herald Tribune, 8 December: 5. Gandhi, Mohandas K. 1969–2001a, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Volume 10, New Delhi: Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. —— 1969–2001b, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Volume 17, New Delhi: Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. —— 1969–2001c, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Volume 34, New Delhi: Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. —— 1969–2001d, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Volume 54, New Delhi: Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. —— 1969–2001e, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Volume 78, New Delhi: Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. —— 1969–2001f, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Volume 80, New Delhi: Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. —— 1969–2001g, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Volume 81, New Delhi: Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. —— 1969–2001h, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Volume 84, New Delhi: Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. —— 1969–2001i, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Volume 86, New Delhi: Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. —— 1969–2001j, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Volume 98, New Delhi: Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Geggus, David 1982, ‘British Opinion and the Emergence of Haiti, 1791–1805’, in Slavery and British Society 1776–1846, edited by James Walvin, London: Macmillan. Goldner, Colin 1999, Dalai Lama – Fall eines Gottkönigs, Aschaffenburg: Alibri Verlag. Hegel, Georg W.F. 1969–79, Werke in zwanzig Bänden, Volume 3, edited by Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Markus Michel, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Hobbes, Thomas 1996 [1651], Leviathan, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hofstadter, Richard and Beatrice K. Hofstadter (eds.) 1982 [1958], Great Issues in American History, Volume 3: From Reconstruction to the Present Day, 1864–1981, New York: Vintage Books. Holloway, John 2002, Change the World Without Taking Power: The Meaning of Revolution Today, London: Pluto Press. Johnson, Paul 1983, A History of the Modern World: From 1917 to the 1980s, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. —— 1993, ‘Colonialism’s Back – and Not a Moment Too Soon’, New York Times Magazine, 18 April: 22. Knaus, John Kenneth 1999, Orphans of the Cold War: America and the Tibetan Struggle for Survival, New York: PublicAffairs.

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Lenin, Vladimir I. 1955–70a, Collected Works, Volume 15, Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House. —— 1955–70b, Collected Works, Volume 24, Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House. —— 1955–70c, Collected Works, Volume 39, Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House. Litwack, Leon F. 1998, Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow, New York: Knopf. Losurdo, Domenico 1991, La comunità, la morte, l’Occidente. Heidegger e ‘l’ideologia della guerra’, Turin: Bollati Boringhieri. —— 1996, Il revisionismo storico. Problemi e miti, Rome-Bari: Laterza. —— 1997, Antonio Gramsci dal liberalismo al comunismo critico, Rome: Gamberetti. —— 2005, Controstoria del liberalismo, Rome-Bari: Laterza. —— 2007, Il linguaggio dell’Impero. Lessico dell’ideologia americana, Rome-Bari: Laterza. —— 2008, Stalin. Storia e critica di una leggenda nera, Rome: Carocci. —— 2010, La non-violenza. Una storia fuori dal mito, Rome-Bari: Laterza. Lukács, György 1973, Tactics and Ethics: Political Writings 1919–1929, London: New Left Books. Luxemburg Rosa 2003 [1913], The Accumulation of Capital, translated by Agnes Schwarzschild, London: Routledge. Magris, Claudio 2007, ‘Preface’, in Benjamin 2007. Mao Zedong 1969–75 [1949], ‘The Bankruptcy of the Idealist Conception of History’, in Selected Works, Volume 4, Peking: Foreign Languages Press. Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels 1955–89a, Werke, Volume 3, Berlin: Dietz Verlag. —— 1955–89b, Werke, Volume 4, Berlin: Dietz Verlag. —— 1955–89c, Werke, Volume 7, Berlin: Dietz Verlag. —— 1955–89d, Werke, Volume 12, Berlin: Dietz Verlag. —— 1955–89e, Werke, Volume 17, Berlin: Dietz Verlag. —— 1955–89f, Werke, Volume 23, Berlin: Dietz Verlag. Mueller, John and Karl Mueller 1999, ‘Sanctions of Mass Destruction’, Foreign Affairs, May– June: 43–53. Raynal, Guillaume Thomas 1981 [1781], Histoire philosophique et politique des Deux Indes, edited by Yves Benot, Paris: Maspero. Roosevelt, Theodore 1901, The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses, New York: The Century. Salvemini, Gaetano 1963 [1914], ‘La guerra per la pace’, in Opere, Volume 3, Book 1, Milan: Feltrinelli. Sarkar, Sumit 1989, Modern India, 1885–1947, Houndmills: Macmillan. Sofri, Gianni 1985, ‘Gandhi tra Oriente e Occidente’, in Cesare and Sofri 1985. Tocqueville, Alexis de 1954, Oeuvres complètes, Volume 6, Book 1, Paris: Gallimard. Tolstoy, Leo 1978 [1869], War and Peace, London: The Folio Society. —— 1985, Tolstoy’s Diaries, Volume 2, London: Athlone Press. Torri, Michelguglielmo 2000, Storia dell’India, Rome-Bari: Laterza. Tucholsky, Kurt 1985 [1927], ‘Der Krieg und die deutsche Frau’, in Gesammelte Werke, Volume 5, edited by M. Gerold Tucholsky and F.J. Raddatz, Hamburg: Rowohlt. Ziegler, Valerie H. 1992, The Advocates of Peace in Antebellum America, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Zweig, Stefan 1943, The World of Yesterday, New York: Viking Press.


brill.nl/hima

‘What Keeps Mankind Alive?’: the Eleventh International Istanbul Biennial. Once More on Aesthetics and Politics Gail Daya, Steve Edwardsb, David Mabbc a

c

University of Leeds [email protected] b Open University [email protected] Goldsmiths University of London [email protected]

Abstract Starting from the 2009 Istanbul Biennial, with its Brechtian curatorial theme, this essay considers the Left’s varying responses to art’s so-called ‘political turn’. Discussion ranges from the local and regional context of the Biennial’s function as part of Turkey’s bid to join the EU, through to a longer theoretical perspective on the critical debates over ‘art and life’, artistic autonomy and heteronomy, and the revival in avant-gardism. The authors propose that the standard accounts of the intimate connection between the commodity and art have become politically counterproductive. They suggest that Marxist analysis needs to develop a more complexly-articulated philosophical reflection on the relation between economy, politics, and art – and between political and aesthetic praxes – if it is to advance its longstanding contributions to considerations of ‘aesthetics and politics’. Keywords Istanbul Biennial, aesthetics and politics, avant-garde, Brecht, contemporary art, political turn, commodity, commodification

Biennials of contemporary art have increasingly spread across the globe, taking place in Venice, Havana and Cape Town; in Athens, Lyon and Seville; in Berlin, Sydney and São Paulo; in Tel Aviv and T’aipei; in Sharjah and Shanghai; in Gyumri and Guangzhou; even Liverpool has one.1 There are also triennials (Yokohama, Turin, London’s Tate Britain); quinennials (Documenta 1. The authors would like to express their sincere gratitude to Demet Dinler for her translations from Turkish and critical reading of this essay. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011

DOI: 10.1163/156920610X550631

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in Kassel) and decennials (the Münster Sculpture-Festival).2 Venice’s is a now a venerable institution, dating back to 1895, and Documenta, having been conceived as part of the postwar-reconstruction of Europe – as a means ‘to reconcile German public life with international modernity and also confront it with its own failed Enlightenment’3 (not to mention its rôle as a beacon of Western values sited close to the border with East Germany) – is now over half a century old. However, the escalating presence of these large-scale exhibitions is a phenomenon of recent origin and a significant feature in the landscape of late-capitalist culture, often requiring of their visitors multi-day commitments and international travel. Big art-fests of this kind usually come with grandiosesounding, but generally vaporous, themes. To take just two examples from 2009: the Venice Biennale’s Making Worlds was a title so vague it could mean everything or nothing, while Tate Triennial’s Altermodern – despite its promise to chart a new moment beyond both modernism and postmodernism – turned out to be a rehash of some well-worn (postmodern) values. Few take these large curatorial claims that seriously. At these mega-shows, visitors are typically reduced to seeking out individual works that rise above the vast array of dark cubes filled with videos, white cubes filled with documentaryphotographs, and coloured cubes filled with every object imaginable, and are usually forced to abandon the idea that the exhibition itself might actually add up to something coherent. However, the Eleventh Istanbul Biennial attempted just that: to create an exhibition that was more than the sum of its constituent artworks. This Biennial, which ran from 12 September to 8 November 2009, was put together by What, How and For Whom (WHW), a curatorial group based in Zagreb.4 WHW took as its thesis a line – ‘What Keeps Mankind Alive?’ – from The Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht (with Elisabeth Hauptmann) and Kurt Weill: What keeps mankind alive? The fact that millions Are daily tortured, stifled, punished, silenced, oppressed. Mankind can keep alive, thanks to its brilliance In keeping its humanity repressed. For once, you must try not to shirk the facts: Mankind is kept alive by bestial acts.5

2. For convenience, ‘biennial’ stands as the generic term. 3. See Documenta 2007a. 4. The members of WHW are: Ivet Ćurlin, Ana Dević, Nataša Ilić and Sabina Sabolović (with designer and publicist Dejan Krišić). 5. Brecht 1979.


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The sign, ‘Brecht’, features throughout the exhibition and its spin-offs. Quotes from Brecht are stencilled onto walls; artists make explicit reference to his ideas in their works (one piece, by the collective Etcétera, includes his likeness); and the work-group Chto Delat/What Is to Be Done published a special issue of their paper devoted to Brecht’s ‘Great Method’.6 The short exhibition-guide opens with an address to students by Brecht7 and the parallel volume of texts is littered with his critical interventions and writing on his work.8 Of course, one might observe, such compilations of written material are just standard features of biennial-culture – and, anyway, who reads the texts? However, it should be clear that something is going on in an exhibition where Brecht is mobilised, not only as a progenitor for the critique of representation, but as an explicit marker for left politics. Within the biennial-scene itself, this was a significant move, pushing the theme beyond the obligatory pitch signifying the event’s unique ‘character’ or ‘selling point’. While maintaining the necessary commitment to openness, variety and flexibility, WHW seemed to be seeking out a greater degree of specification. ‘Brecht’ offers this, we might note, at the level of both form and content: one could feel the political charge and critical pointedness; and Brecht’s injunctions to make art politically useful were – despite the apparent paradoxes and limits of the biennial-context – conveyed with some urgency. The Istanbul Biennial itself has a limited budget (2,050,299 euros in 2009). A range of statistics are cited at the beginning of the Biennial-guide: the number of male and female artists participating (30 women, 32 men); the number of collectives (5) and collaborative projects (3); the artists’ ages (the average age was 43); their countries and regions of origin (28 per cent from the West and 72 per cent from the rest); and the numbers represented by galleries. The budget is broken down, indicating how it was spent and from where it all came. No doubt, this deliberate act of transparency – a ‘baring of the device’ – was designed as a Brechtian gesture intended to reveal the production-apparatus of the exhibition: it was also clearly an acknowledgment of the marxisant criticisms of the spectacular effect of such large-scale events. However, there are some odd absences from the data proffered by WHW. For instance, there are no percentages for the types of 6. Chto Delat 2009, with essays by Sergei Zemlyanoy, Dmitry Vilensky, Peio Aguirre, Gene Ray, Antonio Negri, and David Riff and Dmitry Gutov. The issue also contains the screenplay for Chto Delat’s Partisan Songspiel, which is discussed later. 7. WHW 2009c. 8. The commentaries include works by Elin Diamond, Alain Badiou, Mladen Dolar, Luis Ignacio Garcia, Fredric Jameson, Darko Suvin, Bob Dylan, Slavoj Žižek and Keti Chukhrov. WHW 2009b.

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work shown: the number of videos (quite a lot), but also the number of works on paper (printed, water-coloured, drawn and photographed, often pinned to the walls in grids); percentage of sculptures (very few) and paintings (a few more, but mostly small); large photos (a few more), etc. This point is not made out of pedantry, but to remark that it looks like the curators were short of money for shipping and insurance. (Even the Venice Biennale is not immune from similar material constraints, as witnessed with the ‘Utopia Station’ in 2003.)9 Alternatively, it may be that this was just the nature of the work selected by WHW, because their Brechtian Haltung gave little room for more traditional art-forms. Or, perhaps, this was the result of the political-geographical regions where most of the artists were drawn from: the ex-‘Soviet Bloc’ (particularly its southern fringe), ex-Yugoslavia, Turkey and down through Syria, Lebanon, Israel/Palestine and Egypt. Given the lack of a strong market for art through most of these geographical zones, it is likely that producing saleable commodities was not the most important motive for many of the artists involved. Whatever the reasons for the relative absence of traditional art-media, this led to an exceptionally makeshiftlooking exhibition, with a lot of work literally lacking weight. But the physical insubstantiality of many of the works was made up for by the number that evidenced epic-ambitions.

Art at the Eleventh Istanbul Biennial In this essay, we will take the Eleventh Istanbul Biennial as an occasion to outline some recent shifts in art and the Left’s varying responses to them. We suspect that many of the instinctive approaches to art and culture that have become familiar among Marxists may need reconsideration. We realise that there will be more questions raised than answers given here. This article does not attempt to provide a comprehensive map (let alone a resolution) of the conflicting positions that the Left in general, and Marxists in particular, have taken towards contemporary art, but simply to give some indication of the parameters shaping these. Perhaps the key-debate has been whether such events are now so contaminated by corporate sponsorship that participation is questionable: some argue for outright boycott, others for a struggle for hegemony inside the organisations of art. Attitudes have varied substantially towards questions such as economic or political modernisation, and how these are to be thought in the context of an unevenly developing world. They 9. The form of chosen media in contemporary art-exhibitions are frequently a marker of such restrictions. Biennial-venues – typically, redundant industrial public buildings – make for difficult conditions for valuable work in terms of security, climate-control and insurance-costs.


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have equally varied just as much, if not more, so when considering the ways cultural practices have been inserted into these same historical developments, as suggested by the famous debates on aesthetic modernity, or on formalism and the avant-garde, from the 1920s and 30s, and from their revitalisation in the 1960s and 70s. Some Marxists may still hold to premodernist aesthetics; while some who accept the arguments in favour of modernism may struggle to accommodate their views to postconceptual art. Meanwhile, opinion continues to be divided by debates over the nature of aesthetic realism, the relevance of beauty, or the precise means by which to articulate the ‘autonomy’ of art. None of these can be restricted to some (imagined) free-standing aesthetic realm, but necessarily overlap with disputes in other fields (philosophical realism, political realism, etc); at the same time, something distinctive is brought to bear by the aesthetic context. Further, many of the critical discussions of art, which have grown in influence, were founded on writings that tried to read artistic form through the prism of Marx’s analysis of the value-form; the analysis of the commodity and capitalist market have since taken a more Bourdieu-inspired direction. Assessing the ‘political turn’ in art (which we will return to shortly), radical critics have struggled to reach any level of agreement. Political responses (the nature of practice, tactics or strategy) to this turn or its manifestations have found themselves subject to similar lack of consensus. It is not that we wish for some ready consensualism, though the current political fragmentation certainly seems debilitating (this itself being addressed in some of the best artworks); rather, the point, we think, is that Marxist analysis in/of art has itself come to rely on some standard – even standardised – responses, which have become counterproductive. We hope that our essay may contribute towards clarifying some of the parameters of the current debates, especially those on the relation between ‘art and commodity’. The 2009 Istanbul Biennial dramatised the problems. Crystallising issues – from the tensions between liberal expression and neoliberalism, between modernisation and gentrification, between art’s commodification and its emancipatory potential, between an individual artpractice and the institutions of art, or between the capacity of these institutions to ‘incorporate’ and to serve as progressive ideological platforms, through to questions of form and content (philosophical and aesthetic), or to those of ‘art’ and ‘life’ – this Biennial brought to the fore questions concerning the very relation of aesthetic and political praxis. It will help to survey of some of the artworks that were on display in Istanbul – though, given the contingent nature of the event, these are not necessarily the most prominent of international artists present at the event or the best examples of their work. Familiar genres were present in Istanbul: photographs of poignant spaces, in this instance, Syrian sites used for public

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executions; batches of scruffy drawings pinned to the wall (though these transpired to be illustrations to Capital ); video-essays reflecting on working conditions or colonialism; conspiracy-maps; documentation of oil-pipelines; ‘smuggling art’ (lemons being carried through an Israeli checkpoint); archives, here one of political posters from the civil war in Lebanon assembled by Zeina Maasri; and fictionalised ‘documentaries’ that trade on the viewer’s gullibility (or, satisfaction when they catch on to the trick). This last genre is becoming tiresome, though the one shown here by Rabih Mroué – if a little too-closely modelled on the work of Walid Ra’ad’s Atlas Group – at least succeeded in being humorously pertinent, recasting the process of ‘truth and reconciliation’ through his performance apologising publicly for all and sundry. The Biennial was peppered with little-known works from the past: Tamás St Auby’s intriguing avant-garde film Centaur from 1973–5, in which Hungarian factory-workers break off from their labour or travel to address Marxist dialogues on alienation and exploitation to the camera; Hamlet Hovsepian’s Fluxus-like films documenting small actions, giving a prominent position to an Armenian modernist; the beautifully filmed Step by Step (1977) by Mohammed Ossama, which depicts the poverty of Syrian rural life and the forces of Arab nationalism, and which bears the traces of his training at VGIK, the great Moscow film-academy; the German painter K.P. Brehmer’s marvellously subversive systems-works from the 1970s, which take as their raw data, not the usual abstract mathematical problems, but stock-market prices for zinc or potatoes and psychological studies of workers’ attitudes towards their labour. None of these projects or artists were resurrected simply to flesh out the canon and spice up the market: the exhibition may have this effect, of course, but the works all repay extended critical engagement. The Biennial contained works that sought to reveal the historicity of contemporary political conjunctures or open onto questions of social totality, and could be described as realist. In this mode, Bureau d’Etudes’ Administration of Terror (2009) plots diagrammatically connections between secret right-wing military groups, and diplomatic, financial and intelligenceforces – obviously topical in the light of the ‘Ergenekon’-case. Forming part of a larger project, and produced in collaboration with local academics, Trevor Paglan’s photographs display traces of secret satellites orbiting over Istanbul. The images seem to invoke the sublimity that is associated with astronomical photography, but turn this around to demonstrate the all-toohuman hidden ‘black world’ of the military-industrial complex. Marko Peljhan’s installation – Territory 1995 – consists of maps, sound-recordings and documents, focusing on the massacre in Srebenica, the rôle played by the international ‘protection’-force, and the ways in which the landscape becomes


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reconfigured by an explosion of tactical and strategic communicationssystems. Strictly speaking, Territory 1995 at Istanbul is less ‘installation’ than presentation of an ongoing project, which involves collaborative work with researchers and low-tech intercept-operators, the former contributing lectures and the latter providing Peljhan access to their archive of data-tracking and decoding military communications. Peljhan’s projects are envisaged, not just as evidence of military power, but as experimentations in self-organisation. There were a significant number of works that took as their subject the political configurations of Israel and Palestine. Larissa Sansour’s Soup Over Bethlehem (2006) brings together a family from the Palestinian diaspora over the dish of mloukhieh, which provides the only splash of colour in an otherwise black-and-white video; conversation turns to travel and being strangers in your own land, to border-controls and passport-ruses. Sandi Hilal, Alessandro Petti and Eyal Weizman – working as the collective decoloninizing.ps – make proposals for refunctioning the architecture of oppression that, since the foundation of Israel, has transformed the landscape to which displaced Palestinians hope to return. Wafa Hourani’s Qalandia 2087 is a small-scale model of an Israeli checkpoint and refugee-camp. This is part of a series that considers the future of the occupation. Set in 2087, Qalandia projects forwards to a moment of decolonisation. In another work, Ruti Sela and Maayan Amir pick up Israeli men via an internet-site: the guys turn up expecting to be rewarded sexually (one brings a bag of ‘tools’) only to find a video-camera and an interview-process that turns the situation from expectations of sex to discussions of state-military violence, mining the psychic connections and disconnections between erotics and war. One man hopes that his vignette in Sela and Amir’s film will lead to a lucrative future as a porn-star. The Biennial included some pieces that directly addressed moments of intense political confrontation. For example, Igor Grubič’s East Side Story (2006–8) takes the form of a double-screen projection of events surrounding the Gay-Pride demonstrations in Belgrade and Zagreb in 2001 and 2002. On one screen, Grubič projects footage of skinhead and neo-Nazi violent assaults on these parades; on the other, dancers re-enact incidents from the riots. This format was a failure of nerve: all attention in Istanbul focused on the footage of the attacks, which is so visceral as to be almost unwatchable. Warring nationalisms are shown to rest on comparable forms of bigotry and fear. This means no-one bothers with the adjacent screen, mounted at rightangles, which just makes art seem ineffectual and besides the point. Artur Żimijewski bombards viewers’ senses with his multi-screen video-work Democracies (2009), which displays diverse demonstrations including Jörg Haider’s funeral, anti-NATO clashes in Strasbourg, the Way of the Cross for

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Working People in Poland, the Orange Order in Belfast and Palestinian protests and Israeli counter-demonstrations. Żimijewski is an activistintellectual in the Polish left movement Political Critique, yet he opts to depict these scenes of conflict with an odd neutrality and equivalence (though, during our time in the exhibition, the monitor displaying the anti-NATO protestors burning a petrol-station drew the most rapt viewers). Works like these, despite Grubič’s botched aesthetic dialectic, figure the exhibition-space with violent conflict in a way that charges the whole.

Brechtian themes Some of these works are powerful enough to remain memorable, but you would not specifically characterise their themes and strategies as Brechtian. As the curators acknowledge: The works presented are not necessarily ‘Brechtian’ per se; indeed few refer directly to Brecht’s oeuvre. They subscribe, on the one hand, to Brecht’s belief in political engagement in art and seek to make that potential meaningful; on the other hand, they share something of the spirit of Brecht’s song. ‘What Keeps Mankind Alive?’ points a way forward beyond the merely existent, delineating possible directions and new readings.10

Nevertheless, some works in the Biennial explicitly draw, in a fashion, on Brecht’s legacies or precursors: Mahagonny was reworked (sadly, with an overweening portentousness, lending it the air – and historical staticity – of classical tragedy); both Zanny Begg and Etcétera use the model of popular entertainment to explore commodity-fetishism and its ruptures. Etcétera’s Errorist Kabaret includes objects that talk, speaking about their place in consumer-desire and their own sense of alienation. Begg’s Treat (or Trick) draws spectators into a small tent (reminiscent of the attractions found on piers or at fairgrounds) to look down on a small monitor (itself suggestive of the way the camera obscura was used for early visual spectacle). Employing animation and performance, and with Marx’s comments intervening, Begg literally turns Adam Smith’s ‘invisible-hand principle’ into the sleights of a popular illusionist – albeit one who runs out of ruses. Two explicitly Brechtian projects require extended consideration. Among the most impressive works in the Biennial were those by Chto Delat/What is to Be Done. The work-group, based in Moscow and Petersburg,

10. WHW 2009b, p. 99.


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exhibited three videos within an installation detailing the recent history and demise of the Soviet Bloc. The first of the three videos, Chronicles of Perestroika (made by Dmytri Vilenski), presents edited footage of demonstrations in Leningrad from the period 1987–91. Projected in black and white with a keyboard sound-track, it recalls silent movies from the 1920s. The footage looks as if it was shot a lot longer than twenty years ago and, at moments, the video is evocative of early-Soviet newsreels or Sergei Eisenstein’s October. This footage attempts to actualise the imagery of revolution, but these are demonstrations that would currently be difficult in the face of the Russian Federation’s repressive state. A chorus singing the story of ‘hopes that didn’t come true’ introduces the second video, Perestroika-Songspiel. The story is told through ‘five heroes of perestroika’: ‘An idealistic democrat, A noble businessman, A heroic revolutionary, A bitter nationalist and A woman who has found her own voice’. Interrupted by a ‘Chorus’ and a ‘Group of Wolf-Girls’, they all act out the contested politics of the future of Russia against the coming introduction of what became neoliberal-oligarchic capitalism. Illusion gives way before the reality of capitalist reconstruction, and ideals become shoddy compromises. The third video, Partisan Songspiel: A Belgrade Story (made by Chto Delat with Vladan Jeremić and Rena Rädle), has a related structure. Here the story takes place in Serbia, where a group of ‘Oppressed’ archetypes – a ‘Romany Women’, a ‘Lesbian-Activist’, a ‘Disabled Veteran’ and a ‘Worker’ – narrate their stories, interrupting another group, the ‘Oppressors’ (a ‘WomanPolitician’, an ‘Oligarch’, a ‘Nationalist’, and a ‘Mafioso’ – along with their heavies – who wish to ‘clean up Serbia’). This time, the chorus dressed in white body-suits – evoking a combination of environmental activists and Tutti Bianchi – appears from behind the cut-out image of a stone-monument to Yugoslav partisans, which was a montage composed from monuments in Slovenia and Serbia. The chorus here figures as a spectral communism, a memory of class-conscious solidarity, commenting on the divisions now so evident today among the oppressed, and calling on the ‘comrades’ to ‘close their ranks’. The work narrates – through speech, dance and song – political conflicts in Serbia, but one cannot help seeing parallels with repression and resistance elsewhere. What is extraordinary about both Songspielen is their articulation of the tensions created by capitalist class-restoration with a politics of form. Both videos are, by turns, affecting and hilarious (even when the audience’s laughter is not in time with the actors). There is nothing austere about these works: Chto Delat is not afraid of emotion, laughter, savage irony or visual pleasure. The two videos are very much in the tradition of Brechtian epic-theatre in their use of music, dance, costume, and laughter; the action and views of

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participants is commented on by the chorus or characters. In this dimension, these works are much closer to Brecht than the neo-Brechtian works of the 1970s, which were, for the most part, humourless. They walk the line between typification and caricature – the problem of how to have one individual represent or stand for a social group and how particular representations are used to achieve this. Such characters sometimes run the risk of degenerating into stereotypes, particularly in the case of gender and sexuality; Chto Delat is aware of the problem, and in Partisan Songspiel worked with a prominent lesbian-activist.11 Never for a moment can the viewer believe that the story is anything but a theatrical construction: there are no ‘hypnotic tensions’.12 The Songspielen are a new departure for Chto Delat. The group has primarily made filmic records of actions, but this current direction is especially suggestive. The three videos work together to function as a moving lament for the possibilities offered by the overthrow of Eastern-European bureaucratic state-capitalism that ended in betrayal and lost opportunities.13 The epic historical sweep animated the Biennial’s premise of rereading Marx through Brecht. But to see these works as no more than a ‘lament’ and concern with the erasure of historical memory – a prominent and widespread mood within recent art – is to recognise but one aspect, and to strip the project of its vital counterpart; the mood is less defensive, less pessimistic, less nostalgic, and less melancholic than most other works that have been mining this vein of historical memory. Even Benjamin’s dialectical images, which aimed to let the past rip into nowtime – a claim he made on behalf of the historical-materialist project – seems not quite to grasp it adequately.14 To the fore are themes of collective action, solidarity, agency – conveyed, not just as ‘reminders’ of ‘lost’ terms, but more as the need to register anger and to mobilise here, now. These works are among the most significant cultural products of our time for Marxists to reflect upon, not least for considering the gap between the social desires and aesthetic mood being expressed in art, on the one hand, and, on the other, the state of our current political reality and the fragile self-confidence of emancipatory projects. Another work in the tradition of epic-theatre is the film Z32 by Avi Mograbi. It also deploys the structure of the narrative punctuated with the intervention of a chorus, but, this time, Mograbi himself sings a

11. How this image travels is another matter. 12. Brecht 1978, p. 136. 13. We note that one author of this essay disagrees with this characterisation of the ex-Soviet state, but the likelihood of three Marxists agreeing on this subject is obviously still remote. 14. Benjamin 2003.


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commentary from his living room, progressively joined and accompanied by a small-but-growing orchestra. The storyline is formed by a digitally-disguised former Israeli soldier describing to his girlfriend (who is similarly masked) his rôle in the murder of two Palestinian police-officers in a revenge-attack. He asks her for forgiveness, but, at the same time, shows little remorse or understanding of the significance of his actions; indeed, he still seems to take some pleasure and excitement from the episode. A third strand of the film – the only one to break the claustrophobic confines of interior-domestic space – has Mograbi drive the soldier through the district to provoke his memories and to identify the spot where the killings took place. The video covers similar ground to the film Waltz with Bashir in that it grapples with the way Israeli society is itself collectively damaged by this violence (a theme also present in Amir and Sela’s work), but Mograbi utilises the ex-soldier’s inability to sympathise with the Palestinians he murdered to distance the viewer critically from the central character. The work is structured through both repetition and development. Sitting on a bed or divan, the young man and woman go through their discussion, as if working through a process of therapy, or as though rehearsing their rôles for a performance and attempting to get into character. The digital masks gradually drop away – as if ‘de-pixelating’ – but, most significantly, the woman, who starts out unable, and unwilling, to understand her lover’s past-actions, begins to identify with him. Asked (initially, pressured and cajoled) to speak back to him his experiences, her halting and reluctant account passes over, not just into a seamlessly smooth relating of his perspective, but also into a new grammatical voice; now telling his story in first-person narrative, she effectively takes on his point of view. This alone offers a powerful consideration of the forces of ideology, the pressures to conform socially, or to submit in the face of love – all played out with reference to a specific geopolitical context and as an interpretation of that situation’s social mechanisms. But, taken in isolation, this narrativestrand runs the risk of fatalism. As with Chto Delat, Mograbi’s work has an internal resistance to the tendency, common in recent art, towards ‘left melancholy’. In addition to serving its function as punctuation, the chorus is also the counterpoint to this part of the narrative. It grows in size, sonic clamour, musical complexity and sense of social integration; its growing ‘oneness’ made of many – a move away from the solitary voice of Mograbi – is of a different nature to the emerging ‘one-ness’ of the two individuals; here, solidarity displaces conformity. The chorus provides its expected metacommentary on the ex-soldier’s narrative, but it also comments on the rôle of the filmmaker. The latter is a means to consider Mograbi’s own ethics (he reports his wife’s criticism that his artistic project risks being in the service of

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his own career, and that, as director, he holds a certain power over his subjects and his representation of them). It is also a cipher to explore the rôle of art (its political purposefulness; its complicity with, or the gains it makes from, such charged material; the possibilities of, and limitations inherent to, art’s critical capacities). In this sense, Z32 serves as a meta-work that raises questions pertinent to the biennial-form, or, further, which focuses upon issues of political engagements with, and of, art today.

Biennials and the ‘political turn’ As these works indicate, there has been a marked politicisation of artistic activity. Art-critics have dubbed this mood the ‘political turn’ or the ‘social turn’.15 This reconfiguration of art beyond the postmodern consensus began in the mid 1990s and coalesced symbolically with Seattle in 1999. Much of this art is characterised by attempts to find new ways to represent capitalism and war; others are turning to direct intervention (a mix of agitprop and counter-spectacle); and there is a marked rise in collectives and groupprojects. As each year passes, the mood seems increasingly emboldened. Biennials have played a part in this phenomenon, bringing artists together and crystallising a structure of feeling. A significant moment of the reorientation was provided in 1997 by Catherine David’s curatorial directorship of the tenth Documenta – known as Document X.16 This event was orchestrated around the conjuncture ‘Politics/Poetics’ and, at the time, was widely dismissed by critical cognoscenti as a retrograde leftism, nostalgic for an earlier time and unable to face up to the ‘end of history’. However, David’s mobilisation of the spirits of Pasolini, Fassbinder, Rossellini, Godard, etc – in conjunction with interventions, such as, David Harvey’s ‘militant particularity’, Masao Miyoshi on ‘A Borderless World?’, Etienne Balibar, Jacques Rancière, Edouard Glissant, Dominique Lecourt, Alain Lipietz, and many others – now appears, not as backward-looking, but as a perspicacious point-of-departure for the next decade or so, as though she and her team had detected early signs of a shifting cultural mood and a need to recover (and not just for the purposes of historical curiosity) a range of abandoned radical and socially-focused aesthetic traditions.17 Documenta X was in development 15. The ‘documentary-turn’ has also been used. Other writers have criticised the fashionorientated turn to the concept of the ‘turn’. 16. Exceptionally, the Roman rather than Arabic numeral was employed in 1997. 17. David 1997.


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when Chiapas took place, when workers and students again took to the streets of Paris, and as the antiglobalisation-movement was cohering and developing anticapitalist articulations; its context was framed by the new conflicts of the world after 1989 and the expansions of the neoliberal project. Post-Seattle, and in the years of the World Social Fora (and regional social fora), this politicised trajectory was further developed at Documenta 11 in 2002, by Okwui Enwezor with an increasingly global perspective. Key-sections of the 2003 Venice Biennale followed suit – Hou Hanru’s ‘Zones of Urgency’; ‘Utopia-Station’ (Hans Ulrich Obrist, Molly Nesbit, Rikrit Tiravanija); ‘The Structure of Survival’ by Carlos Basualdo; David’s own ‘Contemporary Arab Representations’ – as did Seville 2006 (Enwezor) and Istanbul 2007 (Hou Hanru). Sydney 2008, directed by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev in association with her ‘curatorial comrades’, was themed ‘Revolutions – Forms That Turn’, ‘a celebration of the defiant spirit’ exploring the ‘impulse to revolt’ and ‘the agency embedded in forms that express our desire for change’.18 Even Documenta 12 (2007, directed by Robert Buergel), which was billed as a departure from its two politicised predecessors – ‘you don’t need a sociology degree to understand the art’, Buergel told the International Herald Tribune – contained significant amounts of intelligent (and sociologically demanding) work.19 These are but a few examples among the international mega-exhibitions. Nevertheless, practices with a strong anti-neoliberal and socialist bent, both registering and reflecting critically on the post-89 world-order, have appeared widely in other local, national and international exhibitions of art. At a series of small sites along the south coast of England, for example, curator Julian Stallabrass focused on the subject of war and photography for the 2008 Brighton Photo-Biennial.20 Of course, some of this may not be much more than curators adapting to the fashion of the moment, but the return of such rhetoric is symptomatic, indicating a shift away from the claims for the ‘end of the avant-garde’ and the anomie of ‘postmodern debates’. WHW’s deployment of ‘What Keeps Mankind Alive?’ was, in many senses, a culmination of a longer process that turned away from the clever 18. See Biennale of Sydney 2008a and 2008b. 19. A number of radical journals were meant to come together to discuss the urgency of reconstituting a public sphere through the leitmotifs ‘Is Modernity Our Antiquity?’, ‘What Is Bare Life?’ and ‘What Is to Be Done?’, the last of which identified education as ‘one viable alternative to the devil (didacticism, academia) and the deep blue sea (commodity fetishism)’. See Documenta 2007b. On the ensuing debacle, prompted by the reduction of the magazines to a low-key, disorganised, critical window-dressing, see Radical Philosophy 2007. 20. The 2008 Brighton Photo-Biennial was entitled Memory of Fire: The War of Images and Images of War. For an assessment, see Edwards 2009.

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complacencies and political cynicism/defeatism (with all the knowing ironyfor-no-particular-sake) that dominated discussions of art during the 1980s and early 1990s. But Istanbul 2009 did not simply lie at the end of an artistic and curatorial lineage; it pushed further. The anti-neoliberal structure of feeling that has dominated the so-called political turn acquired a redder colouration. The effort seemed to exceed the more usual left-liberal appeals – such as those made to, say, Giorgio Agamben’s ‘bare life’, or the figure of the ‘nomad’ – as diagnoses of contemporary modernity. What seemed striking about the event was its depth and energy, its forward-looking and agitated mood. The line taken from Brecht demanded – and demands – more than the interpretation and representation of capitalism’s features. It would be perfectly possible, of course, to evacuate Brecht’s work of any political meaning – it has been done often enough and the sign, ‘Brecht’, does not carry radical values out of necessity – but it is to the credit of WHW that the Eleventh Istanbul Biennial centred Brecht for his political values and suggested something more precise about the rôle(s) of aesthetic-political praxis. Brecht’s star tends to rise at those times when possibilities for activism and cultural intervention open up; his militant class-politics and aesthetic strategies for ideological dislocation are, to take one of his favourite ideas, ‘useful’ at moments like this.21 In Godard and Gorin’s Vent d’est (1969), the final name erased from the list of those to be reckoned with was ‘Brecht’. (Concomitantly, the prestige of Theodor Adorno – predicated on his defence of art’s autonomy as a placeholder for critical values in dark times – declines under such circumstances; and, until fairly recently, it was Adorno whose work set the main terms for debate.22 For reasons that should be obvious, Benjamin’s ‘The Author as Producer’ also took a back-seat through this period.) If art can be understood as, among other things, symptomatic of social currents, the theme of the 2009 Istanbul Biennial might be one more indication on the ideological barometer that we are seeing a resurgence of socially radical aspirations; or, at least, that we may be witnessing a significant puncturing to capital’s hegemony of ideas within significant sections of the growing creative and cultural workforce.

21. The literature related to the neo-Brechtian practices of the 1970s is vast, and there is nothing approaching an adequate history of this important moment in Marxist aesthetics. For a partial view, see Rodwick 1994. 22. For a selection of exchanges, see Beech and Roberts (eds.) 2002.


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Neoliberalism and art in Istanbul It is one of the features of the Istanbul Biennial that its geopolitical position makes it one of the most interesting of such events. We mean by this, not some cliché about the ‘meeting of East and West’, though the curators went out of their way to draw artists from geographical areas that might resonate in Istanbul. (It is not often that one can see such a strong representation of artists from the Kyrgyz Republic.) Rather, the biennials in Istanbul are animated by the internal struggles between secular/religious/progressive/ conservative forces in Turkish society. These were condensed in 2007 by the assassination of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink. In such contexts, artworks can become highly charged. In the Ninth Biennial in 2005, Burak Delier’s photograph Guard was censored; for reproducing it in the catalogue, the publisher Halil Altindere stood trial under article 301 of the penal code.23 In the same event, the Istanbul/New York-based collective Xurban was refused permission to take photographs for a project on the cheek-by-jowl proximity of prostitution, chandelier-production and ritual-ablution in the Karaköyarea of the city. The collective’s proposal to ship to Istanbul refuse from Northern-European brothels employing Turkish sex-workers was also blocked. (In the end, a fold-out work inside the cover of the catalogue was included.)24 Perhaps the traces of this censorship can be found in the 2009 catalogue. Brecht famously claimed that things could be said in Austria which were not utterable in Nazi Germany, and maybe the catalogue employs a similar throwing of the voice: Morad Farhadpour’s account of ‘Secularism and Politics in Iran’ can be read with a neighbouring land in mind; another account of the ‘great transformation’ might substitute for that adopted from Karl Polanyi in the essay by Ayşe Buğra as well as that by Brian Holmes and Claire Pentecost; class-formation in China, probed by Minqi Li, might be considered closer to home. The framing situation for the Istanbul Biennial is undoubtedly the politics of Turkey’s pitch to join the European Union. Tourism is a necessary part of this project, drawing the liberal middle class from the Euro-zone and beyond. Euros are already exchanged for cultural wares, as well as in hotels and restaurants; but it is widely recognised that the real deal revolves around the consumption of the idea of cultural openness and democratic diversity in a bid to ‘win hearts and minds’ and to ‘make friends and influence people’ in the EU. The contradiction here is that to play this biennial-game successfully 23. Evren 2008b, p. 42. 24. Mörtenbeck and Mooshammer 2008, pp. 59–60.

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entails drawing to Istanbul critical artists who can be relied on to challenge received wisdoms and culturally-accepted values.25 The situation may be fragile and uneven, but it seems that more is being tolerated. In the 2007 exhibition, Kutluğ Ataman and Atom Egoyan showed the videos Testimony and Auroras as a collaborative project addressing the Armenian genocide. The situation where they could speak of this history stood in contrast to public trials taking place of intellectuals. A critic might – with some reason – point to the narrow audience of the Biennial, or to the relative obliqueness of videos by Ataman and Egoyan, but this explanation seems too straightforward and does not chime with the facts: the Istanbul Biennial is not only geared at impressing European politicians and art-critics; it also draws very large local audiences (the central venue being especially packed during weekends and Eid). And, while Ataman and Egoyan, rather than writing explicit treatises on the genocide, deploy suggestion through the index of lens-based testimony and the charged metonyms of place, it is hardly a major challenge to recognise the links being made (arguably, the ‘haunting’ quality of these banal scenes – a familiar enough tactic in contemporary art’s fascination with politically-poignant spaces – has equal, if not greater, affectivity). The animation Exemplary, by Canan Şenol, was one of the obvious successes of the eleventh Biennial. Outside the projection-room, a notice announced that this work might be disturbing for minors and, sure enough, the room was permanently overflowing with attentive and appreciative viewers. Exemplary was one of the few works – surprisingly, perhaps, in such a politically motivated and reflective exhibition – which centrally addressed the politics of the personal, making public issues usually kept private or repressed. Using a narrative reminiscent of a folk-tale and an animation-style based on Ottoman miniatures, Exemplary took the life of one extraordinarily beautiful woman as a parable of the period from Atatürk’s passive revolution through to the postwar-world of consumerism. Spoken as a ‘women’s tale’, with the mother’s constant warnings to beware of falling for male predators, it touched on a number of themes: forced westernisation; the passage from the rural to urban world; sexual desire among young girls and femaleheterosexual promiscuity; incest in the family; and the morality behind the institution of marriage. In one incident, in an attempt to enforce the ban on traditional dress, soldiers are depicted entering a village and tearing clothes 25. There are also, to a degree, echoes of New York’s Museum of Modern Art in the face of McCarthyist hysteria, when the US intelligence-service collaborated with private cultural institutions to promote a vision of liberal America that could not be circulated through official state-organisations. See Guilbaut 1983; Frascina (ed.) 1985. We now know that some of these specific claims have been over-egged, but the general point holds.


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from the local men; at a distance, the women snigger at the exposed genitals of the elders. The video is faux-innocent – a strategy that, even at the story’s gravest moment, works to make it simultaneously accessible and funny. Erkan Özgen, from the predominantly Kurdish city of Diyarbakir, showed Robben, a triptych of scenes where actions are performed at the prison known for holding political prisoners after the 1980 coup (it should be remarked that, although association of prisons with the author of Discipline and Punish is evident, we still do not fully understand why, in one video, we see a child lobbing stones at large picture of Foucault stuck to the building’s exteriorwall). In his video Origin, Özgen has a group of young men from Africa march around a park chanting a line from the national oath – ‘How fortunate is the one who says I am Turkish’ – which, turned into a repetitive mantra accompanying the steady rhythm of stomping feet, impinged itself upon the exhibition-space. By including works such as these, the Biennial allows an argument to be made for Turkey’s modernity and tolerance for critical and unorthodox views. Even the international curators appointed figures within this project of open inclusion. It is one thing to take on Hou Hanru, the director of the 2007 Biennial, a curator famed for layering his selections into ‘urban’ cacophonies, taking Simmel’s account of ‘Metropolis and Mental Life’ to new extremes.26 Even if it risks some complaints of headaches, frayed nerves and demands to know why there is no space to meditate on beautifullycrafted pictures, the acoustic-visual assault of hypermodernity in all its excitement/horror appears safe enough – even, it could be argued, desirable for the state’s larger project of ideological modernisation. (The reality in Istanbul 2007 was significantly less frenetic than might have been expected.) However, it is difficult to opt for a curatorial collective like WHW – whose first exhibition, in 2000, celebrated 150 years of the Communist Manifesto – without knowing what you will get: even one of the smaller venues they secured – the abandoned Greek school in Feriköy – made the point. Despite the odd hitch, the exhibition is part of a wider political strategy aimed at Turkey’s inclusion in an expanded ‘open’ Europe. Gökçe Dervişoğlu draws the lesson: the shift from the European Community to the European Union involved a policy of ‘creating a “European Culture” via cultural integration’.27 Dervişoğlu, however, appears to be advocating a replay of this older European strategy in order to meet Turkey’s current aspirations. The privatisation of culture in Turkey can be traced to the 1960s with the 26. Simmel 1997. 27. Dervişoğlu 2009, p. 39.

