Structured and Structuring: Lordon and Éwanjé-Épée on Race and Class

 

As I mentioned when I first reviewed it here, Frédéric Lordon's Figures du Communisme is an oddly titled book. It is not about some communist past or event, about the Soviet Union or China, but what communism must mean if it is to be a force of transformation in the future. Its central topics, the environment, work, and the intersection of race and class, are not exactly topics that immediately come to mind when perusing the history of communist thought. Or all of the sections, the long discussion of race and class is the most interesting (and the reason why I agreed to translate it).

In that section, Lordon develops a distinction between the structure of capital and the structure of race and sexism in contemporary society.  What follows is a long citation from the draft of the translation. 

"The superior position of capitalist domination in the structural hierarchy of the relations of domination indicates therefore that we are in a capitalist society. But how—and what to add—to ensure that this statement does not amount to a pure and simple circularity? Namely, that in capitalist society, capitalism is institutionally expressed, instrumentalized, and defended. And it is formally. This is without a doubt the decisive point. The social relations of capitalist are juridically inscribed. The right of property is written in the Constitution, the subordination of workers in the labor laws. Given that it is solidified in law, capitalist domination is as a consequence defended by the State, which as such is an avowed “Bourgeois State.” This is flagrant when the police protect a reunion of known oligarchs under the name “Le Siècle.” It is no less so when the police repress—with unheard-of savagery—activist movements of manifest anti-capitalist scope (the ZAD, the Labor Law protests, etc.), on the grounds of "protecting institutions." In the mind of the police or administrators “institutions” are undefined entities which designate nothing other than the social order in force. But then, how better to reveal—in this particular instance—that this social order is capitalist than when the "defense of institutions" is deployed to destroy anti-capitalist protesters? 

 It is not entirely the same with racist and sexist dominations, they are not inscribed in the most fundamental texts. It is entirely to the contrary: they say exactly the inverse—equality, universality, the republic, human rights, etc. Of course, nothing of this limits either racism or sexism. But here, these take on their own particular modality: unacknowledged, diffuse, delocalized—systemic. “Systemic” is the inverse of “systematic,” qualified as its name indicates, an effect of the system, that is to say an effect produced by the multiplicity of informal social mechanisms, without a global organizing pole or subject—whereas the "systematic," on the contrary, refers to a conscious, deliberate, and therefore localizable organization. This is why in the qualifications disputed today, by example with respect to the racist violence of the police, it would be conceptually more just to say that in the first approximation these are systemic, and not institutional (or we could say: more systemic than institutional). The institutional such as we are using it here, supposes a formal inscription-- enshrined in a foundational text. The systemic, which, is contained in practice, that is to say, directed by a multiplicity of agents, and traversed by a multiplicity of mechanisms, admittedly forming in fine a coherence of the collective which could be called precisely, the racist system, but without having to resort to the hypothesis of an engineer of the system, which only presides over the systematic. The racism of the police is systemic, it is not only institutional Indeed, it is precisely along this front line that the police mount their defense—(deliberately ,or perhaps out of sheer stupidity, conflating "systemic" with "systematic," and lumping both together with "institutional”): nowhere, indeed, will one find a directive, an order, a text, or an explicit principle calling for Black people and Arabs to be specifically mistreated.In line with this purely formalist argument, the absence of all formal institutional inscription, makes it possible to “prove,” albeit tautologically, that the police as an institution are not racist....These are the characteristic denials to which formal arguments, pushed to the very limit of their formalism, inevitably lead. However, there is no need of directives for which the police among themselves, with their hierarchy, abandoned to their worst passions, operating outside of view in surplus zones established as ghettoes, steep and mutually reinforce one another in the most crass and generalized racism—informal, yet systemic.

 It is, however, difficult not to see that the present era undermines the clarity of these conceptual distinctions. Because the institutional texts are more infused with racism: anti-immigration laws (which are anti-certain immigrants), for example—or, as is now the case, the "anti-separatism" laws—whose fundamental Islamophobia they believed they could conceal by glossing it over as a "reaffirmation of the principles of the Republic," evidently failing to perceive the "special" coloration that this fine maneuver imparted to the said "Republic." Here the evidence of systemic racism is on the way of taking on an “institutional” consistency. It was likely the inevitable outcome of a continuous drift toward systemic state racism—that it would ultimately produce a discontinuity, paving the way for institutional state racism.

