I made a start on Richard F. Day's Gramsci Is Dead: Anarchist Currents in the Newest Social Movements with the best of intentions, having seen the book recommended and having finished John Holloway's execrable quasi-Marxist Change the World Without Taking Power: The Meaning of Revolution Today. To be fair to Day, he does warn readers that his book targets "activist academics" and "theoretically inclined activists," so I should have had my loins girded for the onslaught of terminology.
I'm not even going to attempt to outline his argument because I put the book down after two and a half chapters. There are two very good reviews here and here, but I'm content to confess that overtheorizing leaves me cold, and that's what a lot of these books theorizing "new new social movements" seem to do. Years of studying philosophy taught me, if nothing else, to beware of abstractions and metaphors. Reading Hegel and Spinoza and Parmenides, it strikes me that it's possible to construct an entirely coherent theoretical universe that runs parallel to the real thing without the two ever coming into contact (yes, I know, that's what parallel means). And when I read of rhizomes, multitudes, discourses, and a plethora of other abstractions, I know it's only a matter of time before characteristics belonging only to the abstract term are assumed to belong to the concrete.
So, that's my excuse for not finishing an (I'm sure) otherwise worthy book. What value it actually has, and more important, to whom, it's difficult to say. Academics who want to write about progressive movements and acquire cred by association, I imagine.
For me, Henri Alleg's 120-page book The Question is worth a thousand Gramsci Is Dead's. An account of his torture by French Paratroops in Algeria in 1957, the language is simple, direct, evocative. It is a moving and powerful story that had me close to tears on the train, wanker that I am. In the 1958 edition I bought online, Alleg's account (he was a Communist and editor of the newspaper Alger Republicain) is accompanied by a preface by Jean-Paul Sartre which addresses the ongoing situation in Algeria and the use of torture by the French state. It is a brilliantly written piece that reminds us of a salient fact: "Torture costs human lives but does not save them." Certainly, this is true in the long run, whatever information a torturer gleans in the short term.
I see that a new edition of this book is due out soon. Secure a copy if you can.
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19 comments:
No! I refuse to believe you have ANYTHING in common with 'that man'!
Bugger...wrong comment in the wrong place!
"An account of his torture by French Paratroops in Algeria in 1959 ..."; "In the 1958 edition ...": One of those years is a mistake, isn't it?
Spotted, guys. You really should be editors. I woke up this morning and realized what I'd written regarding the dates.
First date duly changed.
D2W:
Haven't read any Holloway articles but the book had been recommended to me.
The book is full of neologisms less precise than the very Marxist terms Holloway is replacing. It reminded me of the way other Marxists hide the fact that they've discovered the anarchists were right all along about nonhierarchical organization, the dangers of vanguardism, the worthlessness of the LTV as a diagnostic of capitalism, etc., but can't bring themselves to admit it so instead create new terms in order to make it look like they're adding something to Marxism.
If I had to choose between the two, I'd plump for the Day book in an instant, but terms like the "hegemony of hegemony" still make me squirm.
Jane--
Difficult to imagine, isn't it? I'm such a delicate flower.
Whereas the more I read, the more I find the LTV regarded as an embarrassment.
King & Howard's two-volume History of Marxist Economics was the most recent thing I read that touches on the topic, but I'm also half-way through Kolakowski's three-volume Main Currents of Marxism, and he says pretty much the same thing: The theory only renders Marxism more vulnerable to criticism. In addition, because terms such as surplus value and exchange value are extrapolated from it, it's to blame for later Marxists attempting to predict the downfall of capitalism on the basis of the decline in the rate of exploitation.
Castoriadis deals with the LTV in Crossroads in the Labyrinth but you'll find plenty of other criticisms of it online, be it from the Sraffian crowd regarding the problem of transformation to "bourgeois" economists applying Occam's razor and pointing out its irrelevance in the determination of prices.
In my view, it simply doesn't work as an explanation of the way capitalism works, and the more I understand, the more inclined I am to side with those Greens who argue that the "surplus" liberated by the industrial revolution comes not from labour but from nature: I don't recal whether it was Gorz or someone else I was reading recently, who pointed out that the planet had stored up massive resources of energy over several millions of years, and in the space of a few hundred, we've managed to extract it. I'm inclined to that view: The capitalist can't extract more from a worker than he pays for. Where's the energy going to come from? What he can do is add the worker's labour to the energy stored up "inefficiently" in nature to transform it into commodities, to "release" that energy for consumption.