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development of art-collections and galleries by private banks, but the turn from Kemalist cultural statism to private or corporate initiatives really gathered pace after the military coup in 1980 – in line with international neoliberal developments.28 The art-museum Istanbul Modern (İKSV), founded by the Eczacibaşi business-empire as a non-state enterprise, is regularly presented as the face of modern Turkey. Recently, the Suna and Inan Kiriç Foundation put aside US$500 million for art and culture, including a new cultural complex to be built by high-end architect Frank Gehry for US$160 million.29 There are plans afoot for loan-deals with Tate Modern and the Louvre (the latter – and it is not alone – is developing similar links in the Gulf-states). The Istanbul Biennial is heavily funded by Koç and a host of other private and corporate sponsors. The point is, as Mahmut Mutman observes, that the EU-process ‘of globalisation, the model of the multicultural, liberal, rule-of-law state cannot be artificially separated from the process of IMF-imposed policies of economic liberalisation’.30 This holds just as much for neoliberalism in the field of art. The Biennial sits alongside the rise of commercial TV aimed at the middle class, the construction of giant shopping malls, hosting the Champions-League Final, and the city’s status as European Capital of Culture for 2010. It will, though, take a lot of art-exhibitions to gentrify Istanbul beyond its obvious property hot-spots. If the strategy of the Istanbul Biennial involves bringing in critical curators and artists then the question remains, have they been bought off? As far as outsiders can tell, the answer of the Turkish Left has been ‘yes’. Some of these criticisms have been conservative from private dealers, those who feel painting is under-represented among the new media, and some who argue that too few Turkish artists are included. Here, we will look at two responses to the Biennial, but we do so only insofar as they are characteristic of wider trends in left thinking. In an open letter to the curators, the Direnal-İstanbul Resistance Days Conceptual Framework began by citing John Jordan: We have to stop pretending that the popularity of politically engaged art within the museums, magazines and markets over the last few years has anything to do with really changing the world. We have to stop pretending that taking risks in the space of art, pushing boundaries of form, and disobeying the conventions of culture, making art about politics makes any difference. We have to stop pretending that art is a free space, autonomous from webs of capital and power. It’s time for the artist to become invisible. To dissolve back into life.31 28. 29. 30. 31.

On urbanism and development in Istanbul, see Tuğal 2008. Aksoy 2008, p. 77. Mutman 2008, p. 19. Jordan n.d.; see other critiques from more-or-less the same direct-action perspective,


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Literally, this statement is not really true, since ‘pushing boundaries of form, and disobeying the conventions of culture’ do change art and culture, but the frustrations and ambitions contained in this statement are intriguing, condensing several key-debates from the critical traditions of cultural analysis (to which we will return shortly). The open letter acknowledges that the members of WHW quoted Brecht and foregrounded the issue of neoliberalism, but continues: we recognize that art should have never existed as a separate category from life. Therefore we are writing you to stop collaborating with arms dealers such as the Koç Holding which white wash themselves in warm waters of the global art scene and invite you to the life, the life of resistance.

In fact, the correlation of Brecht with the corporate sponsors seems to have especially upset the critics. (Why was Brecht acceptable back then, but not now? Were the theatres in Weimar untainted?) In contrast to the ‘corporate spaces reserved for tolerated institutional critique so as to help them clear their conscience’, the letter’s authors invite involvement in the ‘resistance carnival’ organised to welcome the IMF and World Bank to Istanbul in October 2009: Let’s prepare works and visuals (poster, sticker, stencil etc.) for the streets of the resistance days. Let’s produce together, not within the white cube, but in the streets and squares during the resistance week! Creativity belongs to each and every of us and can’t be sponsored.32

These are now familiar criticisms of the institutions of art from direct-action and anarchist groups. We are all for stickers, posters and warm welcomes for the IMF, but starkly contrasting activism to ‘autonomous art’ does not seem good enough, even when it is draped in the fashionable rhetoric of the Situationist International. The splitting of consensus performed in the space such as the cartoon by Zampa di Leone, ‘What Keeps Bazaar Alive’ (di Leone 2004); see also the exchange between Resistanbul and Brian Holmes in Holmes 2009. 32. DIRDCF 2009. The same issues of corporate sponsorship were also raised with the curators in an interview published online. Asked to comment on the selection of a collective (who had previously organised an exhibition on the Communist Manifesto) by a foundation governed by Eczacibasi and with Koç Holdings as the main sponsor, the curators responded: ‘What does the source of money impose on our independence. . . . Can we say what we want to say? We feel that in this biennale we feel that we can tell our concerns, what we want to discuss. . . . We want to open and use all possible channels.’ The questioner was unconvinced, and suggested that the joining of Koç and Brecht was an abuse that closed channels rather than opened them. To which WHW replied: ‘What you say evokes this feeling: “Brecht is ours, we want to protect Brecht from Koç”.’ (WHW 2009a.)

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of the Biennial – and its bringing into vision conditions occluded by an increasingly conformist mass-media – is a political task of some significance. Moreover, a great deal of what now goes on in resistance-festivals is modelled on the activities of the early twentieth-century avant-garde, itself once frequently dismissed on much the same grounds; they may now be famed for their projects intended to transform ‘art into life’, but the historical avantgardes – or, for that matter, the SI – were not, on the whole, well received in their own time by Marxists. (Some would even argue that the growing interest in avant-gardist rhetoric – whether by curators, artists or political activists – in the later-twentieth century is itself, in part, a reflex of revolutionary defeat: a type of compensation.) Sürreyyya Evren, an advocate of the postmodern Left,33 offers a different perspective on the Biennial. According to him, there has been a clash between orthodox Marxism and contemporary art in Istanbul for quite a while. The Biennial, Evren suggests, has always drawn sharpest criticism from the Left, with the sponsorship of Koç as its pretext.34 He criticises a ‘Marxist cultural magazine’ for constructing a holistic demonology made out of ‘neoliberalism, globalism, imperialism, contemporary art and curators’.35 Some of these things certainly need to be resisted, of course, but the Left’s bundling of these phenomena smells of a stale anti-intellectualism. Evren can only explain this difference in terms of a contrast between libertarianism and the nationalism (or statism) of ‘old-school Marxist motivations’.36 He does tell us that the traditional Left felt that Hou Hanru committed two key-errors in the tenth Biennial: he made judgements about Turkish politics from the outside, and his theme, ‘Not only Possible, But Necessary: Art in the Age of Global War’, was seen as insufficiently critical of the system’s destructiveness.37 It is now a familiar criticism that international curators regularly lay down the law before their feet have touched the ground, but Hou Hanru at least brought with him plenty of art with which Marxists ought to have been able to engage. A section of the exhibition, entitled ‘World-Factory’, explored working conditions from China to Mexico, including: Black Sea Files, by Ursula Biemann, on the flow of oil and people associated with the pipeline; Chen Chieh-Jen’s haunting meditations on making community in desolate factories; Allan Sekula’s A Short Film for Laos; Multiplicity’s recording and mapping of differential constraints on Israelis and Palestinians as they pass 33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

Evren 2008a. Evren 2009, pp. 376–7. Evren 2009, p. 374. He gives no source, but the journal in question seems to be Mesele. Evren 2009, p. 370.


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through the landscape. And, while the theme of global war was not as prominent as it was in the 2006 Seville Biennial or at Brighton in 2008, it was present enough to have been a focus for political discussion. These criticisms may say as much about the nationalism of sections of the Left as about the exhibitions in question; they also suggest a backward-looking antipathy towards contemporary art. However, Evren himself mobilises the critics’ hostility to art to champion the ‘libertarian Left’ against those ‘traditionalists’ of the Left who insist on reckoning with the state and imperialism. As with some of the other writers on contemporary art in Turkey, he seems to feel that economic liberalisation will generate a space beyond the state, and provide a dynamic force against the dead-weight of cultural conservatism. (If these critics are intent on supping with the Devil, they may be advised to obtain the proverbial long spoons.) Marxist anti-intellectualism is undoubtedly frustrating; but, while contemporary art may provide an energetic force against conservative traditions, critics should not underestimate how art can also be, and regularly is, mobilised as a driver for neoliberal modernisation, financial speculation and gentrification.38 Whatever their limitations, ‘old-school Marxist’ arguments cannot simply be set aside.

Commodity-critique, or aesthetics and politics Taken together, the debates provoked by the Biennial can be seen as registering some parameters with respect to the way in which the relation between art and politics is often framed today. Between the positions presented by the authors of the open letter, the defenders of modernisation/ ‘Europeanisation’, Evren’s ‘old-school Marxists’, the curators – not to mention the various stances suggested by the artists – we are returned to the heart of the debate on ‘aesthetics and politics’, which has been a vital, and much contested, part of the Marxist-intellectual inheritance. The discussion is overlaid with the spectre of commodification and its potentiation in the late-twentieth century. Serious thinking on these matters must hold together intransigent anticapitalism and the space of experimentation and aesthetic recomposition. The hostility to art’s proximity to private institutions and corporate money is registered in the open letter to the curators, along with its appeal for activism on the streets rather than messing about with ‘autonomous’ art. Corporate 38. Deutsche and Gendel Ryan 1984; Deutsche 1996; Cameron and Coaffee 2005; Mathews 2010.

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sponsorship does not leave art untainted, but this now familiar argument is becoming stultifyingly one-dimensional. At its worst, it dissolves into crass economism. One risk with this attitude is that it allows old prejudices to bubble up: contemporary art – like modern art before it – is portrayed as distracting, élitist, unrealistic and inherently compromised. As an argument, the proposals of the letter are in equal measure populist, conservative and ultraleftist. The traditional Stalinist-populist version of this claim has entailed a weird aesthetic which hovers in some indeterminate space between, on the one hand, viewing art as decorative surface-effect and, on the other, a cosmic vision that believed art could mould the ‘new man’.39 Neither version offers a productive engagement with, let alone critique of, modern art: the Stalinist version locked the Left into association with an aesthetic past and failed to register the critical resources contained in modern art.40 In the name of confronting the immanent crisis, the call to activist-immediacy equally circumvents or defers the difficult work of analysis and representation that makes politics possible. The modernised version – with its claim to join with life through stickers and street-protests – seems to us no more compelling: just what is, and where are we to find, this ‘life’? In the realm of ephemeral counterspectacles? We can appreciate the sentiment and also the strategic use of such actions, but part of the answer to these questions, it seems, is that ‘life’ is not sitting around ready-made, waiting to be ‘found’; ‘we’ need to make it possible, and to elide this project surely goes way beyond making demands on Biennialparticipants to join a carnival. Even if conceived as a tactic for mobilising and building a movement, the demands seem misjudged: they set up a false dichotomy and an unnecessary division between artists and festival. Considered more theoretically, their categories can be seen as too overwrought with a critical-theoretical language – and, as a corollary – with the difficult and multifaceted legacy of those emancipatory debates on art/life, autonomy/ heteronomy, aesthetics/politics, and so forth (none of which lend themselves to such straightforward solutions). Just how helpful or progressive is it, today, to call for the (self-)abolition of art and artists? (Indeed, some might sniff out deeply regressive – even reactionary – consequences from this argument.) The sublation once dreamed of – whatever the faults and limits of its dreams – had the ambition to transform ‘life’ fundamentally; it was not imagined to take place on the terms 39. The latter perspective was shared by many in the avant-garde. We find much to disagree with in Boris Groys’s The Total Art of Stalinism, but he does capture something of this strange cultural alliance between activist anti-art and Stalinist wish-fulfilment. See Groys 1992. 40. Which is not to say there is nothing to be found of critical interest – historical, aesthetic or cognitive – in socialist realism, or that it was monolithic and unchanging.


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of life as it stands, even if that is the life of anticapitalist actions. Here, we have the paradox of avant-garde rhetoric (of merging with life) mobilised against no-less avant-garde inspired art. Peter Bürger once suggested that the avant-garde’s appeal to merge art with life-praxis was made, not on the grounds of ‘life’, but on those of ‘art’; the ambition of the historical avant-gardes – essentially a romantic aspiration – was to draw on the powers of poiesis to transform the everyday.41 The letter’s authors invoke a more limited interpretation, where, for example, ‘autonomy’ means simply the old modernist call of ‘freedom’ or even ‘art-for-art’s-sake’ usually associated with modernism.42 Where is Adorno, at this moment, or Bürger, or Rancière, for whom – albeit in distinct ways – autonomy has to be grasped more dialectically in terms of its relation to heteronomy, and not as some ideological or ethical preference identified by artists, but, rather, as a condition of art under capitalism (one that impinges even on artists who want to evade ‘autonomous art’ and take to the streets)?43 It has become an increasingly common gambit for critics to dismiss the new forms of critical art as commodified gestures that offer the bourgeoisie the edgy allure of aesthetic opposition, while fuelling the spectacular machine. The open letter offers an activist-spin on themes drawn from the Frankfurtschool, whose ideas now seem to underpin a number of conflicting assessments. Similarly, the current fascinations with the SI can run in different directions, sometimes allowing devotees to conjoin deep-seated political pessimism with anti-theoretical activism, sometimes pre-empting any kind of critique by viewing everything as already incorporated into the commodity-nexus. Jacques Rancière has recently characterised the commodification-thesis (from his own post-Marxist perspective) as a ‘post-Marxist and post-Situationist wisdom’ that:

41. Bürger 1984. He further noted that the sublation of art and life was indeed made, but in the postwar-situation and as the ‘false sublation’ of neo-avantgarde art with the commodity. For arguments over the historical avant-garde’s ‘false negations’ of the division of art and life, see Habermas 1981 and Bürger 1981. Bürger’s original account of the neo-avantgarde false sublation proved contentious. See Buchloh 1984; Foster 1996; Buchloh 2000. Buchloh’s social pessimism has grown; see Foster, Krauss, Bois and Buchloh 2004. 42. Modernism was, by many accounts, a rather more complex phenomenon. 43. Adorno 1997; Bürger 1984; Rancière 2004; Rancière 2009a; Day 2009. It is noticeable that there has been a further shift among curators and critics to reassert art’s autonomy (from politics) while trying simultaneously to retain the charge that politics has provided over the past couple of decades. See, for example, the public statements issued on the websites of the 2010 Sydney Biennial and the 2010 Bienal de São Paulo.

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G. Day et al. / Historical Materialism 18 (2010) 135–171 is not content to furnish a phantasmagorical depiction of humanity completely buried beneath the rubbish of frenzied consumption. It also depicts the law of domination as a force seizing on anything that claims to challenge it. It makes any protest a spectacle and any spectacle a commodity.44

Another way of putting this is to say that it is an approach suited to the liberal academy, whose tendency is to spot the spectacular-commodity working its tricks, while rendering any opposition – political as well as aesthetic – already neutralised. The result, for Rancière, is a ‘left-wing irony or melancholy’ in which any gesture of opposition is seen as ‘a game available on the global market’.45 The argument is especially suited to sustaining the radical reputation of the critic in conjuncture with an aloof resignation. Rancière’s own aesthetic thought – developed out of his leave-taking from Marxism – remains to be reckoned with, but, in this instance, he exposes an apparently radical criticism for the conformism it has increasingly become. Many of those who see themselves as resisting political neutralisation draw on the founding ideas of critical theory, but Rancière underestimates the range of political practices produced in response to this model in recent times, which can span from voluntarism and direct action to near-total inertia. Brecht had no doubt that artworks were commodities: Only those who blind themselves to the enormous power of the revolutionary process that drags everything in this world into the circuit of commodities, without exception and without delay, can assume that works of art in any genre could be excluded . . .46

This realisation did not stop him writing poems and plays, or novels and film-scripts; nor did he conclude that the institutions of art should be boycotted, but rather, that they should be changed through intervention and ideological ‘re-functioning [Umfunktionierung]’. Unfortunately, discussion of art’s position within capitalism – and specifically its relation to the commodity – increasingly tends to be reduced to some well-worn gambits: the popular fascination and disgust, and whole British media-obsession, with, for instance, the Saatchi-Hirst-yBa nexus; the attention given to the way museums try to capitalise on their collections by raising money from pathetic spin-off trinkets, or on their premises by renting them out for companyreceptions; the focus on the expanding proportion of floor-space devoted to 44. Rancière 2009b, pp. 32–3. 45. Rancière 2009b, p. 33; see also Walter Benjamin’s earlier criticism of a related formation: Benjamin 1999. 46. Brecht 2000, p. 169.


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retail and catering and the corporate sponsorship of exhibitions; the rise of ‘biennial-culture’ and the sense that all art is becoming equivalent in a global homogenisation-process that erases local character, promotes tourism and increases the ‘carbon-footprint’. This is all undoubtedly true, and reveals aspects of capitalism’s stultifying banality, but these things are easy targets if there is no attempt at a larger critique; they too-easily slip into a reactionary sentimentality for the good old days promoted by critics such as Dave Hickey.47 There have, in recent years, been some significant studies of specific developments of cultural neoliberalisation;48 some thinkers have tried to explore art’s relation to the commodity at a more abstract critical-theoretical level, or have sought to pursue cultural analysis by finding structural homologies with the value-form.49 There are a host of criticisms that see in art-developments that are isomorphic with the changing skill-demands of the workplace.50 Yet other approaches focus on art’s connection to affective models of labour.51 Yet, it is not at all clear what it means to characterise the artwork as a commodity. The commodification-debate lacks real specificity. On the one hand, there are detailed sociological studies of markets and institutions that remain largely under-theorised; on the other, theoretical reflections with remarkably little empirical content. The field of debate, if that is what it is, for the commodification-thesis has been produced out of a weird amalgam of themes from Bourdieu, Debord, Adorno and Horkheimer. These are odd bedfellows to say the least, and it is not surprising that there is a lack of mediation, but the key-point is akin to one Terry Eagleton once made about postmodernism: the problems reside, less with the ideas of these thinkers (though, there are those too), than with ‘the culture, milieu or even sensibility’ as a whole.52

47. Hickey 2009. 48. For example, Wu 2003 and 2009. 49. See, for example: Jameson 1991; Jameson 1998a; Buchloh 2000, Roberts 2000, Martin 2007; Martin 2009. 50. Influential here has been Boltanski and Chiapello, who have written on the way late twentieth-century management-discourse adopted the model of ‘artistic critique’ (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005; Holmes 2006). Other examples include: Buchloh on conceptual art as an ‘aesthetics of administration’; Miwon Kwon on artists bringing managerial functions into the heart of their practice; Buchloh 1991, Kwon 1997; or the many critics correlating relational aesthetics to either the neoliberal emphasis on networking or as subordinated to the needs of state-cultural policy. 51. A theme prominent among postworkerist writers: Hardt and Negri 2000; Lazzarato 1996: Lazzarato 2008; Negri 2008. 52. Eagleton 1996, p. viii.

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It is certainly the case that artworks have been issued in print-runs, editions and multiples; and artworks have increasingly come to resemble filmic work (in part because art-spaces have come to welcome time- and lens-based media as the distribution-networks for radical film or indeed journalism have diminished). It is true that art has become tied to branding and celebrity, to gentrification and to tourism, and that art can also be used as stock on which to gamble. Writing in the early 1970s, Ernest Mandel described how – alongside building sites, gold, precious metals, antiques, and stamps – art served as a ‘“mobilization” of material values’ in response to the devaluation of paper-money.53 With the drying-up of credit in the recent crisis, the big auction-houses turned into blue-chip pawn-shops where valuable artworks provided collateral on which to raise finance.54 Recognising the part played by factors such as these, however, still does not seem to get us close to understanding art. Critical theory is likely to remain an important resource for Marxist work on aesthetics, art and ideology, but it is time serious critical questions about the commodification-of-art thesis were posed. Even at its best, the work of the Frankfurt-school, and those influenced by it, often proceeds by homology – or, perhaps, by a model-analogy that only claims deeper structural connections between cultural and commodity-forms.55 The universalisation of marketrelations transformed art as it did other aspects of social life. But it did so in some peculiar ways, which has meant that art’s status as commodity has never been worked through in the ways seen with other human products. Art has long been mobilised by those in social power, and, historically, this relationship has generally been fairly direct and explicit, registered through the patronage and glorification of monarchs, aristocrats and religious orders. Capitalism made the connection between art and economic control more circuitous and ambivalent. The rise of the public museum mediates market-mechanisms. Nearly all works in art-museums are purchased from a small group of galleries, or donated by collectors who have, in turn, bought from these same galleries. These transactions are obscured, and the most confidential information of all is how much – or little – an institution has paid for an artwork.56

53. Mandel 1978, pp. 450–1. 54. Salkin 2009. This is not a new activity as such, but its prominence has, according to reports, escalated. 55. Adorno made this criticism of Benjamin’s Paris-studies, though he was hardly innocent on this score himself. See Adorno 2007; the classic statement is probably Kracauer on the Tiller Girls dance-troupe and the Fordist production-line: Kracauer 1995. 56. As an institution on the European model, the public museum also raises further interesting questions about the rôle of the state, its relative autonomy (or otherwise) from


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Nevertheless, both the film-industry and literature have been subject to much deeper commodity-penetration; they are fields where, in comparison to the visual arts, the deployment of substantially higher capital-values can be found. Interestingly, despite this, discussions of literature rarely adopt the same tenor as those to be found in assessments of art: commodification seems not to be the primary concern when considering, say, the works of Stieg Larsson or a TV series, such as The Wire. On the whole, other questions are asked, and criticisms made, of these works; their cognitive status is treated as uppermost. Discussions of film seem to proceed without getting fixated on the sponsorship of film-festivals, or on the quantity of money and celebrities circulating at Cannes. When addressing these fields, Marxist critics seem better able to draw distinctions between the institutional contexts and the specific practices delivered through them. We are not arguing that these factors should be treated as separate; we need an account able to address both realms – and their mediated relations – without collapsing them into some direct identity. The reasons for the differential types of critical discourse across these cultural fields are probably complex, but we suspect the historical éliteassociations of the visual arts may impinge. Art generally lacks the commoditypenetration that is taken to ‘democratise’ the availability of a product. Moreover, the near-singularity of the artwork tends to connect to its form in a different spatiotemporal way to film, literature or to music.57 It should not be forgotten that the model of ‘bourgeois art’ (an early stage in art’s commodification) has been precisely the target of radical art-practices for over a century.58 The story of ‘the rule of equivalence’ has become a marxisant commonplace, and is often an unwritten assumption underpinning other more-or-less adequate accounts of social developments.59 The observation that subjection to the value-form has extended and deepened historically is now often translated into the false statement that, in the contexts of monopoly- and late capital-processes, and its association with cultural-ideological agendas. Conflicting tendencies operate at all levels. 57. Benjamin 2002. 58. Other important factors would have to feature, which are themselves no less contradictory, from the rise of the public museum to its intersections (direct or indirect) with the state; from the ‘civilising’ ideology of culture to the making-accessible of ‘high’-cultural forms. The historical rôle of criticism and the development of critical values are also vital to understand. 59. Buchloh 2000; Buchloh in Foster, Krauss, Bois and Buchloh 2004; Stallabrass 2004. Interestingly, this account generally leaves the speaker – the critical theorist or philosopher – oddly untainted by the same process in a sort of performative contradiction; the book, the journal and the lecture-circuit – the writer’s institutional base in a university – somehow seem to escape the commodity-nexus she describes.

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capitalism, use-value has disappeared.60 This argument has little to do with Marx or Marxism (although it is often understood to be the specifically Marxist contribution to cultural theory). Ernest Mandel was already on to this problem in the early 1970s when he challenged those who ‘make a great stir out of the fact that capital succeeds in converting “everything” into a commodity’.61 His example was revolutionary-Marxist literature. No doubt, he argued, publishers saw the chance of making a profit out the rising interest in Marxism, but their ‘insensitivity’ to the use-value of such works did not amount to ‘an “integration” of Marxism into the world of commodities’; these writings still had a specific use-value at the point of consumption: the capacity to heighten readers’ anticapitalist understanding. Mandel’s primary target was the prevailing ideology of ‘technical rationality’ (and, in this particular instance, some comments from Adorno), but he was picking up on an outlook whose delineations can still be found in the theoretical accounts of art and culture. As he pointed out, the argument which says that ‘everything’ is exchange-value not only overlooks use; it also erases social contradiction, nurturing political fatalism, addressing analysis solely from the perspective of capital. At best, the critics address the formal and not real subsumption of art under capital; arguably, art cannot be fully subsumed and remain art. There remains something quite distinctive about the nature of art’s insertion into the economic circuits of capital, which is yet to be understood comprehensively and theoretically. Part of the trouble is that it is undoubtedly difficult to pin down the nature of this most peculiar commodity. ‘For instance’, Marx wrote: Milton, who wrote Paradise Lost, was an unproductive worker. On the other hand, a writer who turns out work for his publisher in factory style is a productive worker. Milton produced Paradise Lost as a silkworm produces silk, as the activation of his own nature.62

The silk-worm analogy, unfortunately, reduces art to nature, but Marx’s distinction between productive and unproductive labour registers the problem. In this important passage, he continues to distinguish between forms of 60. Sources for this can be found in Adorno; Debord and a host of later thinkers. Day 2010 offers an account of the way historical and logical tendencies have been rendered as a concrete condition; relational categories absolutised; the opening chapter of Capital read as a literal and direct account of the phenomenal world of capitalism and a dialectical analysis of the commodity-form and its two-fold nature turned into a one-dimensional historical narrative. 61. Mandel 1978, p. 507. 62. Marx 1976, p. 1044.


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cultural labour (his examples are a literary proletarian, a singer and a schoolteacher) that are unproductive and those that produce ‘capital directly’. He concludes by suggesting that, on the whole, this is ‘wage labour that is not at the same time productive labour’.63 Shifting the ground of the argument to immaterial or affective labour without sorting out the initial problem of artas-commodity will not help. Comparing art to luxury-commodities – a pair of hand-made shoes or a piece of individually-crafted jewellery, whose value is related to total social production – only goes so far towards art’s status as a commodity. David Harvey gives perhaps the most sophisticated version of the insertion of art into the circuits of capital by comparing artworks to viticulture. ‘That culture has become a commodity of some sort is undeniable’, he announces at the start of his essay ‘The Art of Rent’.64 However, his question becomes ‘of what sort?’, because, as he maintains, cultural artefacts and practices are distinct from ordinary commodities. This is an important recognition, and art-theorists would be advised to note the point. Harvey’s argument turns on the rôle art and wine play in the formation of ‘monopoly-rent’ and competition (an account which draws also on Pierre Bourdieu’s discussion of cultural ‘distinction’ and ‘symbolic capital’).65 Harvey writes: All rent is based on the monopoly power of private owners of certain portions of the globe. Monopoly rent arises because social actors can realize an enhanced income-stream over an extended time by virtue of their exclusive control over some directly or indirectly tradable item which is in some respects unique and non-replicable.66

There are two kinds of monopoly-rent for Harvey: the first entails the control of some ‘quality resource, commodity or location’ that enable the extraction of monopoly-rent – here, the example is a vineyard; the second form involves the scarcity of a site or commodity – the example being a painting by Picasso. Harvey’s argument may shed light on the mechanisms of gentrification and raising property-values around museums (Bilbao’s Guggenheim, Tate Liverpool, Tate Modern). But we should note that, in such cases, the monopoly-rent does not accrue primarily to the museums, but to the developers operating in the immediate vicinity; in some cases, it is statecollections (national, regional, federal, or municipal) that are being used to redevelop blighted areas, amounting to a form of state-subvention to private 63. 64. 65. 66.

Marx 1976, p. 1045. Harvey 2001. Bourdieu 1985. Harvey 2001, p. 395.

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capital. By analogy, the biennial-artist’s economic rôle may be tied less to the art-market than to the business of hotels, airlines and restaurants. This is one reason that they are increasingly located outside of capital-cities and combine public and private finance with the aim of regeneration. Of course, the condition is that there has to be something worth seeing. More significantly, the comparison with ‘special’ goods has real limitations: Harvey recognises contradictions in this account – which would only be exacerbated if he shifted from a blue-chip artist to a young video-maker or art-activist – but his analogy with the wine-trade serves a significant rhetorical rôle in the argument. Comments on appellation contrôlée, terroir and the language of wine-connoisseurs (‘flavour of peach and plum, with a hint of thyme and gooseberry’) shift onto ideas of ‘distinction’ and ‘cultural capital’.67 Knowingly or not, this stacking of metaphor – and appeal to Bourdieu – allows Harvey to relegate the critical or cognitive claims of art to Pseuds’ Corner. The problem is that no-one even tries to speak of the truth-content of a necklace or pair of brogues, nor – despite its associated discourse of taste – do they attempt to do so when discussing Champagne, Burgundy, Chablis or Sauternes. Even with wine, this underplays important questions relating to the education of the senses, but Harvey dismisses the larger problems being suggested as no more than the ‘residues of wishful thinking (often backed by powerful ideologies)’ which want to see art as existing on a ‘higher plane of human creativity’.68 This (anti-romantic) statement is, in part, a ruse to prepare the ground for his own, more ‘technical and arid’ economic analysis (he was clearly being mischievous, the original audience for his argument being seated in the auditorium of Tate Modern).69 Nevertheless, it means he evades important dimensions pertaining to the consideration of art – its aesthetic-cognitive status – that cannot be so readily dismissed with allusions to privilege or ‘distinction’, or, by extension, to ‘aesthetic ideology’, or to the legacies of German-idealist philosophy.70 Visual 67. Harvey 2001, pp. 400–1. 68. Harvey 2001, p. 394; the education of the senses is Marx’s reworking of Schiller via Feuerbach: Marx 1975. 69. Harvey has recently reaffirmed German-idealist philosophy as one of the three components of Marxist method, but he seems to see this solely in terms of the process and movement of categories, and passes over the aesthetic dimension to Marx’s thought. See Harvey 2010. 70. In their distinct ways, both Althusserianism and analytical Marxism would like to ditch the romantic dimension of Marx’s work. The enormous cost of this is to sever Marxism from aesthetic and affective thought. Marx was a profoundly aesthetic thinker who drew much more than a model of dialectic from the tradition of German philosophy: terms like ‘sensuous’ and ‘sensible’ play an important rôle throughout his work, while his mature economic and historical


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art, like literature and film, can be (although none necessarily are) engaged at a number of levels: ideological, symbolic, communicative, aesthetic, affective, cognitive, and critical. Marxism ought – among so many bodies of thought – to be supremely positioned to think through the social relations of art, ranging from the commodity-form to the aesthetic and cognitive dimensions. No other intellectual tradition has the conceptual riches necessary to make the mediations. But, to do this, Marxists will need to advance beyond the current level of discussion-at-large and begin to think about the problems again, to think them more dialectically. Social science and its cognates can, arguably, do without aesthetic thought, but it is doubtful if Marxism can jettison this legacy of German idealism without doing serious self-harm. Art was once understood to have a triple function: ‘to teach, to move, to delight’, although, as Jameson reminded us, there has been a tendency to marginalise the first of these functions.71 Although it is unhelpful to make a fetish or orthodoxy of Brechtian models, it is worth taking seriously the claim of the Istanbul Biennial to engage with learning. WHW acknowledges that biennials largely function as ‘high-end branding tools for promoting cultural tourism in metropolitan cities, market-driven “events” designed to ensure a more seamless integration of art and capital’.72 Faced with the invitation to oversee the 2009 Biennial, WHW elected to take up the ‘opportunity for a big career move and decided to put together a biennial informed by a fully-fledged political program’ that would also be ‘completely aesthetic’.73 The double-bluff in this passage is palpable, both registering the problem of working in the institutions of art and insisting on the radical potential of art. Brecht, then, was being invoked in yet another sense: WHW sets out to subject the very institution of an art-biennial to a ‘refunctioning’. The aspiration was ‘to rethink the Biennial as a meta-device with the potential to facilitate the renewal of critical thinking by extracting thought from the immediate artistic and political context where it takes place’,74 and ‘to give the public some form of “agency,” making choices that would boost their capacity for action’. The collective continues:

studies are inconceivable without the form/content distinction. The same might be said about totality and a host of other key-concepts. 71. For Jameson, its resurrection accompanied the call for an aesthetics of ‘cognitive mapping’. Arguably, the situation has changed since he wrote this in the early 1980s, with many bewailing the loss of the latter two functions in the wake of postconceptual practice. See Jameson 1988. 72. WHW 2009b, p. 95. 73. Ibid. 74. WHW 2009b, p. 96.

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G. Day et al. / Historical Materialism 18 (2010) 135–171 Is it not possible, today, to think of art the way Brecht understood theatre – that is, as a mode of ‘collective historical education’, an apparatus for constructing truth rather than what amounts to a viewing fest for the bourgeoisie?75

To this end, the curators gathered together openly political artworks. ‘In times like these, like ours, art can – and should – involve itself as one of the few places where unfettered analysis and the eclosion of new concepts, where criticism, education, and even agitation, are possible’. The emphasis here is on art’s rôle within cultural ideology; not just as a vehicle for dominant values, but its part in internal contestations and struggles. Creativeintellectual work also provides an important facet to the history of human expression and the self-understanding of society; these complexities can be seen as ‘useful’, not only for general expansion of intellectual and aesthetic capabilities, but also – and we mean ‘also’, not ‘instead’ – as counterideological or as challenges to cultural or political hegemony. From the ideological perspective, biennials comprise, not just the exhibitions of art, but all the platforms and openings they provide for generating debate. Indeed, the very status of the ‘political turn’ becomes part of the dispute. If some see in art’s politicisation a hypostatised response to a wider political sclerosis (a marker of the political defeats of the twentieth century), there are those who argue to the contrary that the politicisation of discussion in art signifies the emergence of an alternative public sphere in reaction to the increasingly supine and banal news-media.76 At times, however, the political claims tip into overstatement, as when WHW states: ‘Art is arguably not the best place to plan, for instance, the future of Palestine. But it may well be the only one’.77 This version of art-as-enclave does not stand up: nevertheless, it perhaps points, symptomatically, to the ambitions and political limitations of such aesthetic endeavours. These ambitions may not ultimately counter or displace the biennial’s rôle in capital-(re)generation – how could they, outside of the context of a sustained and broad-based social resistance? – but it would be too easy to allow ourselves to rest on the cynical conclusion.78 The works in Istanbul – and we have mentioned only a small number – split consensus, bringing the overlooked into sight or the unsaid into hearing; they gesture to militant collectives that have yet to emerge: most of all, they offer reconfigurations of experience through a meeting of politics and strategies for formal recomposition. This swing to the left has taken multiple forms 75. 76. 77. 78.

WHW 2009b, p. 98. See, for examples on each side: Charlesworth 2002; Jonsson 2009. WHW 2009b, p. 97. WHW 2009b, p. 95.


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(Marxism surely has precedents enough for a range of aesthetic-cognitive responses and assessments – and often, conflicting ones). Probably for the first time since the ‘Tucamán Burns’ manifesto, the implosion of the Situationist International, the demise of The Fox and the break-up of the Godard-Gorin double act, there is something approaching an authentic anticapitalist avant-garde at work. Arguably, nothing has been seen on this scale since the end of the 1960s, and, this time around, its scope is much more international. There are, of course, limits to the ‘political turn’ – sometimes for utterly banal reasons; sometimes because not all the artists live up to the over-stated claims; sometimes because they are opportunistically hitching a ride on a bandwagon; sometimes because the enthusiasts for ‘political art’ have negligible interest in politics, let alone questions of praxis. But, there is plenty of work that is serious and committed; some that has come through activism or has activist-dimensions; some that is the result of a lifetime of endeavour, or which sees the aesthetic-political conjuncture as a serious project. Anarchocommunism is the most characteristic politics associated with this trend. However, this has been redirected under the impact of, first, autonomism (influenced, of course, by the writings of Hardt, Negri and Virno) and, more recently, by a resurgent interest in the histories of, and ideas associated with, council-communism and building socialism from below. Depending on outlook, some readers may remain unimpressed by this shift, but it is surely important to take note when artistic discussions not only begin from the rejection of the givens of capitalist life, but increasingly feature Marx or Rosa Luxemburg; and when some artists even thematise questions of political organisation within their work. The critics of contemporary art see certain dimensions of its institution, but they miss – or downplay – the intensity of the shift to the left among a significant sphere of art, ranging across the renewed critical interest in realism, ‘cognitive mapping’ (Jameson), historical analysis, and various levels of ‘intervention’ or ‘relational’ engagement. Marxist aesthetics must be prepared to grapple with such artistic ambitions, and the issues raised by them, not least art’s position of both being and not being ‘incorporated’. There is something here of what Jameson has called art’s ‘fundamental ambivalence’.79 The test is to avoid the trap of taking that ambivalence to be no more than liberal ambiguity (with all its political evasiveness and reducing of viewers to undecidability-spotters); instead, ambivalence needs to be understood through the prism of social contradictions. This would involve drawing on some of Marx’s most distinctive contributions: to be able to 79. Jameson 1998b, p. 149.

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think historically and philosophically, socially and aesthetically – a task made all the more complex by the institutional histories and reification of the disciplines now inhabited. These questions often impinge on art-debates in terms of tensions between more sociologically-inclined and more philosophical-aesthetic models of interpretation. With its Brechtian drive, the 2009 Istanbul Biennial might be seen as an opportunity which, by bringing the problems to the fore – and by crystallising the contradictions – helps develop our reflections on the aesthetic-political questions before us. Of course, in and of itself, this radicalisation of contemporary art may yet evaporate without trace; conceived as a fashionable ‘turn’, it may inevitably follow the way of the New. But it might prove an indicative weathervane for coming storms, or contribute to the actualisation of counter-hegemony, to making visible social division and to the ‘eclosion of new concepts’. WHW have certainly grabbed this mood. For the first time in an age, there is the real possibility to revivify critical culture through a meeting between Marxism and the artistic avant-garde.

References Adorno, Theodor 1997 [1970], Aesthetic Theory, edited and translated by Robert Hullot-Kentor, London: Athlone Press. —— 2007 [1935–6], ‘Letters to Walter Benjamin’, in Adorno, Benjamin, Bloch, Brecht and Lukács 2007. Adorno, Theodor, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Bertolt Brecht and Georg Lukács 2007, Aesthetics and Politics, London: Verso. Aksoy, Asu 2008, ‘Istanbul’s Choice’, Third Text, 22, 1: 71–83. Beech, Dave and John Roberts (eds.) 2002, The Philistine Controversy, London: Verso. Benjamin, Walter 1999 [1931], ‘Left-Wing Melancholy’, in Selected Writings, Volume 2: 1927– 1934, Cambridge, MA.: Belknap Press. —— 2002 [1936], ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technical Reproducibility: Second Version’, in Selected Writings, Volume 3: 1935–1938, Cambridge, MA.: Belknap Press. —— 2003 [1940], ‘On the Concept of History’, Selected Writings, Volume 4: 1938–1940, Cambridge, MA.: Belknap Press. Biennale of Sydney 2008a, ‘Exhibition’, available at: . —— 2008b, ‘Theme’, available at: . Boltanski, Luc and Eve Chiapello 2005, The New Spirit of Capitalism, translated by Gregory Elliott, London: Verso. Bourdieu, Pierre 1989 [1979], Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, London: Routledge. Brecht, Bertolt 1978 [1940/51], ‘Short Description of a New Technique of Acting Which Produces an Alienation Effect’, in Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic, edited by John Willett, London: Methuen. —— 1979 [1928], The Threepenny Opera, London: Methuen.


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—— 2000 [1932], ‘The Threepenny Lawsuit’, in Bertolt Brecht on Film and Radio, edited by Marc Silberman, London: Methuen. Buchloh, Benjamin 1984, ‘Theorizing the Avant-Garde’, Art in America, 72: 19–21. —— 1991, ‘Conceptual Art 1962–1969: From the Aesthetics of Administration to the Critique of Institutions’, October, 55: 105–43. —— 2000, Neo-Avantgarde & Culture Industry, Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press. Bürger, Peter 1981, ‘The Significance of the Avant-Garde for Contemporary Aesthetics: A Reply to Jürgen Habermas’, New German Critique, 22: 19–22. —— 1984 [1974], Theory of the Avant-Garde, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Cameron, Stuart and Jon Coaffee 2005, ‘Art, Gentrification and Regeneration – From Artist as Pioneer to Public Arts’, European Journal of Housing Policy, 5, 1: 39–58. Charlesworth, J.J. 2002, ‘Twin Towers: The Spectacular Disappearance of Art and Politics’, Third Text, 16, 4: 357–66. Chto Delat 2009, ‘Great Method’, Chto Delat, 3, 27, available at: . David, Catherine 1997, Politics, Poetics: Documenta X, the Book, Ostfildern-Ruit: Cantz Verlag. Day, Gail 2009, ‘The Fear of Heteronomy’, Third Text, 23, 4: 393–406. —— 2010, Dialectical Passions: Negation in Postwar Art Theory, New York: Columbia University Press. Debord, Guy 1994 [1967], The Society of the Spectacle, translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith, New York: Zone Books. Dervişoğlu, Gökçe 2009, ‘Corporate Support on Art: A Vicious or Virtuous Cycle?’, in WHW (ed.) 2009. Deutsche, Rosalyn 1996, Evictions: Art & Spatial Politics, Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press. Deutsche, Rosalyn and Cara Gendel Ryan 1984, ‘The Fine Art of Gentrification’, October, 31: 91–111. di Leone, Zampa 2004, ‘What Keeps Bazaar Alive’, available at: . DIRDCF 2009, ‘Open Letter to the curators, artists, participants and art lovers’, 4 September, available at: . Documenta 2007a, ‘about documenta’, available at: . —— 2007b, ‘Leitmotifs’, available at: . Eagleton, Terry 1996, The Illusions of Postmodernism, Oxford: Blackwell. Edwards, Steve 2009, ‘Apocalyptic Sublime: On the Brighton Photo-Biennial’, Historical Materialism, 17, 2: 84–102. Evren, Sürreyyya 2008a, ‘Notes on Post-Anarchism’, in Talk on Anarchism, edited by Group for Logistical Support, Belgrade: Group for Logistical Support. —— 2008b, ‘Parrhesiatic Games in Turkish Contemporary Art Scene’, Third Text, 22, 1: 35–42. —— 2009, ‘Neither With You Nor Without You’, in WHW (ed.) 2009. Foster, Hal 1996, ‘Who’s Afraid of the Neo-Avant-Garde?’, in The Return of the Real: The Avant-Garde at the End of the Century, Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press. Foster, Hal, Rosalind Krauss, Yve-Alain Bois and Benjamin H.D. Buchloh 2004, ‘Roundtable: The Predicament of Contemporary Art’, in Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism, London: Thames and Hudson. Frascina, Francis (ed.) 1985, Pollock and After: The Critical Debate, London: Harper and Row. Groys, Boris 1992, The Total Art of Stalinism: Avant-Garde, Aesthetic Dictatorship and Beyond, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

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Guilbaut, Serge 1983, How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art: Abstract Expressionism, Freedom and the Cold War, translated by Arthur Goldhammer, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Habermas, Jürgen 1981, ‘Modernity versus Postmodernity’, New German Critique, 22: 3–14. Hardt, Michael and Antonio Negri 2000, Empire, Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press. Harvey, David 2001, ‘The Art of Rent: Globalization and the Commodification of Culture’, in Spaces of Capital: Towards a Critical Geography, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. —— 2010, A Companion to Marx’s ‘Capital’, London: Verso. Hickey, Dave 2009, The Invisible Dragon: Essays on Beauty, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Holmes, Brian 2006, ‘The Flexible Personality: For a New Cultural Critique’, in Economising Culture: on the (Digital) Culture Industry, edited by Geoff Cox, Joasia Krysa and Anya Lewin, New York: Autonomedia. —— 2009, ‘Panel Discussion: Who Needs A World View?’, 12 September, available at: . Jameson, Fredric 1988, ‘Cognitive Mapping’, in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, edited by Lawrence Grossberg and Cary Nelson, Urbana: University of Illinois Press. —— 1991, Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, London: Verso. —— 1998a, The Cultural Turn: Selected Writings on the Postmodern, 1983–1998, London: Verso. —— 1998b, Brecht and Method, London: Verso. Jonsson, Stefan 2009, ‘Facts of Aesthetics and Fictions of Journalism: The Logic of the Media in the Age of Globalization’, in The Green Room: Reconsidering the Documentary and Contemporary Art, edited by Maria Lind and Hito Steyerl, Berlin: Sternberg Press. Jordan, John n.d., ‘Deserting the Culture Bunker’, The Journal of Aesthetics and Protest, available at: . Kracauer, Siegfried 1995 [1927], ‘The Mass Ornament’, in The Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays, Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press. Kwon, Miwon 1997, ‘One Place After Another: Notes on Site Specificity’, October, 80: 85–110. Lazzarato, Maurizio 1996, ‘Immaterial Labor’, in Radical Thought In Italy: a Potential Politics, edited by Paolo Virno and Michael Hardt, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. —— 2008, ‘Art, Work and Politics in Disciplinary Societies and Societies of Security’, Radical Philosophy, 149: 26–32. Mandel, Ernest 1978, Late Capitalism, London: Verso. Martin, Stewart 2007, ‘The Absolute Artwork Meets the Absolute Commodity’, Radical Philosophy, 146: 15–25. —— 2009, ‘Artistic Communism – a Sketch’, Third Text, 23, 4: 481–94. Marx, Karl 1975 [1844], ‘Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts’, in Early Writings, translated by Rodney Livingstone and Gregor Benton, Harmondsworth: Penguin. —— 1976 [1867], Capital, Volume 1, translated by Ben Fowkes, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Mathews, Vanessa 2010, ‘Aestheticizing Space: Art, Gentrification and the City’, Geography Compass, 4, 6: 660–75. Mörtenbeck, Peter and Helga Mooshammer 2008, ‘Plan and Conflict: Networked Istanbul’, Third Text, 22, 1: 57–69. Mutman, Mahmut 2008, ‘The Nation-Form’, Third Text, 22, 1: 5–20. Negri, Antonio 2008, ‘Metamorphosis’, Radical Philosophy, 149: 21–5. Radical Philosophy 2007, ‘Dossier: Documenta 12 Magazines Project’, Radical Philosophy, 146: 39–46. Rancière, Jacques 2004 [2000], The Politics of Aesthetics, London: Continuum.


