Capitalist Dogs II: Or, What Habit Makes in Smith and Marx

 I remember a friend in graduate school saying that our task, at least when it came to writing dissertations, was to write something that a database could not produce. He was a bit ahead of the curve, this was sometime around the late nineties early two thousands. Databases could not write books then, but they are getting closer to it. Or, more to the point, a particular kind of academic monographic, the sort the traces the development of a concept in a single author oeuvre or a comparison of two thinkers, seems to be increasingly the kind of thing that a machine could write. That is the bad news. The good news, is that such monographs seemed useful to write, but never that fun to read in the first place. What if we could leave such books to the machines that generate them and consume them. What kind of writing should we do in the age of (seemingly) intelligent machines?

The Work of Philosophy: Spinoza, Hegel, and Macherey on Theoretical Practice

 

I wanted to illustrate this post with images of simple machines,

but couldn't find any I liked. I then remembered the great collection of records 

that Simple Machines put out. 

Althusser and the students and collaborators who made up his circle have perhaps never been forgiven for developing the concept of “theoretical practice.” Their critics have argued that the concept attempted to grant an importance to philosophy, seeing it as immediately practical and effective, without the need of organization or materiality. Thus reversing Marx’s famous dictum, that “philosophers have only interpreted the world.” Philosophy became a practical act in itself. To dismiss such a concept is to not only misread what is at stake in Althusser’s attempt to the think philosophy as a particular practice, as something which is both limited, as all practices are, but as something which has effects, even if these effects are only on philosophy. One of the central threads running through Pierre Macherey’s thought is an attempt to think through both the implications and conditions of theoretical practice. The problem of theoretical practice, of what philosophy is and does, runs through all of Macherey’s research from his writing on Spinoza, to the question of literature, and the history of philosophy. It also defines his particular practice, his teaching through the seminars on Philosophie au sense large, and the books on utopia, everyday life, the university, and the essay, all of which are defined by an attempt to think the conditions and limitations of philosophy as a practice. Furthermore, this reflection on philosophy as a transformative activity can be found in one of Macherey’s earliest philosophical works, Hegel or Spinoza. Read through Macherey’s later work it is possible to see Hegel and Spinoza as two different ideas of theoretical practice, of what it means to do philosophy.

The Death of Cool: Silicon Valley and Cultural Capital

 

There is no small irony in the fact that the Communist Manifesto, a text that, as the title suggests, is meant as a political progra, is read more for its description of the cultural logic of capitalism than for its program for a communist revolution. "All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned," is a line that is remembered and 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).

Why We Write: Or, Blogging as a Philosophical Practice

A collection of posts from this blog will be published as a book soon from Mayfly books. 

I am posting the introduction as well as the table of contents below. 

 

Fun with Hegel and Kojève: On Matthieu Renault's Maîtres et Esclaves: Archives du Laboratoire de Mythologiques de la Modernité

 

Perhaps it is time to have fun with Hegel. In the past year I have now read two books that have taken up a relation to Hegel that could be referred to as playful, which is not to say that the stakes or questions of these books are not serious. The first was Gray and Johnson's Phenomenology of Black Spirit, which posed the scandalous, and even heretical question, what if the subject of Hegel's Phenomenology was black. The second is Matthieu Renault's Maîtres et Esclaves: Archives du Laboratoire de Mythologiques de la Modernité. Both books in different ways show how that Hegel's thought can be all the more productive,  and all the more interesting, if one changes from the question what did Hegel mean (admittedly not an easy question) to what does Hegel make it possible to say. (Also oddly enough, both books read Hegel's dialectic against the actual struggle of Frederick Douglass to liberate himself from his master). 

Draft Translation: For a Systematic Study of the Relation of Marx to Spinoza by André Tosel

 

Draft Translation: Not for Citation

What follows is another attempt at a translation of an important text by André Tosel on the Marx/Spinoza relation. It is not a finished, or polished translation, but a rough sketch put forward to help people get a sense of this overlooked articulation of the relation between Marx and Spinoza.

How to Do Things with Hegel: On Gray and Johnson's Phenomenology of Black Spirit

 

Because actual history is rarely linear, let alone teleological, I read the repudiation of Hegel before I ever read Hegel. I had read arguments and polemics against Hegel in Althusser, Deleuze, and Foucault long before I had every cracked Hegel's books. A funny thing happened once I started reading, writing, and teaching Hegel, is that I started to warm up to him. It was not the idea of spirit that appealed to me, or even the dialectic as some overarching logic, but the more limited, finite dialectics of the different figures and moments of consciousness. 