 The shifting boundaries between the systemic and the institutional in matters of racism exemplify, par excellence, the transitions of a capitalist society in the throes of an organic crisis—as well as the characteristic rhythms of these transitions: everything moves at high speed. However, the fundamental dividing line still holds true: when society today is racist and sexist, it is against its fundamental declarations (and their institutional inscriptions in the texts of the highest level of juridical normativity): when society is capitalist it is in accord with these fundamental declarations. This is why on can say, with reason, that contemporary society is a capitalist society. It would be a racists society or a sexist society (in the sense of structural dominance, and not int the sense of the evident presence of racism and sexism in society), if, for example, it were explicitly constructed on the basis of ethnic or theo(phallo)cratic principles. The societies of apartheid formally recognized the racial difference, an expressed them in their affirmation of their highest values—and actively defended them. In the same way sexist societies are those that require the minority status of women. Racism and sexism are positive values, which merit by consequence being defended. Contemporary society declares no such thing, for god’s sake no! It even swears it wants to fight hard against it—though, of course, that in no way prevents it from being racist and sexist, albeit without ever fully admitting that is what it is doing. On the other hand, it is explicitly inscribes the principles of capitalism—property, freedom—in its fundamental texts--and we have lost count of the times the police have been dispatched to the aid of capital for this very reason. In fundamental reality, in capitalist society this is what the police are for. Interpersonal disputes are, in a sense, the small change of policing—paradoxically intended to make one forget the large denominations, or rather—if one may play on words—the big payoff: the rift between capital and labor, of which the capitalist police are fundamentally the overseers. 

 In today’s society, therefore, racism and sexism are (with the preceding reservations) systemic. Capitalism itself is completely institutional. More exactly, it is primarily institutional and systemic as a surplus. Because beyond the formal inscriptions, capitalism is equally maintained by all of the informal social mechanisms, diffuse, decentered, uncoordinated ex ante (even if, in fact, they are perfectly coordinated ex post—and produce an effect of a system). These are the mechanisms that Marx names ideology and Gramsci hegemony. In the case of sexism or racism, the system is the hypocritical substitute of an official institution, in the case of capitalism it is its natural complement—because the logic of its formal positive values is extended into a discourse of informal apologetics. In any case, we now know of the fact of the particular superior place of capitalist in the structural hierarchy of relations of domination: 1) Its extension: Capitalists aside, capitalist domination affects everyone, since everyone is concerned with the stakes of material survival—and capitalism, as a mode of production, has entirely captured these stakes. Structural hierarchy is therefore expressed through the relations of inclusion between various "spheres": all racialized people and queer individuals are wage earners, but the converse is not true (relations of inclusion are not symmetrical...). 2) Capitalist domination corresponds to the general organization that society explicitly demands, from which it formulates the fundamental principles, to which it gives a multitude of formal institutional expressions, and which it would actively defend through the armed forces. No other relation can claim a similar status in contemporary society. 3 The relationship of capitalist domination—while it benefits from the existence of other relations of domination, insofar as the latter are capable of advantageously complicating its own—may also contemplate dispensing with them. There is no imperative need for it to reproduce the reservoir of “unworthy” from the depths of those most shamelessly amenable to such instrumentalization—since it itself produces the reserve army. It can therefore keep its ear to the ground, registering the reorientations of the great currents of opinion, and compose itself accordingly. Of course the racist and sexist dominations have been made entirely functional, and if the latter come to be challenged by the work society performs upon itself, capitalism will first seek minimal compromises—for example, through the strategy of tokenism. If, however, these accommodations were to prove insufficient, the concessions that a serious assault on other relations of domination would impose upon it would be in no way fatal to it."

End citation. 