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—— 2009a [2004], Aesthetics and its Discontents, Cambridge: Polity. —— 2009b, The Emancipated Spectator, London: Verso. Roberts, John 2000, ‘On Autonomy and the Avant-Garde’, Radical Philosophy, 103: 25–8. Rodwick, D.N. 1994, The Crisis of Political Modernism: Criticism and Ideology in Contemporary Film Theory, Berkeley: University of California Press. Salkin, Allen 2009, ‘That Old Master? It’s at the Pawnshop’, New York Times, 23 February, available at: . Simmel, Georg 1997 [1903], ‘The Metropolis and Mental Life’, in Simmel on Culture, edited by David Frisby and Mike Featherstone, London: Sage. Stallabrass, Julian 2004, Art Incorporated, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tuğal, Cihan 2008, ‘Greening Istanbul’, New Left Review, II, 51: 65–80. WHW 2009a, ‘Taking the Enemy on Your Side’, Interview with WHW, 26 September, available at: . —— 2009b, ‘This is the 11th International Istanbul Biennial Curators’ Text’, in WHW (ed.) 2009. —— 2009c, ‘What Keeps Mankind Alive?’: The Guide, Istanbul: Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts. —— (ed.) 2009, ‘What Keeps Mankind Alive?’: The Texts, Istanbul: Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts. Wu, Chin-Tao 2003, Privatising Culture: Corporate Art Intervention Since the 1980s, London: Verso. —— 2009, ‘Biennials without Borders’, New Left Review, II, 57: 107–15.


brill.nl/hima

Value after Lehman Geoff Mann Simon Fraser University geoff[email protected]

Abstract This article considers the status and meaning of the category of value in the wake of the financial crisis that began in 2007. I argue that value is best understood as a form of social wealth constituted by a spatially and temporally generalising social relation of equivalence and substitutability under, and specific to, capitalism – and that a categorial focus shows that despite massive ‘devaluations’, the value-relation is not itself in crisis. On the contrary, it is running at near full capacity, erasing the difference between ‘financial’ and ‘real’ capitals, values, and assets. Consequently, attempts to understand the crisis that rely on material distinctions between ‘real’ and ‘fictitious’ values and capitals overstate the extent and depth of the crisis for capital, and underestimate the virtually uninterrupted consolidation of the rule of the value, i.e. the territorial and historical imperative of equivalence and substitutability. Keywords value, crisis, finance, capitalism, fictitious capital

In the flood of political economy written in the wake of the current financial crisis, much has been said of the ‘destruction of value’.1 As debt- and equitymarkets collapsed, the idea featured particularly prominently in the pages of outlets such as the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal, and in economists’s and policymakers’s apologias.2 This ‘destruction of value’ involved the ‘disappearance’ of trillions of dollars via plummeting asset-prices and associated write-downs. But a slightly different ‘critical’ variation on this ‘destruction’-analysis has also circulated. This analysis holds that the crisis has entailed, not the destruction of ‘real’ value, but, rather, the exposure of a 1. Acknowledgments: although several of them will still disagree with the final results, I have benefited enormously from the helpful comments of Peter Thomas, Joel Wainwright, Gillian Hart, Jake Kosek, Patrick Bond, and the Historical Materialism Editorial Board. 2. ‘The Fearsome Become the Fallen’, Financial Times 2009; ‘Lehman’s Chaotic Bankruptcy Filing Destroyed Billions in Value’, Wall Street Journal 2008; Padoa-Schioppa 2008, p. 316; James 2009. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011

DOI: 10.1163/156920610X550640

G. Mann / Historical Materialism 18 (2010) 172–188

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long-standing and elaborate world of ‘fictitious’, ‘artificial’ or ‘virtual’ capital and value.3 Indeed, some on the populist Right and Left go so far as to claim that the crisis did not ‘destroy’ value so much as precipitate finance-capital’s ‘emperor-has-no-clothes’ moment, when the value of its fantastical derivativecreations was finally uncovered for the Ponzi-scheme it always was, leaving only a tangle of ‘real’ value from which the sophisticated chicanery had originally been conjured.4 In both its conceptually rigorous and its conspiratorial varieties, this analysis – based on distinctions between the ‘real’ and ‘financial’ economies, or ‘real’ and ‘fictitious’ or ‘virtual’ capitals or values – is mistaken, and what follows is an attempt to explain why, partly via an engagement with David McNally’s compelling analysis of the crisis in the pages of Historical Materialism.5 The mistake arises because insufficient attention is paid to the category of value in capitalism, and, while McNally’s contribution is immensely productive in many ways, his analysis inadvertently reproduces it. The meaning of the current moment lies not in the destruction of value, the end of ‘fictitious’ capitals and ‘artificial’ assets, but in the movement (or otherwise) of the category of value itself. The question of value after Lehman (or AIG and so forth) has several potential answers, some of the most useful of which are obscured by talk of destruction of value in the quantitative sense. This is not to say that nothing really happened, that what you thought was a crisis was not. When the financial system gasped in 2007, and temporarily held its breath in the autumn of 2008, very real problems were exposed, and regulatory alternatives hitherto ridiculed were all of a sudden openly discussed. Similarly, it is no accident that the rhetoric of ‘green shoots’ (presumably, a ‘regrowth’ of value) that began to pepper the media in early-2009 coincided with the fading of much of the hope for fundamental transformation in the wake of the crisis. By mid-2010, that reassessment appears irrefutable: I write as Greece collapses, Spain and Ireland try to muffle the sound of their knees knocking, and the G20 applauds the imposition of ‘austerity’ on peoples who only months ago were coercively indebted in a socialised effort to save the financial system. If ever there was a ‘tragedy of the commons’, it is the one constructed over the last two years by capital, central banks, treasuries and multilateral institutions across the planet.

3. Goldner 2008; Altvater 2009; Barker 2009; Nakatani 2009. 4. Huffington Post 2010; the ‘Craig Ferguson Investigates’ website (available at: ); see also Dan Hind’s thoroughly enjoyable ‘Jump! You Fuckers!’, Hind 2009. 5. McNally 2009.

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Yet, while there certainly was, and is, a crisis, the idea that there are ‘real’ values, that stand in some distinction from complex financial-asset values, is based on a claim that there is something particularly pernicious or ‘illusory’ about ‘fictitious’ forms of value which lends itself to a qualitatively more meaningful, more totalising crisis. This leads us to exaggerate both the magnitude of the crisis for capital, and, more importantly, the instability of modern capitalist political economies. When complex financial instruments are drastically reduced in price, become worthless, or even cannot be priced, it need not signal a crisis of the very concept of price or value. These instruments do not represent a qualitative change in value in capitalism; they are, rather, the same value-relation in a different, and increasingly dominant form. In the operation of value in contemporary capitalism, there is nothing in the character of such financial instruments that meaningfully distinguishes them from other, more ‘real’ values, and there is no guarantee that a massive collapse in the price of one set of exchanges means the system as a whole is at risk. ‘Financial fragility’ à la Hyman Minsky, a concept that has become essential to the mainstream-analysis of the crisis, is not a threat to the régime of capital-as-a-totality. As Rick Wolff puts it, ‘the crisis in capitalism today is not, or not yet, a crisis of capitalism’.6 There is no necessary relation between the trillions that vanished following the supposedly ‘artificial’ expansion of credit which supposedly started it all – the ‘destruction of value’, fictitious or not – and a crisis of value, the central organising category of capitalism.7 Consequently, it seems important to take some time to ask ourselves a question that at first seemed so obvious no-one bothered to utter it: What exactly is this a crisis of ? A focused consideration of the problem of value at this moment, of the category of value-in-capitalism, suggests fairly strongly that, whatever this is a crisis of – and sometimes it seems like a crisis of the possibility of a ‘Left’ that does not include Joseph Stiglitz – it is not a categorial crisis of value. To see this, we must differentiate an analysis of value-as-category and the current talk of ‘destruction of value’. The latter refers, not to the destruction of the category of value or the value-form, but to a quantitative decline in the magnitude of value, with the tacit – and correct – assumption that the category of value is not itself at risk. A categorial analysis of value, in contrast, problematises not the magnitude of value, but value as an historically-specific category in capitalism. It demands that we move beyond what Moishe Postone calls ‘traditional’ Marxism’s ‘critique of capital from the standpoint of labour’, which is in the end a 6. Wolff 2009, p. 3. 7. Marazzi 2010, p. 37.


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critique or theory of the distribution of value. Instead, what is necessary is a ‘critique of labour in capitalism’, and consequently of the category of value itself. Value, in other words, is not a ‘good’ that labour produces but is unfairly denied access, but, rather, is the organising principle of capital, and the essence of the commodity-form that wealth takes in capitalism. Capitalism is worthy of critique not, principally, because labour does not get enough of the value ‘produced’; capitalism is worthy of critique because, in it, labour is condemned to the production of value.8 Under capital, producing value is what labour must do; as Elson famously put it, the ‘labour-theory of value’ should really be a ‘value-theory of labour’. Marx himself said it well: Political economy has indeed analysed value and its magnitude, however incompletely, and has uncovered the content within these forms. But it has never once asked the question why this content has assumed that particular form, that is to say, why labour is expressed in value, and what the measurement of labour by its duration is expressed in the magnitude of the value of the product. These formulas bear the unmistakable stamp of belonging to a social formation in which the process of production has mastery over man, instead of the opposite . . .9

The ultimate goal of a Marxist and/or critical-political practice is not ultimately a fairer distribution of value to its ‘producers’ – although this is an important task – but the abolition, destruction, overcoming of the category of value itself. The aim is for a world in which value is not the organising principle. As Postone puts it, [I]t is value that constitutes the foundation of capitalism and is necessarily bound to it. The use value dimension is, to be sure, constituted in a form that is shaped by capital; unlike value, however, it is not bound necessarily to capital. The logic of Marx’s presentation suggests that the abolition of value would allow what had been constituted as social labor’s alienated use value dimension to exist in another form.

As such, value is distinct from ‘material wealth’; ‘value is a determinate form of wealth, historically specific to capitalism’, and the end of the value-form, i.e. commodity-being, is essential to an overcoming of capital’s hegemony.10 Recentring value in analyses of the crisis requires explicit attention to this historical specificity. An historicised notion of value that recognised 8. This is part of what drives Marx’s attack on the Gotha Programme’s call for ‘just distribution’; Marx 1978, pp. 528–9; Bensaïd 2002, pp. 135–40. 9. Marx 1977, pp. 173–5. 10. Postone 1993, pp. 360, 378.

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capitalism’s own dynamism must re-examine value-theory’s attachment to its ‘labour’ predicate, to recognise that the historical specificity of value is not only to capitalism in all its forms, but to each capitalism. To see value as historically determinate is also to understand that – while value remains ‘value’, the organising principle of capitalism – as capitalism changes, so too will the way in which value operates. While it appears to hold true across the capitalist era that labour under capitalism is condemned by the social formation to the production of value, it is also the case that, if abstract labour constituted the ‘being’ of value when Marx theorised it, one can see this as one (dominant) aspect of the quality constituting value at that time, but that value as such has more recently escaped labour’s bonds. The abolition of value, in such an analysis, would involve the abolition of the two imperatives of valorization – the necessity for ever increasing productivity and the structural necessity that immediate labor time be expended in production. This would allow both for a great quantitative change in the social organization of labor – that is, a socially general large-scale reduction in labor time – as well as for a fundamental qualitative transformation of the structure of social production and the nature of individual labor as well.11

The critique of value, and its abolition, then, are labour-oriented strategies, limited neither to a critique of the political rôle or emancipation of the proletariat alone, nor to social struggles limited to (some limited vision of ) it. This means the labour-theory of value, as conventionally understood, is dead. Not because we have passed into a ‘new phase of political history’, the moment of real subsumption, although Negri is correct to highlight this shift.12 The conventional labour-theory of value – i.e. workers performed the labour, so they should get the value – is dead because it misconstrues value. A focus on the category of value, as opposed to this essentially distributional critique of ‘traditional Marxism’, demonstrates that the problem is ultimately not that all value comes from labour, and is expropriated from its rightful owners, but that labour in capitalism is condemned to the production of value. Elson’s argument for a value-theory of labour makes the clearest case that Marx himself went far beyond this distributional critique ‘from the standpoint of labour’ – what she calls the theory of value as a theory of exploitation – but, whether he did or not, we certainly must. To put labour-as-sole-producer-of-value front and centre is to fall victim to the idea that capitalism’s fundamental flaws are quantitative, not qualitative. Moreover, unless we are willing to tread into the mire of what 11. Postone 1993, p. 362. 12. Negri 1996, p. 149.


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constitutes ‘real’ labour, and take on what seems to me the futile task of itemising the ‘labour’ behind all commodities in circulation (is a specialist in financial combinatorics who ‘produces’ a new derivative a labourer producing value?), then we are faced with a choice: either we categorically deny that the CDSs, ABSs, and CDOs that sloshed around the world until recently are values, or we accept that capital can generate value. Indeed, in its current form, it may even be limited to doing only that: much of the point of the Marxian critique is that labour could do so much more if not for capital’s domination. Capital can do nothing other than what it does. Value is best understood as a form of social wealth constituted by a spatially and temporally generalising social relation of equivalence and substitutability under, and specific to, capitalism. I stress both equivalence and substitutability because both are essential to the operation of value. Equivalence, as Marx emphasised, enables exchange and comparison; the status as ‘general equivalent’ is precisely what grants a particular commodity its ‘money-ness’, and the extraordinary power with which money is endowed.13 But equivalence alone is insufficient to explain the value-relation, because it does not specify the movement that must constitute value, which consists not only in equivalence, but also in the unfolding process of substitution, of one commodity for another, of one production-process for another, of one capital for another. When mainstream-economists speak of ‘capital-labour substitution’, they identify a crucial mode through which the value-relation operates: a social process through which one form of capital (constant) is rendered not only equivalent, but is substituted for another form (variable). As Marx showed, money is of course essential to this movement for capital. Value not only finds its social expression in money, it is realised in and inseparable from the money-form. Today, money wields value like a weapon, and the rule of value is the ongoing reconstitution of governmentality and state-power qua and via money. If we have moved into a ‘new phase of history’, the process is perhaps best described by the relative decline in the critical power of ‘abstract labour’ and ‘surplus-value’ as a way to specify the generation and appropriation of value. Of course, contemporary capital’s power still lies to a significant extent in the expropriation of labour’s surplusproduct, but the exercise of that power resides more fundamentally in the hegemonic-categorial logic of value: the territorial and historical imperative of equivalence and substitutability. Abstract labour remains a crucial manifestation of this relation, but our current condition demonstrates that value itself is not beholden to labour. The present hegemony of the category of 13. Marx 1977, pp. 147–54; Karatani 2005, pp. 196–211.

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value is buttressed by capital’s own accumulatory dynamic, but also by larger transformations in the way that the state exercises its capacity to govern. These include changing ideas of how the state in capitalism should exercise authority and those particular shifts in regulatory arrangements that liberate capital, via accelerated financialisation, from a dependence on labour’s productive capacity, without hindering its mandate for self-expansion.14 On this account, value remains essentially supersensuous and nonmaterial – ‘not an atom of matter enters into the objectivity of commodities as values’ – but no less real for that, and no less imperial.15 These qualities help explain value’s amenability to capital’s famous mystifications (which, it is important to note, are not equivalent to magics or fictions): supersensuous, non-material qualities are hard to keep track of, hard to pin down. But again, that does not make them fictitious, virtual or artificial. We must emphasise a critique of the distinction between ‘real’ and ‘fictitious’ value, because rejecting it is essential to the theory of value posited above, and to identifying the political and theoretical work the theory suggests. A critique of the current crisis as the product of fictitious capitals, of ‘imaginary’ assets whose unreality has now been exposed, is fatally flawed, a complement to both the critique of capital ‘from the standpoint of labour’ and its associated focus on the quantitative ‘destruction’ of value: all three lead us to substitute a transhistorical quantitative critique of the distribution of values in capitalism for a qualitative and historically-specific critique of the category of value in capitalism. Only the latter affords us the lens on the fundamental features of capitalism necessary for substantial qualitative change. To illustrate this point, let us turn to McNally’s detailed examination of the crisis. McNally’s analysis is worth considering in some detail, not only because he is justifiably one of the most influential contemporary radical political economists. Rather, it is of interest because he is, on the one hand, one of the few who explicitly brings the question of value to an analysis of the crisis, and, on the other, among the many wedded to a critique of the ‘fictions’ of modern financial capital. The problem, however, is that a commitment to the latter greatly limits what one can do with the former. In the end, a categorial critique of value in capitalism is foreclosed by a commitment to a distinction between ‘real’ capitals and values and their pernicious, ‘fictitious’ counterparts. McNally describes what he calls a ‘curious conjunction that has defined capitalist globalisation in the neoliberal era’: an ‘intensification of capitalist 14. Lapavitsas 2009. 15. Marx 1977, p. 138.


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value-logics’ that has unfolded, somewhat paradoxically, ‘through the medium of more unstable and volatile forms of money. As a result, valueforms have been extended at the same time as value-measures (and predictions) have become more volatile’.16 He then goes on to suggest that [t]he heightened instability of world-money, the explosion in foreign-exchange trading, and the rise of instruments designed to hedge risk (derivatives) and, finally, the speculative activities associated with these have all encouraged a whole range of financial instruments designed to capture future values; that is, shares of surplus-value that have not yet been produced. The result has been a proliferation of fictitious capitals, such as mortgage-backed securities and Collateralised Debt Obligations.17

With this laid out, McNally reminds us that in the Marxist tradition, ‘fictitious capitals’ are not exactly ‘fictional’ or ‘imaginary’ capitals, but something more specific: First, fictitious capitals are paper-claims to wealth that exist alongside the actual means of production, stocks of goods and reserves of labour-power that capitals mobilise. Yet, they can be bought and sold many times over, as if they were that wealth itself: this is why the prices of stocks can come to bear an absurdly inflated relation to the actual value and profitability of a firm. Secondly, fictitious capitals lay claim to future wealth, that is, to shares of profits or wages that have not yet come into existence. So, when a bank creates a financial asset that provides the right to the principal and interest-payments from my creditcard debt – a process, as we have seen, known as securitisation – it is not selling an existing asset but a claim to income that may be created in the future. Should I lose my job, however, and default on my credit-card debt, then the ‘asset’ sold by the bank is revealed to be totally fictitious, a mere piece of paper – nothing more than an IOU that will never be repaid. And, during the neoliberal period, for the three reasons I have outlined, we have seen an extraordinary build-up of fictitious capitals (paper-claims to future wealth) within the system.

The proliferation of these fictitious capitals – i.e. fictitious value-in-motion – opened up a ‘huge field of speculative activity’ and ‘financial gambling’. The consequent collapse in the price of these assets, he says, is precisely what Marx meant by ‘a destruction of capital’: [V]alues of fictitious capitals – stocks, bills and all kinds of paper assets – which were previously treated as if they were real assets (and against which financial 16. McNally 2009, p. 57. Unless noted, all emphases are in the original. 17. McNally 2009, p. 59.

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G. Mann / Historical Materialism 18 (2010) 172–188 institutions borrowed), enter a freefall. At the same time, real capital is destroyed, as factories are mothballed, corporations go bust and sell off their buildings, machines, land, customer lists and so on at bargain basement prices.18

So, here, we have some indication of what constitutes ‘real’ capital, ‘real’ values: factories, buildings, machines, land, customer-lists. But the problem with the real-fictitious opposition lies not only in the fact that it tacitly buttresses exactly those liberal commitments to the relative independence of the real and financial ‘sides’ of the economy which justify theories of monetary neutrality and the supposed distance between Wall Street and Main Street. Just as importantly, in its more precise ‘fictitious’ formulation as much as in a looser critique of ‘fictions’, it elides the thorny – and ultimately unanswerable – question of just what, in capitalism, makes an asset, capital, or value ‘real’. Where is the cut-off point? The astounding power of the category of value in capitalism lies precisely in the fact that it ‘really’ renders these distinctions meaningless.19 If value is a form of social wealth constituted by a spatially and temporally generalised social relation of equivalence and substitutability under, and specific to, capitalism, then the category of value is essentially defined by its relation to money qua equivalent value-form. This is its irreducible feature, and on these terms there is no meaningful distinction to be made in the category of value in capitalism, i.e. between value deemed ‘fictitious’ and value deemed ‘real’: both relate to the equivalent-form, both are commensurable as value by abstracting their qualitative features, and both, if substituted for money, can buy you a drink. The very real consolidation of the category of value holds precisely in the relation of equivalence and substitutability that erases qualitative difference. To say, with Robert Guttmann (in what is perhaps the clearest account and application of the concept of fictitious capital of which I am aware), banks’ ‘money creation ex nihilo is in itself a source of fictitious capital and the reason why credit-money has no intrinsic value’, is to fundamentally misconstrue the stakes in the category of value.20 On this score, Schumpeter, for whom the private creation of bankcredit money was the distinctive feature of capitalism, is far more helpful. If credit-money has no ‘intrinsic’, i.e. ‘non-fictional’ value, then capitalism makes no sense. Consequently, a critique of ‘fictitious capital’ or imaginary assets is, in fact, not necessarily a critique of value, nor, ultimately, of capitalism. Indeed, one could argue that the various regulatory reforms currently being considered, 18. McNally 2009, p. 66. 19. On the acknowledged analytical difficulties confronted in an attempt to maintain the ‘chaotic’ distinction, see Chesnais 2006, pp. 82–3. 20. Guttmann 1994, p. 299.


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from Basel to Bahrain, are testimony to the possibility of a liberal critique of fictitious capital that only functions to further protect the category of value. In fact, rather than stamping factories as real assets and derivatives as fictitious assets unveiled by crises for what they ‘really are’ – ‘some kind of money bet on production that does not yet exist’ (in the words of David Harvey) – it seems to me much more pertinent to an understanding of contemporary capitalism to see them as just another, albeit extremely sophisticated and mystifying (again, that is not to say magic or imaginary), commodity – one that the crisis has not so much exposed as fictional as rendered just plain valueless.21 Indeed, the categorial analysis of value in capital demonstrates that it is the web of social relations that determines value; Colletti calls it ‘the social unity itself in its hypostatized form’.22 Surely, in a social formation in which capital’s hegemony is acknowledged by virtually all, a theory of value that relegates a substantial part of value in circulation to the realm of the fictitious can do little but distract our attention from the fact that the capitalist dynamics which fundamentally determine our lives and possibilities depend not on artificial variations on value, but on value per se? A similar critique holds for any analysis of contemporary capital’s ‘speculative’ character as somehow novel. What aspect of capitalism is not ‘speculative’ in a meaningful sense? Certainly shareholding, almost as old as capitalism itself, is speculative; not in the same way as a CDO, to be sure, but the idea that values produced by speculation are not ‘real’ is to misunderstand capital’s most fundamental accumulatory dynamic, which is always speculative. Fiction, speculation, etc. – the distinction between these ideas and their supposedly ‘real’ opposites is entirely arbitrary. We cannot pretend that the current crisis shows that capitalism is all an elaborate sham. If it is, it is a very real sham, and the category of value that stands at its foundation will not crumble because we say that some of it is real, and some of it is not. That leaves the category, and its rule, intact. McNally exposes the political limits imposed by this critique himself. For he is correct to suggest that in the current situation ‘a classic crisis of capitalist measurement is manifesting itself, in part in the form of a breakdown in riskmeasurement and derivatives-pricing’.23 This adds up to an argument regarding the declining powers of money to price ‘reliably’, i.e. ‘to provide relatively predictable measures of value’.24 Yet, if this is so – and it is – a critical response cannot be limited to the itemised evaluation of values or capitals that ‘should be’, since they are real, and those that should not be, because they are fictitious. 21. 22. 23. 24.

Harvey 1990, p. 107. Colletti 1973, p. 275. McNally 2009, p. 71. McNally 2009, pp. 70–1.

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This is to tacitly participate in precisely that house-cleaning which capital itself has undertaken. And it also, perhaps unwittingly, opens the door to a socialdemocratic critique of capital ‘from the standpoint of labour’, i.e. the problem with capitalism is really just a distributional problem: there are real, ‘good’ values, and these must be better distributed. From this perspective, the crisis of ‘value-measurement’ or the ‘destruction of values’ presents an opportunity to correct this mess.25 Unfortunately, although perhaps unsurprisingly, it is only a reinvigorated capital that has taken up the task. In fairness, and unlike almost all other accounts, McNally’s does not ignore the categorial critique entirely. Indeed, at the end of his article, he turns to what he calls the ‘value-struggles’ of social movements like MST and Via Campesina, which implicitly challenge the domination of society by the capitalist value-form. They assert the priority of life-values – for land, water, food, housing, income – over the value-abstraction and the violent economic and social crises it entails. . . . It is, as we have seen, the logic of the value-abstraction to express utter indifference to use-values, notably to the needs of the concrete, sensuous beings who are bearers of labour-power.26

True. Still, it must be said that, despite his claim that such value-struggles ‘are posed with a dramatic urgency in the midst of a crisis such as this’, McNally is unable to connect the current conjuncture to them either historically or theoretically. Instead, these movements appear as dynamics independent of our present turmoil, if not unaffected by it. The only struggles that McNally does directly connect to the crisis are less fundamental challenges to the rule of value – again, essentially distributional critiques of capital from the ‘standpoint of labour’: [T]he politics of massive government-bailouts, in which the debt of major financial institutions is assumed by the state, raises important openings for campaigns to reduce and eliminate working-class debt and debts in the global South. At the same time, it opens political space for mobilisations to use the massive funds designed to save banks in order instead to build social housing, repudiate the South’s debts to the North, socialise failing industries, convert them to green production, and preserve jobs.27

25. Blackburn 2008; Wade 2008, Wade 2009; Crotty 2009; Kregel 2009. 26. McNally 2009, p. 74. 27. McNally 2009, pp. 74–5; emphasis added.


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We would have reason to cheer any such developments, of course, but that does not mean they represent challenges to the sanctity of value. Indeed, while they are certainly unlikely given current state-priorities, they are not incompatible with the state-sponsored stimulus behind the bailouts and fiscal policy’s so-called ‘comeback’ – the so-called ‘return of Keynesianism’, however little Keynes himself might have recognised it.28

The rule of value There is a good reason McNally cannot connect categorial value-struggles to the current crisis: they are, at least at present, disarticulated. To return to a problem raised earlier, a categorial critique of value suggests that a crucial aspect of the current crisis is what is not in crisis: the category of value. Indeed, the news is perhaps even worse. The rule of value has been significantly strengthened by the crisis. This is to dispute the idea that, even though it is now hard to see, the initial stages of the crisis made manifest not only the ‘destruction of value’ via crisis, in the quantitative magnitude-of-value sense, but also exposed the edges, if you will, of the category of value itself, buried as it is in the firmament of our social structures. For a moment, according to this logic, when it seemed like the political-economic skeleton of the world had disintegrated, and the worldeconomy had become one big boneless chicken, the relation of equivalence and substitutability was momentarily exposed, and precisely that relation became the implicit Alamo in the state’s and capital’s frantic defensive efforts. For what was at risk was the capacity of price to signal anything meaningful; the very status of equivalence as a relationship worthy of confidence, the ability of money to command the fulfillment of obligation. This is to overstate the matter, however. Clearly, the difficulties involved in what Ben Bernanke delicately calls ‘price discovery’ were an important reason financial markets went from freefall to frozen solid in 2008.29 But we must not mistake what are essentially epistemological problems for a generalised ontological instability at the heart of modern capitalism. To do so would be to fall victim, again, to the idea that a crisis in the distributionalquantitative operation of value in capitalism constitutes some more fundamental categorial incoherence. The problem never posed itself as a challenge to the logic of equivalence and substitutability as such. As the 28. Bateman, Hirai and Marcuzzo 2010, pp. 5–7; Krugman 2005; Leijonhufvud 2009. 29. Bernanke 2008.

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Governor of the Bank of France put it, ‘the current crisis is about valuation’, and valuation is ‘without any doubt an accounting issue’ – in McNally’s words, it is a ‘classic crisis of capitalist measurement’, and nothing more.30 The chaos in the securities-markets that began in the late summer of 2007 was not due to the vaporisation of finance-capital’s ‘fictitious’ assets, but to the difficulty they faced in determining what they owned was worth. I think one can say quite confidently that, despite what we may think, those so-called fictional assets have not disappeared at all, nor has their ontological status as value, capital, or assets been unsettled in any meaningful way. There are millions of them still out there – mostly in the hands of central banks and other government-agencies – and they will certainly be back in circulation quite soon, and when they are, we will never know they returned – until the next one hits. In fact, the idea that we will need to find a new means to create the next bubble may be naïve. Aggressive re-financialisation, via the very same ABSs, CDOs and CDSs that supposedly imploded, is at the top of many powerful states’ priority-list: the US-government has become perhaps the single largest holder of these assets. As such, consider the following. With the failure of the financial system to handle the crisis, attention has turned to two broad areas of reform: institutional and/or regulatory restructuring of the financial industry to mitigate the risk of future crises, and augmenting state-capacity to deal with future crises which, despite reform, will inevitably arise. The first is not, for the most part, organised to restrain or limit the processes of financialisation so widely noted in recent years.31 Rather, regulatory reform is concerned primarily to reduce the information-problems that plague global finance-capital: improve interagency and international co-operation, increase capital-requirements and prudential standards, state-registration of hedgefunds and other private pools of capital, comprehensive oversight of OTCtrading and securities-origination. The point is not to de-financialise, but to financialise with state-oversight. The second focus – increasing crisis-management capacity – is, again, not aimed at reducing the rôle and expanding reach of finance, but at reducing the systemic risks thereof. Including increased international co-operation and standardisation, the range of possibilities on the table in the dominant capitalist economies are relatively few, mostly involving the effort to deal with what John Lanchester calls TBTF (firms ‘too-big-to-fail’) – not, it should be noted, to prevent their emergence – and to increase the linkages of 30. Noyer 2008. 31. See, for example, Martin 2002; Blackburn 2006.


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the treasury to the central bank in its rôle as lender-of-last-resort.32 Both regulatory strategies are meant to get us back to the same capacity for financialisation, the main difference being that we will be safer when we get there than before.33 If these regulations come into effect – and, despite some opposition and suggested alternatives, in the US and Western Europe, some set of regulations roughly resembling the Obama-administration’s proposals seems likely – many on the Stiglitz-Krugman Left will approve.34 Even if we go further – which seems unlikely – and follow the far more interventionist advice of someone like Robert Wade or Robin Blackburn, we must acknowledge that we will not have put value-as-organising-principle into question.35 Relative to what we will probably end up with, any of Wade’s proposals would be welcome: banking reform to protect consumers from investment-bank wheeler-dealers, state-oversight of financial ‘innovation’, anti-trust tactics to prevent TBTF, increased levels of national macroeconomic planning and global regulation, reduced global imbalances (i.e. working toward a situation in which the dollar and US-debt is less central to the global economy), and relegitimising capital-controls (something the IMF itself recently mumbled in a staff position-paper).36 But it must be remembered that, like the Keynesian framework from which it draws inspiration, these superficially ‘radical’ reforms are explicitly oriented to the promotion and stabilisation of capital.37 The point is not to reduce, but rather to rationalise, the rule of value: witness the furious pace at which economists have turned to explaining the crisis as a problem of ‘massively inefficient capital allocation’, as if the fundamental problem, in the end, is just a bad case of information-asymmetry.38 If we put the category of value at the centre of our lens, it seems clear that the new measures implemented or proposed, in the context of existing presubprime state-regulatory frameworks, are focused almost single-mindedly on the reassertion of the rule of value. Moreover, this newer set of regulatory responses is actually a means through which to extend the rule of value to new institutional and social arenas, and to fortify the unassailability of money – the expression of value – as mode of governance. Any world in 32. Lanchester 2009; Financial Stability Forum 2008; Group of Twenty 2008; United States Department of the Treasury 2009. 33. Crotty 2009. 34. See, for example, the contributions in Part 4 of Vanden Heuvel and the Editors of The Nation 2009. 35. Wade 2008; Wade 2009; Blackburn 2008. 36. Ostry, Ghosh, Habermeier, Chamon, Qureshi and Reinhardt 2010. 37. Negri 2009, p. 4. 38. Stiglitz 2010, p. 17; Financial Stability Board and International Monetary Fund 2009.

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which finance is the source of value, or where it is the principal channel through which economic regulation is enacted, will require not just a stable measure of value – witness the constant agonising over the fate of global money – but a stable and hegemonic category of value, i.e. a spatially and temporally generalised – and unassailable – relation of equivalence and substitutability. Indeed, the category is a precondition of the measure. To govern via money qua expression-of-value is effectively to enforce, as much as is practicable, the dependence of social institutions on the stability of value’s monetary expression and the redemption of social relations according to the logic of equivalence and substitutability. Indeed, this where the problem really lies: it is not merely that ‘the financial system has achieved a degree of autonomy from real production unprecedented in capitalism’s history’, as Harvey put it two decades ago, but that the growing power of the rule of value erases, under and for capital, the boundary between finance and the rest of capital, between a financial instrument and a ‘real’ commodity.39 The fact of the matter is that, in modern capitalism, the mezzanine-tranche of a CDO and a bushel of wheat are equally subsumed by the rule of value. We must not confuse devaluation of the former with the devalorisation of the latter. That is our task, and this financial crisis has not yet hinted at.

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39. Harvey 1990, p. 194.


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Chesnais, François 2006, ‘La Prééminence de la finance au sein du “capital en général”, le capital fictif et le mouvement de mondialisation du capital’, in de Brunhoff, Chesnais, Duménil, Lévy and Husson 2006. Colletti, Lucio 1973, Marxism and Hegel, London: New Left Books. Crotty, James 2009, ‘Structural Causes of the Global Financial Crisis: A Critical Assessment of the “New Financial Architecture”’, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 33, 4: 563–80. Financial Stability Board and International Monetary Fund 2009, ‘Report to the G-20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors’, available at: . Financial Stability Forum 2008, ‘Report of the Financial Stability Forum on Enhancing Market and Institutional Resilience’, available at: . Financial Times 2009, ‘The Fearsome Become the Fallen’, 23 March. Friedman, Milton and Anna Schwartz 1963, A Monetary History of the United States, 1867– 1960, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Goldner, Loren 2008, ‘The Biggest “October Surprise” of All: A World Capitalist Crash’, available at: . Group of Twenty 2008, ‘Declaration of the Summit on Financial Markets and the World Economy’, available at: . Guttmann, Robert 1994, How Credit-Money Shapes the Economy: The United States in a Global System, Armonk: M.E. Sharpe. Harvey, David 1990, The Condition of Postmodernity, Oxford: Blackwell. Hind, Dan 2009, ‘Jump! You Fuckers!’, available at: Huffington Post 2010, ‘Janet Tavakoli: Wall Street Mortgage-Derivatives Trading Was “A Massive Ponzi Scheme”’, 15 February, available at: . James, Harold 2009, The Creation and Destruction of Value: The Globalization Cycle, Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press. Karatani, Kojin 2005, Transcritique: On Kant and Marx, Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press. Kregel, Jan 2009, ‘Why Don’t the Bailouts Work? Design of a New Financial System versus a Return to Normalcy’, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 33, 4: 653–63. Krippner, Greta 2007, ‘The Making of US Monetary Policy: Central Bank Transparency and the Neoliberal Dilemma’, Theory and Society, 36, 6: 477–513. Krugman, Paul 2005, ‘Is Fiscal Policy Poised for a Comeback?’, Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 21, 4: 515–23. Lanchester, John 2009, ‘It’s Finished’, London Review of Books, 28 May: 3–13, available at: . Lapavitsas, Costas 2009, ‘Financialised Capitalism: Crisis and Financial Expropriation’, Historical Materialism, 17, 2: 114–48. Leijonhufvud, Axel 2009, ‘Out of the Corridor: Keynes and the Crisis’, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 33, 4: 741–57. Makdisi, Saree, Cesare Casarino and Rebecca Karl (eds.) 1996, Marxism Beyond Marxism, London: Routledge. Marazzi, Christian 2010, The Violence of Financial Capital, Los Angeles: Semiotext(e). Martin, Randy 2002, The Financialization of Daily Life, Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Marx, Karl 1977 [1867], Capital, Volume 1, New York: Vintage. —— 1978 [1890–1], ‘Critique of the Gotha Program’, in Tucker (ed.) 1978. McNally, David 2009, ‘From Financial Crisis to World-Slump: Accumulation, Financialisation, and the Global Slowdown’, Historical Materialism, 17, 2: 35–83. Nakatani, Paulo 2009, ‘The World Financial Crisis’, in Rosa Luxemburg Foundation (ed.) 2009.

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Negri, Antonio 1996, ‘Twenty Theses on Marx: Interpretation of the Class Situation Today’, in Makdisi, Saree, Cesare Casarino and Karl (eds.) 1996. —— 2009, ‘No New Deal Is Possible’, Radical Philosophy, 155: 2–5, available at: . Noyer, Christian 2008, ‘Lessons from the Crisis: A Central Banker’s Reflections on Some Accounting Policy Issues’, available at: . Ostry, Jonathan D., Atish R. Ghosh, Karl Habermeier, Marcos Chamon, Mahvash S. Qureshi and Dennis B.S. Reinhardt 2010, ‘Capital Inflows: The Role of Controls’, IMF Staff Position Note, available at: . Padoa-Schioppa, Tomasso 2008, ‘The Crisis in Perspective: The Cost of Being Quiet’, International Finance, 11, 3: 311–25. Páez, Pedro 2009, ‘Towards an Environmentally Sustainable, Culturally and Scientifically Sensitive Planetary Program of Decent Full Employment’, in Rosa Luxemburg Foundation 2009 (ed.). Postone, Moishe 1993, Time, Labor and Social Domination, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rosa Luxemburg Foundation (ed.) 2009, The World in Crisis – and Beyond: Conference on Alternatives and Transformation Paths to Overcome the Regime of Crisis-Capitalism, Brussels: Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. Stiglitz, Joseph 2010, ‘The Non-Existent Hand’, London Review of Books, 22 April: 17–18, available at: . Tucker, Robert C. (ed.) 1978, The Marx-Engels Reader, Second Edition, New York: Norton. United States Department of the Treasury 2009, ‘Financial Regulatory Reform: A New Foundation: Rebuilding Financial Supervision and Regulation’, available at: . Vanden Heuvel, Katrina and the Editors of The Nation 2009, Meltdown: How Greed and Corruption Shattered Our Financial System and How We Can Recover, New York: Nation Books. Wade, Robert 2008, ‘Financial Regime Change’, New Left Review, II, 53: 5–21. —— 2009, ‘From Global Imbalances to Global Reorganisations’, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 33, 4: 539–62. Wall Street Journal 2008, ‘Lehman’s Chaotic Bankruptcy Filing Destroyed Billions in Value’, 29 December. Wolff, Rick 2009, ‘Economic Crisis from a Socialist Perspective’, Socialism and Democracy, 23, 2: 3–20.


brill.nl/hima

Review Articles Reclaiming Marx’s ‘Capital’: A Refutation of the Myth of Inconsistency, Andrew Kliman, Lanham: Lexington Books, 2007. Abstract Andrew Kliman’s Reclaiming Marx’s ‘Capital’ sets out to refute the ‘myth’ that Marx’s original presentation of the theory of the value is internally inconsistent. A century ago, Bortkiewicz purported to demonstrate that Marx’s mistake was his failure to adopt simultaneous valuation. Thereafter, twentieth-century Marxian economics worked out a ‘corrected’ version of Marx’s original theory, culminating in Steedman’s 1977 Marx after Sraffa. Conclusions Marx himself deemed central were dropped, prominently including the law of the tendential fall in the rate of profit. But simultaneous valuation is absolutely incompatible with Marx’s first and fundamental premise, the determination of value by labour-time. On the other hand, if Marx’s major theoretical conclusions do consistently follow from his premises, including the transformation of values into prices of production, then the quantitative dimension of his value-theory is internally consistent after all and stands in no need of correction on this score. Advocating a temporal, single-system interpretation, Kliman shows how ‘two simple modifications’ eliminate ‘all of the alleged inconsistencies in the quantitative dimension of Marx’s value theory’: valuation is temporal, and values and prices are determined interdependently. Kliman’s refutation is sound, but his claim to know Marx’s intentions, in E.D. Hirsch’s sense, is questionable. Keywords Andrew Kliman, Marxian economics, value-theory, temporal single-system interpretation, falling rate of profit controversy, transformation-problem, Okishio-theorem, Fundamental Marxian Theorem

After Ladislaus von Bortkiewicz ‘corrected’ it a century ago, almost everyone, orthodox and Marxian economists alike, accepted the view that Marx’s theory of value is internally inconsistent. In Reclaiming Marx’s ‘Capital’ (RMC ), Andrew Kliman sorts out a bewildering tangle of approaches and topics in order to demonstrate that the charge of internal inconsistency is false. Broaching this issue in the subtitle of his book, ‘a refutation of the myth of inconsistency’, he doggedly pursues it on every page as the overarching, singleminded leitmotif of the work as a whole, cast as a single, sustained argument through twelve chapters. From this perspective, the controversies concerning Marx’s law of the tendential fall in the rate of profit (LTFRP), the so-called ‘transformation-problem’, and other basic elements of value-theory appear in a fresh new light. Kliman both argues and teaches. His readers learn about the dual-system theory of values and prices, simultaneous valuation, and what he calls ‘physicalism’, the three pillars of the dominant view that followed Bortkiewicz’s ‘correction’. We learn about alternative interpretations, including the ‘new interpretation’, the value-form school, simultaneous © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011

DOI: 10.1163/156920610X550659

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Review Articles / Historical Materialism 18 (2010) 189–206

single-system interpretations (SSSIs), and the temporal single-system interpretation (TSSI) Kliman advocates. We learn the history of the controversy. We discover exactly what is at issue in the charge of internal inconsistency and its import for what counts as Marx’s theory. Finally, we learn what Marx’s fundamental conclusions were, the premises from which they followed, and why these conclusions differ in key respects from those of contemporary ‘Marxian economics’. If Marx’s theoretical conclusions matter, at least to Marxists, then so do the technical details of the arguments that generate them. These arguments are usually said to be based on the so-called ‘labour-theory of value’ Marx inherited from his classical predecessors, Smith and Ricardo, which the marginalist revolution of neoclassical economics rendered obsolete. Today, the terms and relations of Capital, categories of the Marxian theory of value, are almost universally held in hindsight to be ‘metaphysical’, ‘otiose’, ‘redundant’, or ‘irrelevant’. The canonical references include the Nobel-laureate Paul Samuelson’s 1971 paper, ‘Understanding the Marxian Notion of Exploitation’ and Ian Steedman’s 1977 book Marx after Sraffa, both of which argued for the alleged ‘redundancy’ of the concept of value (for Kliman’s discussion of Samuelson, see pp. 9–10, 47–50, and for Steedman, see pp. 35–6). For non-economists, even when they are specialists in other fields, and even when they share broadly Marxian sympathies, the case seems closed on the typically reliable grounds of the consensus of expert-judgment. But what makes Marx’s concept of value ‘metaphysical’ or ‘redundant’? In the end, it comes back to his theory’s supposed internal inconsistencies. Kliman stresses that value is in fact not redundant under Marx’s original theory, but it becomes redundant only after the alleged inconsistencies are ‘corrected’. Inputs to production and the outputs that result from production are valued simultaneously in these ‘corrections’ (that is, inputs and outputs are assigned the same per-unit prices or values), and simultaneous valuation has a crucial consequence: it causes physical quantities – technology and ‘real’ (physical) wages – rather than labour-time, to become the exclusive determinants of prices, profits, and the rate of profit. In this way, ‘value’ appears as excess metaphysical baggage carried over from the nineteenth century. However, if Marx is not guilty of the inconsistencies with which he is charged, then his theory does not need to be ‘corrected’ by the analytical device of simultaneous valuation, value is perhaps no longer redundant, and the head-shaking relegation of Capital to an antiquated genre may not be warranted after all. If Marx’s presentation of the theory of value were internally inconsistent, then it would not be possible to ‘reclaim’ Capital as a coherent, unified whole, for, in that case, the massive edifice of Marx’s text would be a house divided against itself. If Marx committed a logical blunder in his overall argument, then that argument is invalid, therefore unsound. A sound mind will simply walk away. Or else, initiate the programme of a ‘corrected’ Marx and what had come to be known through the twentieth century as ‘Marxian economics’. In a defence of twentieth-century Marxian economics that appeared in 2004, David Laibman undertook ‘an appraisal’ of what he named ‘the new orthodox Marxism’, in reference to a number of theorists including Alan Freeman, Guglielmo Carchedi, Fred Moseley, Ted McGlone, Andrew Kliman, and others.1 Apart from their differences, their common ground, as Laibman tendentiously puts it, is ‘a retreat to the doctrines of the [nineteenth] century in pure and unadulterated form’, whereas he holds that in contemporary Marxian economics, ‘there is only one path leading 1. See Laibman 2004. Kliman takes up Laibman’s claim in his first chapter, pp. 12–13.