The concepts of ‘surplus value and exchange value’ aren’t to blame for some Marxists ‘attempting to predict the downfall of capitalism’—they themselves, or those who misrepresent them, are, since Marx quite clearly doesn’t do this; he talked of the tendency of the rate of profit to decline (hence, no mechanist prediction, and not the ‘decline in the rate of exploitation’). It is this which is a determinant of economic crises, which indubitably exist, and which bourgeois economists (I avoid the scare quotes; I’m not scared of owning that there is a bourgeois class and that they have their ideologues) have given up even trying to find an explanation for—crisis theory is no longer discussed in mainstream economics.
‘Terms such as surplus value [Physiocrats] and exchange value [Aristotle]’ are pre-Marxist, and the latter essential in discussing how commodities can exchange for equivalents. The criticisms of Marx’s expansion of the LTV available are, almost without exception, derived from positivist academics not known for their sympathy for radical politics, who are mostly attacking theses never held by Marx (as, likewise, the non-existent ‘transformation problem’). It’s actually arguable whether Marx has a ‘labour theory of value’; Ricardo did, however, and Sraffa simply returns to Ricardo. How this constitutes a theoretical advance, how radical it is, and how it refutes the LTV is far from clear. And Sraffa, who can’t dispense with ‘surplus value’ etc., wasn’t trying to refute Marx; his target was marginalism.
The incoherent Green argument, that somehow mixes up energy with cash, mistakes social relations for things, and believes that commodities grow on trees, casually reveals just how reactionary, antihumanist, and anti-worker ecopolitics can be. The substitution of energy for value is ahistorical, even asocial, and devoid of any explanatory power—what, here, would constitute specifically capitalist exploitation? It seems to be motivated by a kind of reductionist naturalism that can’t think in terms of social entities, appropriate objects for a social science, that are on a higher emergent level (see Bhaskar).
The crucial thing is, not how the capitalist can ‘extract more from a worker than he pays for’; it’s:
‘how does production on the basis of exchange-value solely determined by labour-time lead to the result that the exchange-value of labour is less than the exchange-value of its product’. That, expressed with great clarity, is the contradiction that Marx finds in the labour theory of value, and which he goes on to answer. Daft Green theories about ‘you can’t get more out than you put in’ are facile—I think that Engels, who was deeply informed in the natural sciences, might have easily have spotted a breach in the laws of thermodynamics—and completely useless for the emancipation of the working class.
As for Day, the review at Sketchy Thoughts is most pertinent, though I wouldn’t have even bothered—there’s not a drop of radicalism in it at all.
hi John,
I really liked the Holloway book, but I know what you mean about feeling frustrated when libertarian marxists don't seem to recognize or recognize enough that there's a lot of graet anarchist and other libertarian stuff that pre-dates a recent libertarian turn among some marxists.
As for value and that, my take on it is vulgarized Harry Cleaver, which is basically that capitalism is a society of social control based on forcing people to work. (This might, I think, in some ways makes distinctions between capitalism and prior types of societies hard to maintain, but if so then I think I like that.) We hate being forced to work and want out of that, collectively, for everyone. I think that's the important bit.
take care,
Nate
Hi Nate--
That's pretty much my take on it, too, and frankly I don't have any problem with not separating capitalism from other forms of social relations. Exploitation as such works in each society in a more or less similar manner: Members of the propertyless class (or those not controlling the means of production) are at the mercy of those who do own/control the means of production. In primitive communist societies, people can extract from nature enough resources to enable them to play or shag or play footie all they want, unless they live in the desert, of course, in which case there are no surplus resoures to live on: they can do no more than subsist. However, in a society in which they own nothing but labour power, it isn't up to them how long they work. They're at the boss's mercy. This would apply in any society in which the means of production are not owned or controlled by society as a whole. (I identified it as a "Green" argument only because it recognizes that the "surplus" energy that we have over after performing "necessary" labour can only come from nature, which Marx too recognizes as a source of wealth.) The extent of exploitation then depends pretty much entirely on the class struggle, on the resistance that the propertyless class can successfully put up. That the class struggle largely determines profit rather than any structural relation between constant and variable capital is what I understand to be the central feature of Castoriadis's argument and that of the Italian autonomists, but I'm open to contradiction.
