Dr. Dr. Hanselmann ist, wie alle defragmentierten Träger verantwortungsvoller Postionen in den Institutionen, Stiftungen und Konglomeraten der internationalen Finanzmärkte, ein posthumaner Transmitterdenker. Richtig, die Benchmark. Richtig, der Tod meißelt das Leben aus dem Chaos, dachte er, als der ICE gestern Nacht aus Paris in den Hauptbahnhof einfuhr, deutscher ICE, die Leute quollen förmlich aus den dreizehn Wagen heraus, nur er, Dr. Dr. Hanselmann quoll nicht, er flog elegant im Gehen über den Bahnsteig und Read more ...
Saal 6 – 4
Der Ursprung des Kapitalismus/ Moderne und Postmoderne
Wenige Fragen der Geschichte haben so viele aktuelle politische Implikationen wie die scheinbar so einfache: Wie ist der Kapitalismus entstanden? In dieser erhellenden Arbeit widerlegt Ellen Meiksins Wood die meisten vorhandenen Darstellungen über den Ursprung des Kapitalismus, denen es nicht gelingt, die spezifi schen Eigenschaften des Kapitalismus als Gesellschaft ssystem zu erkennen, und die ihn statt dessen als Höhepunkt einer natürlichen menschlichen Neigung zum Handel erscheinen lassen. Aber nur mit einem richti gen Verständnis der Anfänge des Kapitalismus, so Wood, können wir uns die Möglichkeit seines Endes vorstellen.
Ellen Meiksins Wood beginnt ihre Erforschung der Ursprünge des Kapitalismus mit einer Untersuchung der Ursprünge des Kapitalismus mit einer Untersuchung der klassischen Denker von Adam Smith bis hin zu Max Weber, um dann die großen marxisti schen Debatt en zwischen Autoren wie Paul Sweezy, Maurice Dobb, Robert Brenner, Perry Anderson und E. P. Thompson zu erkunden. In ihrer eigenen Darstellung der agrarischen Ursprünge des Kapitalismus stellt sie schließlich die Verbindung des Kapitalismus mit Städten, die Gleichsetzung von »kapitalisti sch« mit »bürgerlich« und die von diesen Annahmen abgeleiteten Konzepti onen von Moderne und Postmoderne infrage.
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Jay-Walker. Wie es dazu kam, dass Jay-Walking mit dem Tode bestraft wird (deutsch/englisch)
Aus dem Englischen von Nina Bandi und Gerald Raunig
Dieser Text wurde zum ersten Mal im Dezember 2014 an der Wiener Akademie der Bildenden Künste vorgetragen. Er basiert auf Anmerkungen für meine Zusammenarbeit mit Fred Moten. In den darauf folgenden Gesprächen entwickelten Fred und ich zwei weitere Texte: „Mikey the Rebelator“, veröffentlicht im Performance Research Journal und „Michael Brown“, veröffentlicht in Boundary 2. Ich möchte Anette Baldauf danken, die mir die Möglichkeit gab, diese Überlegungen in Form eines Vortrags zu formulieren, und Gerald Raunig dafür, dass er mich ermunterte, meine Notizen in der vorliegenden Form in Kamion 1 zu veröffentlichen.
Wie kam es, dass Jay-Walking mit dem Tode bestraft wird? Aus Jay-Walking eine Straftat zu machen, war ein Aspekt des Übergangs vom kolonialen Kapitalismus zum Industriekapitalismus in den USA. Ein Jay war jemand vom Land, der in der Mitte der Straße ging, ein Ort, der allerdings rasch dem aufkommenden Automobilverkehr vorbehalten wurde. Es gab eine öffentliche Kampagne, um die Leute davon abzuhalten, auf den Straßen zu gehen und so diesen Verkehrsstrom, dieses Fließband der Autos aufzuhalten. Als aber Michael Brown am 9. August 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri wegen Jay-Walking niedergeschossen wurde, änderte sich etwas. Natürlich wurde auch sehr schnell darauf hingewiesen, dass sich nichts geändert hatte. Unabhängig voneinander können diese beiden Aussagen jedoch nicht verstanden werden. Denn das, was sich geändert hatte, machte das, was sich nicht geändert hatte, umso unveränderlicher. Ich werde im Folgenden zu erklären versuchen, was ich damit meine. Aber ich beginne einfach mit dieser Behauptung. Der heutige logistische Kapitalismus verlangt nach einem nie dagewesenen, verallgemeinerten Zugriff auf uns. Dieser unbegrenzte Zugriff hat jedoch eine Geschichte sowohl unter jenen, die ihm am meisten unterworfen, als auch unter jenen, die am meisten von ihm befreit waren. Ich spreche vom Urmoment der Logistik im Kapitalismus, vom Sklavenhandel und seiner grausamen Fracht. Ich spreche aber auch von einer Geschichte, in der der Zugriff nicht nur verweigert, sondern sabotiert und sogar befreit wurde. Michael Browns Jay-Walking war ein Akt der Sabotage, und in der Protestbewegung von Ferguson sehen wir die Befreiung des Zugriffs einmal mehr am Werk, in den Jay-Walking-Fußstapfen der Black Radical Tradition. In einem berühmten Ausspruch sagte Cedric Robinson, dass die Black Radical Tradition die Kritik der westlichen Zivilisation sei. Hier möchte ich sie übertragen als die Kritik der westlichen Idee und Praxis des Zugriffs auf andere. Wie Denise Ferreira da Silva zeigt, verlangt diese Idee und Praxis zunächst nach der Verweigerung des Zugriffs anderer auf sich selbst, und erst dann nach der Herausbildung des Zugriffsrecht auf andere – im Besonderen auf das, was Hortense Spillers als unbestimmtes Fleisch der anderen bezeichnet.