It is All Subjective: Marx, Spinoza, and Subjectivity

 

Anyone who has ever taken or taught a philosophy class is familiar with the claim "[Blank] is subjective" in which the [Blank] in question could be anything from literary interpretations to ethical norms. This response effectively ends any and all cultural and philosophical discussion, which is why it is so aggravating. One response is to argue against this claim, to point out that not every interpretation of a poem, novel, or film, is authorized, that there are better or worse interpretations, with respect to cultural version. With respect to the ethical or political arguments it is tempting to point out that the very existence of ethics, of society, presupposes norms that are shared as well as debated and challenged.

Demarcations and Determinations: on Hijacked by Elizabeth Anderson

 

Elizabeth Anderson is always an interesting author for me to read because as much as we are both concerned with the same issues, namely,  the politics of work, and the domination of the work ethic over our lives, we approach these issues from fundamentally different philosophical perspectives. Anderson is for the most part working on these issues from within the liberal tradition, construed broadly, while my approach is framed in large part by the traditions of Marxism and Marxist Spinozism. Determination is negation, as Marx cited Spinoza as saying, and it is through reading Anderson that I get a deeper sense of my own philosophical commitments and perspective.

Two Great Tastes Part Two: The Introduction to Fischbach's La Production des Hommes

 

What follows is a draft of the translation of the introduction to Franck Fischbach's La Production des hommes: Marx avec Spinoza which will be published by Edinburgh University Press as Marx with Spinoza: Production, Alienation, History. Posted here in preparation for my forthcoming event with the Marx Education Project, and as part of the process of editing it. 

The relation of Marx with Spinoza has often been driven—most notably with respect to Althusser and the Althusserian tradition—by the project of “giving Marxism the metaphysics that it needs,” according to an expression used by Pierre Macherey specifically with respect to Althusser. The intention was laudable, but times having changed, our project can no longer be exactly that. We begin from the idea that the philosophy specific to Marx or the specifically Marxist philosophy is still largely unknown, that Marx as a philosopher is still largely and for the most part unknown. For a long time this was due reasons largely external to the thought of Marx: initially it was due to the urgency of militant practice, then it remains thanks to theme of the rupture with philosophy that is expressed by the eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach or in The German Ideology, any reading of Marx that is resolutely philosophical was suspected as being ideological. Then on the verge of orthodoxy, several authors—and not insignificant ones—both at the heart of the history of Marxism , and outside of it , have maintained that there is a critique of philosophy in Marx , this critique would still be a determinant practice of philosophy. However, the ignorance of “Marx’s philosophy” equally lies in reasons that internal to Marx’s work: the critical relation that Marx enters with philosophy implies in effect that the latter appears in terms of disconcerting new features, which are not those of a doctrine expressed as such (Marx, who never completed any of his grand works, always refused any dogmatic or systematic presentation of his thoughts), but are also not that of fragments. Neither systematic, nor fragmentary, philosophy with respect to Marx, appears diluted, omnipresent but always mixed and everywhere combined with elements of the discourse of history, of political economy, but also the sciences of nature and literature. It is not necessary to reconstruct or reconstitute the philosophy of Marx: that would suggest that it is only present in a fragmentary and dispersed state, and that it is necessary to reassemble and unify—which would lead to dogmatic and systemic presentation that is perfectly alien to the Marxist practice of philosophy. 

The Dialectic of Conspiracy and Trust: Hegel and Conspiracy Theories

 

Don't worry I will explain why I picked this image

This post is an immediate follow up or even sequel to an earlier post on Spinoza and conspiracy theories. In a more oblique way it is also a follow up to something that I have said repeatedly on this blog, that not only is there more to Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit than the master and slave, but that other dialectical scenes or figures can also be wrested from the linear progression of Hegel's thought to become the basis of social and political criticism. Kojeve can't have all of the fun.

Reworking Hegel: Philosophies of Work in Macherey's Petit Riens

 

Images from Property is No Longer Theft 

There is a line that I used to attribute to Roland Barthes, "those who do not reread are doomed to read the same book over and over again." I liked the riddle like nature of the phrase, and the way it seemed to posit a first read which is often a restating of one's already existence preconceptions, hence the rereading of the same book under different covers, against a rereading that discovers difference in repetition. 

The Interruption of Individuation: Some Tertiary Retentions in Memory of Bernard Stiegler

In memory of Bernard Stiegler I thought that I would post the following excerpt from The Politics of Transindividuality.  As an introduction I will return to the idea of interruption that I wrote about in my first response to Stiegler.  