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from the [nineteenth] to the [twenty-first] century, and that one lies through the [twentieth]’.2 Laibman’s idiom of a ‘retreat’ could be regarded as an example of the ‘Whig-history’ Kliman criticises in his first chapter (pp. 9–13), based on Herbert Butterfield’s The Whig Interpretation of History (originally published in 1931). Butterfield wrote that Whighistorians ‘produce a story which is the ratification if not the glorification of the present’ (quoted on p. 9). But, as plausible as Laibman’s claim initially might appear, the history of science is complex enough to defy the thesis that a successor-theory is necessarily superior to its predecessor. In ‘The Case for Simplicity: A Paradigm for the Political Economy of the 21st Century’, Alan Freeman, another proponent of the TSSI, appeals to the example of the Copernican Revolution: [It] is worth noting where Copernicus’ discovery came from. Actually, he did not invent it. It was laid down in the second century B.C. by Aristarchus of Samos. It came, not just from a previous century but from a previous millennium, entombed by fourteen centuries of obscurantism. The following one and a half millennia perfected, with a complexity so great that it is still hard to follow today, an alternative system invented by Eudoxus, sanctified by Aristotle and perfected by Ptolemy. . . . Yet progress did not come through a forward development of this dazzling system, now unknown and forgotten. It arose in a return to an earlier system of thought with two, and only two, features to recommend it. It was easier; and it was right.3 Thus, linear progress is not inevitable. It is also possible for errors to aggregate over time, one compounding the other, with fateful if not fatal consequences for the original theory. What the ‘new orthodox Marxist’ Kliman purports to demonstrate in RMC is that this is what happened to Marx’s theory of value on the way to the twenty-first century. Since this is a matter of argument, rather than ‘orthodoxy’ or ‘dogmatism’, Kliman’s book cannot be dismissed as mere hagiography. RMC exposes many of the ways in which the leading lines of ‘twentieth-century Marxist’ economics depart from the original Marxism of Marx. As noted above, his supposed inconsistencies are ‘corrected’ by adopting the analytical tool of simultaneous valuation of inputs and outputs. But this has several important consequences. Marx’s three aggregateequalities – total profit equals total surplus-value, total price equals total value, and the aggregate ‘price’ rate of profit equals the aggregate ‘value’ rate of profit – either fail to obtain, or they are at best ‘preserved in a formal sense only’ (p. 164). Moroever, the LTFRP, which he deemed to be ‘in every respect the most important law of modern political economy’ (p. 14), falls by the wayside.4 Finally, concerning the conclusion that might seem most vital to Marx’s criticism of capitalism, that the sole source of surplus-value and profit is the exploitation of workers, Marx’s original theory must be incoherent as well (contrary to what the ‘twentieth-century Marxist’ economists have long claimed). According to Kliman, the appearance of inconsistency in Marx’s theory is an artifact of two basic constructs of the ‘twentieth-century’ or standard interpretation: simultaneous 2. Laibman 2004, pp. 1, 17. 3. Freeman 2004, p. 55. 4. Here Kliman quotes Marx 1973, p. 748.

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valuation and the construction of values and prices as two separate systems. Kliman argues that the TSSI removes the inconsistency by ‘two simple modifications’: ‘valuation is temporal, so input and output prices can differ, and values and prices, though quite distinct, are determined interdependently’ (p. 2). ‘Once these two simple modifications are made, all of the alleged inconsistencies in the quantitative dimension of Marx’s value theory are eliminated’ (p. 2). The astonishing result of these modifications is that, on this basis, it can be demonstrated that Marx’s own major theoretical conclusions follow consistently from Marx’s own premises. Whereas the TSSI makes Marx make sense but ‘simultaneist’ interpretations do not, they should be rejected as implausible, and Marx’s original theory should be understood as a temporal and as a single-system theory. This straightforward argument does not (as I see it) depend on a divination of ‘what Marx really meant’ or what was on his mind as he wrote Capital. Rather, there is a consensus and no serious disagreement about what Marx took to be his own major theoretical conclusions, as, for example, that the LTFRP is ‘the most important law of modern political economy’, which is in turn based on Marx’s conclusion that the average ‘price’- and ‘value’rates of profit are equal, which is not only the basis for the derivation of the remaining aggregate-equalities – of aggregate-prices and values and of aggregate-profits and surplusvalue – but also the result of the transformation of values into prices of production, which is in turn, Marx wrote, itself the ‘firm ground’ on which the LTFRP rests (see pp. 139–40).5 On the basis of Kliman’s textual holism, the principle of coherence, the principle of scientific exegesis (PSE) that Kliman derives from George Stigler (see pp. 62–9), and, Kliman would add, our ability, fallibly but plausibly, to know what Marx meant by inference from the textual evidence taken as a whole, we can determine, not just any premises from which these conclusions can be made to follow, but the premises from which Marx himself took them to follow (through the mutual or ‘back-and-forth’ interpretation of premises in the light of conclusions, and vice versa). Nothing is hidden here in Marx’s mind; everything is textually out in the open. The crucial question, then, is whether Marx’s conclusions consistently follow from Marx’s premises, which is what simultaneist interpretations deny but the TSSI affirms. If these are ‘only’ interpretations, however, we might appear to be travelling in the orbit, not of a hermeneutic, but of a vicious circle. Yet it turns out that, not only is there a broad consensus across interpretations concerning what Marx’s own major theoretical conclusions were, but there is also a broad consensus ranging across rival hermeneutic theories that not all interpretations are equally plausible, that some are better than others, and that it is simply not the case that ‘anything goes’ (see p. 59). Moreover, there is also a broad consensus across the rival interpretations of the quantitative dimension of Marx’s value-theory that there are differences between Marx’s own original presentation of it and the ‘corrected’, twentieth-century versions of it, and that on the latter versions, conclusions Marx noncontroversially deemed to be central to his own presentation must fall by the wayside in the ‘corrected’ accounts. And, finally, there is the broad, uncontested consensus across the various readings of Marx that the ‘corrections’ in question are necessary only if Marx’s own presentation unavoidably gives rise to the bedeviling inconsistencies. Since Kliman returns to this issue again and again through the course of RMC as a whole – whether the issue is simultaneous valuation, ‘Marx after Sraffa’, the alleged 5. Here Kliman quotes Marx 1991b, p. 104.


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redundancy of value, the falling rate of profit, the so-called ‘transformation-problem’, the Okishio-theorem, the ‘Fundamental Marxian Theorem’, or the conceptual entanglements of an ‘empirical defence’ of the law of value – I will present just one example of his way of proceeding, concerning the well-known allegation that ‘in chapter [nine] of Capital, volume III, Marx recognized that his account of the value-price transformation contained an error’ (p. 106). In the famous passage, Marx acknowledges that the ‘price of production’ as well as ‘the cost-price of a commodity, in which the price of production of other commodities is involved’ can ‘diverge from its value’, so that it is ‘necessary to bear in mind this modified significance of the cost price, and therefore to bear in mind too that if the cost price of a commodity is equated with the value of the means of production used up in producing it, it is always possible to go wrong’ (p. 106).6 Kliman writes, The reason why Marx’s critics construe this passage as an admission of error is that they fail to distinguish between the value of means of production and the sum of value advanced as capital. In the absence of that distinction, he seems to be admitting that there is a difference between the value of capital and the ‘price of capital’ – a difference that leads directly to two separate value and price systems. Yet once we distinguish between the value of inputs and the value of capital, it becomes apparent that the main function of the passage is to make that very distinction! Rather than admitting error, Marx is anticipating that readers might ‘go wrong’ if they overlook the distinction, as they now have for almost a full century. (p. 106.) On the one view, Marx makes perhaps his most damning mistake. On the other view, Marx is warding off an error that would arise if he were a ‘dual-system theorist’, but that does not arise in the TSSI. But, since, as we have seen, the very law that he holds to be ‘the most important’ hangs in the balance, and since that law must be abandoned if Marx’s putative ‘error’ must be ‘corrected’, it is reasonably clear where the real interpretive error lies (again, as a matter of the internal consistency of Marx’s theories, their logical validity as arguments but not necessarily their soundness or truth). The path through twentieth-century Marxian economics was first charted a century ago by Bortkiewicz in a series of four papers purporting a mathematical solution to the ‘transformation-problem’ (to which Kliman devotes his eighth and ninth chapters).7 Bortkiewicz himself, inspired by the general-equilibrium model of Walras, understood that ‘his simultaneist conception of price determination diverged markedly from Marx’s’ (p. 46). Yet, in the English-speaking world, Paul Sweezy played a leading rôle in transforming Bortkiewicz’s critique of Marx into a correction of Marx’s supposed mistake, thereby fixing what was supposed to be wrong with Marx’s original presentation. Kliman quotes Sweezy from The Theory of Capitalist Development (1942), who held that Bortkiewicz’s model is the ‘final vindication of the labor theory of value, the solid foundation of [Marx’s] theoretical structure’ (pp. 46, 160). In other words, Bortkiewicz’s critique of Marx somehow became a fixture of ‘Marxian economics’ itself, fixing and thereby vindicating him. This ‘corrected’, 6. Here, Kliman quotes Marx 1991a, pp. 264–5. 7. Bortkiewicz’s second and third papers appear in English in Bortkiewicz 1952; his fourth paper appears in English in Bortkiewicz 1949.

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twentieth-century version of Marx’s theory of value became the received and standard interpretation of it. This was the version Samuelson showed to be redundant in his 1971 paper, which ‘touched off a new and heated debate’ in value-theory thereafter (p. 48). Steedman’s Marx after Sraffa presupposed it in his ‘physically based analysis’ or ‘the physical quantities approach’ (p. 35). Kliman observes that, in a footnote, Steedman ‘wondered whether “Marx after Dmitriev” or “Marx after Bortkiewicz” might not be a proper title’, but he ‘opted for [Marx after Sraffa] on the ground that Sraffa’s model was a generalization of theirs’ (p. 41). What Kliman calls ‘the myth’ of Marx’s ‘inconsistency’ follows from the sole source of Bortkiewicz’s ‘correction’. By the early eighties, hardly anyone questioned the premise from which this conclusion followed, simultaneous valuation itself. Kliman writes, Wielding impressive and seemingly rigorous mathematical tools, the Sraffians made mincemeat out of attempts to defend Marx’s value theory. Unless the proponents of value analysis repudiated the simultaneist algebra that generated the physicalist conclusions, they could not prevail. They did not repudiate it and they did not prevail. Steedman’s (1977) Marx after Sraffa effectively settled the debate. By the start of the 1980s, the Sraffians’ victory was an established fact. (p. 51.) RMC seeks to rectify just this circumstance by going back to the source and repudiating the interpretative premise that has led inexorably across seven decades to ‘the Sraffians’ victory’. More recently than the era of Sweezy, Sraffa, Samuelson, and Steedman, some Marxian theorists such as Fred Moseley have advocated single-system rather than dual-system interpretations, but they have retained simultaneous valuation (for Kliman’s critique of Moseley, see pp. 69–71, 92–4, and 170–4). In these cases, Marx’s aggregate-equalities are preserved, yet Kliman demonstrates that: [The] equalities are preserved in a formal sense only. . . . The [single-system interpretations employing the methodological device of simultaneous valuation] preserve Marx’s aggregate equalities, yet they imply that Marx’s rate of profit is identical to the rate of profit of his physicalist critics! The voice is the voice of Marx, but the hands are the hands of Sraffa. (p. 164.) Accordingly, whether the interpretation of Marx’s value-theory is a dual or a single-system one, if it employs simultaneous valuation it will be ‘necessarily physicalist’ (p. 79). What Kliman means by the claim that simultaneous single-system interpretations (SSSIs) preserve Marx’s aggregate-equalities ‘in a formal sense only’ is illustrated by his critique of Moseley’s SSSI, to which he devotes most of the final section of Chapter Nine, ‘The Transformation Problem (2): If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Correct It’ (see pp. 170–4). Kliman writes, Moseley . . . contends that his interpretation yields Marx’s results rather than Sraffian results because it starts from different ‘givens’ (data). This is not the case. His interpretation can indeed sound quite Marx-like when he presents it, but words can be deceiving. With regard to its analytic content, Moseley’s


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interpretation differs in no essential respect from the other SSSIs, which . . . obtain the same rate of profit (and the same relative prices of production) as other simultaneist models. (pp. 170–1.) In the subsequent paragraphs, Kliman attempts to demonstrate this. Many of his demonstrations are like the ‘corn-models’ of classical (Ricardian) political economy and contemporary Sraffian economics, serving as expository devices. So here, for example, if input-prices equal output-prices, then 12 bushels of corn-output must be worth 20 per cent more than 10 bushels of corn invested, so that the value or price-rate of profit, like the ‘physical rate of profit’, must be 20 per cent. Accordingly, 11 bushels of corn-output must be worth 10 per cent more than 10 bushels of corn invested, so that the value or price-rate of profit, like the physical rate, must be 10 per cent. So, since Moseley is a simultaneist, if his rate of profit falls, it must be because physical output per unit of physical input falls. (The numbers in Kliman’s demonstration are different from the numbers here, but the logic is the same. In his demonstration in the text, Kliman also uses ‘[a] bit of algebra’; see pp. 172–4.) Kliman concludes, Thus Moseley’s rate of profit is determined by the same technological and real wage coefficients that determine all other simultaneist theorists’ rate of profit, and in exactly the same manner. That he expresses his rate of profit as the ratio of surplus-value to capital value advanced, instead of as a ratio of physical coefficients, makes no difference. It is all value-form and no value-substance. (p. 174.) In Chapter Five, Kliman asks his fundamental question: ‘How can [such] a seemingly innocuous tool of analysis [as the simultaneous valuation of outputs and inputs] wreak such havoc?’ His answer is: ‘Simultaneous valuation is absolutely incompatible with the principle upon which Marx’s value theory is founded, the principle that value is determined by labor-time’ (p. 78). Returning to the corn-model here, Kliman explains this ‘absolute incompatibility’ as follows: Corn . . . is produced using only corn of the same kind, planted in seed, plus the labor of farmworkers. Simultaneist theorists impose the constraint that a bushel of seed corn planted at the start of the year is worth exactly as much as a bushel of corn harvested at the end. If the value of a bushel of seed corn is $5, then the value of a bushel of corn output must also be $5, no matter how much or how little the farmworkers have had to labor in order to produce it. They may have had to toil a thousand hours, or only ten hours – or not at all! It makes no difference; the per-unit value of the corn output cannot rise above nor fall below the per-unit value of the seed corn. There is therefore no meaningful sense in which the corn’s value depends upon the amount of labor needed to produce it. (p. 78.) Not only is simultaneous valuation ‘absolutely incompatible’ with Marx’s basic premise, but ‘[s]imultaneist models have their own logic, a logic that leads inexorably to physicalist conclusions’ (p. 77).

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‘This too’, Kliman writes, ‘can be explained very simply’, as follows: The aggregate value (or price) of a peculiar type of item is its per-unit value (or price) times the physical quantity of the item. There are thus two things that cause the aggregate value to change, changes in the physical quantity of the item and changes in its per-unit value. But simultaneous valuation eliminates the change in the per-unit value that occurs during the production period. Hence, there is only one remaining cause of changes in the item’s aggregate value – changes in its physical quantity. (p. 79.) The reader will have noticed that the reasoning in the last two quotations is almost unbelievably simple, especially by comparison with the sophisticated (and, to the noneconomist, foreboding) mathematical formalism typically employed in economists’ reasoning. Yet, as we saw, Kliman advises his readers at the outset that all that is required to eliminate ‘all of the alleged inconsistencies in the quantitative dimension of Marx’s value theory’ are ‘two simple modifications’ (p. 2). And here, ‘simple’ is almost closer as a synonym to ‘easy’ than it is, for example, to ‘elegant’. This is the first half of Freeman’s point, quoted above, about Aristarchus, whose discovery was ‘entombed by fourteen centuries of obscurantism’. In his fifth chapter, Kliman claims to have proved that simultaneous valuation is incompatible with the determination of value by labour-time (DVLT). He also claims to have proved that simultaneous valuation necessarily entails ‘physicalism’. Still, it may be that dual-system and single-system interpretations of Marx’s value-theory that employ simultaneous valuation, and which consequently must be physicalist, are incompatible with the determination of value by labour-time (DVLT), but that Marx was nevertheless a simultaneist. Kliman faces this question directly in his sixth chapter, ‘Was Marx a Simultaneist?’ (pp. 89–111). The SSSIs and Sraffian readings require it, if not of Marx personally, then of the post-Bortkiewicz reconstructions of his text. Yet Bortkiewicz himself ‘set out to prove . . . that Marx’s solution [to the transformation] leads to a spurious breakdown of the reproduction process’ (p. 149). After reviewing his ‘proof ’, Kliman quotes his conclusion: ‘[w]e have thus proved that we would involve ourselves in internal contradiction by deducing prices from values in the way in which this is done by Marx’ (p. 151).8 Kliman also points out, ‘[t]o this day, Bortkiewicz’s . . . papers of 1906–1907 are the only works that have really tried to prove, not merely assert, that the non-simultaneous character of Marx’s solution leads to internal inconsistency’ (p. 149).9 In other words, Bortkiewicz himself saw clearly enough that Marx was not a simultaneist. It was Marx’s failure to adopt the ‘seemingly innocuous tool of analysis’ that led to his charge of internal inconsistency in the first place, and which led him to favour the ‘general equilibrium model’ innovated by ‘the school led by Léon Walras’ (which has since become ‘the foundation of 8. Here Kliman quotes Bortkiewicz 1952, p. 9. 9. Kliman considers Bortkiewicz’s ‘proof ’ in the context of the first of two chapters devoted to the ‘transformation problem’, Chapter 8, ‘The “Transformation Problem” (1): Marx’s Solution and Its Critics’, pp. 139–55. His ‘refutation’, which I will refrain from summarising here, appears on pp. 151–2. He writes, ‘If [Bortkiewicz’s] arguments were valid, I would regard them as having decisively demonstrated that Marx’s account of the value-price transformation, and thus his theories of value and economic crisis, are insupportable’ (p. 151).


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modern neoclassical economics’), by way of explicitly contrasting Marx’s ‘successivist’ (or temporalist) conception of price-determination with the (simultaneist) alternative of ‘mutual determination’ (see pp. 47, 95). So it is a somewhat curious fact that dual-system, Sraffian, and SSSI readings would nevertheless claim to discover textual evidence in Marx’s own text to the contrary. In his sixth chapter, Kliman considers several cases of such textual evidence in detail, but he begins the chapter strategically by asking: ‘What Remains to be Shown?’ (Section 6.2, pp. 90–1). He concedes that he ‘shall not be able to prove conclusively that this or that passage is absolutely incompatible with simultaneism’, that ‘many passages’ are ‘simply ambiguous’, and that he will ‘not be able to demonstrate [that simultaneist interpretations perform more poorly when one considers the contested passages as a whole and in relation to the rest of Capital ] to the satisfaction of simultaneist interpreters’ (p. 90). Yet the textual holism he defends in his chapter on interpretation, compared to the futility of selective quotation, is to his advantage. His argument to this point, in part, has been (1) that simultaneous valuation necessarily entails physicalism; (2) that Marx’s own (universally agreed) conclusions often contradict physicalism; and (3) that therefore, either Marx is inconsistent, or else Marx does not employ simultaneous valuation. Recalling that Kliman’s interpretative aim is to make ‘coherent sense of Capital as a whole’ (p. 90), and that his standard is plausibility within a fallibilist constraint, we should consider what we are asked to believe about Marx under the interpretation that he was a simultaneist. We would have to believe ‘that his deductive powers were so limited that he repeatedly – in case after case, and year after year – drew invalid conclusions from simultaneist premises’ (p. 90). We would also have to believe that Marx again and again deduced conclusions that were not only invalid, but diametrically opposed to those that actually follow from his simultaneist premises . . . for instance, that he maintained that the rate of profit falls under circumstances in which his own, simultaneist premises imply that it must rise; [that] surplus labor is the exclusive source of profit, although his simultaneist premises imply that it is not; [and that] value is determined by labor-time, although his simultaneist premises imply that labor-time is redundant. (pp. 90–1.) Or, in the case of Marx’s solution to the transformation, ‘[t]he idea that a serious theorist could commit such ridiculous errors and never notice [for example] that his sale and purchase prices differ, or that his values and prices are dimensionally inconsistent, is so implausible that it is sufficient reason to reject [modern simultaneist critiques of Marx’s solution]’ (p. 152). Kliman maintains throughout RMC that Marx’s theory, unlike Sraffa’s, is not a ‘static equilibrium’ theory (see especially pp. 91–5). However, it is possible that even if Marx was not a static-equilibrium theorist, he was a simultaneist for another reason: he valued inputs at their post-production replacement-cost, which implies that inputs and outputs have the same per-unit prices or values. This replacement-cost interpretation has been put forward by Fred Moseley, as well as by Richard Wolff, Antonio Callari, Bruce Roberts, and others. Marx explicitly rejected the idea that the ‘historical cost’ of an input – its cost when it was originally produced – is a determinant of its value, and he ‘also held that the sum of value

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transferred from inputs to outputs that were produced in the past can change retroactively’ (p. 97). Kliman recognises that for these reasons, ‘the replacement-cost interpretation initially appears plausible, if not compelling’ (p. 96). However, ‘[t]he controversy between the temporalist and replacement-cost interpretations concerns the valuation of newly produced commodities only’ (p. 97). Accordingly, the relevant question is: Does the sum of value transferred from an input to a newly produced commodity depend upon the input’s price when it enters production, as the TSSI holds, or upon the cost of replacing the input when the new commodity is completed, as the replacement-cost interpretation holds? Passages that refer to the revaluation of previously produced commodities shed no light on the answer. (p. 97.) But ‘the input’s price when it enters production’ is not the same as its ‘historical cost’, and the replacement-cost interpretation draws its plausibility by ‘[overlooking] the existence of a third alternative – the TSSI’s pre-production reproduction-cost interpretation’ (p. 96), which is ‘the cost (inclusive of profit) of producing an [input] at the moment when [it] became an input into the production of [an output]’ (p. 96, emphasis added). With this third alternative in hand, Kliman proceeds in the next two sections of the chapter to consider the textual evidence. At issue in so narrow and technical a controversy, again, is the textual evidence on behalf of the claim that Marx himself was a simultaneist, the central issue in dispute between the TSSI and the SSSIs in their status as interpretations of Marx’s original theory. If the pre-production reproduction-cost interpretation of the TSSI spares us from the conclusion that Marx was a simultaneist, then it spares us from the consequences of having to conclude that he was, the very consequences that would deny him the modicum of deductive skill it would take to register the internal inconsistencies between his own basic premises and the major conclusions he draws from them. Yet, among those major conclusions is the LTFRP, which is widely thought to have been conclusively refuted by the Okishio-theorem (1961). It is therefore incumbent on Kliman to enter the lists of ‘The Falling Rate of Profit Controversy’ (Chapter 7, pp. 113–38). The prevailing view is typified by this statement of Howard and King: ‘[t]o reassert . . . the relevance of the falling rate of profit, as analyzed by Marx, has done much damage to the intellectual credentials of Marxian political economy’ (p. 113).10 Abandon hope, therefore, all ye who enter here! It would be hard to overstate the prestige of the Okishio-theorem, which states that rising productivity cannot lead to a falling rate of profit, whereas Marx held precisely the opposite, ‘that the rate of profit can fall because productivity rises’ (p. 45). The Okishio-theorem does not hold that the rate of profit will never fall under any circumstances, any more than Marx held that the rate of profit must fall under any circumstances. Neither the theorem nor the LTFRP are predictions. They are not inductions. They are not generalisations based on empirical evidence. In evaluating either one, therefore, it is crucial to disentangle the logical and conceptual from the empirical issues. In particular, the Okishio-theorem purports to show why the LTFRP cannot possibly be true and must be false.11 Kliman writes, 10. Here, Kliman quotes Howard and King 1992, p. xii. 11. Kliman concludes this chapter, ‘even if we suppose, for the sake of argument, that the Okishio theorem was not originally meant to be a theorem on Marx’s rate of profit, that is


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[The] fact that the theorem denies that Marx’s theory can ever, even in a single instance, provide a correct explanation for why the rate of profit fell, implies that the controversy cannot be settled by any empirical means whatsoever. It cannot be settled even by sophisticated econometric studies that do try to explain why the rate of profit fell. If the Okishio theorem is true, then – as Roemer, a prominent advocate of the theorem, correctly stressed – no facts or data analysis can vindicate the LTFRP. (p. 115.) All of the issues touched upon in this review are caught up in the conceptual aspects of the falling-rate-of-profit controversy. As we have seen, Marx’s transformation of values into prices of production, his aggregate-equalities, his theory of exploitation, the DVLT, and indeed his allegedly ‘redundant’ theory of value as a whole, coalesce in this juncture, as we might have expected they would in the light of the conceptual unity and coherence of Capital as a whole. If the LTFRP must be false, then the game is over. Just as the Okishio-theorem does not hold that the rate of profit will never fall under any circumstances, ‘Marx’s LTFRP does not predict that the rate of profit exhibits a long-term falling trend; much less does it predict the eventual collapse of capitalism. It predicts recurrent economic crises, by means of which the tendency of the rate of profit to fall is constantly overcome’ (p. 115). As far as matters of fact are concerned, ‘[t]hat physical output rises in relation to physical input as a result of increasing productivity is undeniable, as is the fact that this tends to boost profitability’ (p. 114). Likewise, however, ‘prices do tend to fall as a result of increasing productivity’ (p. 127). As a factual matter, then, it may seem equally obvious, especially to a non-economist, ‘that labor-saving technological progress can cause the rate of profit to fall’ (p. 127). But these facts (obvious or not) only exacerbate the question of which ‘rate of profit’ (the nominal rate, the real rate, the pricerate, the value-rate, the ‘average’ rate, the ‘static equilibrium’ rate, the long-run rate, or the material or the physical rate) is being measured – or mis-measured, as the case may be – by a particular theory. The Okishio-theorem is physicalist and belongs to the landscape of physicalism. We will not be surprised, then, to find Kliman arguing that simultaneist critiques of the Okishio-theorem are bound to fail (see pp. 118–19), since, in the sense in which the Okishio-theorem may be correct, ‘[rising] productivity can never cause the physical rate of profit to fall’ (p. 118), and Kliman argues that the simultaneous valuation of inputs and outputs of production necessarily entails physicalism as a consequence. Yet, Kliman does not concede that there is any sense in which the Okishio-theorem is correct: early in the chapter (pp. 116–18), he argues that it is ‘logically invalid’. However, since logically invalid arguments may still draw true conclusions, what the chapter as a whole seeks to establish is this: ‘The reason why the Okishio theorem appears to prove that rising productivity cannot lead to a falling rate of profit is that it overlooks the price effect, or, more precisely, spirits it away by valuing inputs and outputs simultaneously’ (p. 114). Later in the chapter, when he confronts ‘the simultaneist value/price rate of profit’ directly and argues that ‘simultaneous valuation produces an incorrect measure of profitability, one that systematically undervalues the

certainly what it is now, for that is how it is now understood’ (p. 136). This may be a surprising statement for him to make, granted his theory of interpretation in Chapter Four.

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capital advanced when values are falling’ (p. 122), he refers to this ‘spiriting-away’ as a ‘miracle’ (p. 123). On the other hand, Kliman asks, ‘What happens when we jettison the simultaneist theoretical construction and bring the disinflationary or deflationary impact of rising productivity – in other words, the determination of value by labor-time – back into the picture?’ (p. 115). His answer is that ‘a decline in the rate of inflation causes the actual rate of profit to fall, necessarily and systematically, in relationship to the Okishio theorem’s physicalist rate’ (p. 115), the conclusion he seeks to demonstrate in the fourth section of the chapter (pp. 127–32). ‘[The] actual rate of profit mirrors the physical rate only if increases in productivity do not tend to lower values or prices’ (p. 126). But when simultaneous valuation causes some of the value of invested capital to disappear mysteriously between periods when prices or values are tending to fall, the rate of profit is artificially boosted. The artifice may not be readily apparent when the nominal price-rate of profit is rising, and it might be tempting to assume ‘that the nominal price rate of profit must rise, not fall, when prices are continually rising’ (p. 129), contrary to the LTFRP. However, Kliman argues that ‘what affects the rate of profit is . . . not inflation per se, but changes in the rate of inflation. . . . What matters is not whether prices are rising or falling – that is, whether the rate of inflation is positive or negative – but whether the rate of inflation is rising or falling’ (p. 129). As Kliman explains: [Productivity] growth need not lead to deflation, falling prices, in order to cause the nominal rate of profit to fall. It needs to lead to disinflation, a falling rate of inflation. If this occurs, then the nominal rate of profit, just like the real value rate, must fall in relationship to the physical rate of profit, regardless of whether prices are rising or falling. Unless the physical rate rises by an amount sufficient to offset this effect, both the nominal and the real value rate of profit will decline in absolute terms as well. (p. 129.) In other words, once temporal valuation and DVLT are ‘brought back into the picture’, the rate of profit has a tendency to fall as long as the rate of inflation tends to fall as a result of quicker productivity-growth, even if the absolute level of prices does not fall. In fact, ‘we have experienced an almost continual rise in prices for many decades, despite the fact that increasing productivity has caused commodities’ values (measured in labortime or a constant [monetary expression of labor-time]) to decline’ (p. 129). Physical output rises in relation to physical input as a result of increasing productivity, hence the seduction of the Okishio-theorem. But, in ‘consistent physicalist valuation’ (see pp. 125–7), ‘physical output has replaced labor-time as the determinant of value’ (p. 126). In that case, however, it is hard to see how the disparity between both the nominal and the real value-rate of profit, on the one hand, and the physical rate on the other hand (the failure of the former to mirror the latter) can be explained. With disinflation, both the nominal and the real value-rate of profit can fall, even if the absolute level of prices is not falling, and despite any physical increases in output relative to input. Or, in other words, ‘when value is determined by labor-time and capital value is not spirited away by means of simultaneous valuation, it follows naturally, indeed inescapably, that labor-saving technological progress can cause the rate of profit to fall’ (p. 127). But this is what the Okishio-theorem – as a matter of its logical status as a theorem – had held to be impossible.


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Meanwhile, commentators as recently as Hahnel have been ‘claiming that the LTFRP deserves to be “relegated to the dust bin of history” . . .’ (p. 136).12 Why has this opinion been so pervasive? Kliman concludes the chapter with what he thinks is ‘a far more plausible explanation’: Okishio and others set out to prove a theorem on Marx’s actual LTFRP. They noted that he had assumed the reestablishment of an equilibrium rate of profit after a technological innovation occurs. They recognized that the tendency of prices to adjust to their equilibrium levels is what gives rise to the tendency of rates of profit to equilibrate as well. They then concluded, reasonably but wrongly, that if an equilibrium rate of profit is to be re-established after a technological change, an ‘equilibrium’ price level (the equality of input and output prices) must also be achieved. This error then went mostly undetected and uncorrected – and later, the corrections were ignored – probably because of factors such as ignorance, physicalist intuitions, political opposition to the LTFRP, the quest for academic respectability, etc. And all along, everyone has understood that ‘the equilibrium rate of profit cannot fall’ refers to Marx’s equilibrium rate of profit [that is, the average as opposed to the static-equilibrium rate]. (p. 136.) If these are fighting words, at least they are no more difficult to read than the words that would relegate ‘the most important law of modern political economy’ to the ‘dust bin of history’. Perhaps concerning ‘political opposition to the LTFRP’, it is worthwhile taking note of Kliman’s view that the LTFRP has ‘revolutionary implications – the abolition of economic crises requires the abolition of value production’ (p. 176). Although it is not his purpose in RMC to develop the revolutionary implications of Marx’s Marxism, we can speculate whether modern Marxist economics, in its technical and academic character, is fully open to them. On the related topic of Marx’s theory of capitalist crises, it is also widely believed that Marx thought their recurrence would lead inevitably and automatically to the collapse of capitalism. In that case, the need to ‘make revolution’ is substantially diminished. However, as Kliman remarks, ‘Recurrent economic crises, not a declining rate of profit over the long term, are what Marx’s theory actually predicts’ (p. 31). Economic crises are a means of capitalist regeneration, not of its collapse: they overcome the tendency of the LTFRP. Kliman quotes Marx against Adam Smith from ‘The 1861–63 Manuscript’: ‘Adam Smith explains the fall in the rate of profit [as stemming] from a superabundance of capital . . . he is speaking of a permanent effect and this is wrong. As against this, the transitory superabundance of capital, overproduction and crises are something different. Permanent crises do not exist’ (p. 31).13 On the other hand, Ernest Mandel, ‘a prominent advocate of the view that Marx predicted the collapse of capitalism’ (p. 31), appeals to the passage in Volume One of Capital in which, concerning ‘the historical tendency of capitalist accumulation’, Marx famously writes, ‘The expropriators are expropriated’.14 Kliman writes that ‘this passage says nothing about the system’s collapse. Marx projects that the system’s 12. Here Kliman quotes Hahnel 2005, p. 58. 13. Here, Kliman quotes Marx 1991b, p. 128. 14. Marx 1990, see pp. 928–30.

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tendencies will result in social revolution . . . and not because of any collapse, but because of the centralization of capital and growing revolt of the working class’ (p. 31). Further pursuit of this topic, either by Kliman or by me, would go well beyond the narrow warrant and modest aim of RMC. But the ‘corrected’ version of Marx’s theory, the staple fare of Marxian economics, appears to have one more point in its favour on the premise that Marx’s original theory is internally inconsistent. If the crucial point of Marxism in any of its varieties is the notion of exploitation, it may appear that modern Marxist economics is still ‘Marxist’ in the sense that really matters, because it retains what Michio Morishima called ‘The Fundamental Marxian Theorem’ (FMT; see p. 175). This is the subject of Kliman’s tenth chapter. He writes, The FMT is the crown jewel of simultaneist Marxian and Sraffian economics, for it supposedly demonstrates that the failure to ‘solve the transformation problem’ in a technical sense is no big deal, because Marx’s principal conclusion – the exploitation of workers is the sole source of profit – remains intact. Consequently, proponents of the FMT claim, we can scrap his incoherent and metaphysical theory without doing damage to the essential core of his critique of capitalism. (p. 15.) Yet, in the chapter he devotes to the FMT (pp. 175–91), Kliman demonstrates that it fails, and that the reason it fails is that it is based on simultaneous valuation: ‘[s]imultaneist definitions imply that total profit could be positive even though no surplus labor is extracted from workers, and total profit could be negative even though surplus labor is extracted’ (pp. 175–6). If the FMT fails, however, then modern Marxist economics based on simultaneous valuation cannot even salvage the notion of exploitation in Marx’s sense from his critique of capitalism. If the results of RMC are correct, then the unavoidable conclusion is that twentiethcentury simultaneist-Marxist economics is ‘Marxist’ in name only, and in fact an economic theory quite distinct from the original Marxism of Marx, better named ‘Bortkiewiczism’ (or for that matter, ‘Dmitrievism’, or ‘Sweezyism’). It may already go by the name of ‘Sraffianism’. Since the opposing views Kliman goes up against in order to refute ‘the myth of inconsistency’ are so well established and have a high pedigree, it remains to be seen whether his counterarguments will gain a purchase on contemporary interpretations. Readers will judge for themselves, but we might hope that RMC wins the readership it deserves and renews debate on the legacy of Marxian value-theory. It is unfortunate that the weakest link in Kliman’s argument is the one upon which he places his greatest emphasis. His relentless aim is the refutation of a ‘myth’ the seductive hold of which uniquely derives from the interpretative horizon of simultaneous valuation. His refutation succeeds on his own terms and demonstratively only if simultaneist readings of Marx can be categorically ruled out as an alternative interpretation. Therefore, he thinks that it is a necessary condition of his own success to know what Marx’s intentions were. His principal target is ‘the voice of Marx but the hands of Sraffa’. In other words, he writes that his ‘book deals exclusively with [the] question’: ‘Which interpretation best establishes what Marx would, under ideal conditions, reply to questions about the terms of his analytical arguments which are phrased in terms which he could understand right off the bat?’ (p. 58). His answer, he writes, is ‘simple’: ‘the claim that Marx’s arguments are internally inconsistent


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is a claim that it is impossible to deduce his conclusions from his premises when the premises and conclusions are construed as he intended them to be construed. It is therefore simply untenable to declare that Marx is internally inconsistent while simultaneously declaring that what he really meant is not the issue’ (p. 58; Kliman’s emphasis). On the contrary, he asserts that when Marx’s arguments are construed as Marx intended them, they are deductively valid (that is, the appearance of internal inconsistency demonstrably vanishes). But a deductively valid argument is one in which the conclusion necessarily follows from the premises. Hence, Kliman’s strategy is to turn the tables: what is really impossible is the derivation of Marx’s own theoretical conclusions from simultaneist premises. The hermeneutic theory that informs Kliman’s construction of the exclusive aim of his book is drawn from E.D. Hirsch’s Validity in Interpretation (1967): he adopts Hirsch’s criterion of authorial intent for the interpretation of textual meaning (see pp. 58, 59). ‘Accordingly’, he writes, ‘I assess the interpretations considered herein exclusively in terms of their success as “exegetical interpretations,” their ability to establish the “meaning” (in Hirsch’s sense) of some of Marx’s inscriptions’ (p. 58). In turn, Hirsch’s theory of interpretation is situated within the tradition of romantic hermeneutics founded by Friedrich Schleiermacher, who offered one account of the ‘hermeneutic circle’ (see pp. 60, 65). The principal rival account of the hermeneutic circle derives from the tradition of Schleiermacher’s Berlin-antagonist Hegel, as it was taken up and developed by Hans-Georg Gadamer’s foundational work of philosophical hermeneutics, Truth and Method (1960), which includes an understated but withering critique of romantic interpretation.15 Although Hirsch criticises Gadamer in Validity in Interpretation, it cannot be said that his theory has subsequently fared well. By the early eighties, the process of ad hoc revision was well underway.16 But neither Gadamer nor Paul Ricoeur appear in Kliman’s text, and as a matter of philosophical hermeneutics, their omission is glaring.17 Although a serious development of the hermeneutic issues would require another essay, it is to the point that such namedropping is not idle to our estimate of Kliman’s success. Three brief criticisms will have to suffice. First, at issue is not whether we can plausibly know an author’s intention or whether it is ever a factor in interpretative adequacy, but how we would know it in the first place. In the case at hand (the best reading of Marx), it belongs to the nature of the case that we must draw an inference from evidentiary artefacts, principal among them, texts. Also in the nature of the case, the form of inference will be interpretive rather than deductive (in the strict formal-logical sense). Kliman accuses his opponents of begging the question (see p. 61), but it is not clear that he avoids it himself. Ex hypothesi, he knows the meaning of Marx’s text because he knows Marx’s intention; but he derives his knowledge of Marx’s intention from the meaning he assigns to the text as interpreted (although it is not clear that the biographical Marx would have stopped to call his theory the ‘temporal, singlesystem interpretation’; and the ‘ideal conditions’ constraining the question might prove to be nothing more than the interpreter’s own literary experiment). This objection might

15. See Gadamer 1989, pp. 164–9 for the explicit contrast of Schleiermacher with Hegel; and see pp. 173–218 on ‘the questionableness of romantic hermeneutics’. 16. See Hirsch 1984; and for a critical discussion, see Leddy 1986. 17. See Ricoeur 1981 for a series of essays that draw us concisely into the relevant issues.