Hi Bill--
As far as the tendency for the rate of profit to decline is concerned, I think it's perfectly explicable using standard economic terms. There's no need, either, to deny that there are capitalist crises of overproduction, but they have nothing to do with any inherent tendency of the rate of profit to decline, which is what Marx implies, at least in my understanding, on the basis of the displacement of labour by mechanization.
I don't see why the term "energy" is any more or less ahistorical than the term "value" and, frankly, am wary of the term "ahistorical" as if it were a criticism. It seems that Marxists regard it as some trump-card criticism that actually means something. It doesn't. In my books it is "value" that is the abstract unverifiable term, whereas energy is something calculable and measurable and which can be used by scientists, economists, capitalists, and social scientists.
You see, I don't think there's any great secret to capitalism, but Marxism manages to create one, to mystify social relations by abstracting from them and then pretending there are underlying forces at work that only they can understand.
Of course, we know why Marxism appeals to academics: It flatters their vanity that they are the indispensable interpreters of the holy text, the vanguard who will bring forth the new millennium. But the whole edifice is built on sleight of hand, and better Marxists than you have spotted the con.
Don't fool yourself that your thought is radical by the way. It isn't. At the very least, it's reactionary.
Sorry.
btw Nate, where are you blogging these days? I meant to link to Refusework then you mentioned it was rarely used. Are you the whatinthehell guy?
Just to clarify: Bill said:
"The crucial thing is, not how the capitalist can ‘extract more from a worker than he pays for’; it’s:
‘how does production on the basis of exchange-value solely determined by labour-time lead to the result that the exchange-value of labour is less than the exchange-value of its product’. That, expressed with great clarity, is the contradiction that Marx finds in the labour theory of value, and which he goes on to answer.
Indeed. But if the labour theory of value does not hold, then that contradiction dissolves away, or rather, the solution of it becomes a theoretical exercise and nothing more, and as a consequence, the Marxist edifice becomes exactly what I referred to in the original post: An entirely coherent theoretical universe that runs parallel to the real thing without coming into contact with it. Only, in an inversion of which Plato would have been proud, Marxists insist that it is the apparent universe that is illusory and theirs that is the real one.
For my part, I happen to agree with critics like Kolakowski and Ian Steedman (unapologetic 25 years on from Marx after Sraffa) www.open.ac.uk/socialsciences/ hetecon/2002/abstracts2002/steedman_i_full.pdf -
that Marx's law of value is a fetter on understanding capitalism rather than a boon and that theories of exploitation and class can be more accurately constructed without it.
That link again:
http://www.open.ac.uk/socialsciences/hetecon/2002/abstracts2002/steedman_i_full.pdf
Hi D2W:
It may be a dull argument about prices, and I think the Steedman quote you mention is precisely right, but this is NOT to say that the determination of price is only an economic issue and not a social, political, or cultural issue. On the contrary, as I mentioned above, my understanding of the Italian autonomists and the work of Socialisme ou Barbarie is that it is the class struggle, with all its social, political, and cultural manifestations that is regarded as the primary determinant of the rate of profit, and therefore of the cost of labour, prices of raw materials etc.
As for the omission of the field of knowledge, Marx does indeed provide an all-encompassing, ingenious, and rich political, social, economic and historical worldview. It is coherent and integrated, which means that if one piece of the edifice crumbles, the rest of it does too. To the extent that his sociology, politics, and history are required to mesh with his economics, they must be wrong, and frankly, I think they are.
I don't see any difficulty in constructing theories of social control, exploitation, or social relations without Marx, or indeed, without Marxists, if necessary.
As you've seen here, Marxists insist that we define Marx's terms within the context of Marx's entire theory, which I understand, given the interdependence of his economic theory and his political and social theories, but it means that Marxists will only accept immanent critique, and those who see a problem with this become tarred as a bourgeois economists, defenders of the status quo, regardless of the ACTUAL implications of their arguments. Such an attitude renders Marxism invulnerable to outside criticism. In my view, this makes it a faith, and an idealist one at that.
heya John,
I'm with you entirely that there's no big secret to capitalism. It's really annoying when people insist there is one. I haven't really read Castoriadis, got a recommendation?