There is much that can be said about this formulation, first it can be said that Lordon gives two formulations for the dominance of capitalist domination. First, it affects everyone since it concerns the very stakes of material survival, everyone has to make a living, and thus they have to sell their wage labor. Second, capital is not just the dominant relation materially, effecting everyone, it is officially named as such. The defense of property is openly admitted to be the goal and function of the state, and its police. This distinguishes capitalism from other forms of domination, based on race, sex, or gender, which are, in Lordon's view, always in tension with the universalistic foundations of modern societies, "stated in such assertions as "all men are created equal." Lordon's distinction between capitalist domination and other forms of exploitation is meant to analyze their different function, how they work; it is not meant to dismiss or discredit the latter.  The goal, and subtitle, of the chapter, is to construct a counter-hegemony, and a counter-hegemony against the ruling order must be able to bring together anti-capitalism, anti-racism, and anti-sexism, which is why Lordon sets up a kind of categorical imperative of struggles. As Lordon writes,

"Thus, in order to make a grand pronouncement, one could formulate a political ethic of struggles, or of the coexistence of struggles, Its primary principle would be to do nothing in its struggle that could harm other struggles. Starting with simply refraining from badmouthing them—as useless distractions. And also to not engage with—or pass through—spaces, platforms, or "allies"—even if in merely chance encounters or purely instrumental engagements—that objectively cause harm to other struggles. "

Lordon's statement of strategic intersection is an important one, I find myself returning to it often, but it does not resolve the other matter, and that is the fundamental distinction that he make about capitalism and racism, about the domination of capital and its distinction from other forms of domination. The book contains its own critical evaluation of this point in the form of a long letter from Félix Boggio Éwanjé-Épée (editor of Périod) on this chapter which is the final chapter of the book. Éwanje-Épée  addresses both of Lordon's arguments. With respect to the first, Éwanje-Épée does not question the material centrality fo capital, contests the very terms of a division between the economic basis of society and other  forms of domination, as if it were possible to talk about capital without not just a domination, but without extra economic domination. As he writes, "there is no capitalism without extra-economic exclusion, oppression, or domination." From this historical point Éwanje-Épée questions the theoretical division between rules written and unwritten. As Éwanje-Épée writes, 

"I remain very skeptical with respect to the idea that a bourgeois society would be doctrinally, or in its pure version, is opposed to extra-economic exclusions, privileges, and discriminations. This holds absolutely no truth among liberal thinkers. Take universal suffrage, for instance: historically, it was by no means championed by liberals, but rather by the Radicals of 1793, the Chartist labor movement in England, the insurgents of 1848, the Communards, and so on. The ideologues of capitalism are fundamentally in favor of all naturalized hierarchies—whether based on religious caste or slavery—and accuse the activists seeking their abolition of "fanaticism ."

Éwanje-Épée raises an important question of how exactly we understand bourgeois societies own claims to universality. I am reminder here of Marx's own critical evaluation of the universality of bourgeois rights in "On the Jewish Question," There is much to be said about how societies such as ours stated and repeated such universal claims of "all men" while simultaneously understanding that such claims not only did not mean all humans, the gender exclusion is openly named, but not even all male humans, the racial exclusion was understood if unstated. This argument takes us back to fundamental problem of western society, as Éwanje-Épée, it claimed universality, while simultaneously criticizing those who took such universal claims at their word as fanatics. Case in point, John Brown, who put the idea all men (sic) are created equal into practice during the age of slavery. 

One of the few Americans who "fanatically" believed that all men are created equal.

The Last Moments of John Brown by Thomas Hovenden 

However, as I argued earlier, I wonder if one can also frame a critical response to Lordon based on Spinoza despite the fact Figures du Communisme is Lordon's least Spinozist book. Despite this Lordon's argument about the dominant form of domination, about their being intersecting forms of domination, is drawn from from Althusser. However, Althusser's idea was in some sense the opposite of Lordon's, the idea of overdetermination meant that all dominations are necessarily framed by their relations with the others. As much as there is a dominant domination, that dominant domination cannot exist outside all other dominations. For now, I will say that Lordon and Althusser move this question of domination in opposite directions, Lordon tries to figure out the criteria of the dominant domination, while Althusser, would argue that any dominant dominations can only be heuristically separated from the other dominations that make it possible and it makes possible. I would say more about how "overdetermination" is a thoroughly Spinozist concept, but I will leave that aside for now. The fundamental point is that there is no essence of capitalism outside of actually existing capitalisms. This is the corollary of the general ontological point that Macherey illustrates in his Sages ou Ignorance: 