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sound frivolous, except for Kliman’s self-imposed burden of an ‘impossibility’-claim. We are supposed to know that a rival interpretation is ‘mythic’ (in the pejorative sense in which it is subject to refutation) because we have made our best educated guess as to what Marx might have intended if he had read and responded to Bortkiewicz, Sweezy, Sraffa, Samuelson, and Steedman. Second, the issue for the philosophy of science is whether hermeneutic or textual considerations apply to all scientific theories, with respect to which it would then be necessary, on the basis of the theory of romantic hermeneutics, to bear in mind authorial intent for all questions of validity and soundness, notwithstanding the fact, for example, that Copernicus’s intentions were theological in nature, while the experimental confirmation of the Copernican hypothesis, strictly speaking, had nothing directly to do with theology (insofar as the science of planetary astronomy is concerned). Certainly, knowing an author’s intention can enter into the clarification of the meaning of a text, but where it is a question of the logical validity of a conceptual scheme, framework, paradigm, etc. shaping empirical investigation, validity is not refereed by the author’s intent. So it is not clear that appealing to the author’s intention does any real explanatory work, even for Kliman. For example, as an interpretative matter, I find his arguments exegetically compelling, not because he has construed Marx’s premises and conclusions as Marx intended, but because he adopts the approach of textual holism and the ‘principle of scientific exegesis’ (PSE). But Kliman’s quotation from Stigler’s formulation of the PSE makes no mention of authorial intent (see p. 63). Moreover, when he quotes Stigler again, it is precisely in order to affirm that ‘the interpretation of a man’s position . . . is a problem of inference, not to be solved by the choice of quotations’ (p. 64). By Kliman’s own account, the relevant inferences are established, not by knowing Marx’s mind, but by the back-and-forth movement and mutual adjustment of premises and conclusions. What really makes one interpretation a better reading than another is established by the principle of charitable interpretation (Davidson) or by what Ricoeur called the ‘hermeneutics of respect’.18 But it should not be controversial to say that a reading that eliminates logical problems is better than a strawperson reading, and no privileged appeal to the author’s intention needs to enter into it. For example, surely Marx intends the determination of value by labour-time, but knowing that this is Marx’s intention, the logical or theoretical validity of the DVLT is not thereby confirmed. Similarly, the best way to read the passage from the ninth chapter of Volume Three of Capital on the transformation, whether as a caution or as a mistake, seems to me to be Kliman’s way, but this is not because I know Marx’s intentions, but because Kliman’s way of construing the passage solves a logical or a conceptual problem in the quantitative dimension of value-theory that ripples through Marx’s corpus as a whole. With respect to the validity, in the logical sense, of the DVLT or the LTFRP, it is hard to see what rôle is played exactly by knowing or guessing Marx’s intent. To make matters worse, it may be worth noting that Kliman’s paraphrase of the question with which his book ‘deals exclusively’ is taken from Richard Rorty (see p. 57), but readers of Rorty will recognise that, insofar as conferring a privilege on the author’s intent as the

18. See Ricoeur 1970.


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determinant of meaning is concerned, his own neopragmatic or postmodern view of textual interpretation is fundamentally incompatible with Hirsch’s. Yet Hirsch, Rorty, and Nicholas Rescher, more or less decontextualised, all appear together in the same paragraph, which adds to the eclectic charm of Kliman’s fourth chapter as a whole. Finally, even if Kliman’s insistence on Marx’s intentions is not question-begging, and even if it does actual exegetical work, it is not clear that it is not redundant. What Bertell Ollman describes on the back cover of the book as Kliman’s ‘buzz saw clearing away the underbrush of misplaced criticisms’ requires no special communion in an inner sanctum in order to evaluate. As to Kliman’s own intention (which we know because he tells us), he has snatched the possible from the jaws of impossibility in a truly Promethean way, but whether he has succeeded will not be judged on the grounds of what he intended to do, but as always, only on the grounds of the cogency of his reasoning. And, then, we will have entered a semantic universe in which the formal requirements of deductive validity will have their place, but without ever satisfying the equally ‘misplaced’ expectation of a univocal determinant or rigid designator of ‘the meaning’ of a text, to the logical exclusion of all other possibilities. Reviewed by Thomas Jeannot Gonzaga University, Spokane, WA., USA [email protected]

References Bortkiewicz, Ladislaus von, 1952 [1906–7], ‘Value and Price in the Marxian System’, International Economic Papers, 2: 5–60, available at: . —— 1949 [1907], ‘On the Correction of Marx’s Fundamental Theoretical Construction in the Third Volume of Capital ’, in Karl Marx and the Close of His System, edited by Paul Sweezy, New York: Augustus M. Kelly. Freeman, Alan 2004, ‘The Case for Simplicity: A Paradigm for the Political Economy of the 21st Century’, in Freeman, Kliman and Wells (eds.) 2004. Freeman, Alan, Andrew Kliman and Julian Wells (eds.) 2004, The New Value Controversy and the Foundations of Economics, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing. Gadamer, Hans-Georg 1989 [1960], Truth and Method, Second Revised Edition, New York: Crossroad. Hahnel, Robin 2005, Economic Justice and Democracy: From Competition to Cooperation, London: Routledge. Hirsch, E.D. 1984, ‘Meaning and Significance Reinterpreted’, Critical Inquiry, 11, 2: 202–25. Howard, Michael C. and John E. King 1992, A History of Marxian Economics: Volume II, 1929– 1990, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Kliman, Andrew 2007, Reclaiming Marx’s ‘Capital’: A Refutation of the Myth of Inconsistency, Lanham: Lexington Books. Laibman, David 2004, ‘Rhetoric and Substance in Value Theory: An Appraisal of the New Orthodox Marxism’, in Freeman, Kliman and Wells (eds.) 2004. Leddy, Michael 1986, ‘“Validity” and Reinterpretation’, Critical Inquiry, 12, 3: 616–26. Marx, Karl 1973 [1939/53], Grundrisse, edited and translated by Martin Nicolaus, Harmondsworth: Penguin.

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—— 1990 [1867], Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1, translated by Ben Fowkes, Harmondsworth: Penguin. —— 1991a [1894], Capital, Volume 3, translated by David Fernbach, Harmondsworth: Penguin. —— 1991b [1861–63], ‘The 1861–63 Economic Manuscript’, in Marx/Engels Collected Works, Volume 33, New York: International Publishers. Rescher, Nicholas 2001, Philosophical Reasoning: A Study in the Methodology of Philosophising, Oxford: Blackwell. Ricoeur, Paul 1970 [1965], Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation, New Haven: Yale University Press. —— 1981, Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


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Reclaiming Marx’s ‘Capital’: A Refutation of the Myth of Inconsistency, Andrew Kliman, Lanham: Lexington Books, 2007 Abstract This book seeks to defend Marx’s theory in Capital against the long-standing criticism of logical inconsistency, which has provided the main justification for the rejection of Marx’s theory over the last century. This book presents a new interpretation of Marx’s theory that has emerged over the last several decades called the ‘temporal single-system’ interpretation (commonly abbreviated as TSSI). Kliman argues that the TSSI eliminates all of the alleged logical inconsistencies in Marx’s theory, and therefore logical inconsistency is not a valid reason to reject Marx’s theory. I agree in general with much of this book, but I disagree on some points, especially the use of one-commodity models and its interpretation of the transformation-problem. Keywords Marx, temporal determination, single system

This book seeks to defend Marx’s theory in Capital against the long-standing criticism of logical inconsistency, which has provided the main justification for the rejection of Marx’s theory over the last century. This book presents a new interpretation of Marx’s theory that has emerged over the last several decades called the ‘temporal single-system’ interpretation (commonly abbreviated as TSSI).1 The significance of this name will be explained in the following paragraphs. Kliman argues that the TSSI eliminates all of the alleged logical inconsistencies in Marx’s theory, and therefore logical inconsistency is not a valid reason to reject Marx’s theory. This book is written in an accessible style for non-specialist readers, and I will come back to this point at the end. Kliman argues that Marx’s theory has been misinterpreted in two main ways: (1) It is assumed that Marx’s theory is based on the logical method of simultaneous determination, according to which input-prices and output-prices are determined simultaneously (and also that the rate of profit is determined simultaneously with input- and output-prices), and all these prices (and the rate of profit) are derived from the physical quantities of input-output coefficients and the real wage. In other words, it is assumed that Marx’s logical method is the same as Sraffa’s logical method (or linear production-theory in general). Kliman argues instead that Marx’s theory is based on the logical method of temporal determination, according to which input-prices and the rate of profit are determined prior to output-prices and are taken as given in the determination of output-prices. (2) It is assumed that values and prices of production are separated into two distinct systems, which are determined independently of each other. Kliman argues instead that values and prices of production are interrelated in an all-inclusive single system. Not only do prices of production depend on value and surplus-value, but value and surplus-value also depend in part on prices of production for two reasons: because the constant-capital component (or the valuetransferred component) of the value of commodities is equal to the prices of production of the means of production, and the variable-capital component (which is subtracted from the

1. Other proponents of the TSSI, to varying degrees – it is not a monolithic group – include Alan Freeman, Guglielmo Carchedi and Alejandro Ramos. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011

DOI: 10.1163/156920610X550668

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new value produced to determine surplus-value) is equal to the actual money-wage, which is equal to the prices of production of the means of subsistence. Kliman argues further that, if these two misinterpretations are corrected, then Marx’s theory is no longer logically inconsistent, but is, instead, logically coherent. Therefore, Marx’s theory cannot be legitimately rejected on the grounds of logical inconsistency. I agree in general with both of these key-points, and I think these points are important contributions to Marxian scholarship. However, I also disagree with Kliman and the TSSI on some points, which will be discussed below. The book consists of twelve chapters. The first three chapters provide a brief introduction to Marx’s theory, to the debate over the logical inconsistency of Marx’s theory, and to ‘contending interpretations’ of Marx’s theory. The main contending interpretations that are discussed are simultaneous determination versus temporal determination and dual system versus single system. Chapter 4 discusses the criterion that should be used to assess the relative accuracy of contending interpretations of Marx’s theory (the criterion of coherence, or ‘making sense of the whole’). Chapters 5 and 6 focus on the issue of simultaneous determination, and argue that simultaneous determination is incompatible with Marx’s theory. Chapters 7, 8, and 9 discuss the two main charges of logical inconsistency against Marx’s theory: the falling rate of profit (Chapter 7) and the transformation-problem (Chapters 8 and 9). Chapter 10 is concerned with the ‘fundamental Marxian theorem’, and argues that this theorem cannot be proved on the basis of simultaneous determination, but only on the basis of temporal determination. Chapter 11 is a critical evaluation of empirical tests of the labour-theory of value as presented by Shaikh, Ochoa, and Cockshott and Cottrell. Chapter 12 presents a summary of the main conclusions of the book.

The Okishio-theorem The Okishio-theorem is based on linear production-theory and states that technological change which reduces the cost for an individual capitalist (at the prevailing equilibriumprices) can never reduce the rate of profit for the economy as a whole (at the new equilibrium-prices). Okishio claimed that his theorem refuted Marx’s theory of the falling rate of profit, according to which technological change could cause the rate of profit to fall. Kliman argues (in Chapter 7) that the Okishio-theorem does not to refute Marx’s theory, because the Okishio-theorem is about a different rate of profit from that considered in Marx’s theory. The Okishio-theorem is about the static equilibrium-rate of profit, with input-prices equal to output-prices, and the rate of profit determined simultaneously with input- and output-prices, whilst Marx’s theory is about the average rate of profit, with inputprices not necessarily equal to output-prices, and input-prices and the rate of profit determined prior to output-prices. Kliman presents a one-sector numerical example (a ‘corn-model’) which shows that technological change which reduces costs causes the ‘simultaneous’ static equilibrium-rate of profit to rise, but causes the ‘temporal’ average rate of profit to fall. Kliman concludes that the Okishio-theorem does not therefore refute Marx’s theory. I have doubts and misgivings about Kliman’s one-commodity examples (see below), but I agree with Kliman that the Okishio-theorem does not refute Marx’s theory, because the Okishio-theorem is about a different rate of profit from Marx’s theory (although my own


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interpretation of Marx’s rate of profit is somewhat different from Kliman’s). I think that this argument is an important contribution of Kliman’s work (and of the TSSI in general). Almost the entire debate over Marx’s theory of the falling rate of profit and the Okishiotheorem has assumed that the Okishio-theorem applies to Marx’s theory. However, if this basic assumption is mistaken, as Kliman argues, and as I agree, then the results of the Okishio-theorem do not necessarily apply to Marx’s theory, and we need to go back to square one and examine Marx’s theory more thoroughly, as well as the differences between Marx’s theory and the Okishio-theorem. Kliman’s analysis is a useful start, but much more needs to be done along these lines. Kliman also argues that the Okishio-theorem even fails in terms of its own premises (p. 118) (he has made this argument more forcefully in previous papers). This argument is that the Okishio-theorem assumes only that the new rate of profit that is established after technological change will be equal for all sectors, and does not explicitly assume that the new rate of profit will be a static equilibrium-rate of profit with input-prices equal to output-prices. Instead, the equality of input and output-prices is a conclusion of the Okishio-theorem, not a premise. This argument seems to contradict Kliman’s first argument (discussed in the previous paragraphs) that the equality of input- and outputprices is a premise of the Okishio-theorem, but not a premise of Marx’s theory. In any case, the equality of input- and output-prices is clearly a premise of the Okishio-theorem, even if not explicitly stated. The theoretical framework of the Okishio-theorem is linear production-theory, which assumes the simultaneous determination of input-prices and output-prices and the rate of profit – by the system of equations: p = (pA + pbL)(1 + r) – which clearly assumes that the simultaneously-determined input-prices (on the right-hand side of the equation) and output-prices (on the left-hand side) will be equal. Therefore, Kliman’s second argument, that the Okishio-theorem fails on its own premises, itself fails because of a mischaracterisation of the premises of the Okishio-theorem. Even if this assumption is not explicitly stated, it is clearly embedded in the theoretical framework of the Okishio-theorem. Perhaps Okishio regarded this premise so obvious as to not need be explicitly stated. It cannot be otherwise in linear production-theory, in which inputprices and output-prices are determined simultaneously. What is false is not the theorem itself, but Okishio’s claim that his theorem refutes Marx’s theory of the falling rate of profit.

Temporal determination and the falling rate of profit In the debate over simultaneous versus temporal determination, the main controversial issue has to do with the valuation of constant capital when the price of the means of production changes, and the effect of this valuation on the trend in the rate of profit. According to simultaneous valuation, constant capital would be revalued immediately to the new price of the means of production; that is, constant capital would be valued at ‘current replacement-costs’. According to one version of temporal determination, constant capital would not be revalued at all, but would remain equal to the original price of the means of production at the time the means of production were purchased; that is, constant capital would be valued at ‘historical costs’. Kliman (and the TSSI) has added a third possible interpretation, a different kind of temporal determination: constant capital is valued at the

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time the means of production enter production, but not thereafter; he calls this the ‘preproduction reproduction-costs’ valuation of constant capital. Kliman argues it is clear from the textual evidence that Marx rejected historical costvaluation, but that does not mean that he assumed current replacement-cost valuation; there is the TSSI middle-ground interpretation (pre-production cost-valuation), which Kliman argues Marx had assumed (pp. 95–9). According to this interpretation, if there is a change in the price of the means of production between the time the means of production are purchased and the time these means of production enter the production-process, then the constant capital will be revalued accordingly; but there is no revaluation if the price of the means of production changes after the means of production enter production (until the next period of production). Most of the controversy over this issue has been concerned with the valuation of the flow of constant capital, which is a component of the value of commodities: value = constant capital + new-value. The issue is whether this constant-capital component of the value of commodities is determined by historical costs, current replacement-costs, or pre-production reproduction-costs. However, I think this emphasis is misplaced, and that this particular issue is actually of very little significance, because the magnitude of the flow of constant capital has no influence on the amount of surplus-value produced in a given period. The reason is that the flow of constant capital is also a component of the cost of commodities, and the key-point is that the constant-capital component of the value of commodities is the same magnitude as the constant-capital component of the cost of commodities. Whatever the magnitude of the constant-capital cost is, that is the magnitude that becomes the ‘transferred-value’ component of the value of commodities. Therefore, in the determination of surplus-value, these identical magnitudes of constant capital cancel out, and have no influence whatsoever on the magnitude of surplus-value: S=P−K = (C + N) − (C + V ) =N−V ≠ f (C) Therefore, even if the simultaneous and temporal interpretations assume very different magnitudes of the flow of constant capital, these different magnitudes have no effect on the magnitude of surplus-value, because each of these two interpretations will have the same magnitude of constant capital as components of both value and cost, which will cancel out in the determination of surplus-value (for example, substitute 2C for C in the above equation). Kliman’s examples in Chapter 7 assume that variable capital = 0, and thus that surplus-value = new value. The magnitudes of surplus-value are the same for both the simultaneous interpretation in Table 7.2 and the temporal interpretation in Table 4. Even though the magnitudes of constant capital are different in these two tables, the magnitudes of surplus-value are exactly the same. Therefore, the different interpretations of the flow of constant capital have no effect on the magnitude of surplus-value, the numerator of the rate of profit. The only way the rate of profit could be affected by different interpretations of constant capital is through the stock of constant capital in the denominator of the rate of profit. The stock of constant capital consists of both fixed capital (which lasts for more than one period, and, in many cases, lasts for many periods) and circulating capital (which is


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entirely consumed in one period). Over time, as a result of ongoing mechanisation, most of the stock of constant capital is fixed capital invested in machinery and equipment, buildings, etc. Unfortunately, there is very little discussion in this book (or in Kliman’s previous articles) about the valuation of fixed capital and its effect on trends in the rate of profit. All the numerical examples in the book assume only circulating constant capital. This is sufficient for a critique of the Okishio-theorem, since the Okishio-theorem itself assumes only circulating capital, but it is not sufficient for a proof of the falling rate of profit in the more general case including fixed capital. Furthermore, it is not entirely clear how Kliman interprets the valuation of fixed constant capital if there is a change in the price of the means of production. In a previous article,2 Kliman assumed that fixed constant capital is valued at historical cost; that is, it was assumed that there is no cheapening of fixed capital over its entire lifetime, which obviously would contribute to a falling rate of profit.3 However, in this book, as mentioned above, Kliman agrees that Marx rejected historical cost-valuation, and he seems to assume that, in the event of a change in the price of the means of production, fixed constant capital would be revalued in the next period (p. 123). But it is not clear from this very brief discussion how this revaluation would affect the trend in the rate of profit. In future work, Kliman should clarify how he would incorporate depreciating fixed capital into his TSS-interpretation of the rate of profit. Furthermore, not only are Kliman’s ‘proofs’ and numerical examples in terms of the unrealistic case of circulating capital only, they are also in terms of a one-commodity model, in which inputs and outputs are the same commodity (for example, the corn-model), which gives a misleading view of the revaluation of circulating constant capital. In a multi-sector model, the price of the means of production depends very little or not at all on the price of the output produced with these means of production (for example, the price of cotton does not depend on the price of yarn). In this case, if the price of the means of production declined by, say, 10 per cent, then, according to Kliman’s temporal interpretation, constant capital would not be devalued in the current period, but it would be devalued in the next period, presumably by the full 10 per cent, equal to the new price of the means of production. The delayed temporal devaluation would ‘catch up’ with the simultaneous devaluation, and then they would be equal, and continue to be equal in future-periods (unless there were another change in the price of the means of production, in which case there would be another delayed devaluation, and another ‘catch-up’ in the next period, and so on). However, in a one-commodity model, in which the means of production and the output are the same commodity (for example, corn), the price of the corn as means of production and the price of the corn as output become interdependent, in ways that delay the devaluation of constant capital, and give the appearance of more permanent effects. Assume again a 10 per cent decline in the price of corn as means of production. According to Kliman’s temporal interpretation, the devaluation of constant capital does not occur in the first period. As a result, the price of the corn as output in the first period will be higher than it would have been if constant capital had been devalued immediately. Furthermore, in the second period, the price of the corn as means of production will be higher (than if constant 2. Kliman 1999. 3. This article also assumes ‘non-depreciating fixed capital’; that is, fixed capital that lasts forever.

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capital had been immediately devalued), because it is equal to the price of the corn as output in the first period, which is higher. Therefore, there is not a full 10 per cent adjustment to the new price of the corn as means of production in the second period, but only a partial adjustment to something less than that, which prolongs and magnifies the effects of the initial delayed devaluation. This further effect of delayed devaluation of constant capital is evident in a comparison of Table 7.4 (temporal determination) and Table 7.2 (simultaneous determination). However, this bigger effect is only an artefact of the onecommodity model, and this artefact disappears in a multi-sector model, in which the prices of the means of production are largely independent of the prices of the output produced with these means of production. In a multi-sector model, as explained above, the price of the means of production, and hence the constant capital, would not be affected by the price of the output of the first period, and would be fully devalued in the second period, and thereafter equal to the simultaneous valuation of constant capital (unless the price of the means of production declines again, etc.). Therefore, I do not think that Kliman has conclusively proved that technological change can cause the rate of profit to fall, even in the unrealistic case of circulating capital only, because Kliman’s ‘proof ’ is in terms of a onecommodity model which exaggerates the effects of the delayed devaluation of constant capital on the rate of profit. Kliman also claims, in a footnote, that he has also disproved the Okishio-theorem for the circulating-capital-only case ‘in the context of multiple sectors’ (p. 137, n. 6). However, the numerical example as presented in the cited paper has only two sectors, and Good 1 is a very significant input to its own production (4/5 of a unit of Good 1 as-input is required to produce one unit of Good 1 as-output), similar to the one-commodity model. Therefore, the price of Good 1 as-input is heavily dependent on the price of Good 1 as-output, which again exaggerates the effects of the delayed devaluation of constant capital. Dong-Min Rieu changed Kliman’s numerical example, and reduced the quantity of Good 1 required to produce a unit of Good 1 from 0.80 to 0.59 (which is still very high and almost as unrealistic), and recalculated the simultaneous rate of profit and the temporal rate of profit according to Kliman’s equations. In this case, the temporal rate of profit increased, instead of decreased (although increased less than the simultaneous rate of profit).4 Therefore, Kliman’s ‘refutation’ of the Okishio-theorem in the case of circulating capital only with two goods is not valid under these slightly more realistic assumptions. In future work, Kliman should present more realistic multi-sector models in which goods are not significant inputs to their own production as outputs.

Transformation-problem In Chapters 8 and 9, Kliman claims to refute the long-standing criticism, initiated by Bortkiewicz, that Marx’s theory of prices of production in Part 2 of Volume III of Capital ‘failed to transform the inputs of constant capital and variable capital from values to prices of production.’ Kliman agrees that Marx himself in Volume III did not transform the inputs (that is, that constant capital and variable capital are assumed to be equal to the values of the means of production and means of subsistence, respectively), but he argues 4. See Moseley and Rieu 2009 for further discussion of the results of this simulation.


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that what Marx presented was only the first period of a multi-period transformation of values into prices of production. Kliman claims to complete Marx by continuing the transformation-process into subsequent periods in a logically coherent way. In Kliman’s second period, the inputs of constant capital and variable capital are changed, and are assumed to be equal to the prices of production of the means of production and means of subsistence in the first period. Because constant capital and variable capital change in the second period, the prices of production of the output also change in the second period, in order to equalise the rate of profit across sectors. In this book, Kliman does not continue the transformation beyond the second period, but in an earlier article, he (and co-author McGlone) did.5 In this earlier article, the iterative process begun in the first two periods continues in subsequent periods, until prices of production finally converge to long-run equilibrium-prices in the fourteenth period.6 Kliman claims that his interpretation successfully refutes Bortkiewicz’s criticism that Marx’s theory of prices of production violates the equilibrium-conditions of simple reproduction – that the price of the output of each department (or each industry) in a given period must be equal to the money-demand for the output of that department in the same period. For example, the price of the means of production (Department I) in a given period must be equal to the money-demand for means of production by all firms in that same period; that is, it must be equal to the constant capital invested by all firms in that period. Bortkiewicz argued that this condition is violated in Marx’s theory of prices of production, because constant capital is still equal to the values of the means of production, but the output of Department I is equal to the price of production of the means of production (and a similar argument with respect to variable capital and the means of subsistence). However, Kliman argues that Bortkiewicz’s condition is not the appropriate equilibriumcondition for simple reproduction. The means of production of a given period are not sold for the constant capital invested in the same period, but are instead sold for the constant capital in the next period. And Kliman argues that this condition is always satisfied in his interpretation (and similar conditions are also satisfied for means of subsistence and luxury-goods). In my view, Kliman’s interpretation of Marx’s theory of prices of production is mistaken, for two main reasons. In the first place, there is no textual evidence to support Kliman’s interpretation of a multi-period transformation-process. In all of Marx’s discussions of the transformation, it is presented in only one period, and as complete in that one period. There is never a single comment by Marx that his single-period analysis is only the first period of a multi-period process, and that his single-period analysis should be supplemented and continued into future periods. Secondly, and more importantly, Marx’s prices of production are long-run centre-ofgravity prices, that change if and only if the productivity of labour or the real wage changes, and Kliman’s prices of production are not long-run centre-of-gravity prices, because they continue to change from period to period, even though the productivity of labour and the 5. Kliman and McGlone 1998. 6. Kliman’s interpretation is mathematically the same as Shaikh’s ‘iterative’ interpretation of the transformation-problem, except that Shaikh’s iterations are assumed to be logical iterations within a single period, instead of a series of real historical periods. For further discussion of this point, see Moseley 2008.

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real wage remain constant.7 The reason why Kliman’s prices of production continue to change from period to period is the on-going equalisation of the rate of profit and the transformation-process itself. The prices of production of the output at the end of the first period become the prices of the inputs at the beginning of the second period. If prices of production were to remain constant – that is, if the prices of production of the output of the second period were equal to the prices of production of the output of the first period – then rates of profit in the second period would not be equal across industries. Therefore, in order to equalise the rate of profit in the second period, the prices of production of the output of the second period must change and must be different from the prices of production of the output of the first period. The same logic applies to future-periods, until the prices of production of the output eventually converge to long-run equilibrium-prices. Therefore, Kliman’s prices of production continue to change from period to period as a result of the ongoing equalisation of the rate of profit and the transformation of output-prices into prices of production, even though it is assumed that the productivity of labour and the real wage remain the same. This important feature of Kliman’s prices of production clearly contradicts Marx’s concept of prices of production as long-run ‘centre-of-gravity’ prices, that change only if the productivity of labour or the real wage change. Therefore, I do not think that Kliman’s interpretation of Marx’s theory of prices of production is an accurate interpretation, and I do not think that Kliman has effectively answered Bortkiewicz’s critique.8 The fact that I disagree with Kliman’s interpretation of prices of production and his response to Bortkiewicz’s critique does not mean that I agree with Bortkiewicz. I have presented an interpretation of Marx’s theory of prices of production9 which: (1) rejects simultaneous determination and assumes a single system of values and prices of production, similar to the TSSI; (2) does not assume that the transformation of values into prices of production takes place over multiple periods, but, instead, applies to a single period; (3) assumes that prices of production are long-run centre-of-gravity prices that change only if the physical productivity of labour (or the real wage) changes; and (4) effectively answers Bortkiewicz’s critique.

Interpretative criteria Kliman argues in Chapter 4 that the main criterion for choosing among contending interpretations of Marx’s theory is which interpretation ‘makes sense of the whole’; that is, which interpretation makes it possible to derive the main conclusions of Marx’s theory, especially the falling rate of profit. I agree that this is an important criterion, but I do not think it is the main criterion, or the first consideration, in an assessment of different interpretations of Marx’s theory. The first consideration should be a thorough examination of what Marx actually wrote on the particular subject that is in dispute (e.g. his theory of prices of production). If such a thorough review of the textual evidence strongly favours one interpretation over other interpretations, then this interpretation is the preferred one, 7. See Moseley 1999 for an extensive discussion of this issue. 8. In this book, Kliman responds very briefly to this criticism in a footnote (p. 109, n. 2) and I respond to Kliman’s footnote in Moseley 2008. 9. See Moseley 1993 and 2000a.


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no matter what the implications might be for the other conclusions. On the other hand, if the textual evidence is mixed and ambiguous, then one should consider Kliman’s criterion of which interpretation better ‘makes sense of the whole’. Kliman applies his criterion to the controversy over the transformation-problem. He argues that his interpretation of the transformation-problem is consistent with Marx’s conclusion of a falling rate of profit, but other interpretations (such as mine) are not (pp. 164–5); therefore, his interpretation is the preferred one. I argue, to the contrary, that the textual evidence is so overwhelmingly against Kliman’s interpretation of the transformationproblem (a multi-period process, in which prices of production are not long-run centre-ofgravity prices, but, instead, change every period, even though productivity and the real wage remain the same) that Kliman’s interpretation should be rejected, even though it may be more consistent with the conclusion of a falling rate of profit.10

‘Fundamental Marxian Theorem’ Chapter 10 is about the ‘Fundamental Marxian Theorem’, which was first presented by Okishio and Morishima. Simply put, the ‘Fundamental Marxian Theorem’ (FMT) is that profit is positive if and only if surplus-labour is also positive. Kliman argues that the FMT cannot be proved on the basis of simultaneous determination, because that proof assumes that no good has a negative surplus-product; but, in reality, some goods might have a negative surplus-product (that is, the total output produced in a given period might be less than the uses of this product as inputs to other industries and as workers’ consumption). If these goods with a negative surplus-product have high values and prices relative to other goods, then it is possible that, for the economy as a whole, profit might be negative and surplus-labour positive (or vice versa), thereby contradicting the FMT. Kliman presents a numerical example that illustrates this possibility. In an earlier paper, Kliman concluded that, because of this unrealistic assumption of no negative surplus-products, the FMT ‘does not apply to the real world’ and is invalid on those grounds.11 However, in this book, Kliman argues that ‘the FMT is a claim about the real world’, and therefore its assumptions should be modified to include this more realistic assumption of possible negative surplus-products. However, if this more realistic assumption is incorporated, then the simultaneous FMT can no longer be proved; in other words, it is possible that profit might be negative and surplus-labour positive (or vice versa). In other words, Kliman’s earlier argument is what might be called an ‘external critique’ – the simultaneous FMT is invalid because a key-assumption on which it is based is unrealistic. There is nothing wrong with the internal logic of the simultaneous FMT, if its assumptions are accepted, but its assumptions are unrealistic and therefore unacceptable. By contrast, his argument in this book is an ‘internal critique’ – the simultaneous FMT is invalid on the basis of its own assumptions (modified to be more realistic).

10. In addition, I have argued above that Kliman has not yet convincingly demonstrated that his interpretation is able to prove the possibility of a falling rate of profit, especially not for the general case with fixed capital, and also not even for the unrealistic special case of circulating capital only. 11. Kliman 2001, p. 103.

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I think Kliman’s previous external critique is the more appropriate one, because the assumption of a negative surplus-product cannot be incorporated into linear productiontheory, which is the theoretical basis for the simultaneous FMT. Linear production-theory assumes that no good has a negative surplus-product; this is not just a simplifying assumption that could be dropped, but is a necessary assumption in this theory. If this assumption were dropped, then positive prices could not be determined by linear production-theory, and the simultaneous FMT could not be derived on the basis of linear production-theory.12 My own critique of the simultaneous FMT is that it is based on linear production-theory, which is different from Marx’s theory (similar to Kliman’s critique of the Okishio-theorem). Therefore, whether or not the FMT is valid on its own terms has no bearing on Marx’s theory of surplus-value. Furthermore, Marx’s theory of surplus-value leads to a much stronger conclusion than the FMT. The FMT tells us nothing about the magnitude of profit, except that it is positive. Marx’s theory, on the other hand, determines the magnitude of the total profit (or surplus-value), which is proportional to the total quantity of surpluslabour, with the ‘monetary expression of labour-time’, or the money-value produced per hour of labour (MELT), as the factor of proportionality; that is, S = (MELT) SL. Kliman argues, in the final sections of Chapter 10, that the TSSI is able to prove the FMT. However, in order to make his ‘proof ’, Kliman introduces a new extraneous assumption, which unnecessarily complicates and confuses the issue: that the MELT is changing. And, in particular, his proof requires the assumption that the MELT is declining over time. If the MELT is not declining, then Kliman’s proof does not work. In the previous sections of this chapter, the MELT is assumed to remain constant throughout, and it is argued that the price of the net product (or profit) may be negative even though surpluslabour is positive, because a few commodities might have a negative net product (or negative surplus-product) and high relative prices. By contrast, in the discussion of the TSSI-proof, the price of the net product is negative, not because of a negative net product in physical terms, but because the MELT is declining. This assumption of a declining MELT requires the introduction of the distinction between real profit and nominal profit, with the real profit equal to the nominal profit adjusted for the declining MELT. Kliman presents a numerical example which shows that a declining MELT results in a negative nominal profit, but a positive real profit, which Kliman claims is ‘what Marx’s theory is really about’. In this way, Kliman concludes that the TSSI is able to prove that real profit is positive if and only if surplus-labour is positive; that is, it is able to prove the FMT. However, this is not a general result, but the result of the special assumption of a declining MELT. It still remains to be shown that the TSSI can prove the FMT under the assumption of a constant MELT. The starting point of this demonstration should be a negative price of the net product, due to a few commodities having negative net products and high relative prices (as in the earlier sections of Chapter 10). Then it should be shown how the TSSI can prove the FMT on the basis of these assumptions (which Kliman used to criticise the ‘simultaneous’ proof of the FMT). I do not see how this could be done. And if it cannot be done, then the TSSI is not able to provide a general proof of the FMT on the basis of its own assumption of negative net products.

12. For further comments on Kliman’s external critique, see Moseley 2008.


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Empirical tests of the labour-theory of value Chapter 11 discusses the attempts by various Marxian scholars (Shaikh, Ochoa, and Cockshott-Cottrell) to defend Marx’s labour-theory of value by conducting regressionanalyses of the correlation between prices and labour-values of individual sectors of the economy. These analyses have generally shown a high correlation between prices and labour-values (prices of individual sectors are roughly proportional to labour-values, with small deviations), which these authors have interpreted as providing strong empirical support for the labour-theory of value. Kliman argues that there are several problems with this empirical defence of Marx’s labour-theory of value. In the first place, it does not respond to the logical criticism of inconsistency in Marx’s theory. Secondly, Marx’s theory does not predict that prices of individual sectors should be roughly proportional to labour-values (because of the equalisation of profit-rates across sectors), so a weak correlation between prices and labourvalues would not contradict Marx’s theory. And, thirdly, high correlations between prices and labour-values are ‘spurious correlations’, which are due to a third variable that has not been included in the analysis – the total size of industries, as measured by the total cost of each industry. Once industry-size is taken into account in the analysis, then the high correlation between prices and labour-value disappears. I agree with Kliman’s criticisms of these empirical studies, especially that Marx’s theory does not predict that the prices of individual commodities should be proportional to their labour-values, and, thus, the correlation between prices and labour-values is not an appropriate empirical test of Marx’s labour-theory of value. I would add that the type of empirical test appropriate for Marx’s theory is to compare the main conclusions that are derived from the labour-theory of value – conflict between capitalists and workers over wages, and over the length of the working day, and over the intensity of labour, inherent technological change, the falling rate of profit, inherent boom-bust cycles, etc. – with the historical evidence of capitalist economics. I have argued that the results of such an empirical test show that Marx’s theory has impressive explanatory power, and, certainly, much more explanatory power with respect to these important phenomena than any other economic theory, by far.13

Conclusion As mentioned in the beginning of this review, this book is written especially for nonspecialist readers. It takes an adversarial stance in relation to specialists in Marxian scholarship. It argues that all the TSSI-conclusions have been proven in the literature and have not been refuted by the specialists, but the specialists nonetheless refuse to acknowledge the validity of the TSSI-conclusions. As a result, many non-specialists continue to accept the verdict of the specialists – that ‘Marx’s theory has been shown to be logically inconsistent’. Therefore, the main goal of this book is to convince non-specialists that this widespread view of the specialists is wrong, and that Marx’s theory can be interpreted in a way that is logically consistent. Kliman also challenges specialists to acknowledge that the TSSI has successfully refuted the long-standing criticisms of Marx’s theory. 13. Moseley 1995.

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As I hope I have made clear in the above, I am sympathetic to the TSSI and agree with its two main points of temporal (or sequential) determination and a single system of values and prices. I also agree with the general thrust of the TSSI to re-examine Marx’s texts in order to understand better Marx’s logical method, and to be able to more fairly and knowledgably evaluate the logical consistency of Marx’s theory. However, I do not agree with some of the TSSI-conclusions, as indicated above. My own suggestion to non-specialists would be similar to Kliman’s – that they should be aware that the ‘conventional wisdom’ of the logical inconsistency of Marx’s theory is being increasingly challenged and (in my view) is mistaken, because it is based on a misinterpretation of Marx’s logical method. For example, the Okishio-theorem is not a refutation of Marx’s theory of the falling rate of profit, because it is based on a different linear productiontheory. Much more work needs to be done on Marx’s theory of the falling rate of profit (multi-sector models with depreciating fixed capital), but Kliman and the TSSI have made valuable contributions. Furthermore, even if Marx’s theory does not conclusively prove that technological change always causes the rate of profit to fall, Marx’s theory does provide a much more substantial theory of the trend in the rate of profit and the effects of technological change on the rate of profit than any other economic theory, past or present. Indeed, mainstream-microeconomics and macroeconomics provide no theory whatsoever of the trend in the rate of profit and the effects of technological change on the rate of profit. Therefore, if one wants to pursue these important questions, Marx’s theory would seem to be the best place to start. Reviewed by Fred Moseley Mount Holyoke College [email protected]

References Kliman, Andrew 1999, ‘A Temporal Single-System Interpretation of Marx’s Value Theory’, Review of Political Economy, 11, 1: 33–59. —— 2001, ‘Simultaneous Valuation vs. the Exploitation Theory of Profit’, Capital and Class, 73: 97–112. —— 2007, Reclaiming Marx’s Capital. A Refutation of the Myth of Inconsistency, Lanham: Lexington Books. Kliman, Andrew and Ted McGlone 1988, ‘The Transformation Non-Problem and the NonTransformation Problem’, Capital and Class, 12, 2: 56–84. Moseley, Fred 1993, ‘Marx’s Logical Method and the Transformation Problem’, Marx’s Method in ‘Capital’: A Reexamination, edited by Fred Moseley, Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press. —— 1995, ‘Marx’s Theory: True or False? A Marxian Response to Blaug’s Appraisal’, in Heterodox Economic Theories: True or False?, edited by Fred Moseley, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. —— 1999, ‘Marx’s Concept of Prices of Production as Long-Run Center of Gravity Prices’, available at: <www.mtholyoke.edu/~fmoseley>. —— 2000a, ‘The New Solution to the Transformation Problem: A Sympathetic Critique’, Review of Radical Political Economics, 32, 2: 282–316. —— 2000b, ‘The Determination of Constant Capital in the Case of a Change in the Value of the Means of Production’, available at: . —— 2008, ‘Additional Notes to a Review of Kliman’s Reclaiming Marx’s Capital ’, available at: <www.mtholyoke.edu/~fmoseley>.


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The Project of Autonomy: Politics and Architecture Within and Against Capitalism, Pier Vittorio Aureli, New York: The Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture at Columbia University and Princeton Architectural Press, 2008 Abstract Aureli advances a fresh, spirited and combative account of the idea of ‘autonomy’, connecting Italian architectural debates from the 1960s with the politics of class-autonomy that was being developed and advanced by workerist theorists such as Raniero Panzieri, Mario Tronti and Toni Negri. Aureli’s account focuses on Aldo Rossi’s architectural ideas (his Tendenza and his book The Architecture of the City) and the project of the No-Stop City proposed by the young avant-garde group Archizoom. The Project of Autonomy is not simply envisaged as an historical exploration of the 1960s; primarily, it is conceived as an intervention in current architectural theory (and cultural politics), drawing on the author’s interest in Tronti’s politics to challenge the contemporary popularity of a broadly post-Negrian ‘autonomism’. This review questions aspects of Aureli’s reading of Rossi and Manfredo Tafuri. Furthermore, although Aureli’s discussion of Red Vienna opens up onto vital questions of strategies for social change, which remain pertinent to contemporary arguments over ‘enclaves’ or ‘zones’ of resistance, his antagonism towards Tafuri prevents his argument from either exploring or advancing the debate which he has initiated. Keywords Autonomy, architecture, Pier Vittorio Aureli, Manfredo Tafuri, Aldo Rossi, Archizoom, Mario Tronti, Contropiano, operaismo, workerism, autonomism, Red Vienna, modernism, postmodernism, housing, Venice-school, IUAV, enclave-theory.

Introduction: architecture and modernism Those with a passing familiarity with the cultural debates that took place in the latter part of the twentieth century over the politics of modernism will be aware that architecture has provided one of its key-sites of contestation. At a populist level, built form was often deemed culpable for the symptoms of social crisis. The legacies of the ‘Modern Movement’ – especially the postwar-rôle of CIAM-influenced practices – became configured as one of the negative outcomes of Enlightenment-rationalism. Many railed against Corbusian and Miesian models, but the larger picture was not primarily dominated by objections to highend exempla such as the Villa Savoye or Farnsworth House; above all, the ideological battle was motivated by, and fought over, the corpus of social housing. The contrast – or, to be more precise, the perceived slippage – between the initial visions and the progeny of cheap developments that followed provided a powerful image for a wider crisis in social confidence; tangible manifestations, constructed in brick, concrete and reinforced steel, of a ‘dialectic of enlightenment’ or the crisis of the welfare-state. The St Louis estate of Pruitt Igoe, dynamited in 1972, became famous when the architectural historian Charles Jencks made the exact time of its destruction symbolise the transition to postmodernity. You can witness the explosion – if not necessarily experience the metaphysical claims – on YouTube. (The blasting of postwar high-rises continues to serve its rhetorical work. In the opening prelude to season three of The Wire, the young drug-dealers watch another Pruitt Igoe moment, resonant with its own allegories: a world ‘after the Twin Towers’ – another high-modernist architectural icon – the incursion of urban ‘redevelopment’, and the emergence of a monopoly-consortium/co-operative business-model for narcotics-distribution.) The question © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011

DOI: 10.1163/156920610X550677

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of urban development has been an important topic for writers of the Left – such as Mike Davis and David Harvey – exploring how the city-environment provided a visible connection between capital-expansion, expropriation, and modern enclosure. Fredric Jameson’s writing has put more emphasis on exploring how architectural form itself can be seen as expressing changes in capital. In his consideration of ‘the culture of late capitalism’, his analysis of postmodernism addresses, not only the philosophical confrontation between Jean-François Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition and Jürgen Habermas’s riposte in his Adorno-Prize lecture, but also prominently features accounts of architecture: from Tom Wolfe’s populist polemic against the Modern Movement in From Bauhaus to Our House, via the articulation of a distinctive ‘postmodern’ architecture by Jencks (ever a Jamesonfavourite in all things architectural) and the pop-vernacular of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, through to – and, arguably, above all – the writings of Manfredo Tafuri.1 Extending to his writing on the architecture of finance-capital, Jameson has continued to wonder how form might be mapped as a social question.2

Aureli refuses The politics of form is also of central concern to Pier Vittorio Aureli’s The Project of Autonomy. However, despite its polemical and interventionist quality, Aureli’s study is not located at the level of architecture’s deployment within a wider politics of culture. He is not inclined, for example, to sublimate debates on form into homological diagnoses of the state or stages of capitalism. The question of capitalism is to the fore, but, instead, he approaches the question of form in terms of the specialist-discussions of architectural theory and historiography. A professor at the Berlage Institute, Rotterdam, and co-founder of the architectural collective DOGMA (with Martino Tattara), Aureli is a rising star on the international circuit of critical-architectural and urban theory. He has set out his vision for architecture through a reinterpretation of Ad Reinhardt’s famous denials.3 ‘Architecture Refuses’ tells us what Alberti, Boullée, Durand and Mies were against, before enlightening us on Aureli’s negations for today: . . . no avant-garde, no neo-avant-garde, no new-neo-avant-garde, no anti-avantgarde, no think-tanks, no biennale-activism, no fake-bottom-up-we-work-forthe-people, no architects-as-social-entrepreneur, no architect-as-social-opinionist, 1. Jameson’s discussion of the Bonaventure Hotel is in Jameson 1984a, and Jameson 1991. Jameson has returned to architecture, especially to Tafuri’s arguments, on a number of occasions: Jameson 1985 (also Jameson 1988); Jameson 1984b (republished in Jameson 1991 and Jameson 1998b); Jameson 1994 (republished Jameson 1998b); Jameson 1998a (republished in Jameson 1998b). Most recently, Jameson has affirmed the influence of Tafuri’s account of how temporality itself is ‘invested’ with capital, colonising not only the present and the past, but also the future (Jameson 2007, p. 228). 2. Jameson 1998a (and Jameson 1998b), Jameson 1998d. Interestingly, Jameson’s focus has sidestepped the debates on mass-housing, responding, instead, to types such as the hotel, the office and business-accommodation. 3. Ad Reinhardt’s Abstract Art Refuses originally appeared in the 1952 catalogue to the exhibition ‘Contemporary American Painting’. See Reinhardt 1991, pp. 50–1.