I think this is really well put:
"we know why Marxism appeals to academics: It flatters their vanity that they are the indispensable interpreters of the holy text, the vanguard who will bring forth the new millennium. But the whole edifice is built on sleight of hand"
I've read just a bit of Jacques Ranciere (his earlier stuff, from the 70s and 80s), are you familiar with him? I take a similar point from him, super theoretical accounts of capitalism - and how there's no agency and how hard it all is to figure out - are a bid for importance (either deliberate or accidental) on the part of one group of folks. And working people understand the world a lot more than many marxist academics give them credit for.
I wonder if maybe some of the problems and weirdness about folks insisting on the specific difference of capitalism vs other arrangements (historical progress, stagism and all that) is due to a tendency to start from system rather than from organized resistance. I mean, I'm not totally sure but I think unequal power relations probly looks more similar from the receiving end, and stressing the difference is more probably a perspective that starts from the giving end of power. Oh yeah, to answer your question I'm the whatinthehell guy.
take care,
Nate
heya John,
I'm with you entirely that there's no big secret to capitalism. It's really annoying when people insist there is one. I haven't really read Castoriadis, got a recommendation?
I think this is really well put:
"we know why Marxism appeals to academics: It flatters their vanity that they are the indispensable interpreters of the holy text, the vanguard who will bring forth the new millennium. But the whole edifice is built on sleight of hand"
I've read just a bit of Jacques Ranciere (his earlier stuff, from the 70s and 80s), are you familiar with him? I take a similar point from him, super theoretical accounts of capitalism - and how there's no agency and how hard it all is to figure out - are a bid for importance (either deliberate or accidental) on the part of one group of folks. And working people understand the world a lot more than many marxist academics give them credit for.
I wonder if maybe some of the problems and weirdness about folks insisting on the specific difference of capitalism vs other arrangements (historical progress, stagism and all that) is due to a tendency to start from system rather than from organized resistance. I mean, I'm not totally sure but I think unequal power relations probly looks more similar from the receiving end, and stressing the difference is more probably a perspective that starts from the giving end of power. Oh yeah, to answer your question I'm the whatinthehell guy.
take care,
Nate
Hi Stuart--
So it's you! i never know when you log in as D2W which of you guys it is.
I'll look forward to your post. Try to stick some manga in there if you can.
Hi Nate--
I know Ranciere by name only, really, and from seeing him on all the reading lists. I'll search him out and give him a go.
I know exactly what you mean about the prioritizing of the paradigm over the evidence. This is what Sartre was criticizing all those years ago about Marxism being atrophied: the evidence being made to fit the theory. He did at least try to dp something about it, whatever one thinks of his conclusions.
I'm of the opinion that working people do indeed have a better understanding of exploitation and oppression than they're credited with. It's not so much the academics I'm concerned about, though, as those who would claim to be acting in the workers' name or who claim to have a better understanding of the workers' interests than the workers themselves. Once you travel down that route, it's only a matter of time before workers are being oppressed in the name of "the workers."
I'll put a link on the blogroll asap.
Cheers
john
hi John,
I'm with you 100% about folk who want to act in the name of the working class. I think the name/slogan of that antiwar group - not in my name - could be universalized. The only groups I have much respect for are groups of working class people acting for themselves as working class people (and, of course, in ways that that don't deliberately try to fuck over other working people to get by). If you're interested in Ranciere the book I've read and liked is The Ignorant Schoolmaster, which sums up as: school is place where one gets told not to think until one is good at it, which leads to fearful passivity. Definitely speaks to my experience in school. I've also read the translator's intro to his book Nights of Labor, which has some quotes I really liked about labor aristocracies and working class history.
take care,
Nate
Hi Nate--
Thanks for those titles. I'll check them out. Sounds a bit like a cross between Bourdieu and Ivan Illich, both of which I've read with positive and negative feelings.
The best place to start with Castoriadis is the the Castoriadis Reader, edited by David Ames Curtis. Contrary to the impression I might give here, there's plenty to disagree with in his work, and because so much of his writing to directed at contemporary issues, it can tend to feel very dated, but then that was the point.
The collection of Maurice Brinton's works, "For Workers' Power," might as well be Castoriadis anglicized. I reviewed it here a while back; Brinton seems to carry over both C's good and bad points, but it's nevertheless good stuff.
Thanks for all your comments.
John
Nate--
I take that back about ranciere and Bourdieu. Looking at some of the book blurbs, he clearly has problems with Bourdieu. I'll definitely look at those books.
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