"One must never lose sight of the fact that, within the original perspective adopted by Spinoza, every essence is the essence of a thing in this twofold sense: that, without it, the thing of which it is the essence cannot exist; and, conversely, the essence itself possesses reality as an essence solely by virtue of the relationship it maintains with the thing of which it is the essence—and thus, it too cannot exist without that thing. It follows from this that there are only singular essences: although Spinoza himself never employs the expression "singular essence," he speaks solely of singular things, singular thoughts, singular causes, and so forth." 

Éwanje-Épée reminds Lordon that his early books developed a theory of institutions that did not separate, as he does in this book, between the written and unwritten, the systematic and systemic, but saw them all as overdetermined and intersecting. As he writes,

"To return to the terminology in your chapter, my understanding of institutions is, as you might notice, closer to the definition that you give in Vivre Sans? and moreover closer to the institutionalists, to Durkheimian or Maussian sociology, etc. I see the sense of the distinction that you want to make between the “institutional” level and the “systemic” level: in order to distinguish between complete fascism and actually existing racism. However, in part, I do not understand why you give so much importance to the distinction between written and unwritten rules with regard to this issue. I believe, for example, that according to your logic you could continue to affirm the priority of capitalism over racism in society like the US during Jim Crow, even though racism was inscribed in law."

As Éwanje-Épée the opposition that Lordon claims between a society that is openly capitalist, supporting private property in word and deed, but only racist and sexist in a kind of "bad faith," undermining its own values and ideals of "all men are created equal" breaks down in the sense that capitalism in word means something different from what it means in action. As Éwanje-Épée writes, 

 "On the other hand, if the issue boils down solely to the fact that the system acts in bad faith—claiming to no longer take into account either origins or skin color (though, as you note, this is increasingly less the case in legislation)—then one can find the very same kind of bad faith regarding the fundamental "values" of the market economy: capitalism is when you can do whatever you want, everyone can create a corporation, at worst, a young person from the inner city is free to become an Uber franchisee if they can't find a job—"rather than just hanging around the corner," and so on. Not so long ago everyone was gloating about the "middle-classification" or the “disappearance of classes.” It was the 2008 crisis that shattered this veneer, of course, but I want to emphasize that the self-representation of bourgeois society is that there is no such thing as society. Neoclassical economics is explicitly invented as a counterweight to the excesses of honesty with respect to the origins of wealth that one finds in Smith and Ricardo. " 

I would argue that this split is less a bad faith, than the fact that capitalism has at least two sides, it is from the sphere of circulation that we get our ideal of freedom, equality, and Bentham, while the hidden abode of production introduces in action the inequality that is denied in writing. Of course even that formulation is too static, both spheres, that of consumption and production are constantly changing, and this change also intersects with changes in the hierarchies of race and gender. 

The translation is now complete, 

and should be coming out from Verso sometime soon

In other words, words more relevant to our concern here, there is no generic capitalism, what exists is the singular essence of racial capitalism, or more to the point, racial, patriarchal, colonial....etc. colonialism. Although, to say that all of these elements exist as causes (and effects) of the same structure does not mean that they are instituted in the same way.  The distinctions that Lordon raises are not meaningless, racism is structured differently than capitalism, or more to the point, the racial aspects of domination are structured differently than the capitalist aspects. At the same time, neither capitalism nor racism can function just as structure, they must also exists as subjects, or constitute subjectivity. Despite the Hegelian play on words here, I would argue this is a very Spinozist point (one that Lordon has made before) that any social order must reproduce itself not just at the level of material conditions, or foundational documents, it must reproduce itself at the level of subjectivity, at the level of desire, imagination, and ideas. This is true not just of capitalism in the abstract, but the specific capitalism we live in, which has as its conditions and effects, the reproduction of racial, gender, and other hierarchies.