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no-architect-as-cultural-opinionist, no architects-as-biennale-monkeys, . . . no utopia, . . . no fake-interactivity, . . . no confusing architecture with everything that is not architecture; no confusing life with everything that is not LIFE.4 That he presented this as part of Hans Ulrich Obrist’s ‘Manifesto-Marathon’ at the Serpentine Gallery in 2008, along with the likes of Nicolas Bourriaud, does rather suggest that, despite himself, Aureli is well on his way to occupying the role of a ‘biennale-monkey’.5 Not that this should be reason to dismiss him. On the contrary, one cannot but warm to his verve and uncompromising positions, his commitment to exposing ‘the social and cultural power architecture possesses’, and his combination of art-radicalism with hard-line political critique of all that is (merely) ‘radical’.6 Aureli combines this left avant-gardist approach (the denial of avant-gardism being one of its most established gambits) with his commitment to form. The ‘concept of the formal’ and the ‘concept of the political’, he has argued, constitute ‘architecture’s double theoretical ground zero’, but instead of seeing these as in opposition, which he takes as banal, Aureli aspires to explore the ‘deep relationship between formal techniques and political aspirations in architecture’.7 These same qualities and aspirations are well on display in The Politics of Autonomy, which is perhaps best understood as an extended elaboration of the themes expressed in the manifesto and as a rationale for his approach to architectural practice. In The Project of Autonomy, Aureli wants to dispel the centrality of a number of ‘myths’ prevalent within architectural history. Firstly, he wishes to challenge the identification of the ‘Scuola di Venezia’ of architectural theory with Manfredo Tafuri (pp. 13–14).8 (An irritation with Tafuri simmers throughout the course of the book.) That Tafuri arrived at Venice’s Instituto Universitario di Architettura in 1968, and that a distinctive approach had gestated earlier – under Giuseppe Samonà and the teaching of Carlo Aymonino, with Aldo Rossi as assistant from 1963 to 1965 – is widely acknowledged, if little studied. Secondly, Aureli argues against the delineation of postwar-architectural history into the two tracks of 4. DOGMA 2008. 5. The Manifesto Marathon was held over two days (18–19 October) during the final week of the 2008 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion (designed by Frank Gehry). Previous years had seen a 24-Hour Interview Marathon with the architect Rem Koolhaas in 2006 and 2007’s Experiment Marathon with the artist Olafur Eliasson. The 2008 event was intended to provide a platform for new and established practitioners from art, design, literature, music, science, history, and architecture – all of whom had returned to the idea of the manifesto. Among the many participants were: Rem Koolhaas, Nicolas Bourriaud, Vivienne Westwood, Yoko Ono, Agnès Varda, Jonas Mekas, Raqs Media Collective, Stewart Home, Brian Eno, Marina Abramović, Charles Jencks, and Eric Hobsbawm. The event claimed to respond to the gallery’s location in London’s Hyde Park and its proximity to Speakers’ Corner, ‘which has been used as a platform by Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, George Orwell and William Morris, among many others’. Unlike its model, however, a two-day ticket to hear the Serpentine’s manifestos cost £35, and public access to the pavilion was curtailed. See Serpentine Gallery 2008. 6. Aureli 2007. Referring to the groups of autonomia, the criticism of the word ‘radical’, derived from Mario Tronti, runs as follows: ‘the adjective radical before the word politics meant that the politics could no longer stand alone’ (Aureli 2008, p. 81). 7. Aureli 2007. 8. Aureli distinguishes the later ‘Venice-school’ from the earlier ‘Venice-group’.

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‘autonomous’ and ‘radical architecture’ – associated respectively with Rossi’s Tendenza (neorationalism) and the avant-garde architectural groups (such as Superstudio and Archizoom) (p. 21). More especially, he detects problems arising from the international dissemination of left-Italian theory of the time. The art-critic Germano Celant coined ‘radical architecture’ to describe the work of Archizoom and Superstudio, and the term was taken up in the 1972 exhibition ‘Italy: The New Domestic Landscape’, curated by Emilio Ambasz for New York’s Museum of Modern Art. (The latter’s associated publication included an essay by Tafuri.) The following year, Rossi himself curated the fifteenth Triennial in Milan, where his notion of ‘autonomous architecture’ was widened to embrace a range of practices that lacked the political context from which his own emphasis on autonomy had drawn its force (p. 81). However, the substantial damage was done, Aureli believes, by the translation of the politics and poetics of autonomy into ‘postmodernism’ and by the ‘postmodern appropriation of “radicalism”’ (p. 83).

Political autonomy: operaismo versus autonomia Aureli’s account of how ‘autonomous architecture’ and ‘radical architecture’ became branded as international design-movements in the early 1970s, and how their initial projects declined into an indeterminate-postmodern soup, is animated by his understanding of the political conjuncture. The Politics of Autonomy is set firmly against the politics of autonomia, by which Aureli has in mind both the turn within the Italian extra-parliamentary Left from the early 1970s to the ‘areas of autonomy’ and the organisational manifestations as Autonomia Operaia, on the one hand, and, on the other, the more generic – and internationalised – dissemination of autonomism of the recent period (associated, for example, with the writings on ‘multitude’ and ‘Empire’ by Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, Paolo Virno, and others). Aureli is certainly committed to a politics of autonomy, but he is also interested in how this was developed within the earlier framework of operaismo during the 60s.9 In particular, he addresses the ramifications of emerging workerist ideas for 9. Operaismo (Italian workerism) grew as left outshoots – and, in some cases, rejection – of the PCI and PSI, specifically opposing their compliance with the state and implicit attachment to capitalist ideology (which, in the view of the operaisti, treated labour as a passive and reactive component in the labour-capital relation). They advocated a more trenchant class-opposition, which placed labour as the central dynamic for social change to which capital, in turn, reacts. The ‘autonomy’, then, was the autonomy of labour’s class-interests with respect to capital. Successfully translating this approach into shop-floor action against speed-ups and the like, and into separating wage-increases from productivity-deals, the workerist groupings gained a significant presence in the chemical industries of the Veneto and Turin motor- and engineering works. While initially crystallising around political journals like Quaderni Rossi and Classe Operaia, workerism expressed itself as a political organisation with Potere Operaio and found important echoes in other formations, like Lotta Continua and Il manifesto. Panzieri’s argument for the non-neutrality of technology (and the forces of production) was also significant. The autonomist groups and networks of the 70s, towards which Negri (and other important figures such as Franco Piperno and Franco Beradi) gravitated generally took a more anti-party and anticentralist direction, advocating diffuse, decentralised social movements. Autonomia was a complex formation, embracing extra-parliamentary communists (including many former operaisti) through to more anarchist or libertarian outlooks. They were prominent in Bologna,


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the architectural debates of the time (pp. 8–11). His motivation becomes clearer towards the close of the book. As a practising architect with a perspective on the international reception of Italian architectural theory, Aureli has become increasingly aware of – and frustrated by – the gaps between the history that interests him and its treatment in Englishspeaking countries (p. 82). His book, then, is largely conceived as an attempt to correct the misunderstandings of the Italian debates on autonomy and to confront the one-sided interest in autonomia. The latter, especially as mediated via Negri and Hardt, is rejected by Aureli as a depoliticised – and, at worst, as an anti-communist – post-politics, which, he believes, has become overly exalted and romanticised by anglophone cultural radicals (pp. 8–11, 83). The author’s stated aim for his study is modestly posed as ‘an initial contribution to a historical reconstruction of the intense season of political and poetical imagination that unfolded in Italy over the course of the 1960s’ (p. 21). Aureli’s central endeavour, however, is not so much to recover and reconstruct a particular period, but rather to explore what he sees as ‘one of the most rigorous efforts ever attempted to theorize a grand narrative of the political, challenging the very premises of capitalism (as well as its contemporary avatar, “Empire”)’ (p. 83). He rails against academic lip-service to ‘activism’ and ‘practice’, and emphasises instead – and this may seem surprising at first sight – ‘Theory’ (capital ‘T’ used intentionally) as a means ‘to establish long-term responsibilities and solid categories’ to challenge the notion of development as evolutionary progress (p. 83). If the call to antiacademic Theory might seem a little curious (given the publication-context for the book), it is certainly much easier to grasp The Project of Autonomy as an intervention in discussions of ‘how a new political subject might be materially constructed from within, but ideologically against, the very constraints of our civilization – a civilization that, in spite of its ongoing transformations, remains a civilization of labor’ (p. 83). This theme of ‘within and against’ – brought to fore in the book’s subtitle – is central to Aureli’s argument. Aureli’s account centres on the claims to class-autonomy formulated in Quaderni rossi in the early 1960s as part of an increasingly organised political response to ‘neocapitalism’ (understood as a stage of capitalism – shaped by Keynesian policies in the US in the 30s and in Italy in the 60s – that, compared to its earlier forms, was seen as more organised and planned, more oligarchic and monopolistic, whilst simultaneously being more diffuse in its modalities of power). Three short sections addressing the principle of ‘autonomy’ – ‘Autonomy and History’, ‘Autonomy and the Left’, ‘Autonomy and the Intellectuals’ – serve as an extended introduction to autonomy as a form of communist political positioning, followed by three further chapters devoted to Raniero Panzieri’s arguments on the nonneutrality of technological innovation, Mario Tronti’s account of the ‘social factory’, and, thirdly, the ‘autonomy of the political’ and the project of ‘negative thought’ (Tronti and Massimo Cacciari). For readers with an overview of operaismo, Aureli’s book might seem to belabour a history that has become more widely known, although, admittedly, this situation has changed only in recent years and thus, perhaps, over the course of bringing Aureli’s

Milan, Rome, and Padua. Some autonomists turned to armed struggle, the state’s reaction to which effectively brought to a close Italy’s decade-and-a-half of radical struggle, with mass-arrests and the political exile of a large number of activists from across the extra-parliamentary Left. For a comprehensive account of Italian workerism and autonomism in the 60s and 70s, see Wright 2002.

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study to press.10 But it is unfortunate, nevertheless, that we are over half-way through the volume before the author commences his main discussion of architectural theory, reaching the material where his substantive contribution to this history might best be made. The weighting of his attention – more to an elaboration of the core-concepts of workerism, while the architectural discussion speaks from inside the disciplinary discourse – is indicative of the book’s intended readership of architectural students, underlined by the fact of its inclusion as of a specialist academic series. Aureli believes workerism to have been overlooked. It is not that the ideas of operaismo are ignored in comparison to autonomia – quite the contrary, they are taken as foundational – but they are usually presented as part of a trajectory that finds its telos in a position congruent with ‘Negri’ or, if not that, then with perspectives that counter Negri from within autonomism. The canonical texts of workerist theorists are almost always deployed to initiate autonomist lineages. Marching forth directly, the histories of autonomism proceed via the big names: Panzieri, Tronti, Negri . . . That Panzieri soon balked at the directions being taken by Tronti, or that Tronti stepped back from Negri’s a few years later, are certainly facts to be noted, but they are not explored for the complexity of their political implications or the other directions suggested. The evolutionary tree of the politics of autonomy is covered with truncated sideshoots, lopped off just as they depart from the ‘main’ trunk. What makes Aureli’s history of workerism especially intriguing to encounter – besides his attention to architecture – is his political sympathy for one of these cropped branches. Although much of the material he discusses is from the early to mid 60s, he does so from the perspective of the position adopted by Tronti and his allies later in the decade.11 Aureli follows Tronti (1967), Cacciari (1968), post-Negri Contropiano, and the political decision to operate through the culture of the Italian Communist Party. ‘Autonomy’, for Aureli, is understood as a subjectivisation of proletarian power; it is part of a culture of conflict (a Trontian ‘strategy of refusal’) and a technique to be deployed in labour’s negotiations with capital (pp. 19, 37–9). Autonomy involves making demands for institutional control, which for Aureli includes the struggle for hegemony within the organisations of the Left. Understood, above all, as ‘within and against’ capitalism, the question of autonomy is also taken as a struggle that would be ‘within and against’ the party (or, as he puts it, ‘political action within the institution, and eventually against it as the party made compromises . . .’) (p. 45).

Autonomy as architecture: Aureli on Aldo Rossi and Archizoom Addressing the politics of autonomy as politics would arguably present enough difficulties – one only has to imagine the range of political assessments, past and present, that might be made from within operaismo, from different moments of operaismo, from autonomia or from the PCI, let alone by left perspectives external to all of these. Further problems still 10. Most significant here has probably been Wright 2002. In addition, there has been a flurry of publications and essays, many posted online, spurred by the anniversary of Sessantotto. 11. Aureli’s criticism of ‘radical’ paraphrases Tronti. Aureli notes: ‘In my view, it is precisely the argument of the autonomy of the political from economic determination – as presented by Tronti in 1972 [in ‘L’autonomia del politico’] – that is the core and essence of Operaism’, Aureli 2008, p. 84, n. 8.


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arise in respect of the politics of autonomy as architecture. ‘Autonomous architecture’, in Aureli’s approach, is not to be confused with the type of aesthetic autonomy associated with the traditions of formalism (the English-speaking version traced from Clive Bell and Roger Fry to Clement Greenberg) or late-nineteenth-century aestheticism (analysed by Peter Bürger in his influential Theory of the Avant-Garde as the apogee of the bourgeois artinstitution that was negated by the ‘historical avant-gardes’ in an effort to reintegrate poiesis into life-praxis). In contrast with the approaches to ‘autonomy’ rooted in a (narrow) reading of Kant’s Critique of Judgement, there is little that is ‘disinterested’ about the autonomy at stake for Aureli’s subjects, which concerns, as he reminds us, autonomy for, not autonomy from (p. 12). To pursue the discussion of autonomy as architectural practice, Aureli’s focus is on the work of Aldo Rossi and Archizoom, each an example from either side of the double lineage noted above (‘autonomous’ and ‘radical’ architecture, and broadly coextensive with the more ‘formal’ and ‘avant-garde’ heritages respectively). He sees both as strongly influenced by workerism’s emphasis on the political subject’s autonomy. Aureli marshals a number of comparisons: both Andrea Branzi of Archizoom (who was also a contributor to the Manifesto Marathon) and Rossi rejected the reformist perspective of Italy’s prominent architectural theorists in the postwar-period – Bruno Zevi, Ernesto Rogers, Giulio Carlo Argan – who had sought to recover the critical ambitions of the Modern Movement. Both Archizoom and Rossi sought to resist the ideologies of the bourgeois city, and considered the category of ‘architecture’, not through the traditional history of masterpieces, but as a practice to be situated within wider urban processes. However, as Aureli shows, Rossi and Branzi also recognised that the project of left architects could not simply mirror the formative paths of the autonomous political subject; while the latter could become ‘autonomous’, architecture – an ‘expression of the dominant class’ – could not.12 From this perspective, the efforts of left reformers to construct a ‘working-class metropolis’ were seen as naïve. Responding to comments by Engels in The Housing Question, some architects argued that political autonomy could be pursued, not by attempting to build an alternative urban environment, but only by developing, firstly, their critique, and then their theory, of the city (p. 70).13 Autonomy, then, was reaffirmed as pertaining at the level of the subject’s political recognition – with the break from ideological mystification, and with the development of ‘a working-class critique’. Aureli locates Archizoom in this line of thought, noting that the group had been educated at the same Florentine architectural school as Claudio Greppi, an active associate of Tronti and contributor to Quaderni rossi, who had circulated Engels’s text among his fellow students. Greppi had also presented a diploma project in 1964–5 that encapsulated, Aureli argues, the idea of the social factory (and what would become known as ‘negative thought’). By extending the factory-model to the metropolitan scale and abandoning humanist aspirations, this project, it is claimed, proposed that the reduction of the city to its 12. Rossi cited in Aureli 2008, p. 68. 13. In ‘The Formal and the Political’, Aureli himself advocates a closely related position: ‘even if there is no political architecture, there is certainly a particular way of making, and reading, architectural form’ (Aureli 2007). Tafuri too argued that there was no ‘class-architecture’, only a class-critique of architecture – echoing also Vološinov on ‘class-language’, Pashukanis on ‘classlaw’, and Lenin and Trotsky’s criticisms of Proletkult. See also the comments on Trotsky’s ‘class point of view’ in Ciucci, Dal Co, Manieri-Elia and Tafuri 1979, p. xi.

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infrastructure would make visible capitalism’s urban conditions.14 With ‘No-Stop City’ (1968–70) – a project that was presented on the pages of design-magazines – Archizoom developed the ideas in Greppi’s scheme and presented the metropolis through the eyes of cynical realism, again bringing to the fore the forces of capital to reveal the city as a phenomenon ‘without qualities’; through ‘wild realities’, they sought to ‘exacerbate’ those forces to breaking point. Their ‘homogenous habitat’ was presented as an extension of Ludwig Hilberseimer’s ‘Vertical City’ (1924), as repetitive units organised around infrastructural functions, reduced to stripped-down forms and the most generic architectural signs (aspiring to a-figuration), in which ‘[t]he city no longer “represents” the system but becomes the system itself, programmed and isotropic’.15 The supermarket was treated as the architectural archetype of neocapitalism, and Branzi described Archizoom as a combination of ‘Mario Tronti and Andy Warhol: opposite worlds but not so remote . . . both obeyed the materialist logic of “more money and less work”’.16 Rossi, too, discussed The Housing Question.17 Rejecting both the ‘regressive forms’ associated with the rural nostalgias of the garden-city and the technophilic design that was then popular, Rossi also advocated a confrontation with, rather than retreat from, the nature of the modern capitalist city. The method through which he sought to amplify the city’s expressions of class-power, however, differed from Archizoom’s. Rossi’s emphasis was on making formal proposals that would serve to clarify the question of political decision and which, despite drawing on similar intellectual resources, avoided the more virulent strains of avant-gardist anti-humanism and the political ambivalences attendant upon left nihilism. Aureli’s chapter on Aldo Rossi provides an intimate analysis of the architect’s philosophy, especially as laid out in his 1966 treatise The Architecture of the City. Constructed from a wide range of sources, Rossi evolved a distinctive – and idiosyncratic – approach, influenced by (to name but a small sample) Maurice Halbwach’s work on collective memory and urban expropriation; Hans Bernoulli’s on the relation of architecture to land-ownership; Steen Eiler Rasmussen’s study of London; theories of collective psychology; the writings of Marcel Mauss, Kevin Lynch, Karl Kerényi, and Engels. This dense amalgam of ideas contrasts with the (deceptive) simplicity, or hieratic poetics, typical of Rossi’s designs. Characterised by the use of elemental forms (Rossi explicitly acknowledges the buildings found in the backgrounds of de Chirico paintings), his ossuary at the Cemetery of San Cataldo in Modena (1971) might be seen as exemplary. Nevertheless, the ‘autonomous’ character of his architecture does not refer per se to the formal starkness of his designs.18 Rossi’s work may ‘look’ the way many would expect ‘autonomous architecture’ to appear – pared-down, geometric – but it should not be understood ideally or Platonically, a mistake

14. Aureli points us to Tronti’s appropriation of Paul Klee’s demand to ‘make visible’ or sichtbar machen (Aureli 2008, p. 55). 15. Archizoom cited in Aureli 2008 in the caption to Figure 38 (a diagrammatic section of No-Stop City which appeared in Domus in 1971). 16. Andrea Branzi cited in Aureli 2008 in the caption to Figure 39 (a drawing of a residential area both as layout of a parking lot and as supermarket-aisles). 17. Rossi 1982, pp. 155, 161. 18. This is a view that would make the common, but mistaken, assumption that visual austerity signals the rejection of ‘heteronomy’ and representation, an assumption in which Rossi and Archizoom both appear to partake.


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that is easily exacerbated by common perceptions of the legacy of rationalism within which Rossi located his work. He aspired, however, to ‘a more complex rationalism’.19 The work of Etienne-Louis Boullée or Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, Rossi believed, provided the quintessential bourgeois-architectural language from out of which the new revolutionary class would construct its own tradition, and he admired the work of the twentieth-century successors to this approach (especially the socialists Adolf Behne, Ludwig Hilbersheimer and Hans Schmidt). Rationalism did not mean returning to classical types, Rossi argued, because each period ‘reproposed’ its sources. His buildings acquire their form, not through an external imposition of abstract models, but by way of mediating the arché with the architect’s responses to particular material, environmental and historical conditions (‘necessities’). For Rossi, rational design meant that ‘the broadest adaptability to a multiplicity of functions corresponds to an extreme precision of form’.20 Opposed to the model of unilinear causation suggested by the mantra ‘form follows function’, Rossi argued that architectural form should be understood as a complexly-situated and rigorous response to the city.21 ‘Topography, typology, and history’, he explained, ‘come to be measures of the mutations of reality, together defining a system of architecture wherein gratuitous invention is impossible’.22 Rossi, then, aimed to deploy rationalism, not so much in terms of the claims that it offered generic applicability (based on an appeal to abstract qualities), but, rather, as a civic form, which provided a frame against which the events of social life could be played out and which, through its precise ‘mutations of reality’, helped to enunciate specific social-political proposals. What makes Rossi’s work especially fascinating is the way that the array of ideas underpinning his architectural philosophy become configured by the context of Italian politics in the 1960s. This is what Aureli’s book attempts to draw out. Rossi had joined the PCI in 1956 (the ironies of which are not lost on Aureli), but came to share the disillusion with progress and urban ‘development’ that shaped the New Left in general. Aureli argues that, like Panzieri, Rossi developed a critique of technocratic categories; common at the time within the fields of architecture and planning were ‘city-territory’, ‘network’, and ‘mobility’ (pp. 58–65). (Rossi also advocated shifting from an economic analysis of the city to a consideration of its rôle in political choices.)23 To the top-down ‘scientific planning’ and the then-current aesthetic ideology of ‘open form’, Rossi countered what could be described as an architectural philosophy of site-specific determinate negation. Rigorously derived and particular articulations – ‘closed’ and defined forms – founded upon the locus, Rossi thought, would best enable new forms to emerge. In similar vein, countering the 19. Preface to the second Italian edition (1969), Rossi 1982, p. 166. 20. Comment on the German edition (1973), Rossi 1982, p. 179. (He was citing Adolf Behne: ‘the broadest adaptability to the greatest number of necessities’.) 21. Rossi objected to a narrow understanding of functionalism, not because he objected to function – he challenged those who had misread his critique – but because he thought it just one of the factors at work. 22. Comment on the German edition (1973), Rossi 1982, p. 179. Cf. ‘The urban configuration is a system where questions of topography and land ownership, of regulations, class struggles, and the idea of architecture tend slowly toward a single, precise construction, and every general theory must always be measured against this’ (Preface to the second Italian edition (1969), Rossi 1982, p. 167). 23. Rossi 1982, p. 141.

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schematic models of urban theory advanced by Homer Hoyt and Robert E. Park, he praised detailed studies of ‘urban artefacts [faite urbaine or fatto urbano]’, which sought to understand the relationships between a particular city and the singularity of its architecture (‘the type of object that is Florence’, as he would put it).24

Problems with Aureli’s account Encountered some half a century later, the details of Rossi’s theoretical positioning are not easy to grasp, so much do they rest on engaging or rejecting the commonplace-technics of the day.25 Ultimately, Aureli insists, it is not the content of Rossi’s thought which is of primary interest, but, rather, the modality of his method. This creates some interesting tensions for the book’s argument, since it is here that Aureli – who draws from Rossi a commitment to a politicised praxis of specificity – must himself let go of the specific. Aureli is correct to return us to the political frame of Italy in the 60s for the category of ‘autonomy’, but, in doing so, he has to downplay some other aspects of Rossi’s thought. As early as 1973, Rossi complained that his account had been taken up one-sidedly, with readers isolating and exaggerating different aspects of his argument – not least his account of ‘the autonomy of forms’. ‘These interpretations’, Rossi continued, ‘are erroneous because they obscure the complex nature of architecture’.26 Aureli certainly helps us to recognise the additional valences of autonomy at play, which pose a crucial challenge to the depoliticised and formalistic versions that came to prevail in architectural theory. Nevertheless, his commitment to the politics of autonomy does lead him into a trap that, ironically, parallels the one against which Rossi had warned: isolating the category (just as did architecture’s advocates of autonomy) and flattening the Rossian ‘complexity’. We even lose sight of the extent to which Rossi’s autonomy itself appealed to, and was formed by, an intellectual culture of semiotic logics or language-games. Rossi’s influential American fans, such as Peter Eisenman, might have impoverished Rossi’s notion of autonomy, as Aureli suggests, but their reading was not altogether wrong.27 Aureli picks up on features that Rossi’s approach shares with workerism, but, except insofar as they partake in the mutations within Marxist cultural thought in the midtwentieth century, quite how directly they relate remains unclear. By all accounts, disenchantment with the achievements of reform – especially among architects and architectural students schooled in the experiences of Italy’s numerous postwar housing

24. Rossi 1982, p. 21. ‘“Urban artefact” is an imprecise translation, which attempts to capture not just a physical thing in the city, but all of its history, geography, structure, and connection to the general life of the city’ (editorial note in Rossi 1982, p. 22). 25. We might note in passing how some of these terms – mobility, network, open form – have since been re-functioned for other language-domains. 26. Comment on the German edition (1973), Rossi 1982, p. 179. 27. ‘Eisenmanian’ as it is with its opening epigraph from Jacques Derrida’s Writing and Difference, Eisenman’s introduction to the English translation of Rossi’s book is remarkably subtle and perceptive. Peter Eisenman, ‘The Houses of Memory: The Texts of Analogy’, in Rossi 1982, pp. 2–11.


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plans – became widespread in the early 60s.28 Rossi was certainly a left intellectual who saw himself as part of a wider communist culture, repeatedly insisting, as Aureli notes, on the importance of the collectivity and his Tendenza deriving from Gramsci’s term to describe how a cultural movement might express class-hegemony (p. 86, n. 78). His writing can also be interpreted as advancing arguments for relative autonomy and for a dialectic of making and made, which situates his thinking within a more classical-Marxist vein than Aureli does. It is not that Aureli is incorrect to detect in Rossi an understanding of space as ‘the dialectical conflict between constituent and constituted forces’, but his formulation does swing Rossi somewhat too neatly into one particular frame (p. 64)29 – and there is enough in The Architecture of the City to lead one to doubt this. Rossi’s approach was coded as a ‘scientific’ claim, a feature that Aureli must avoid. Furthermore, it typically advocates shifting from categorical oppositions to an emphasis on the ‘relationship between’, the loosely ‘Hegelian’ nature of which would be a red rag to much workerist theory, all too inclined to read dialectical relations and Aufhebungen in all contexts as synonyms for political compromise and the attempt to abolish conflict. Rossi does not propose an architectural equivalent of the Trontian ‘we do without mediation’.30 Ultimately, however, the real disappointment of Aureli’s book is that it fails to do justice to the very advantages that should have been brought to the subject by the author’s distinctive outlook. It fails to do justice, both in terms of its analysis of history and of the present, and in terms of both its approach to questions of architectural historiography and to debates relevant to the emancipatory project. Aureli speaks from a political perspective that potentially offers important insights into a key-point in the history of modern architectural theory. The decision by a number of prominent operaisti to enter the PCI, and the split in Contropiano, is central, not only to the political history of workerism/ autonomism, but also to the history of the Venice-school. The journal was a key-forum for the publication of architectural writings by Manfredo Tafuri and Francesco Dal Co, and for Cacciari’s essays on current politics and negative thought that would come to inform the critical debates on architecture.31 The history of IUAV is closely entwined with the history 28. See Robert Lumley’s account (Lumley 1990). Interestingly, despite having a chapter entitled ‘The Revolt in the Schools of Architecture’, Vittorio Gregotti’s book on the contemporary architecture of the time scarcely addresses the history (Gregotti 1968). 29. In addition, the political ambivalences in both Rossi and Archizoom are alluded to by Aureli on a couple of occasions, but not developed. 30. Tronti 1971; English translation in Tronti 1973, p. 121. 31. Contropiano: materiali marxisti, published quarterly from 1968 to 1971 by La Nuova Italia, Firenze, in which was published Tafuri’s essays ‘Per una critica dell’ideologia architettonica’ (Tafuri 1969, the basis of his book Architecture and Utopia, Tafuri 1979); ‘Lavoro intelletuale e sviluppo capitalistico’ (Tafuri 1970); ‘Austromarxismo e città: “Das rote Wein”’ (Tafuri 1971b); ‘Socialdemocrazia e città nella Repubblica di Weimar’ (Tafuri 1971a); ‘Socialdemocrazia e città nella Repubblica di Weimar’ (book review) (Tafuri 1971c). Cacciari’s early essays were also published in this journal, including ‘Dialettica e tradizione’ (Cacciari 1968a) ‘Sviluppo capitalistico e ciclo delle lotte. La Montecatini-Edison di Porto Marghera’ (Cacciari 1968b); ‘Teoria e organizzazione in Francia, dopo il maggio’ (Cacciari and Longobardi 1969); ‘Sulla genesi del pensiero negativo’ (Cacciari 1969); ‘Utopia e socialismo’ (Cacciari 1970b); see also ‘Vita Cartesii est simplicissima’ (Cacciari 1970a). Cacciari’s essay on negative thought became the basis for his influential book, Architecture and Nihilism: On the Philosophy of Modern

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of workerist politics (the cross-fertilisation of student- and worker-politics, the actions against the Venice Biennale and Mostra, and support by students and staff for the struggles, occupations and blockades in Porto Marghera and Mestre).32 Once Negri left Contropiano – his departure prompted by disagreements over a submission by Tronti33 – it represented a broadly Trontian axis. As head of architectural history at IUAV, Tafuri brought together prominent figures associated with this same position; Rita di Leo and Alberto Asor Rosa contributed to a symposium in 1970 devoted to analysing the decisions by CentralEuropean architects and designers to participate in the USSR’s Five-Year Plans.34 Cacciari was appointed to teach philosophy at IUAV. Influential as the essays of this phase (or their subsequent book-length elaborations) became for architectural history, and, despite a general recognition of their explicit ‘political’ character, they nevertheless occupy a site of political ‘disappearance’, being subsumed under the general labels ‘Marxist’ or ‘communist’. Even given Aureli’s impatience with the mythologisation of the post-68 Venice-school, the absence of any discussion of this episode and the associated period is remarkable: the moment is the apogee of the ‘within and against’ the PCI that Aureli himself advocates, and it is an instalment in which architectural theory was implicated. For those readers unaware of the history of architectural theory, it cannot be underlined enough just how significant is the output of the Venice-school. The arguments associated with these writers transformed the very concept of architectural history, pioneering critical reflections on materialist history and its methodologies.35 Given the dire state of its own literature, the anglophone world was rightly impressed. It should come as no surprise that IUAV-writers became staples of the pages of the New York innovative architectural journal Oppositions.36 Developing an architectural theory influenced by European critical theory Architecture (Cacciari 1993). See also Francesco Dal Co, ‘Note per la critica dell’ideologia della architettura moderna: da Weimar a Dessau’ (Dal Co 1968a), ‘Riscoperta del marxismo e problematica di classe nel movimento studentesco europeo. Rudi Dutschke’ (Dal Co 1968b); ‘Architettura e piano in Unione Sovietica: stalinismo e “destino dell’avanguardia”’ (Dal Co 1968c); ‘Città senza piani, piani senza città: note a margine della pianificazione urbana negli Stati Uniti’ (Dal Co 1970). Note also Rita di Leo, ‘I bolscevichi e “Il Capitale”’ (di Leo 1969); Alberto Asor Rosa, ‘Rivoluzione e letteratura’ (Rosa 1968b) and ‘Il giovane Lukács, teorico dell’arte borghese’ (Rosa 1968a). 32. See, for example, Chinello 1998. Chinello traces the conections back to Venice’s antifascist demonstrations of 1960 and to the industrial struggle of Sirma in Marghera in the Spring of 1965; both were characterised by joint actions and inter-communication between a new generation of workers and architectural students which were to be features of the late 60s. Unrest in architectural colleges around the country had erupted in 1964, not only in reaction to the stifling traditions and hierarchies of professional training and education, but also to the growing sense of disappointment in the limited achievements of postwar urban planning. See Lumley 1990. 33. The dispute was over Tronti’s article ‘Estremismo e riformismo’ (Tronti 1968), which appeared in the first edition of Contropiano. 34. The symposium resulted in a volume of essays (Tafuri (ed.) 1971). 35. I have in mind here, not only the monographs by Tafuri himself, but also the collaborative ventures, such as, Ciucci, Dal Co, Manieri-Elia and Tafuri 1979; Tafuri (ed.) 1971; Dal Co and Tafuri 1980. 36. Oppositions was founded in 1973 by Peter Eisenman, Mario Gandelsonas and Kenneth Frampton, folding in 1984.


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(ranging from structuralism to the Frankfurt-school), Oppositions was both the primary conduit for Italian architectural theory into American debates and a major player in the depoliticisation, ‘postmodernisation’, and in the hypostatisation of ‘autonomy’ that Aureli targets. However, despite being at the sharp end of his polemic, at no point does he address this transition using anything but the most general of allusions. Indeed, the appearance of Aureli’s volume itself represents an interesting footnote to this history. The publication is part of the FORuM project to study ‘the relationship of architectural form to politics and urban life’ and backed by Joan Ockman. Long associated with the intersection of Italian and American architectural theory, Ockman was co-translator of Rossi’s The Architecture of the City (published as part of an Oppositions-imprint in 1982), and served as associate editor of and editorial consultant to the journal.37 As a key-member of the Revisions-group, she was part of an attempt in the early 1980s to reassert a more political approach to the study of architecture, specifically deploying Italian theory to counter both the dominant formalism of American writing and the emerging conservatism of postmodern historicism.38 The Politics of Autonomy, then, can be seen as returning to this terrain: the question of transnational transmission of cultural politics and the efforts to revive some of the original political dynamics in the face of their theoretical appropriation. Although he never elaborates, Aureli’s ‘correctives’ to the English-speaking reception of Italian architectural theory are located at the heart of an especially influential institutional formation.

The question of Red Vienna It is understandable that Aureli wishes to sidestep the discorso tafuriano or burgeoning academic industry of ‘Tafuriana’; it is easy to imagine that he is sick of the same obsessions coming up in graduate-seminars (and knowing that he is an alumnus of IUAV underscores the ‘weight’ from under which he is trying to escape). But he allows his irritation to obstruct the very project he sets himself.39 To understand this, we must first return to the discussion of Rossi. Locus – which, like ‘urban artefact’, is one of Rossi’s key-concepts – conceives of place as a political category and as an agglomeration of collective memories; locus should be grasped as a geographical singularity, but, as Aureli describes it, where ‘singularity’ is not merely empirical but a universal condition. Rossi’s own discussion of the relation of singular and universal uses the examples of ‘the idea of ’ the Renaissance-piazza and the (worldwide) ‘space’ of Catholicism;40 Aureli, however, allies locus with Tronti’s notion of the ‘state 37. See also her important essay on the American reception of the Venice-school: Ockman 1995. 38. The Revisions study-group was convened between 1981 and 1988, and based, as was Oppositions, at the Institute of Architecture and Urban Studies in New York. In addition to responding to the dual conservatism of formalism and postmodernism, the group can also be seen as responding to the way Oppositions’s project had lost steam and as an effort to revive the political urgency of the European ideas. The group organised a symposium on ‘Architecture and Ideology’ in March 1982, which resulted in a publication (Ockman, Berke and McLeod (eds.) 1985). 39. Discorso tafuriano comes from Daniel Sherer (Sherer 1996, p. 42); ‘Tafuriana’ we owe to Alberto Toscano. 40. Rossi 1982, pp. 103, 106.

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of exception’ (the moment of crisis drawn from Carl Schmitt) (pp. 40–1, 52). Tronti takes ‘Red Vienna’ – the period of Social-Democratic rule in the 1920s – as a classic example of a state of exception, where municipal control was at odds with Austria’s conservative national politics. As Aureli extends the point, the large-scale programmes to construct working-class housing in Vienna in the 1920s represented an example of building socialism ‘from within but against the forms of the bourgeois city’; they had the potential, he argues, to ‘become forms representing the autonomous power of the workers’ (pp. 52, 53). The famous residential ‘fortresses’ of the working class, such as Karl Ehn’s Karl-Marx-Hof – which became famous as the site of the violent stand-off with fascists – are read by Aureli and Tronti as examples of a proletarian will-to-form. At stake here is Tafuri’s critique of the Viennese Höfe. This is a fascinating and crucial difference to explore, but Aureli’s main purpose seems to be to prove Rossi’s locus more authentically workerist than Tafuri’s approach. Tafuri’s writings from the 60s form a key-element of the architectural subjectmatter of Aureli’s book and, given their importance in debates, really deserved fuller development, rather than appearing, as they do, as brief interjections throughout the course of the study (and always playing the rôle of stalking horse). Exasperation with Tafuri – or his ghost – develops into one of the forces motivating Aureli, but it means that he misses an important opportunity to explore a substantive debate within workerism (or, if one wants to be pedantic, among ex-workerist PCI-based workerist-communists). Aureli invites us to the threshold of an important political assessment, across which, regrettably, we do not proceed. For Tafuri, the Höfe replicated the urban politics associated with the garden-city’s fantasy of an artisanal village, albeit scaled-up for the city of the mass-worker. He read the experiences of Red Vienna alongside (and in contrast to) those of the Siedlungen of Ernst May’s Social-Democratic Frankfurt, Cornelis van Eesteren’s Amsterdam, Martin Wagner’s work in Berlin, and then next to those of the Weimar architects and planners (Social Democrats as well as Communists) who, once the economic situation in Europe became less favourable for building, emigrated to the USSR to work as foreign technical specialists on major construction-projects such as Magnitogorsk.41 Aureli alights on certain aspects of Tafuri’s critique: his criticisms of the compromises made by the Viennese administration, of the retrogressive style (with which the modernity of May’s Frankfurt contrasts), and of the failure to confront the problems of the totality. In particular, this last point is taken by Aureli as an example of Tafuri’s fixation with scientific ‘systems and programs’ and with the ‘abstraction of the general plan’, to which, accordingly, he favourably contrasts Rossi’s ‘exceptions and singularities’ (pp. 52, 53). (Here Aureli draws on Tronti’s recent assertion, attributed to a conversation with the author, that Tafuri’s analysis was too mechanical and beholden to the model of planning.) Interesting as this is – and Aureli usefully draws our attention to aspects of Tafuri’s early writings that are usually overlooked – I am not convinced by the argument. Tafuri’s critiques do not rest at the political level (which is rather hypostatised by the Tronti-Schmitt focus), but point to the limitations of left-wing political control under conditions where social rule remains with its opponents – not just 41. Tafuri (ed.) 1971 and Tafuri 1980a. The discussion is also important in a number of chapters in Dal Co and Tafuri 1980, especially ‘The Attempts at Urban Reform in Europe Between the Wars’. See also ‘Sozialpolitik and the City in Weimar Germany’, in Tafuri 1987, pp. 197–233.


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the contrast between municipal and national politics, but the tension between the powers of political office and economic power. Tafuri’s point seems less an obsession with, and inability to break from, scientistic ideologies of planning, and more to do with grasping the contradictions of a social totality (and we would have to qualify the type of incomplete and fractured ‘totality’ Tafuri’s workerist philosophy conceived). By way of Greppi and Alberto Pedrolli’s criticisms, as published in Quaderni rossi, of the ‘city-territory’ as a technocratic policy, Aureli brings out some of the ambivalences in the arguments presented by Tafuri and Giorgio Piccinato in an article from 1962, where they argued for a left appropriation of this same notion (pp. 59–63). But this technocratic moment – if that is how we are to take it – is then treated as the gravitational point towards which all of Tafuri’s subsequent enunciations must be pulled, losing sight of the changing nature of Tafuri’s own formation as a political subject through the period. Collapsing the Tafuri of, say, 1969 and the 70s with the one of 1962 is rather ‘unspecific’, to say the least. Moreover, it also requires us to ignore Tafuri’s own challenges to the scientistic mode. In his 1969 essay for Contropiano, for example, Tafuri is critical of the Taylorism implicit in Hilberseimer’s and Gropius’s approaches and their attempt to adapt their designs to changes in the building-trade.42 He takes his distance from the model of the city as an industrial machine, the Siedlung as assembly-line, the house conceived as a part of the industrial system organised ‘around the service nucleus (the Frankfurter Küche)’. (And here, surely, one can detect some additional reasons for Tafuri’s suspicion of Archizoom, which he dismissed for being one of the avantgardes who, in irresponsible fashion, deduced ‘intellectual playfulness’ from a ‘hasty reading of “new left” reviews such as Quaderni rossi, Classe operaia, and Contropiano’.43 He went on to add that they were intent on hauling ‘a mythical proletariat onto the stage of psychedelic action’. Tafuri’s perspective, then, would have Archizoom as more beholden to ‘a liberating psychophysical therapy devoid of codes [which] called upon its audience to participate in a destructive and cathartic orgy’ than as inheritors to Greppi or Tronti – a dismissal that may be a tad unfair on a group of young designers, but which needs to be put in play with Aureli’s effort to wed them so directly to operaismo.) Moreover, there is an important issue embedded in this debate over Red Vienna, which would have been considerably more productive to explore: an architectural debate over the processes of social change, and the pressure-points of strategies of reform and the rôle of a progressive state-apparatus. Aureli (via Tronti) advocates a perspective on Vienna as ‘a clear manifestation’ of the autonomy of political action (p. 53); Tafuri, in contrast, points to the limitations in this social project of progressive reforms. Having picked up on such an important internal debate, Aureli rather squanders the opportunity before him. A properly political debate – and one less obsessed with keeping Tafuri at bay – would have to consider the weight of specific arguments at particular historical conjunctions, the calibration of tactics. (To dismiss Tafuri as ‘mechanical’ requires us to lose sight of his history; his points on Vienna involved a debate over postwar-Italy: from the disappointments of Ludovico Quaroni, one of the major postwar-architects with whom both Tafuri and Rossi worked in the early 60s, and an engagement with the ambitions of PCI-controlled city-authorities.) The potential discussion here is not just of historical interest and it takes us beyond niggling over the views of Tafuri. The examples and situations of the early twenty-first century are 42. Tafuri 1998, especially pp. 21–5. 43. Tafuri 1989, p. 99.

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different from those that had informed the Vienna-debate (and Italy in the 60s and 70s), but within the terms of Aureli’s ambition to intervene in the current moment we are brought to touch upon the question of the state; to rekindled interest in Rosa Luxemburg; to the debates that took place around John Holloway and power prompted by developments in places such as Venezuela and Bolivia; to the autonomist-inspired arguments for micropolitics and ‘temporary autonomous zones’ that dominate the current landscape of cultural politics. The interest in ‘zones of resistance’ returns us to the debates of the early 80s. Derived from an Anglo-American appropriation of Gramsci’s ‘counterhegemony’, the theory of the enclave tried to counter the perceived harshness of Tafuri’s assessment, and to suggest that resistance to capitalism could be built by separating off islands – or archipelagos, as is lately preferred – of alternative social relations. In architectural circles, ‘enclave-theory’ was articulated most famously by Fredric Jameson at a Revisions-symposium in 1982.44 Becoming one of the themes of the conference, it has ever since been the favourite resort of left-leaning radicals unable either to stomach Tafuri’s conclusions or, paradoxically, to find much of an enclave from within which to act (a classic source of paralysis for the post-New Left).45 Aureli’s reading of Red Vienna as a state of exception offers another inflection on this debate, whilst sidestepping the central political problems that the debate raises; polemicising against discourses associated with the American reception whilst evading a confrontation with probably one of its central legacies (all the more odd because Aureli so actively returns us to the question of Viennese Social Democracy). This is probably less a question of deliberate political evasion than of the book’s lack of resolution, compounded by the author’s simultaneous fixation on and dislike of Tafuri. Nevertheless, as a statementpiece by one of the fresh voices in architectural theory, The Politics of Autonomy represents a fascinating contribution, invoking – if never quite pursuing – the debates over social change and its potential means. Reviewed by Gail Day University of Leeds [email protected]

References Asor Rosa, Alberto 1968a, ‘Il giovane Lukacs, teorico dell’arte borghese’, Contropiano, 1, 1: 59–07. Aureli, Pier Vittorio 2007, ‘The Formal and the Political’, available at: . —— 2008, The Project of Autonomy: Politics and Architecture Within and Against Capitalism, New York: The Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture at Columbia University and Princeton Architectural Press. Cacciari, Massimo 1968a, ‘Dialettica e tradizione’, 1, 1: 125–52. —— 1968b, ‘Sviluppo capitalistico e ciclo delle lotte’, Contropiano, 1, 3: 579–627. 44. Jameson 1985 (and Jameson 1988). 45. Jameson distinguishes his approach – although this has rarely been noticed – not so much as being practical or concrete enclave-spaces but as spaces of critical distance (utopian images). See Jameson 1985, p. 52.