According to Stiegler, as much as Marx interrupted Hegel, positing proletarianization as that which interrupts the passage from slave to master, he never fully grasped the full implications of proletarianization. Which is to say Marx never grasped the extension of proletarianization from the hidden abode of production to consumption. Marx primarily examined consumption as a necessary endpoint and part of the economic process, but not as a transindividual individuation, a process of the production of subjectivity. The consumption of use values is predominantly left outside of the examination. While this is the dominant tendency, Marx’s writings do suggest that consumption needs to be historicized as the transformation of the mode of production, a transformation that includes its effects on social relations, but such remarks are marginal for reasons that are both historical and philosophical. Consumption at the time of Marx’s writing was only formally subsumed, as capital produced and circulated the commodities of food, clothing, and shelter that existed in previous economic conditions, hence the coats, coal, and linen that illustrate Capital. Which is not to say that Marx does not sometimes historicize consumption. Stiegler cites Marx’s statement in the Grundrisse that, ‘Hunger is hunger, but the hunger gratified by cooked meat eaten with a knife and fork is a different hunger from that which bolts down raw meat with the aid of hand, nail and tooth,’ as an oblique reference to the constitutive role of consumption.[1] However, such isolated remarks do not constitute anything like a theory of the mode of consumption, in which consumption is considered alongside production as a specific transindividual individuation.[2] While Stiegler’s comments would seem to contradict Marx’s theorization of the sphere of circulation as the production of “freedom, equality, and Bentham,” it is important to differentiate exchange, which produces individuals isolated and separated from each other and productive relations, and consumption, which demands a disindividuation that exceeds isolation. 

Right Workerism: Or, Class Struggle in Reverse

I had played with the concept of idea of what I called "right workerism," the way in which work, and the value of work, became not a critical perspective on capitalism but its justification previously on this blog. The protests against lockdowns in various states has provided the opportunity to reflect on its meaning again.

Lensgrinding: Spinoza on Work

With all of the attention on Spinoza by Marxists is is surprising how little is written about Spinoza and work. Spinoza has provided theories of ideology, of alienation, and even of the relation between forces and relations of production, it is surprising that few have remarked on what Spinoza actually says about labor or work. This is perhaps due to the fact that it would appear that there is little there, Spinoza's interests were elsewhere. There are only a few references to work in Spinoza, but I would argue that they are significant. 

Conscious Organs: Toward an Anthropology of Labor Power

Presented in Rome in May 2018

Conference Draft 

Buried in the back of Volume Three of Capital, Marx puts forward a thesis of determination that is different from the familiar assertion of a base. As In Volume Marx writes, 

It is in each case the direct relationship of the owners of production to the immediate producers—a relationship whose particular form naturally corresponds always to a certain level of development of the type and manner of labour, and hence to its social productive power—in which we find the innermost secret, the hidden basis of the entire social edifice and hence also the political form of the relationship of sovereignty and dependence, in short, the specific form of the state in each case. 

You Incomplete Me: Marx and Hegel in Balibar’s Des Universels

Requisite wine stain 

“What Hegel calls consciousness, or, more to the point, consciousness of the universal, Marx calls "ideology." It is the same thing, and yet this change of denomination, like the deus sive natura of Spinoza (conscienta sive ideologia, I propose), carries with it the possibility of saying something new, or bringing it to the foreground.  And at the center of debate is the part of unconsciousness constantly rejected by Hegel at the limits of the phenomological field”Etienne Balibar

I have early noted an increasing turn to Hegel in Balibar’s writing both here in this blog and in an essay that will be published here. The recently published Des Universels completes this turn, while also making it clear that as much as Balibar often lists Hegel as a transindividual thinker, his interest in Hegel has less to do that particular problem than with the problem of universals. Spinoza might be the preferred thinker of the transindividuality for Balibar, but Hegel is the thinker of the universal.

We Get Vacations? On The Americans

When I first wrote about The Americans I saw its premise as yet another variant on the sociopathic anti-hero that has become the mainstay of popular culture. The lies and deception seemed no different than the double lives of drug dealers, serial killers, or adulterous ad men. However, I now think that I was wrong about this, or at least the show had moved in that direction. It has the same deceptions, murders, and betrayals that make up the rogues gallery of prestige television, but unlike many of the shows that it is compared to, Elizabeth and Philip feel the effects of what they have done. The do not, like Walter White, Don Draper, and others, float above it all. They feel and struggle with every loss, with every life destroyed. 

Be Social: Fischbach's Le Sense du Social

Franck Fischbach's Le Sens du Social: Les Puissances de la Coopération continues two of the threads of his recent writings. First, there is an examination of the "socio-political" as an orientation for political philosophy. This is directly opposed to the "ethico-political" in that the former places political economy, or specifically the division of labor at the center, rather than subjectivity or alterity. Second, there is an increasing turn away from Spinoza as a philosopher or theorist of the social and the political and towards Hegel and the return to Hegel in contemporary critical theory. (You can probably guess that I am for the latter and against the former, but such a "hot or not" list says little about why--or what is at stake). 

Coming Soon: The Politics of Transindividuality

I have not had much time for blogging as of late as I complete the finishing touches, indexing, proofreading, etc., of The Politics of Transindividuality.