Falls meine Rede metaphorisch oder romantisch klingt, oder nach einem Optimismus des Willens: Ja, das ist sie, aber sie ist auch sehr materiell – in der Tat materieller als alle deplatzierten Aufrufe, „Rasse“ und Klasse zu verbinden (denn sie werden im Gegenteil nie getrennt sein). Genauer noch möchte ich sagen, dass Michael Browns Sabotage auf eine symbolische Art materiell war. Und um das zu verstehen, müssen wir auf die Entwicklungslinien des logistischen Kapitalismus zurückkommen und auf die Gründe, wieso die Verweigerung des Zugriffs und das Streben nach anderen Formen der Bewegung (wieder) in direkten Konflikt mit dieser Form des Kapitalismus gerät.
Wir werden zum verborgenen Reich des Operations Management in den 1960er und 70er Jahren vorstoßen müssen, als der industrielle Kapitalismus begann, zu dem zu werden, als was wir ihn damals noch nicht erkennen konnten. Je nach Kontext bezeichnen wir ihn als postmodernen oder postindustriellen Kapitalismus, als Globalisierung oder als kognitiven Kapitalismus. Nun sehen wir aber, dass eine mögliche Bezeichnung auch die des logistischen Kapitalismus ist. Indem wir ihn so nennen, gelingt es uns auch zu erklären, wie die lange grausame Geschichte von staatlicher und außerstaatlicher Gewalt gegen jene, die am meisten dieses psychotische Verlangen nach Zugriff verkörpern, in eine neue Phase der Intensität eingetreten ist. Das psychotische Verlangen nach immer mehr Zugriff war nie weg, es findet jetzt aber zu neuem Leben, einem neuen Leben, das es aussaugen kann, in der unwahrscheinlichen, verborgenen Stätte des Operation Managements.
Verborgene Stätte
In den 1970er Jahren geschehen zwei Dinge in Bezug auf das Operations Management. Das erste ist Kaizen, das zweite die Logistik. In den 1970ern war die japanische Praxis der ständigen Optimierung, Kaizen, im Operations Management äußerst einflussreich geworden wie auch in den Managementpraktiken, die ihrerseits vom Operations Management beeinflusst wurden. Mit Kaizen verschob sich der Blick des Managements weg von den Arbeiter_innen und Maschinen hin zum Fließband. Das Fließband war nicht mehr Mittel zur Fügung der Arbeiter_innen und der Maschinen, sondern die Arbeiter_innen und Maschinen waren da, um das Fließband zu organisieren, das zum Selbstzweck wurde.
Wie es Deborah Cowen in ihrem großartigen Buch The Deadly Life of Logistics richtig beschreibt, ist das auch die Zeit, in der das Operations Management die Logistik zum ersten Mal zur Kenntnis nimmt. Das Resultat davon wird ein neues Verständnis davon sein, wie das Fließband gefügt ist, und in der Folge und in Verbindung mit Kaizen, wie es durch die Gesellschaft auseinandergenommen und wieder zusammengefügt werden kann, auf der Suche nach ständiger Optimierung durch die immer größere Nachfrage nach Zugriff. Wenn ich sage, dass das Operations Management die Logistik zur Kenntnis nimmt, meine ich, dass sich das Operations Management bisher darauf beschränkt hatte, was es innerhalb der Fabrikmauern überblicken konnte. Seine Aufmerksamkeit begann am Eingangsportal und endete am Ausgangstor. Seit aber Arbeiter_innen auf die Fabrik (und Bewegungen auf den Staat) Druck ausüben, begann sich das Operations Management dem Problem anzunehmen, die Versorgung am einen Ende und die Verkäufe am anderen zu gewährleisten. Und es begann, diese Probleme als Produktionsprobleme zu betrachten, als Erweiterungen des Fließbands über die Fabriktore hinaus, als durchgängige Optimierung einer durchgehenden Linie. Obgleich auch das wieder auf eine symbolische Weise materiell wäre, könnte man sagen: Das Operations Management folgte den Arbeiter_innen bei ihrem Exodus aus der Fabrik.