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—— 1969, ‘Sulla genesi del pensiero negativo’, Contropiano, 2, 1: 131–01. —— 1970a, ‘Vita Cartesii est simplicissima’, Contropiano, 3, 2: 375–99. —— 1970b, ‘Utopia e socialismo’, Contropiano, 3, 3: 563–86. —— 1993, Architecture and Nihilism: On the Philosophy of Modern Architecture, translated by Stephen Sartarelli, New Haven: Yale University Press. Cacciari, Massimo and Giannina Longobardi 1969, ‘Teoria e organizzazione in Francia dopo il maggio’, Contropiano, 2, 2: 451–73. Chinello, Cesco 1998, ‘Il Sessantotto operaio e studentesco a Porto Marghera’, in Sindicato e lotte dei lavoratori a Padova e nel Venezia (1945–1969), Padua: Centro Studi Ettore Luccini. Ciucci, Georgio, Francesco Dal Co, Mario Manieri-Elia and Manfredo Tafuri 1973, La città americana dalla guerra civile al New Deal, Rome: Laterza. —— 1979, The American City: from the Civil War to the New Deal, translated by Barbara Luigia La Penta, London: Granada. Dal Co, Francesco 1968a, ‘Note per la critica dell’ideologia della architettura moderna: da Weimar a Dessau’, Contropiano, 1, 1: 155–71. —— 1968b, ‘Riscoperta del marxismo e problematica di classe nel movimento studentesco europeo. Rudi Dutschke.’, Contropiano, 1, 2: 423–3. —— 1968c, ‘Architettura e piano in Unione Sovietica: stalinismo e “destino dell’avanguardia”’, Contropiano, 1, 3: 527–71. —— 1970, ‘Città senza piani, piani senza città: note a margine della pianificazione urbana negli Stati Uniti’, Contropiano, 3, 1. Dal Co, Francesco and Manfredo Tafuri 1976, Architettura contemporanea, Milan: Electa Editrice. —— 1980, Modern Architecture, two volumes, translated by Robert Erich Wolf, London: Academy Editions/Faber and Faber. di Leo, Rita 1969, ‘I bolscevichi e “Il Capitale”’, Contropiano, 2, 2: 273–344. DOGMA 2008, ‘Architecture Refuses’, available at: . Gregotti, Vittorio 1968, New Directions in Italian Architecture, translated by Giuseppina Salvadori, New York: George Braziller. Jameson, Fredric 1984a, ‘Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism’, New Left Review, I, 146: 53–92. —— 1984b, ‘The Politics of Theory: Ideological Positions in the Postmodern Debate’, New German Critique, 33: 53–65. —— 1985, ‘Architecture and the Critique of Ideology’, in Ockman, Berke and McLeod (eds.) 1985. —— 1988, ‘Architecture and the Critique of Ideology’, in The Ideologies of Theory: Essays 1971– 1986. Volume 2: The Syntax of History, London: Routledge. —— 1991, Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, London: Verso. —— 1994, ‘The Antinomies of Postmodernism’, in The Seeds of Time, New York: Columbia University Press. —— 1998a, ‘The Brick and the Balloon: Architecture, Idealism and Land Speculation’, in ANYHOW, edited by Cynthia Davidson, Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press. —— 1998b, The Cultural Turn: Selected Writings on the Postmodern, 1983–1998, London: Verso. —— 1998c, ‘The Brick and the Balloon: Architecture, Idealism and Land Speculation’, in Jameson 1998b. —— 1998d, ‘Culture and Finance Capital’, in Jameson 1998b. —— 2007, Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions, London: Verso.

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Lumley, Robert 1990, States of Emergency: Cultures of Revolt in Italy from 1968 to 1978, London: Verso. Ockman, Joan 1995, ‘Venice and New York’, Casabella, 619–20: 57–71. Ockman, Joan, Deborah Berke and Mary McLeod (eds.) 1985, Architecture, Criticism, Ideology, Princeton: Princeton Architectural Press. Reinhardt, Ad 1991, Art-as-Art: The Selected Writings of Ad Reinhardt, edited by Barbara Rose, Berkeley: University of California Press. Rosa, Alberto Asor 1968, ‘Rivoluzione e letteratura’, Contropiano, 1, 1: 216–. Rossi, Aldo 1966, L’architettura della città, Venice: Marsilio Editori, 1966. —— 1982, The Architecture of the City, translated by Diane Ghirardo and Joan Ockman with an introduction by Peter Eisenman, Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press. Serpentine Gallery 2008, ‘Park Nights: Manifesto Marathon’, available at: . Sherer, Daniel 1996, ‘Tafuri’s Renaissance: Architecture, Representation, Transgression’, Assemblage, 28: 34–45. Tafuri, Manfredo 1969, ‘Per una critica dell’ideologia architettonica’, Contropiano, 2, 1: 31–79. —— 1970, ‘Lavoro intelletuale e sviluppo capitalistico’, Contropiano, 3, 2: 241–8. —— 1971a, ‘Socialdemocrazia e città nella Repubblica di Weimar’, Contropiano, 4, 1: 257– 311. —— 1971b, ‘Austromarxismo e città: “Das rote Wein”’, Contropiano, 4, 2: 259–311. —— 1971c, ‘Socialdemocrazia e città nella Repubblica di Weimar’ (book review), Contropiano, 4, 4: 207–23. —— 1979, Architecture and Utopia: Design and Capitalist Development, translated by Barbara Luigia La Penta, Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press. —— 1980a, Vienna rossa: la politica residenziale nella Vienna socialista, 1919–1933, Milan: Electa. —— 1980b, La sfera e il labirinto: Avanguardie e architettura da Piranesi agli anni ’70, Turin: Giulio Einaudi Editore. —— 1986, Storia dell’architettura italiana, 1944–1985, Turin: Giulio Einaudi Editore. —— 1987, The Sphere and the Labyrinth: Avant-Gardes and Architecture from Piranesi to the 1970s, translated by Pellegrino d’Acierno and Robert Connolly, Cambridge, MA.: The MIT Press. —— 1989, History of Italian Architecture, 1944–1985, translated by Jessica Levine, Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press, 1989. —— 1998, ‘Toward the Critique of Architectural Ideology’, translated by Stephen Sartarelli, in Architecture Theory since 1968, edited by K. Michael Hays, Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press. —— (ed.) 1971, Socialismo, città, architettura URSS 1917–1937: Il contributo degli architetti europei, Rome: Officina Edizioni. Tronti, Mario 1968, ‘Estremismo e riformismo’, Contropiano, 1, 1: 41–58. —— 1971, Operai e Capitale, Turin: Giulio Einaudi Editore. —— 1973, ‘Social Capital’, Telos, 17: 98–121. Wright, Steve 2002, Storming Heaven: Class Composition and Struggle in Italian Autonomist Marxism, London: Pluto.


brill.nl/hima

Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism Television A: tilifiziūn. – E: television. – F: télévision. G: Fernsehen. – R: televidenie. – S: televisión. C: dianshi 电视 Television is the most intimate and perhaps most significant artefact of an epoch-making process, in which technological invention, cultural reorganisation, and the control of public discourse have been driven ever more vigorously by capitalist imperatives. Television is a machine that not only functions best within capitalist structures, but also reproduces and upholds them. Critical theorists have long treated television as a crucial symptom of the postwar-era, but the significance of this symptom has been cast in very different ways. Broadly speaking, they have either examined the specific ideological positions and cultural values promoted by television-programming – along with its possibilities for radically new forms of cultural experience – or they have explored the ways in which television has become a social technology in a more general sense, an apparently universal mediator capable of connecting the circuits of economic valorisation to the reproduction of social relations and the cultivation of subjectivity. Thus, the critique of television has necessarily encompassed several kinds of analysis, from close readings of particular programmes to theoretical descriptions of the televisual system as a whole. At the same time, the critique of television necessarily opens outwards, towards fundamental philosophical and political questions. At the beginning of his essay ‘Prologue to Television’ (1953), Adorno formulates the crucial outlines for critical reflection: ‘The social, technical, and artistic aspects of televi© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011

sion cannot be treated in isolation. They are in large measure interdependent: artistic composition, for instance, depends upon an inhibiting consideration of the mass public, which only helpless naïveté dares disregard; the social effect depends upon the technical structure, also upon the novelty of invention as such, which was certainly decisive during television’s beginnings in America; but the social influence also depends upon the explicit and implicit messages television programmes convey to their viewers. The medium itself, however, as a combination of film and radio, falls within the comprehensive schema of the culture industry and furthers its tendency to transform and capture the consciousness of the public from all sides’ (1998, 49). The only thing worse than exaggerating the worldhistorical success of television is underestimating the degree to which it has developed into a social force of nature. That is why it is necessary to look at television methodically, according to Adorno’s distinctions, in order to approach its complexity. 1. Technological-economic-political apparatus – Television has maintained, with only slight deviations, the parameters of its initial technical organisation: centralised broadcasting and scattered, non-reciprocal reception. It is a medium controlled like no other by state- and corporate interests, maintaining the gap between those who transmit and those who receive even while providing an imaginary bridge between them. This is true on a strictly financial level: the costs of programming and distribution have grown significantly (due to constant expansion, innovation and stronger competition) while the price of reception (in terms of household-equipment and fees) has become relatively more cheap, and an ever DOI: 10.1163/156920611X558326

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greater share of the faux frais of capitalist production appears in the form of publicityexpenses, which become its condition of economic existence. At a more general level, the costs of television are spread throughout the economic system as a kind of overhead expense, as if the unavoidable price of commodifying everyday life and spectacularising politics must be paid by everyone. During the days of terrestrial broadcasting in Europe, the television-monopoly was held by the state. In the Western-European countries, television was socially controlled by law through oversight boards. In the ‘actually existing socialist’ countries of Eastern Europe, oversight and regulation was exercised by committees of the respective ruling parties. This principle changed with the introduction of newer media-technologies, especially the individual reception of satellite-transmissions. The spread of television burst through national borders; programmes would henceforth be produced for, and circulated to, an international audience. Above all, it was through television that ‘commodity aesthetics’ functioned as a ‘motor of globalization’ (Haug 1999). In the USA, public television gave way from the beginning to a full-blown private-commercial production and broadcasting system. In the climate of neoliberal deregulation that marked the 1980s and 1990s, televisionsystems around the world expanded and became more thoroughly integrated into large corporations, generally at the expense of existing state-operated channels. Although much programming remains relatively local and national in its content, the dominant mediacompanies and their products operate on a global scale, putting the formerly national broadcasters under constant pressure in the battle over market-share. As television-companies have been absorbed into larger operations that include other media-, manufacturing and telecommunications-units, there arise opportunities for classic kinds of vertical integration (production and distribution by the same firm) as well as new kinds of commodification (in which copyrighted products can be ‘leveraged’ across several product lines, from toys and clothing to restaurants and theme-parks). By controlling significant portions of the tele-

vision-spectrum, a handful of corporations are able to promote a range of their own goods, and to repackage the output of other cultureindustries, especially advertising, journalism, and sports. In their business-strategies and marketing techniques, media-companies are exemplary (for further discussion, see Herman and McChesney 1997). 1.2 Marxist approaches to television range between ideology-critique and the question if and how the medium can be critically refunctioned. The radical-democratic vision of television essentially stems from Brecht’s radio-theory and Dziga Vertov’s film-theory and praxis. It is oriented toward the necessity of creating visual reciprocity and an openended circuit of transmissions, whereby everybody would act as both sender and receiver. Just as Vertov treated cinema as a means for making images as social facts, he anticipated that television would provide a means for distributing images as tools of social emancipation. Thus, television would enable a qualitatively new synthesis of art and technique. This optimistic perspective, which calls for a radical reorganisation of the circulation of images, has not disappeared from leftist culture. It reappeared in the avant-garde filmmaking and videomaking groups of the 60s and 70s, who responded to the dominance of television by creating alternative modes and sites of image-production. Its most important theoretical expression appeared in Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge’s Öffentlichkeit und Erfahrung (1972) which outlines the need for products capable of liberating the ‘imaginative faculty’ and activating the ‘sociological fantasy’ already at work in the industrial organisation of television (1972, chapter 3). Their call for a new, positive reappropriation of television remains largely unanswered, with the notable exception of Kluge himself, who continues to produce innovative material – in legally guaranteed ‘windows’ – for several commercial networks in Germany. In his ‘Constituents of a Theory of the Media’ (1970), Hans Magnus Enzensberger argued that a ‘means of distribution’ can be changed into a ‘means of communication’ by reversing the relationships between senders and receivers.

R. Dienst / Historical Materialism 18 (2010) 237–244 Twenty years later, disillusioned, he spoke of television as a ‘nothing medium’, whose ‘pointlessness’ and ‘distractedness’ appear to be ‘the only universal and generally available form of psychotherapy’ – and for which, given the ‘social costs’ of chemical drugs, there is no alternative (1988, 101). This cynical apologia stems from the observation that television, despite its initial utopian promise, did not develop any open-ended structures of discourse. On the contrary, it was organised by strict schedules, which, like radio, juxtaposed different kinds of programming in succession. The calculations of programming precede the moment of presentation: before one can speak about a specific piece of televisual imagery, one must reckon with the televisual apparatus that conveys it as well as the whole televisual programme of which it is a part. To address this situation, Raymond Williams famously described television’s characteristic form as ‘flow’: television presents itself as a stream of images and sounds in which interruption is just as important as continuity (1974, 86). The programme guarantees neither open-ended diversity nor singleminded coherence. Williams recognised that this apparently technical or formal feature has important ideological implications. First, it allows television to recycle other cultural forms, and thus gains an arbitrating power over them. By deploying that multiplicity of forms and genres, then, the televisual programme (whether on one channel or many) offers flow instead of communicative interaction. In practice, this model has been phenomenally successful, turning every televisionsystem into a kind of cultural marketplace, where the choice of programmes replaces the ability to make our own images. 1.3 In the course of almost seventy years, television has undergone constant development as technology and as medium alike: from a single channel to contrasting and competing channels, from a monopolised medium of the state to ‘dual systems’ where legallyestablished governmental channels and programmes coexist with private commercial ones (see Hickethier 1998). The means of broadcasting have changed. As cable-distribution

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and satellite-transmission became available to individuals, terrestrial broadcasting headed toward extinction. Thus, the linkages between viewers of a single channel are erased, just as the possibility of ‘zapping’ erases the connection between viewers and particular programmes and broadcasters. From now on, spectators ‘compose’ their own programmes and constantly adjust their choices. With the possibility of individual recording and stockpiling of television-programmes, viewers can also erase the temporal connections to the centrally-controlled programme-grid. Television is no longer a primary activity; instead, it is received in increasingly casual ways. Through interactive contact with media-programmes on workplace-screens, the basic attitude of television viewers becomes interchangeable with the attitude of data-workers. They are ready to alter every programme available without restriction. Individual (digital) channels already offer paying customers the chance to intervene in the broadcast (for example, the choice of camera-angles at sporting events). Through the integration of video-cards in personal computers, television changes from one ‘programme’ into many. 2. Aesthetics – What distinguishes television from previous visual media, then, is that it is a network of transmission before it is an apparatus of representation or recording. Whether we must therefore reconceive our histories of media and culture in light of the primacy of transmission – as Régis Debray has proposed (1997) – is a much larger question. It is enough to emphasise here that telematic considerations – the problem of sending images at a distance – define television much more than optical or rhetorical considerations. This history has left its imprint on the priorities of the television-industry. If, at a technical level, television transmits in ‘real time’, that sense of temporality is never immediate or unmediated: the ‘liveness’ of television must be carefully staged and regulated, for it is the binding element of the televisual compound. Viewers must learn to switch between different kinds of imaginary time – the time of the newscast, the time of advertising, the time of entertainment – within the synchronising flow of the

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programme. If television has an ‘aesthetic’ of its own, it is an off-balance aesthetic, in which we are meant to learn to shift between images without losing our bearings. If television is structurally incapable of producing discrete works of art – let alone autonomous ones – it would seem impossible to speak of televisual aesthetics. Rather than asking whether television can be an art, it seems more relevant to ask if there can be art in the presence of television. For Perry Anderson, the arrival of television signals ‘the ubiquity of the spectacle as the organizing principle of the culture industry’ (1998, 105 et sq.). The supply of images provided by television overwhelms the capacity of the artistic field to mount any resistance or to strike any distance. There are at least two ways in which theorists and artists have responded to this dead-end. First, as noted before, they demonstrate that it remains possible to answer the televisual system through some alternative mode of cultural production. Video-art has often played this role, as well as cinema itself: in both cases, televisual practices of image-making can be broken down for analysis, or refused outright. From many examples of such artists, two names will suffice: Jean-Luc Godard and Anne-Marie Miéville, who have not only produced video-works that directly engage and criticise the operations of television (Six fois deux), but have also addressed the practical difficulties of developing a radically democratic media-system, whether in France or Mozambique. (It is worth remembering that Brecht became interested in experimenting with television: he asked for fifty cameras to record his theatre-work, but was offered only four, and nothing further came of it; see Adameck 1998, 128). A second way of responding to the crisis in art and aesthetics has been paedagogical and theoretical: instead of bemoaning the supremacy of the spectacle, critics have offered reconceptualisations of spectatorship. Much of this work has been inspired by feminist scholars, who insist that television cannot be simply dismissed as the enemy of art when it remains an important element in the active imaginary lives of so many people. If television is not

governed by a particular aesthetic in the classic sense, then, it nevertheless provides materials with which viewers can productively engage, even in the most unpromising situations. This trajectory of this research in the 1980s and 1990s turned film- and television-criticism into one of the most popular genres of social critique. For example, Tania Modleski’s early work highlighted the complex relationship between women’s work in the home and the genre of soap-opera: she argued that the strategies of televisual storytelling brought about a compromise between programming logic and the needs of women to exercise their own imaginative capacities. Other feminist critics, often influenced by psychoanalysis, repositioned television within a larger history of the visual media and the always imperfect regulation of sexual difference (see Mellencamp 1990). As this conception of spectatorship evolved, new ethnographic research began to examine concretely how various audiences remake what they see on television, inflected by household-dynamics. Thus, the framework of criticism shifted from the centralised broadcasters and the programme as such to the scattered viewers and their diverse experiences (Morley 1986). If this criticism does indeed offer an aesthetic, it is one developed in spite of, even in defiance of the aesthetic material itself. From this perspective – associated with the academic field of cultural studies – viewers do not learn to make ‘judgements’ of particular visual objects, but, rather, learn the ‘practices’ of everyday life. Even if the presence of television is inescapable, what people do with it is not so obvious. In spite of all constraints there is an element of creativity in spectatorship. For many critics, the uses of television can be resistant and subversive, even when viewers produce nothing more than idiosyncratic meanings or fleeting moments of pleasure. Clearly, these arguments defy the more strident denunciations of television as a whole, and, instead, call for a constant critical engagement with the actuality of television. The aesthetic positions around television are often set in terms of larger debates about postmodernism, where it is almost always


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taken for granted that television is a paradigmatically postmodern object. In his wellknown book on postmodernism, Jameson (1990) treats television and video-art as two components of the same medium, so that an examination of both will provide not only an account of ‘cultural hegemony’ of the former but the ‘possibilities and potentialities’ opened up by the latter (67–96). This proposition is distinct from the strategy of video-artists themselves, or the critics who try to develop a ‘resistant’ hermeneutic for the treatment of discrete televisual texts. Jameson’s dialectical procedure leads away from aesthetics, no matter how ingeniously reinvented, and towards the social and economic dimensions of the televisual system.

Democratic Republic, television was seen as a new medium of social communication. By the 1970s at the latest, this perspective was suppressed by the interpretation and practice of television that prevailed in the Soviet Union, where it, like all mass-media, was treated as a ‘means of mass information and propaganda’ ( Jurovski 1975, 7). Thereafter television developed in the GDR as a centralised stateinstitution for the ongoing strategic direction of organised social processes, and was defined according to that function. Some individual theorists countered this interpretation by arguing that the role of television as a cultural forum could not be separated from the communicative function of the medium (see Hoff 1985).

3. Ideological formation – The historical importance of television does not consist in some particular technical innovation, or in any special artistic achievement, but, rather, in the distinctive social ordering functions and new experiences that have evolved through it. There have been significant innovations in the quality and quantity of images, but that does not change the fact that television always been an apparatus of social ordering, exercising distinctive kinds of control and violence.

3.2 Television, no matter what its scale, necessarily addresses its audience as a mass, even though there are many modalities of that address. Put another way: television mobilises its masses in ever more differentiated ways. Although it has often served as a symbol for a certain kind of totalitarian control, it would be hard to demonstrate that television was ever very successful in the role of singleminded propaganda-machine. It would be easier to speak of the ideological effect of television, whereby the most advanced systems develop a repertoire of offerings – ‘something for everybody’ – through which audiences exercise a margin of choice and distinction with each turn of the channel. Marcuse argued that this proliferation of choices was a way to dominate the expression of desire, and thus constitutes the totalitarian thrust of ‘advanced industrial society’ in general. Indeed, he thought that the simplest way to see ‘one-dimensionality’ at work was to take in a few hours of television or radio, switching the stations at random (1964, 20). Thus television presents a vicious circle of illusion, enveloping all who catch a glimpse. This view remains a kind of abstract negation – indirectly echoed by the later slogans of Debord (‘the society of the spectacle’; 1967) and Baudrillard (‘the age of simulation’; 1976) – which would later become a kind of cynical affirmation. Adorno (1953a)

3.1 In the eyes of its dominant functionaries and practitioners, contemporary television is a ‘marketplace’. Yet almost all of the earlier television-systems adopted somewhat different self-images, having been created as public projects and invested with state authority. Depending on the tenor of the political régime, such public monopolies might be cast in terms of an official national culture, or entrusted to a bourgeois élite as a vehicle of its own kind of acculturation. In 1948, Adolf Grimme, a broadcasting pioneer in the Federal Republic of Germany, defined radio (and so also television) as an ‘instrument for forming the people and thereby the shaping of public life’ (cited in Rundfunk 1990, 159), which could be seen as the basis for the ‘political mission’ of radio and television in the building of a democratic German society after the War. In the early years of the German

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sees things quite differently, insofar as the ‘stultification, psychological crippling and ideological disorientation of the public’ could be broken through television, because its ideology is not ‘the result of evil intentions, perhaps not even of the incompetence of those involved, but rather is imposed by demonic objective spirit’ (1998, 69). That is why Adorno thought that ‘there is some hope in trying to raise awareness’, even if it consisted only in concerted action by producers and viewers whereby ‘the public could develop an aversion to being led around by the nose’ (ibid.). Such an effort would in any case confront human perceptions already radically altered by radio and television. ‘As the relationships of the human world become unilateral, the world, neither present nor absent, becomes a phantom’, remarked Günther Anders (1956, 129). Jean-Paul Sartre wrote of the ‘intensified serialization of the listener’ through broadcasting: the dispersed audiences know each other only through the machines that connect them (1991, 437). One cannot watch television without being aware that there are others watching, somewhere else: everybody is unified precisely by being cut off from each other through the machine. After travelling to Cuba in 1960, Sartre asked whether television could regroup people in productive ways, if only the institution did not impose a single programme and if the act of watching could become collective. In this respect, Sartre proposed a media-specific variation of an archaic vision: ‘So you need a carnival, or the apocalypse, or some upheaval, in order to make a comparison’ (1991, 438). That gesture – holding out hope for television – recurs in even the most radical criticism. For a recent example, we can look to Pierre Bourdieu’s attack on current televisionpractices (1996). In his sociologically detailed description, television is shown to be managed by a very limited class-fraction, serving as the front that allows journalists and other ‘collaborators’ to masquerade as the voices of the entire polity. What had been distinct fields – politics, science, the arts – are thereby stripped of their distinctive kinds of discursive author-

ity and put at the mercy of the marketplace of audience-ratings. Bourdieu insists that such consolidation of cultural and intellectual power must be reversed, and he urges the creation of new, autonomous means of communication (which may or may not be technically advanced) to serve different social groups. 3.3 Thus, television has been understood as the agent of both mass-politics and classhegemony. In both cases, the advantage of television to the ruling order consists in its pacifying ideological function. It remains to be asked whether there might be some more direct economic function at work. Of course, critics have recognised that television has been an important part of building a culture of consumption, both directly through advertising and indirectly, through the various milieux of commodities it puts on display. Étienne Balibar has drawn an important theoretical distinction here: on on hand, mass-identifications and class-based discourses organise subjects as social groups, which can be seen as a state-oriented function; while on the other hand, the promotion of commodityconsumption corresponds to a fetishising function, which serves capital and the market (1993, chapter 3). If contemporary television does indeed resemble a market of fetishes more than an arena of ideological positions, its economic power may be waxing while its political role wanes. Here lies television’s most ‘vulgar’ aspect: it captures the play of images by which people identify and orient themselves in an already diffused collectivity. It restructures our creative psychic life around the habits of consumption, and thereby demands some portion of our ‘free’ time as the price of social belonging. The economic analogy is exact: just as wage-labour and industrial production ‘socialises’ the labour-time through which society is reproduced, so too does television ‘socialise’ the time of imagination and culture. Watching television is indeed a kind of labour in both a narrow sense (it creates value for broadcasters) and in a broad sense (it translates our own activity into an abstract ‘consumptive force’ which must be always driven onwards).

R. Dienst / Historical Materialism 18 (2010) 237–244 Thus it provides a concrete mechanism by which the ‘means of consumption’ can be expanded, and new areas of life opened up to capitalist valorisation (See Smith 1997, 195–7). In that respect, television is just the beginning. Indeed, the ‘expansion of the means of consumption’ seems to be a good first explanation for the way the internet is being steered today, which appears less as a liberation from television than its expansion. Television already circulates hitherto unimaginable social energies on the scale of both vast crowds (international acts of celebration and mourning) and obscure niches (privatised acts of consumption). It already generates more information than we can absorb, and takes up more time than we can afford. It would not be easy to uproot and throw away, nor do we have anything with which to replace it. Yet, alongside everything terrible about it, television preserves one final possibility: that it will teach us what we need to know and what we could scarcely otherwise experience. Learning about the world, sharing the happiness and suffering of other people, feeling a sense of belonging: television promises everything we cannot fail to wish for. Bibliography: H. Adameck 1998, ‘Brechts Vorstellungen von Filmaufzeichnungen seiner Theaterstücke’ in W. Hecht (ed.), alles was Brecht ist . . ., Frankfurt/M; T. W. Adorno 1998, ‘Prolog zum Fernsehen’ (1953), GS 10.2, 507–17, and ‘Fernsehen als Ideologie’ (1953a), GS 10.2, 518–32, translated in Critical Models, New York; G. Anders 1988 [1956], ‘Die Welt als Phantom und Matrize. Philosophische Betrachtungen über Rundfunk und Fernsehen’, in Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen, Bd. 1: Über die Seele im Zeitalter der zweiten industriellen Revolution, Munich, 97–211; P. Anderson 1998, The Origins of Postmodernity, London; É. Balibar 1993, La philosophie de Marx, Paris; J. Baudrillard 1976, L’Échange symbolique et la mort, Paris; P. Bourdieu 1996, Sur la télévision, Paris; G. Debord 1967, La Société du spectacle, Paris; R. Debray 1997, Transmettre, Paris; J. Engler ed. 1990, Rundfunk und Fernsehen 1948–1989, Hans Bredow Institute, Baden-Baden-Hamburg; H.M. Enzensberger 1970, Baukasten zu einer Theorie der Medien, Munich 1997; H.M. Enzensberger

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1988, ‘Das Nullmedium oder Warum alle Klagen über das Fernsehen gegenstandslos sind’ in Mittelmaß und Wahn, 4th ed., Frankfurt/M 1988, 89–103; W.F. Haug 1999, ‘Warenästhetik als Globalisierungsmotor’ in Politisch richtig oder Richtig politisch. Linke Politik im transnationalen High-Tech-Kapitalismus, Hamburg, 33–43; E.S. Herman & R.W. McChesney 1997, The Global Media: The New Missionaries of Global Capitalism, London; K. Hickethier in collaboration with P. Hoff 1998, Geschichte des deutschen Fernsehens, Stuttgart-Weimar; P. Hoff 1985, Fernsehen als Kunst, Babelsberg; H. Holzer 1972, ‘Massmedien und Manipulation’, in G. Gleisberg et al., Zu Pressekonzentration und Meinungsmanipulierung, Frankfurt/M; H. Holzer 1975, Theorie des Fernsehens, Hamburg; F. Jameson 1990, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Durham; A.J. Jurovski 1975, Televidenie – poiski i resheniia: ocherki istorii i teorii sovetsko telezhurnalistiki, Moscow; E.A. Kaplan (ed.) 1983, Regarding Television, Frederick; H. Marcuse 1964, Der eindimensionale Mensch, Neuwied-Berlin/W 1970; P. Mellencamp ed. 1990, The Logics of Television, Bloomington; T. Modleski 1983, ‘The Rhythms of Reception: Daytime Television and Women’s Work’, in Kaplan (ed.) 1983, 67–75; D. Morley 1986, Family Television, London; D. Morley 1992, Television, Audiences and Cultural Studies, London; O. Negt & A. Kluge 1972, Öffentlichkeit und Erfahrung, Frankfurt/M; J.-P. Sartre 1991 [1985], Critique of Dialectical Reason volume 2, London; P. Smith 1997, Millenial Dreams: Contemporary Culture and Capital in the North, London; R. Williams 1974, Television: Technology and Cultural Form, New York; S. Zielinski 1989, Audiovisionen, Kino und Fernsehen als Zwischenspiele in der Geschichte, Reinbek.

Richard Dienst Advertising, aesthetics, actuality, available time, cinema, commodification, commodity-aesthetics, communication, consumerism, counterculture, cultural critique, cultural studies, cultural imperialism, culture-industry, delusion-context, diffusion, entertainment, facts, fascination, faux frais, fetish-character of the commodity, fiction, free time, hegemonic apparatus, ideology-critique,

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ideological powers, illusion, image, internet, manipulation, mass-communication, mass-culture, mass-media, media-imperialism, narcotic, postmodern, radio, resistance-aesthetics, subversion, telecracy, time, use-value promise. Ästhetik, Bild, disponible Zeit, Fakten, Faszination, faux frais, Fetischcharacter der Ware, Fiktion, Film, Freizeit, Gebrauchswertversprechen, Gegenkultur, Hegemonie-apparate, Ideologie-

kritik, ideologische Mächte, Illusion, Internet, Kino, Kommodifizierung, Kommunikation, Konsumismus, Kulturimperialismus, Kulturindustrie, Kulturkritik, Kulturstudien, Manipulation, Massenkommunikation, Massenkultur, Massenmedien, Medienimperialismus, Postmoderne, Radio, Rauschgift, Subversion, Tatsache, Telekratie, Unterhaltung, Verblendungszusammenhang, Warenästhetik, Werbung, Widerstandsästhetik, Zeit, Zerstreuung.


brill.nl/hima

Notes on Contributors Gail Day teaches in School of Fine Art, History of Art & Cultural Studies at the University of Leeds, where she is Programme Director for the MA History of Art. Her essays have appeared in Radical Philosophy, Third Text, Oxford Art Journal, and Art History, and she is author of Dialectical Passions: Negation in Postwar Art Theory (Columbia University Press, 2010). She belongs to the collective organising the London-based seminar ‘Marxism in Culture’: . [email protected] Richard Dienst teaches literature and theory at Rutgers University. His publications include The Bonds of Debt (Verso, 2011) and Still Life in Real Time: Theory after Television (Duke, 1994). His current project, Remains to be Seen, concerns the materiality of visual media, via Brecht, Godard, Kluge and others. [email protected] Steve Edwards teaches art-history at the Open University and works on modern art and photography. He is an editor of the Oxford Art Journal and of Historical Materialism. Author of The Making of English Photography: Allegories (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006), his latest book Martha Rosler, The Bowery in Two Inadequate Descriptive Systems will be published by Afterall Books in 2011. He belongs to the collective organising the London-based seminar ‘Marxism in Culture’: . [email protected] Thomas Jeannot is a professor of philosophy at Gonzaga University in Spokane, WA., USA. His most recent article is ‘The Enduring Significance of the Thought of Karl Marx’, International Journal of Social Economics, 37 (2010): 214–38. [email protected] Domenico Losurdo is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Urbino, Italy. He is the author of many books in Italian, German, French and Spanish. In English he has published Hegel and the Freedom of Moderns and Heidegger and the Ideology of War, and Liberalism: A Counterhistory will be published by Verso in 2011. [email protected] David Mabb is an artist and teaches at Goldsmiths, University of London. He regularly exhibits at the Leo Kamen Gallery, Toronto and in 2004 curated William Morris ‘ministering to the swinish luxury of the rich’ at the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester. Recent exhibitions include; Art into Everyday Life, CAC, Vilnius; and A Miniature Retrospective and Rhythm 69, Kunstmuseet Kube, Alesund, Norway. During 2010 he is exhibiting The Morris Kitsch Archive at Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts and contributed to An Exhibition of Proposals for a Socialist Colony, Houston. He belongs to © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011

DOI: 10.1163/156920610X550703

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Notes on Contributors / Historical Materialism 18 (2010) 245–246

the collective organising the London-based seminar ‘Marxism in Culture’: . [email protected] Geoff Mann teaches economic geography and political economy at Simon Fraser University, in Vancouver, British Columbia, where he directs the Center for Global Political Economy. He is the author of Our Daily Bread: Wages, Workers and the Political Economy of the American West (Chapel Hill 2007). His current research concerns the impacts of Keynes and Keynesianism on left economic thinking. geoff[email protected] Fred Moseley is Professor of Economics at Mount Holyoke College (Massachusetts, USA). He has written many articles on Marx’s logical method, especially with respect to the transformation problem, and is writing a book on that subject entitled Money, Totality, and Time. [email protected] Duy Lap Nguyen is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine. He is currently completing a dissertation on twentiethcentury Vietnamese literature and history. His publications include ‘The Kiểm Thảo and the Uses of Disposable Time in the National Liberation Front’ in Public Culture, 20, 2, 2009. [email protected] Charles Post teaches sociology at the Borough of Manhattan Community College-CUNY, is active in his faculty-union and is a member of Solidarity, a US-based socialist organisation. His book The American Road to Capitalism: Studies in Class-Structure, Economic Development and Political Conflict, 1620–1877 will be published in February 2011 as part of the Historical Materialism Book Series. [email protected]


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Back Issues

HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 1 Ellen Meiksins Wood on the non-history of capitalism • Colin Barker on Ellen Wood • Esther Leslie on Benjamin’s Arcades Project • John Weeks on underdevelopment • Tony Smith on theories of technology • Michael Lebowitz on the silences of Capital • John Holloway on alienation • Peter Burnham on globalisation and the state • Fred Moseley on the US rate of profit • reviews by Matthew Beaumont on Bloch • Benno Teschke on Guy Bois • Peter Linebaugh on Robin Blackburn HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 2 China Miéville on architecture • Gregory Elliott on Perry Anderson • Andrew Chitty on recognition • Michael Neary & Graham Taylor on alchemy • Paul Burkett on neoMalthusian Marxism • Slavoj Zizek on risk society • reviews by Geoff Kay on Freeman & Carchedi • Ben Watson on Adorno and music • Mike Haynes on the Russian Revolution • Elmar Altvater on David Harvey • Martin Jenkins on Althusser and psychoanalysis • Esther Leslie on Benjamin HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 3 Symposium on Leninism and political organisation: Simon Clarke • Howard Chodos & Colin Hay • John Molyneux • Alan Shandro • Jonathan Joseph • Peter Hudis • John Ehrenberg • Plus Paul Burkett on Ted Benton • Werner Bonefeld on novelty • reviews by Michael Lebowitz on Felton Shortall • Gareth Dale on East Germany • Adrian Budd on Kim Moody • Giles Peaker on John Roberts • Chris Bertram on analytical Marxism • Ken Hammond on Vietnam HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 4 Symposium on Brenner and the world crisis, Part 1: Alex Callinicos • Guglielmo Carchedi • Simon Clarke • Gerard Duménil & Dominique Lévy • Chris Harman • David Laibman • Michael Lebowitz • Fred Moseley • Murray Smith • Ellen Meiksins Wood • Plus Hal Draper on Lenin • Tony Smith on John Rosenthal • reviews by Rick Kuhn on Australian trade unionism • Charles Post on Terence Byres • Edwin Roberts on pragmatism and American Marxism • Alan Wald on Michael Löwy • Matt Worley on British Communism HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 5 Symposium on Brenner and the world crisis, Part 2: Werner Bonefeld • Alan Freeman • Michel Husson • Anwar Shaikh • Tony Smith • Richard Walker • John Weeks • Plus Geoff Kay on abstract labour and capital • Craig Brandist on ethics, politics and dialogism’ • reviews by John Gubbay on Erik Olin Wright • Alan Johnson on the Third Camp • Sean Sayers on Marx on Russia • Adrian Haddock on Andrew Collier • Gregor Gall on organised labour • Greg Dawes on postcolonial theory

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011

DOI: 10.1163/156920611X558335

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Back Issues / Historical Materialism 18 (2010) 247–20

HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 6 Alan Shandro on Marx as a conservative thinker • Patrick Murray on abstract labour • Deborah Cook on Adorno and Habermas • Andrew Kliman on intrinsic value • Felton Shortall vs. Mike Lebowitz on the limits of Capital • Fine, Lapavitsas & Milonakis vs Tony Smith on Brenner • reviews by Mike Cowen on James C. Scott • Alan Carling & Paul Nolan on Jared Diamond • Jonathan Joseph on Derrida • Ian Birchall on Romain Rolland HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 7 Tony Burns on ancient Greek materialism • Chik Collins on Vygotsky and Voloshinov • Paul Wetherly on Giddens • Patrick Murray on abstract labour, part II • Geert Reuten on Patrick Murray • John Kelly vs. Gregor Gall on class mobilisation • reviews by Noel Castree on Manuel Castells • Paul Blackledge on Perry Anderson • Paul Jaskot on art history • John Roberts on Adorniana • Andrew Hemingway & Paul Jaskot on T.J. Clark • Larry Wilde on human nature • Paul Jaskot on Marxism and art history • an interview with Slavoj Zizek HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 8 Focus on East Asia: Paul Burkett & Martin Hart-Landsberg on East Asia since the financial crisis • Michael Burke on the changing nature of capitalism • Giles Ungpakorn on Thailand • Vedi Hadiz on Indonesia • Dae-oup Chang on South Korea • Raymond Lau & Dic Lo on China • Jim Kincaid on Marxist explanations of the crisis • Joseph T. Miller in Peng Shuzhi • Paul Zarembka & Sean Sayers debate Marx and romanticism • Ted Benton & Paul Burkett debate Marx and ecology • reviews by Walden Bello, Alex Callinicos, Paul Burkett, Brett Clark and John Bellamy Foster HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 9 Peter Gowan, Leo Panitch & Martin Shaw on the state and globalisation: a roundtable discussion • Andrew Smith on occult capitalism • Susanne Soederberg on capital accumulation in Mexico • David Laibman on the contours of the maturing socialistic economy • John Rosenthal on Hegel Decoder: A Reply to Smith’s ‘Reply’ • Jonathan Hughes on analytical Marxism and ecology • reviews by Alex Callinicos, Warren Montag, Kevin Anderson and Tony Smith HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 10:1 Ellen Meiksins Wood on infinite war • Peter Green on “the passage from imperialism to empire”: a commentary on Empire by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri • John Holloway: Going in the wrong direction: or, Mephistopheles: not Saint Francis of Assisi • Ray Kiely on actually existing globalisation, deglobalisation, and the political economy of anticapitalist protest • Enzo Traverso on Bohemia, exile and revolution • interventions by Patrick Murray: reply to Geert Reuten, and Paul Burkett: analytical Marxism and ecology • reviews by Erik Olin Wright and Harry Brighouse, Paresh Chattopadhyay, Chris Arthur, John Foster, Alex Law, Thomas M. Jeannot and Richard Saull HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 10:2 Paris Yeros on Zimbabwe and the dilemmas of the Left • Sam Gindin and Leo Panitch on gems and baubles in Empire • Marcus Taylor on neoliberalism in Chile • Sean Creaven on Bhaskar’s Dialectic and Marxism • Paul Nolan on Darwinian aspects of historical materialism • interventions by Jason C. Myers on ideology after the welfare state, Tony Smith on Hegel, and Robert Albritton with a response to Chris Arthur • film review by Mike Wayne on Robert Guédiguian’s La ville est tranquille • reviews by Milton Fisk, Ian Birchall, Dave Beech, and Gregor Gall


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HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 10:3 Giovanni Arrighi on lineages of empire • Ellen Meiksins Wood on landlords and peasants, masters and slaves: class relations in Greek and Roman antiquity • Peter Thomas on philosophical strategies: Althusser and Spinoza • archive: Richard B. Day on Pavel V. Maksakovsky’s Marxist theory of the cycle and Pavel V. Maksakovsky on the general theory of the cycle • intervention by Neil Davidson: Stalinism, ‘nation theory’ and Scottish history: a reply to John Foster • reviews by Ian Birchall, Ian Buchanan and Simon Bromley HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 10:4 Symposium on Marxism and fantasy: China Miéville • Mark Bould on the dreadful credibility of absurd things • Stuart Elden on Lefebvre, Rabelais and intellectual history • Ishay Landa on Tolkein’s political unconscious • Mike Wayne on utopianism and film • Anna Kornbluh on for the love of money • Alex Law and Jan Law on magical urbanism • Ben Watson on Adorno, Tolkein, Burroughs • commentary by Ana Dinerstein on the battle of Buenos Aires: crisis, insurrection, and the reinvention of politics in Argentina • archive: Jurriaan Bendien • Ernest Mandel: anticipation and hope as categories of historical materialism • interventions: Carl Freedman with a note on Marxism and fantasy • Fredric Jameson on radical fantasy • Steve Shaviro on capitalist monsters. reviews by Neil Maycroft, Mark Bould, Andrew M. Butler, Mike Haynes, and Tony Smith HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 11:1 Alfredo Saad-Filho on the political economy of Lula’s election • Maria Turchetto on Hardt and Negri • George Liodakis on the role of biotechnology in the agro-food system • Paul Paolucci on the scientific and the dialectical method • Sean Sayers on creative activity and alienation in Hegel and Marx • Martin Hart-Landsberg and Paul Burkett on development, crisis and class struggle in East Asia • Dan Bousfield on export-led development and imperialism • Jim Kincaid on underconsumption versus the rate of profit • Christopher J. Arthur on the HegelMarx connection • Tony Smith on the homology thesis • Christopher J. Arthur once more on the homology thesis • reviews by Scott MacWilliam, Ian Birchall and Pete Glatter HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 11:2 Tony Smith on globalisation and capitalist property relations: a critical assessment of David Held’s cosmopolitan theory • Paul Cammack on the governance of global capitalism: a new materialist perspective • William Brown on the World Bank, Africa and politics: a comment on Paul Cammack’s analysis • Simon Pirani on class clashes with party: politics in Moscow between the civil war and the New Economic Policy • Glenn Rikowski on alien life: Marx and the future of the human • Interventions: James Gordon Finlayson on the theory of ideology and the ideology of theory: Habermas contra Adorno • Deborah Cook with a response to Finlayson • Alex Callinicos on egalitarianism and anticapitalism: a reply to Harry Brighouse and Erik Olin Wright • reviews by Enzo Traverso, Chik Collins, Craig Brandist, Christopher Arthur, and Bob Jessup HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 11:3 Simon Bromley with reflections on Empire, imperialism and United States hegemony • Jairus Banaji on the fictions of free labour: contract, coercion, and so-called unfree labour • Alan Milchman on Marxism and the Holocaust • Alfredo Saad-Filho and Marta Harnecker with commentaries on understanding the past to make the future • an interview with Michael Hardt • Interventions by Angela Dimitrakaki on art and politics continued: avant-garde, resistance and the multitude in Documenta 11 • by Andrew Levine & Elliott Sober with a reply to

