There is no small irony in the fact that the Communist Manifesto, as text that, as the title suggests, is meant as a political program is read more for its description of the cultural logic of capitalism. "All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned," is a line that is remembered cited, made the title of books essays, and panels, long after everyone forgot Marx and Engel's policy on the nationalization of industry. The flowing prose of the first section will always outlast the programatic statements of the latter section (and to be fair even Marx thought that they were dated by 1871, after the Paris Commune).
Given the particular formal restrictions of a manifesto, a text that is as much performative, manifesting a party and a position, it is not entirely clear that Marx and Engel's famous lines about the cultural dynamics of capital where meant as anything more than a call to arms. Thus, we can forgive their limitations. Nevertheless these proclamations have value to us not so much as statements, but as the formulation of problems, as in the following.
The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors”, and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment”. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom — Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.
The idea that capital strips exploitation bare, revealing its truth, is an idea that has come under a great deal of criticism. In fact, one could argue that Marx himself was the greatest critic of this idea, and by the eighteen sixties had replaced this idea of capital stripped bare with the theory of commodity fetishism and the everyday religion of capitalism. There is a larger question here, one raised in different ways by pretty much all theories of ideology or commodity fetishism in the latter half of the twentieth century; namely, how does a system that strips away all of the halos of domination reproduce itself?
In thinking about this I am reminded of this passage from Immanuel Wallerstein, in one of his contributions to Race, Nation, Class, as passage that turns conventional wisdom in its head. Conventionally we are led to believe that a meritocratic system, or a system that at least has a meritocratic ideology, is stable because it disseminates the idea that everyone could become rich. Wallerstein argues that historically this is not the case, empires and dynasties founded on the divine right of kings have lasted much longer. As Wallerstein writes,
‘While privilege earned by inheritance has long been at least marginally acceptable to the oppressed on the basis of mystical or fatalistic beliefs in an eternal order … privilege earned because one is possibly smarter and certainly better educated than someone else is extremely difficult to swallow, except by the few who are basically scrambling up the ladder. Nobody who is not a yuppie loves or admires a yuppie. Princes at least may seem to be kindly father figures. A yuppie is nothing but an overprivileged sibling. The meritocratic system is politically one of the least stable systems. And it is precisely because of this political fragility that racism and sexism enter the picture’
I will bracket for a moment the question of racism and sexism, and the dated reference to yuppies. One solution to this problem historically is "cultural capital." Cultural capital, the right taste in music, theater, books, etc., are one way to soften the blow of meritocracy. It does so in two ways. First, it makes the boss, the capitalist, look like something more than just a guy with more money. The capitalist inherits an aristocratic halo. Despite what Marx wrote in 1848, the term bourgeoisie has often been used to refer not so much to the bare calculation of money, but to a class which has converted at least some of its capital into cultural capital. Secondly, for the dominated it also outlines a plan for class transformation, for transclass ascendency, read these books, listen to this music, and appreciate this art, and you too could become bourgeoisie.
All of this is rather long preamble to some reflections on this piece by Rebecca Shaw. As she writes,
She is referring to the attempts to Zuckerberg, Musk, etc., to look cool, to play video games, take up mixed martial arts, surfing, and post pictures of their guns, historical and imaginary, by the bedside table (no photos to confirm whether or not the bed is a race car). No one has been more invested in destroying the old "cultural capital" than Silicon Valley, they have been quick to point out that they did not go to college, or if they did they were not paying attention. They have stripped away every halo of the bourgeoisie, replacing even the suit and tie with a hoodie and t-shirt. Despite this, or maybe because of it, they do not want to be seen as just rich. They desperately want to be seen as having not just capital, but a new, hipper kind of cultural capital, one based on video games, not books, mixed martial arts and not the opera. In brief, they want to be cool.
Musk's bedstand
Of course the darkest aspect is not to be found in the dorky jokes, but in the embrace of racial and sexual hierarchies that have always been part of capitalism. Racism and sexism were never drowned in the icy waters of calculation, they have floated to the top persisting as its greatest alibi. Much more should be said about that, but I would like to end with a question, why has the capitalist ruling class found just being rich unbearable? Why do they desperately want to be not just rich but cool? Along those lines, and since we are viewing nineteenth century philosophy from the twenty-first, we could ask why do "our natural superiors" spend so much time gaining recognition from those that they cannot recognize in return. It is often said, rightly or wrongly, that Hegel thought that mutual recognition, the desire to be recognized by one who one could recognize in return, was one of the driving forces of history. None of that explains why Musk is willing to trash twitter to be retweeted by accounts with dozens of followers. Maybe it is because we are living through the end of history. We definitely seem to be living through the demise of cool.
I will let the Nation of Ulysses play us out.
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