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Paul Nolan’s ‘What’s Darwinian About Historical Materialism?’ • Paul Nolan on Levine and Sober: a rejoinder • reviews by Kees van der Pijl, Colin Mooers, Ray Kiely, Ian Birchall, Alan Shandro, Pranav Jani, and Neil Larsen HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 11:4 Symposium: The American Worker – Alan Johnson on ‘The American Worker’ and the absurd-truth about Marxism • Daniel Gaido on ‘The American Worker’ and the theory of permanent revolution • Karl Kautsky on Werner Sombart’s Why Is There No Socialism in the United States? • Paul Le Blanc on the absence of socialism in the United States: contextualising Kautsky’s ‘The American Worker’ • Loren Goldner on the non-formation of a working-class political party in the United States, 1900–45 • Stephen Resnick and Richard Wolff on exploitation, consumption, and the uniqueness of US capitalism • Noel Ignatiev on whiteness and class struggle • Alan Johnson on equalibertarian Marxism and the politics of social movements • Peter Hudis on workers as reason: the development of a new relation of worker and intellectual in American Marxist humanism • Archive by Franz Mehring with a literary review of Hermann Schlüter’s Die Anfänge der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung in Amerika and with an obituary of Friedrich Sorge • Intervention by Christopher Phelps with “Why Wouldn’t Sidney Hook Permit the Republication of His Best Book?” • film review by Bryan D. Palmer on Martin Scorsese’s The Gangs of New York • reviews by Kim Moody, Mary McGuire, Bryan D. Palmer, Alan Wald, Gerald Friedman, Graham Barnfield, Robbie Lieberman, Sharon Smith and a rejoinder by Nelson Lichtenstein HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 12:1 Wal Suchting on Althusser’s late thinking about materialism • Alan Carling on The Darwinian Weberian: W.G. Runciman and the microfoundations of historical materialism • Peter E. Jones on discourse and the materialist conception of history: critical comments on critical discourse analysis • interventions by John McIlroy with critical reflections on recent British Communist Party history • by John Foster on Marxists, Weberians and nationality: a response to Neil Davidson • review articles by Paul Wetherly, Paul Blackledge, Paul Burkett, Jan Dumolyn, Steve Wright • a conference report by Enda Brophy on the Operaismo a Convegno conference HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 12:2 Brian Kelly on materialism and the persistence of race in the Jim Crow South • Domenico Losurdo on towards a critique of the category of totalitarianism • Massimo De Angelis on separating the doing and the deed: capitalism and the continuous character of enclosures • James Furner on Marx’s critique of Samuel Bailey • interventions by Paresh Chattopadhyay replying to Mike Haynes • Mike Haynes responding to Chattopadhyay • David McNally responding to Chik Collins • Chik Collins responding to McNally • review articles by Vasant Kaiwar, Pete Green, Samuel Friedman and Matthew Caygill HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 12:3 Dimitri Dimoulis and John Milios on Commodity Fetishism vs. Capital Fetishism: Marxist Interpretations vis-à-vis Marx’s Analyses in Capital • Symposium on Moishe Postone’s ‘Time, Labor and Social Domination’ • Guido Starosta’s Editorial Introduction • Moishe Postone on Critique and Historical Transformation • Robert Albritton on Theorising Capital’s Deep Structure and the Transformation of Capitalism • Christopher J. Arthur on Subject and Counter-Subject • Werner Bonefeld on Postone’s Courageous but Unsuccessful Attempt to Banish the Class Antagonism from the Critique of Political Economy • Joseph Fracchia on Transhistorical Abstractions and the Intersection of Historical Theory and Social Critique • Peter Hudis on The


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Death of the Death of the Subject • Geoffrey Kay and James Mott on Concept and Method in Postone’s Time, Labor and Social Domination • David McNally on The Dual Form of Labour in Capitalist Society and the Struggle over Meaning: Comments on Postone • Karen Miller on The Question of Time in Postone’s Time, Labor and Social Domination • Michael Neary on Travels in Moishe Postone’s Social Universe: A Contribution to a Critique of Political Cosmology • Marcel Stoetzler on Postone’s Marx: A Theorist of Modern Society, Its Social Movements and Its Imprisonment by Abstract Labour • Reviews • Sumit Sarkar on the Return of Labour to South Asian History: Raj Chandavarkar’s The Origins of Industrial Capitalism in India: Business Strategies and the Working Classes in Bombay, 1900–1940 and Imperial Power and Popular Politics: Class, Resistance and the State in India, c. 1850–1950, Ian Kerr’s Building the Railways of the Raj, Dilip Simeon’s The Politics of Labour under Late Colonialism: Workers, Unions and the State in Chota Nagpur, 1928–1939, Janaki Nair’s Miners and Millhands: Work, Culture and Politics in Princely Mysore and Chitra Joshi’s Lost Worlds: Indian Labour and its Forgotten Histories • Chris Harman on William Smaldone’s Rudolf Hilferding: The Tragedy of a German Social Democrat and F. Peter Wagner’s Rudolf Hilferding: The Theory and Politics of Democratic Socialism • Loren Goldner on Joao Bernardo’s Poder e Dinheiro. Do Poder Pessoal ao Estado Impessoal no Regime Senhorial, Séculos V–XV • Branwen Gruffyd-Jones on Sean Creaven’s Marxism and Realism: A Materialistic Application of Realism in the Social Sciences HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 12:4 Nick Dyer-Witheford on 1844/2004/2044: the return of species-being • Marcel Van Der Linden on council communism • Symposium: Marxism and African Realities • Liam Campling’s editorial introduction • Pablo L.E. Idahosa and Bob Shenton the africanist’s ‘new’ clothes • Henry Bernstein on considering Africa’s agrarian questions • Patrick Bond on bankrupt Africa: imperialism, subimperialism and the politics of finance • Ray Bush on undermining Africa • Alex Nunn and Sophia Price on managing development: EU and African relations through the evolution of the Lomé and Cotonou Agreements • Alejandro Colas on the re-invention of populism: Islamist responses to capitalist development in the contemporary Maghreb • Christopher Wise on geo-thematics, and orality-literacy studies in the Sahel • Carlos Oya on the empirical investigation of rural class formation: methodological issues in a study of large and mid-scale farmers in Senegal • Franco Barchiesi on the ambiguities of ‘liberation’ in left analyses of the South-African democratic transition • Brian Raftopoulos and Ian Phimister on Zimbabwe now: the political economy of crisis and coercion • Interventions • David Moore on Marxism and Marxist intellectuals in schizophrenic Zimbabwe: how many rights for Zimbabwe’s Left? A comment • Ashwin Desai on magic, realism and the state in post-apartheid South Africa • Review Articles • Paresh Chattopadhyay on ‘Karl Marx – Exzerpte und Notizen: Sommer 1844 bis Anfang 1847’, in Gesamtausgabe (MEGA) vierte Abteilung. Band 3 • Nigel Harris on Trade in Early India: Themes in Indian History, edited by Ranabir Chakravarti, and Michael McCormack’s Origins of the European Economy: Communications and Commerce, AD 300–900 • Surinder S. Jodhka on Tom Brass’s Towards a Political Economy of Unfree Labour and Peasants, Populism and Postmodernism • Henry Vandenburgh on Habermas, Critical Theory, and Health, edited by Graham Scrambler HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 13:1 Commentary • Lecio Morais and Alfredo Saad-Filho on Lula and the Continuity of Neoliberalism in Brazil: Strategic Choice, Economic Imperative or Political Schizophrenia? • Articles • Joseph Fracchia on Beyond the Human-Nature Debate: Human Corporeal Organisation as the ‘First Fact’ of Historical Materialism • Craig Brandist on Marxism and the Philosophy of Language in Russia in the 1920s and 1930s • Sean Homer on Cinema and Fetishism: The Disavowal of a Concept • Paul Burkett on Entropy in Ecological Economics: A

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Marxist Intervention • Intervention • Marcus Taylor on Opening the World Bank: International Organisations and the Contradictions of Capitalism • Reviews • Anastasia Nesvetailova on Robert J. Shiller’s Irrational Exuberance, Kavaljit Singh’s Taming Global Financial Flows: Challenges and Alternatives in the Era of Globalization. A Citizen’s Guide and Walden Bello, Nicola Bullard and Kamal Malhotra’s Global Finance: New Thinking on Regulating Speculative Capital Flows • Michael Calderbank on Jean-Michel Mension’s The Tribe, Ralph Rumney’s The Consul and Elizabeth Wilson’s Bohemians: The Glamorous Outcasts • Greg Tuck on Esther Leslie’s Hollywood Flatlands: Animation, Critical Theory and the Avant-Garde • Peter Sarris on Jairus Banaji’s Agrarian Change in Late Antiquity – Gold, Labour and Aristocratic Dominance • Yumiko Iida on Harry Harootunian’s Overcome by Modernity: History, Culture, and Community in Interwar Japan • Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism • Wolfgang Fritz Haug (introduced and translated by Peter Thomas) on Dialectics HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 13:2 The Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize Lecture (Part I) • Benno Teschke on Bourgeois Revolution, State Formation and the Absence of the International • Debating the Hegel-Marx Connection: A Symposium on Christopher J. Arthur’s ‘The New Dialectic and Marx’s “Capital”’ • Jim Kincaid’s editorial introduction • Alex Callinicos on Against the New Dialectics • Patrick Murray on The New Giant’s Staircase • Jim Kincaid on A Critique of Value-Form Marxism • Jacques Bidet on The Dialectician’s Interpretation of Capital • Ian Hunt on The Economic Cell-Form • Robert Albritton on How Dialectics Runs Aground: The Antinomes of Arthur’s Dialectic of Capital • Christopher J. Arthur’s Reply to Critics • Intervention • Sean Creaven on Marxism and Realism: A Reply to Branwen Gruffyd Jones • Review articles • Bob Jessop on Antoine Artous’s Marx, L’Etat et la politique • Alan Milchman on Domenico Losurdo’s Heidegger and the Ideology of War: Community, Death, and the West • Daniel Lazare on 51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration With the Nazis, edited by Lenni Brenner • James Devine on Michael Perelman’s Transcending the Economy: On the Potential of Passionate Labor and the Wastes of the Market • German Books for Review • The Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism • Frigga Haug (translated by Peter Thomas) on Gender Relations HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 13:3 The Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize Lecture (Part II) • Neil Davidson on How Revolutionary Were the Bourgeois Revolutions? • Articles • Jean-Jacques Lecercle on Deleuze, Guattari and Marxism • Rick Kuhn on Henryk Grossman and the Recovery of Marxism • Thomas Marois on From Economic Crisis to a ‘State’ of Crisis: The Emergence of Neoliberalism in Costa Rica • Bob Cannon on Retrieving the Normative Content of Marxism: From a Subject-Centred to an Intersubjective Critique of Capitalism • Interventions • Karl Beitel on The US, Iraq, and the Future of Empire • Mike Wayne on Fetishism and Ideology: A Reply to Dimoulis and Milios • Review Articles • Paul Blackledge on Brian Manning, 21 May 1927–24 April 2004: Historian of the People and the English Revolution • Brian Manning on Winstanley and the Diggers, 1649–1999, edited by Andrew Bradstock • Andrew Hemingway on The Philistine Controversy, edited by Dave Beech and John Roberts • Michael Keaney on Bastiaan van Apeldoorn’s Transnational Capitalism and the Struggle over European Integration • Paul Dillon on Evald Ilyenkov’s Philosophy Revisited, edited by Vesa Oittinen • Eric Piper on Raya Dunayevskaya’s Power of Negativity: Selected Writings on the Dialectic in Hegel and Marx • Conference Report • Peter Hudis on Rosa Luxemburg in China: The ‘Rosa Luxemburg’ Conference 21–2 November 2004 – South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou, China • The Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism • Bastiaan Wielenga, Hermann Klenner and Susanne Lettow on Justice


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HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 13:4 The Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize Lecture (Part II) • Neil Davidson on How Revolutionary Were the Bourgeois Revolutions? (contd.) • Articles • Deborah Cook on The Sundered Totality of System and Lifeworld • Fotini Vaki on Adorno Contra Habermas and the Claims of Critical Theory as Immanent Critique • Gary Farnell on Benjamin as Producer in The Arcades Project • Commodity Fetishism and Revolutionary Subjectivity: A Symposium on John Holloway’s ‘Change the World without Taking Power’ • Guido Starosta’s Editorial Introduction • Daniel Bensaïd on a Recent Book by John Holloway • Marcel Stoetzler on How to Make Adorno Scream, Some Notes on John Holloway’s ‘Change the World without Taking Power’ • Michael A. Lebowitz on Holloway’s Scream: Full of Sound and Fury • Massimo de Angelis on How?!?! An Essay on John Holloway’s Change the World without Taking Power • Leigh Binford on Holloway’s Marxism • John Holloway: No • Interview • Max Blechman, Anita Chari, Rafeeq Hasan on Democracy, Dissensus, and the Aesthetics of Class Struggle: An Exchange with Jacques Rancière • Review Articles • Ian Birchall on Robert Barcia’s La véritable histoire de Lutte Ouvrière, Daniel Bensaïd’s Les trotskysmes and Une lente impatience, Christophe Bourseiller’s Histoire générale de l’ultra-gauche, Philippe Campinchi’s Les lambertistes, Frédéric Charpier’s Histoire de l’extrême gauche trotskiste, André Fichaut’s Sur le pont, Daniel Gluckstein’s & Pierre Lambert’s Itinéraires, Michel Lequenne’s Le trotskysme: une histoire sans fard, Jean-Jacques Marie’s Le trotskysme et les trotskystes, Christophe Nick’s Les trotskistes, and Benjamin Stora’s La dernière génération d’octobre • Simon Kennedy on G.A. Cohen’s Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defence • Maria Elisa Cevasco on Fredric Jameson’s A Singular Modernity: Essay on the Ontology of the Present • Tony Smith on Phases of Capitalist Development: Booms, Crises and Globalizations, edited by Robert Albritton, Makoto Itoh, Richard Westra and Alan Zuege • John Michael Roberts on Masses, Classes and the Public Sphere, edited by Mike Hill and Warren Montag • German Books for review • Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism • Peter Ives on Grammar HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 14:1 Article • Andrew Burke on Nation, Landscape, and Nostalgia in Patrick Keiller’s Robinson in Space • Symposium: On Costas Lapavitsas’s ‘Social Foundations of Markets, Money and Credit’ • Jim Kincaid on Finance, Trust and the Power of Capital • Gary Dymski on Money and Credit in Heterodox Theory: Reflections on Lapavitsas • Dick Bryan and Michael Rafferty on Money in Capitalism or Capitalist Money? • Makoto Itoh on Political Economy of Money, Credit and Finance in Contemporary Capitalism – Remarks on Lapavitsas and Dymski • Kazutoshi Miyazawa on the Anarchical Nature of the Market and the Emergence of Money • Costas Lapavitsas on Power and Trust as Constituents of Money and Credit • Interventions: Replies to Ana Dinerstein on the Argentine Crisis • Guido Starosta Editorial Introduction • Alberto Bonnet on ¡Que se vayan todos! Discussing the Argentine crisis and insurrection • Juan Iñigo Carrera on Argentina: The Reproduction of Capital Accumulation Through Political Crisis • Juan Grigera on Argentina: On Crisis and a Measure for Class Struggle • Review Articles • Paresh Chattopadhyay & Martin Thomas on Stephen A. Resnick and Richard D. Wolff’s Class Theory and History: Capitalism and Communism in the USSR • Alan Freeman on Guglielmo Carchedi’s For Another Europe: a Class Analysis of European Economic Integration • Loren Goldner on Christophe Bourseiller’s Histoire générale de l’ultra-gauche • Christopher May on Mark Poster’s What’s the Matter with the Internet? HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 14:2 Article • Robert Bond on Speculating Histories: Walter Benjamin, Iain Sinclair • The Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize Lecture • Michael A. Lebowitz on The Politics of Assumption, the Assumption of Politics • Symposium: The Dark side of Marx’s ‘Capital’: On Michael Lebowitz’s

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‘Beyond Capital’ • Pablo Ghigliani’s Editorial Introduction • Colin Barker on Capital and Revolutionary Practice • Werner Bonefeld on Marx’s Critique of Economics. On Lebowitz • Al Campbell and Mehmet Ufuk Tutan on Beyond Capital: A Necessary Corrective and Four Issues for Further Discussion • Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin on Bringing the Working Class In: Mike Lebowitz’s Beyond Capital • Interventions • John Milios and Dimitri Dimoulis on Louis Althusser and the Forms of Concealment of Capitalist Exploitation. A Rejoinder to Mike Wayne • Patrick Murray on In Defence of the ‘Third Thing Argument’: A Reply to James Furner’s ‘Marx’s Critique of Samuel Bailey’ • Review Articles • John Haldon on Igor M. Diakonoff’s The Paths of History • Jeff Noonan on Kojin Karatani’s Transcritique: On Kant and Marx • Lee Salter on Mike Wayne’s Marxism and Media Studies: Key Concepts and Contemporary Trends • Mark O’Brien on Global Unions? Theory and Strategies of Organised Labour in the Global Political Economy, edited by Jeffrey Harrod and Robert O’Brien • Chris Wright on What Is to Be Done? Leninism, Anti-Leninist Marxism and the Question of Revolution Today, edited by Werner Bonefeld and Sergio Tischler • The Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism • Wolfgang Fritz Haug on Historical-Critical HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 14:3 Articles • Martin Hart-Landsberg & Paul Burkett on China and the Dynamics of Transnational Accumulation: Causes and Consequences of Global Restructuring • Paresh Chattopadhyay on Passage to Socialism: The Dialectic of Progress in Marx • Christopher J. Arthur on The Inner Totality of Capitalism • Geoff Kennedy on Digger Radicalism and Agrarian Capitalism • Andrew Robinson & Simon Tormey on Žižek’s Marx: ‘Sublime Object’ or a ‘Plague of Fantasies’? • Interventions • John Eric Marot on Trotsky, the Left Opposition and the Rise of the Stalinism: Theory and Practice • Martin Thomas on Three Traditions? Marxism and the USSR • Review Articles • Carl Freedman on Christopher Hitchens’s Why Orwell Matters, Jeffrey Meyers’s Orwell: Wintry Conscience of a Generation and John Newsinger’s Orwell’s Politics • Ian Birchall on Jean-François Fayet’s Karl Radek (1885–1939) • Charles Post on Robert J. Steinfeld, Coercion, Contract, and Free Labor in the Nineteenth Century • Charles Post on Roger L. Ransom’s and Richard Sutch’s One Kind of Freedom: The Economic Consequences of Emancipation • Marcel Stoetzler on Michael Forman’s Nationalism and the International Labor Movement, The Idea of the Nation in Socialist and Anarchist Theory • Geoff Kennedy on Neal Wood’s Reflections on Political Theory: A Voice of Reason From the Past • The Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism • Wal Suchting on Epistemology HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 14:4 Symposium: On David Harvey’s ‘The New Imperialism’ • Sam Ashman’s Editorial Introduction • Ellen Meiksins Wood on Logics of Power: A Conversation with David Harvey • Noel Castree on David Harvey’s Symptomatic Silence • Bob Sutcliffe on Imperialism Old and New: A Comment on David Harvey’s The New Imperialism and Ellen Meiksins Wood’s Empire of Capital • Robert Brenner on What Is and What Is Not Imperialism? • Sam Ashman and Alex Callinicos on Capital Accumulation and the State System: Assessing David Harvey’s The New Imperialism • Ben Fine on Debating the ‘New’ Imperialism • David Harvey’s Comment on Commentaries • Intervention • Mike Lebowitz on The Politics of Beyond Capital • Literature Review • Stuart Elden on Some Are Born Posthumously: The French Afterlife of Henri Lefebvre • Review Articles • Peter Green & Martin Thomas on Nigel Harris’s The Return of Cosmopolitan Capital • Mark Bould on Carl Freedman’s The Incomplete Projects: Marxism, Modernity and the Politics of Culture • Neil Lazarus on David Macey’s Frantz Fanon: A Life • Loren Goldner on Franklin Rosemont’s Joe Hill: the IWW and the Making of a Revolutionary Working Class Counter Culture • Vincent Présumey on Revolutionary History: From Syndicalism to Trotskyism – Writings of Alfred and


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Marguerite Rosmer • Elena Isayev on Guy Bradley’s Ancient Umbria • The Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism • Karen Ruoff Kramer on Jeans HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 15:1 Articles • Alberto Toscano on From Pin Factories to Gold Farmers: Editorial Introduction to a Research Stream on Cognitive Capitalism, Immaterial Labour, and the General Intellect • Carlo Vercellone on From Formal Subsumption to General Intellect: Elements for a Marxist Reading of the Thesis of Cognitive Capitalism • Symposium: Ernest Mandel and the Historical Theory of Global Capitalism • Marcel van der Linden’s and Jan Willem Stutje’s Editorial Introduction • Jairus Banaji on Islam, the Mediterranean and the Rise of Capitalism • Patrick Karl O’Brien on Global Economic History as the Accumulation of Capital through a Process of Combined and Uneven Development. An Appreciation and Critique of Ernest Mandel • Michael R. Krätke on The History and Logic of Modern Capitalism. The Legacy of Ernest Mandel • Marcel van der Linden on The ‘Law’ of Uneven and Combined Development: Some Underdeveloped Thoughts • Jan-Willem Stutje on Concerning Der Spätkapitalismus: Mandel’s Quest for a Synthesis of Late Capitalism • Review Articles • Spencer Dimmock on Jane Whittle’s The Development of Agrarian Capitalism: Land and Labour in Norfolk, 1440–1580 • João Bernardo on Alessandro Orsini’s L’Eretico della sinistra. Bruno Rizzi élitista democratico • Anthony Chase on the Leiden Journal of International Law’s ‘International Symposium on Marxism and International Law’ • Alan Thornett on Ralph Darlington’s and Dave Lyddon’s Glorious Summer: Class Struggle in Britain in 1972 • The Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism • Peter Thomas on Absolute Historicism HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 15:2 Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize Lecture • Kevin Murphy on Can We Write the History of the Russian Revolution? A Belated Response to Eric Hobsbawm • Articles • David Camfield on The Multitude and the Kangaroo: A Critique of Hardt and Negri’s Theory of Immaterial Labour • Peter Thomas’ Editorial Introduction • Roberto Finelli on Abstraction versus contradiction: Observations on Chris Arthur’s The New Dialectic and Marx’s ‘Capital’ • Samuel Knafo on Political Marxism and Value Theory: Bridging the Gap between Theory and History • Jan Dumolyn on The Political and Symbolic Economy of State Feudalism. The Case of Late Medieval Flanders • Archive • William S. Lewis’ Editorial Introduction • Louis Althusser’s Letter to Comrades on the PCF Central Committee • Review Articles • Jan Rehmann on Domenico Losurdo’s Nietzsche, il ribelle aristocratico. Biografia intellettuale e bilancio critico • Ian Birchall on Michel Surya’s La Révolution rêvée: Pour une histoire des intellectuels et des œuvres révolutionnaires 1944–1956 • Markar Melkonian on Richard Rorty’s Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America, Philosophy and Social Hope, and Against Bosses, Against Oligarchies • Pat Devine on Michael Albert’s Parecon: Life After Capitalism • Paulo L. dos Santos on Alfredo Saad-Filho’s The Value of Marx and Ben Fine’s and Alfredo Saad-Filho’s Marx’s ‘Capital’ • The Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism • Bob Jessop on Statism HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 15:3 Articles • Paolo Virno on General Intellect • Axel Kicillof and Guido Starosta on Materiality and Social Form: A Political Critique of Rubin’s Value-Form Theory • Symposium: Ellen Meiksins Wood and Empire of Capital • Paul Blackledge’s Editorial Introduction • David Harvey on In What Ways Is the ‘New Imperialism’ Really New? • William I. Robinson on The Pitfalls of Realist Analysis of Global Capitalism: A Critique of Ellen Meiksins Wood’s Empire of Capital • Prasenjit Bose on ‘New’ Imperialism? On Globalisation and Nation-States • François Chesnais on The Economic Foundations and Needs of Contemporary Imperialism • Ellen Meiksins

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Wood’s Reply to Critics • Intervention • Sam Moyo and Paris Yeros on The Zimbabwe Question and the Two Lefts • Review Articles • Wolfgang-Fritz Haug on Jan Rehmann’s Postmoderner Links-Nietzscheanismus. Deleuze & Foucault. Eine Dekonstruktion • Richie Nimmo on Marx and Wittgenstein: Knowledge, Morality and Politics, edited by Gavin Kitching and Nigel Pleasants • Alexander Gallas on Entfesselter Kapitalismus: Transformation des europäischen Sozialmodells and Klassen und soziale Bewegungen: Strukturen im Kapitalismus, edited by Joachim Bischoff, Paul Boccara, Robert Castel and Klaus Dörre • Daniel Gaido on Oliver Nachtwey’s Weltmarkt und Imperialismus: Zur Entstehungsgeschichte der klassischen marxistischen Imperialismustheorie • The Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism • John Bellamy Foster on Earth HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 15:4 Articles • Helmut Reichelt on Marx’s Critique of Economic Categories: Reflections on the Problem of Validity in the Dialectical Method of Presentation in Capital • Roland Boer on The Perpetual Allure of the Bible for Marxism • Gavin Fridell on Fair-Trade Coffee and Commodity Fetishism: The Limits of Market-Driven Social Justice • Viren Swami on Evolutionary Psychology: ‘New Science of the Mind’ or ‘Darwinian Fundamentalism’? • Jim Kincaid on Production vs. Realisation: A Critique of Fine and Saad-Filho on Value Theory • Review Articles • Steve A. Smith on Kevin Murphy’s Revolution and Counterrevolution: Class Struggle in a Moscow Metal Factory • Samuel Knafo on Gérard Duménil’s and Dominique Lévy’s Capital Resurgent: Roots of the Neoliberal Revolution • Michael Heinrich on Karl Marx’s Das Kapital. Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, Dritter Band in Gesamtausgabe (MEGA) • The Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism • Jan Rehmann on Earth HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 16:1 Articles • Giuseppe Tassone’s and Peter Thomas’s Editorial Introduction to Vittorio Morfino • Vittorio Morfino on Causa sui or Wechselwirkung: Engels between Spinoza and Hegel • Oliver Nachtwey & Tobias Ten Brink on Lost in Transition: the German World-Market Debate in the 1970s • Rakesh Bhandari on The Disguises of Wage-Labour: Juridical Illusions, Unfree Conditions and Novel Extensions • Intervention • Ana C. Dinerstein on Here Is the Rose, Dance Here! A Riposte to the Debate on the Argentinean Crisis • Archive • Paul Burkett & John Bellamy Foster on The Podolinsky Myth: An Obituary. Introduction to ‘Human Labour and Unity of Force’, by Sergei Podolinsky • Sergei Podolinsky’s Human Labour and Unity of Force • Review Articles • Chris Harman on Christopher Dyer’s An Age of Transition? Economy and Society in England in the Later Middle Ages and John Landers’s The Field and the Forge: Population, Production and Power in the Pre-Industrial West • Matthew G. Hannah on Peter Brückner’s Ulrike Meinhof und die deutsche Verhältnisse • Wolfgang Wicht on Bernd Blaschke’s Der ‘homo oeconomicus’ und sein Kredit bei Musil, Joyce, Svevo, Unamuno und Céline • Zoë Marriage on Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja’s The Congo from Leopold to Kabila: A People’s History, Reinventing Order in the Congo: How People Respond to State Failure in Kinshasa, edited by Theodore Trefon and The African Stakes of the Congo War edited by John F. Clark • The HistoricalCritical Dictionary of Marxism • Peter Thomas on Immanence HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 16:2 Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize Lecture • Chris Wickham on Productive Forces and the Economic Logic of the Feudal Mode of Production • Articles • Jefferey R. Webber on Rebellion to Reform in Bolivia. Part I: Domestic Class Structure, Latin-American Trends, and Capitalist Imperialism • John Roberts on The ‘Returns to Religion’: Messianism, Christianity and the Revolutionary Tradition. Part I: ‘Wakefulness to the Future’ • David Kristjanson on Gural Postmodern Contributions to Marxian Economics: Theoretical Innovations and their Implications for Class Politics • Interventions • Greig Charnock on Competitiveness and


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Critique: The Value of a New-Materialist Research Project • Alex Callinicos on Marxists, Muslims and Religion: Anglo-French Attitudes • Review Articles • Sharad Chari on Patrick Bond’s Elite Transition, Against Global Apartheid, Talk Left, Walk Right, and Unsustainable South Africa and Ashwin Desai’s Arise Ye Coolies, We Are the Poors and, with Vishnu Padayachee, Krish Reddy and Goolam Vahed, Blacks in Whites • Alexander Anievas on Martin Shaw’s Theory of the Global State: Globality as an Unfinished Revolution, and William I. Robinson’s A Theory of Global Capitalism: Production, Class, and the State in a Transnational World • Peter Green on Rick Kuhn’s Henryk Grossman and the Recovery of Marxism • Loren Glass on Jean Baudrillard’s The Spirit of Terrorism, Paul Virilio’s Ground Zero, Slavoj Žižek’s Welcome to the Desert of the Real, Jeffory A. Clymer’s in a New Age of War, and Susan Willis’s Portents of the Real: A Primer for Post9/11 America • Owen Hatherley on Ilya Ilf ’s and Evgeny Petrov’s Ilf and Petrov’s American Road Trip • The Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism • Lise Vogel on Domestic-Labour Debate HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 16:3 Articles • Jim Holstun on Utopia Pre-Empted: Kett’s Rebellion, Commoning, and the Hysterical Sublime • Jefferey R. Webber on Rebellion to Reform in Bolivia. Part II: Revolutionary Epoch, Combined Liberation and the December 2005 Elections • John Roberts on The ‘Returns to Religion’: Messianism, Christianity and the Revolutionary Tradition. Part II: The Pauline Tradition • Intervention • Ben Fine on Debating Lebowitz: Is Class Conflict the Moral and Historical Element in the Value of Labour-Power? • Archive • Daniel Gaido on Marxism and the Union Bureaucracy: Karl Kautsky on Samuel Gompers and the German Free Trade Unions • Karl Kautsky on Samuel Gompers • Review Articles • Panagiotis Sotiris on Louis Althusser’s Philosophy of the Encounter: Later Writings, 1978–1987 • Andrew Robinson on Antonio Negri’s Books for Burning: Between Civil War and Democracy in 1970s Italy • Christoph Herrman on Pietro Basso’s Modern Times, Ancient Hours: Working Lives in the Twenty-First Century • Yaşar Aydin on Komplexität und Emanzipation, edited by Alex Demirovic • Samuel R. Friedman on Alexander Saxton’s Religion and the Human Prospect • Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism • Victor Wallis on Innovation HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 16:4 Articles • Martijn Konings and Leo Panitch on US Financial Power in Crisis • Joseph Fracchia on The Capitalist Labour-Process and the Body in Pain: The Corporeal Depths of Marx’s Concept of Immiseration • Jefferey R. Webber on Rebellion to Reform in Bolivia. Part III: Neoliberal Continuities, the Autonomist Right, and the Political Economy of Indigenous Struggle • Steve Wright on Mapping Pathways Within Italian Autonomist Marxism: A Preliminary Survey • Roland Boer on A Titanic Phenomenon: Marxism, History and Biblical Society • Interventions • Ben Fine and Alfredo Saad-Filho on Production vs. Realisation in Marx’s Theory of Value: A Reply to Kincaid • Jim Kincaid on Production versus Capital in Motion: A Reply to Fine and Saad-Filho • Review Articles • Enzo Traverso on Arno Mayer’s The Furies: Violence and Terror in the French and Russian Revolutions • Paul Mattick on David Harvey’s Limits to Capital • Owen Hatherley on Judd Stitziel’s Fashioning Socialism – Clothing, Politics and Consumer Culture in East Germany • Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism • Georges Van Den Abbeele on Fable HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 17:1 Articles • Marcus E. Green and Peter Ives on Subalternity and Language: Overcoming the Fragmentation of Common Sense • Henry Heller on The Longue Durée of the French Bourgeoisie • Michael Löwy on Capitalism as Religion: Walter Benjamin and Max Weber • Daniel Cho on Adorno on Education, or, Can Critical Self-Reflection Prevent the Next Auschwitz? • Reflections on ‘Gewalt’ • Étienne Balibar on Violence • Massimilano Tomba on Another Type of Gewalt: Beyond Law. Re-Reading Benjamin • Interventions • Guglielmo Carchedi on The Fallacies

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of ‘New Dialectics’ and Value-Form Theory • Christopher J. Arthur on Contradiction and Abstraction: A Reply to Finelli • Review Articles • Benjamin Noys on Ian Parker’s Revolution in Psychology: Alienation to Emancipation and Yannis Stavrakakis’s The Lacanian Left: Psychoanalysis, Theory, and Politics • Marcel Bois on Christian Gotthardt’s Die radikale Linke als Massenbewegung. Kommunisten in Harburg-Wilhelmsburg 1918–1933 • Tyson E. Lewis on Peter McLaren’s Capitalists and Conquerors and McLaren and Ramin Farahmandpur’s Teaching Against Global Capitalism and the New Imperialism HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 17:2 Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize Lecture • Rick Kuhn on Economic Crisis, Henryk Grossman and the Responsibility of Socialists • Articles • David McNally on From Financial Crisis to World-Slump: Accumulation, Financialisation, and the Global Slowdown • Steve Edwards on Apocalyptic Sublime: On the Third Brighton Photo Biennial • Symposium on the Global Financial Crisis • Samantha Ashman’s Editorial Introduction • Glossary of Technical Terms • Costas Lapavitsas on Financialised Capitalism: Crisis and Financial Expropriation • Gary A. Dymski on Racial Exclusion and the Political Economy of the Subprime Crisis • Paulo L. Dos Santos on On the Content of Banking in Contemporary Capitalism • Reflections on ‘Gewalt’ (contd.) • Luca Basso on The Ambivalence of Gewalt in Marx and Engels: On the Interpretation of Balibar • Review Articles • Ian Hudson & Mark Hudson on Gavin Fridell’s Fair Trade Coffee: The Prospects and Pitfalls of Market Driven Social Justice, Daniel Jaffee’s Brewing Justice: Fair Trade Coffee, Sustainability, and Survival, and Laura Raynolds’s, Douglas Murray’s & John Wilkinson’s Fair Trade: The Challenges of Transforming Globalization • Richard Westra on Pierre Bourdieu’s Firing Back: Against the Tyranny of the Market 2, Global Turbulence: Social Activists’ and State Responses to Globalization, edited by Marjorie Griffin Cohen and Stephen McBride, John Rapley’s Globalization and Inequality: Neoliberalism’s Downward Spiral and AntiCapitalism: A Marxist Introduction, edited by Alfredo Saad-Filho • Michele Filippini on Alberto Burgio’s Gramsci storico • Richard Seymour on Markku Ruotsila’s John Spargo and American Socialism • Robert Knox on Alain Supiot’s Homo Juridicus • Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism • Stefan Bollinger & Juha Koivisto on Hegemonic Apparatus HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 17:3 Articles • Massimo de Angelis and David Harvie on ‘Cognitive Capitalism’ and the RatRace: How Capital Measures Immaterial Labour in British Universities • Iain Pirie on The Political Economy of Academic Publishing • Maria Turchetto on Althusser and Monod: A ‘New Alliance’? • Reflections on ‘Gewalt’ (contd.) • Vittorio Morfino on The Syntax of Violence. Between Hegel and Marx • Archive • David Fernbach’s Editorial Introduction to Paul Levi’s Our Path: Against Putschism and What Is the Crime: The March Action or Criticising It? • Paul Levi on Our Path: Against Putschism • Paul Levi on What Is the Crime: The March Action or Criticising It? • Interventions • Alberto Toscano on Partisan Thought • Ben Fine and Alfredo Saad-Filho on Twixt Ricardo and Rubin: Debating Kincaid Once More • Jim Kincaid on The Logical Construction of Value Theory: More on Fine and Saad-Filho • Review Articles • Christian Høgsbjerg on Frank Rosengarten’s Urbane Revolutionary: C.L.R. James and the Struggle for a New Society and Brett St Louis’s Rethinking Race, Politics, and Poetics: C.L.R. James’ Critique of Modernity • Robert T. Tally Jr on Loren Goldner’s Herman Melville: Between Charlemagne and the Antemosaic Cosmic Man: Race, Class, and the Crisis of Bourgeois Ideology in the American Renaissance Writer • Seongjin Jeong on Iain Pirie’s The Korean Developmental State: From Dirigisme to Neo-Liberalism • Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism • Peter Thomas on Catharsis


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HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 17:4 Articles • Elizabeth Esch and David Roediger on One Symptom of Originality: Race and the Management of Labour in the History of the United States • Massimiliano Tomba on Historical Temporalities of Capital: An Anti-Historicist Perspective • Karl Beitel on The Rate of Profit and the Problem of Stagnant Investment: A Structural Analysis of Barriers to Accumulation and the Spectre of Protracted Crisis • Intervention • Andrew Milner on Archaeologies of the Future: Jameson’s Utopia or Orwell’s Dystopia? • Review Articles • Panagiotis Sotiris on Warren Montag’s Louis Althusser, William S. Lewis’s Louis Althusser and the Traditions of French Marxism, and Gregory Elliott’s Althusser: The Detour of Theory • Julian Müller on Poulantzas lesen. Zur Aktualität marxistischer Staatstheorie, edited by Lars Bretthauer, Alexander Gallas, John Kannankulam and Ingo Stützle • Benjamin Noys on Gregory Elliott’s Ends in Sight: Marx/Fukuyama/Hobsbawm/Anderson • Ian Birchall on Reiner Tosstorff ’s Profintern: Die Rote Gewerkschaftsinternationale 1920–1937 • Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism • Wolfgang Fritz Haug on Immaterial Labour HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 18:1 Articles • Alberto Toscano on Beyond Abstraction: Marx and the Critique of the Critique of Religion • Symposium on Giovanni Arrighi’s ‘Adam Smith in Beijing: Lineages of the Twenty-First Century’ • Liam Campling’s Editorial Introduction • Christopher Chase-Dunn on Adam Smith in Beijing: A World-Systems Perspective • Richard Walker on Karl Marx between Two Worlds: The Antinomies of Giovanni Arrighi’s Adam Smith in Beijing • Leo Panitch on Giovanni Arrighi in Beijing: An Alternative to Capitalism? • Lucia Pradella on Beijing between Smith and Marx • Flemming Christiansen on Arrighi’s Adam Smith in Beijing: Engaging China • Intervention • Michael A. Lebowitz on Trapped inside the Box? Five Questions for Ben Fine • Review Articles • Donald V. Kingsbury on Steve Ellner’s Rethinking Venezuelan Politics: Class, Conflict and the Chávez Phenomenon, Eva Golinger’s Bush vs. Chávez: Washington’s War on Venezuela, and Gregory Wilpert’s Changing Venezuela by Taking Power: The History and Policies of the Chávez Government • Jeff Kinkle on Guy Debord’s Correspondence: The Foundation of the Situationist International (June 1957–August 1960), Michèle Bernstein’s All the King’s Horses, and McKenzie Wark’s 50 Years of Recuperation of the Situationist International • Frédérick Guillaume Dufour on Pierre Bourdieu’s The Social Structures of the Economy • Robert J. Knox on Bill Bowring’s The Degradation of the International Legal Order? The Rehabilitation of Law and the Possibility of Politics • Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism • Christopher J. Arthur on Capital in General HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 18:2 Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial-Prize Lecture • Kees van der Pijl on Historicising the International: Modes of Foreign Relations and Political Economy • Articles • Adam Hanieh on Khaleeji-Capital: Class-Formation and Regional Integration in the Middle-East Gulf • John Roberts on Art After Deskilling • Interventions • Ben Fine on Locating Financialisation • William Beik’s Response to Henry Heller’s ‘The Longue Durée of the French Bourgeoisie’ • David Parker on Henry Heller and the ‘Longue Durée of the French Bourgeoisie’ • Henry Heller’s Response to William Beik and David Parker • Review Articles • Emmanuel Barot on Sciences et dialectiques de la nature edited by Lucien Sève and Eftichios Bitsakis’s La nature dans la pensée dialectique • Steve Edwards on Caroline Arscott’s William Morris and Edward BurneJones: Interlacings and Mike Sanders’s The Poetry of Chartism: Aesthetics, Politics, History • Owen Hatherley on Sabine Hake’s Topographies of Class: Modern Architecture and Mass Society in Weimar Berlin • Elizabeth M. Sokolowski and Amy E. Wendling on New Waves in Philosophy of Technology edited by Jan Kyrre Berg Olsen, Evan Selinger, and Søren Riis • Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism • Wolfgang Fritz Haug on General Intellect

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HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 18:3 Article • Gene Ray on Dialectical Realism and Radical Commitments: Brecht and Adorno on Representing Capitalism • Symposium on Lars Lih’s ‘Lenin Rediscovered’ • Paul Blackledge’s Editorial Introduction • Ronald Grigor Suny on Reconsidering Lenin: What Can Be Said about What Is to Be Done? • Robert Mayer on One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: On Lars Lih’s Lenin • Chris Harman on Lenin Rediscovered? • Alan Shandro on Text and Context in the Argument of Lenin’s What Is to Be Done? • Paul Le Blanc on Rediscovering Lenin • Lars T. Lih on Lenin Disputed • Interventions • Matteo Mandarini on Critical Thoughts on the Politics of Immanence • Mario Tronti on Workerism and Politics • Review Articles • Paul Flenley on Oktyabr’skaya Revolyutsiya i Fabzavkomy [The October Revolution and Factory-Committees] edited by Steve A. Smith, and Oktyabr’skaya Revolyutsia i Fabzavkomy, Volume 3, Second Edition and Oktyabr’skaya Revolyutsiya i Fabzavkomy: Materialy po istorii fabrichno-zavodskikh komitetov, Volume 4, edited by Yoshimasa Tsuji • Jeffery R. Webber on Fernando Ignacio Leiva’s Latin American Neostructuralism: The Contradictions of Post-Neoliberal Development • David Parker on Heide Gerstenberger’s Impersonal Power. History and Theory of the Bourgeois State • HistoricalCritical Dictionary of Marxism • Dick Boer on The Imaginary

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Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Volume 40, Number 4, December 2010

American Mathematical Monthly, volume 117, number 4, April 2010

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Applied Linguistics, Volume 31, Number 3, 2010

Personnel Review, Volume 32, Number 4, 2003

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For Mao Essays In Historical Materialism

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Impersonal Power (Historical Materialism Book Series)

A Marxist Philosophy of Language (Historical Materialism)

Democracy against Capitalism: Renewing Historical Materialism

Democracy against Capitalism: Renewing Historical Materialism

Theory as History (Historical Materialism Book Series)

Materialism

EDN Magazine November 18, 2010

New Testament Studies, Volume 56, Number 1 (January 2010)

Journal of Semitic Studies, Volume 55, Number 1, Spring 2010

American Mathematical Monthly, volume 117, number 1, january 2010

American Scientist Magazine ~ March-April 2010 Volume 98, Number 2

Horticultural Reviews (Volume 18)

Volume 18: After Zero

Historical Materialism, Volume 18, Number 4, 2010

Historical Materialism, Volume 18, Number 3, 2010

Historical Materialism, Volume 19, Number 3, 2011

Historical Materialism, Volume 19, Number 2

Ecology and Historical Materialism

New Testament Studies, Volume 56, Number 4 (October 2010)

Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Volume 40, Number 4, December 2010

American Mathematical Monthly, volume 117, number 4, April 2010

Historical Materialism and Social Evolution

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