Als man begann, alles Material, das in die Fabrik kam, als Teil der Kalkulation der Produktion zu sehen, und nicht nur als Kosten zu Beginn der Produktion, und umso mehr mit dem aufkommenden Glauben, dass diese Kalkulation selbst dem Prinzip von Kaizen unterworfen werden kann, führte das Operations Management, mehr als alle anderen kapitalistischen Wissenschaften, zur Entstehung der sozialen Fabrik. Aber dies erlaubt uns auch, die soziale Fabrik von einem anderen Winkel aus zu betrachten. Dafür müssen wir noch etwas länger beim Operations Management verweilen. Wir werden sehen, dass es auch am Ursprung von all dem steht, von der Private Equity Firma über die Derivate bis – und dies ist am wichtigsten – zur Figur des Beraters, auf die ich später nochmals zurückkommen werde.
Mit der Verlagerung der Aufmerksamkeit von den Arbeiter_innen und den Maschinen zur Fertigungslinie selbst verändert sich die Art und Weise, wie das Management über Wert spricht. Das Management sieht das Fließband nicht mehr als statischen Kostenfaktor an – während die Verbindung von Menschen und Maschinen den Mehrwert durch den relativen Zuwachs an Produktivität generiert. Es ist umgekehrt das Fließband, das dynamisch ist. Es ist der Prozess, in dem Wert geschöpft werden muss, und insbesondere im Potenzial der Fertigungslinie. Mit diesem Potenzial entsteht auch die Spekulation (die anderen Obsessionen des Managements verschwinden natürlich nicht gänzlich mit dem Auftauchen einer neuen Obsession. In der Tat könnten wir auch eine spekulative Verschiebung im Übergang vom Personalmanagement zum Human Ressource Management und von der statischen Buchhaltung zu dynamischen Formen der Buchführung in der andauernden Aufmerksamkeit gegenüber Arbeiter_innen und Maschinen sehen – in diesen beiden sich verändernden Feldern wird Spekulation, oder die Zukunft in der Jetztzeit, zum Objekt der Analyse.). Diese Spekulation mit der Produktionslinie wird durch die Einbeziehung der Logistik und durch Fortschritte bei den Algorithmen enorm verstärkt.
Das Management begann bald nicht nur in der Fabrik in der Optimierung der Fertigungslinie Wert zu schöpfen, sondern darüber hinaus in allen Aspekten der Versorgung, der Verteilung und des Konsums außerhalb der Fabriktore. Und der beste Weg dahin war die wachsende Leistungsfähigkeit von Algorithmen zu nutzen, erstens durch die Implementierung einer Reihe von internen Management-Systemen, und dann durch die Verbindung unterschiedlicher Algorithmen: zunächst die aus der Logistik, dem Transport und der Lagerung, und dann auch die aus dem Konsum – jene aus den Kundenbeziehungen und dann auch die, welche eines Tages zu Big Data werden würden. Dies kulminiert in Unternehmen wie SAP und 4G-Logistikfirmen, wo sich die Firma im Kern aufgelöst hat und weniger in die Finanz als in die Fertigungslinie aufgegangen ist. Die Idee, dass es immer eine bessere Möglichkeit geben würde, die Fertigungslinie anzuordnen, den Prozessfluss auszugleichen, den Prozess kontinuierlich zu optimieren, erhält eine enorme Stärkung durch den Algorithmus. Ein Grund dafür ist, dass der Algorithmus diese Aufgabe – die kontinuierliche Selbstoptimierung – zumindest teilweise selber durchführt, insbesondere im Fall von sogenannten genetischen und evolutionären Algorithmen. Der Algorithmus vermittelt den Eindruck, nie mit sich selbst zufrieden zu sein, und er scheint sich andauernd zu optimieren. In der Tat hat er kein anderes Ziel als dieses, und er treibt die Fantasie voran, dass das Fließband ebenso sein eigener Zweck sein soll – wer daran arbeitet und wie es mechanisiert oder computerisiert ist und sogar was es herstellt, das ist alles sekundär im Vergleich mit seinem eigenen Effizienz-Ziel. Und diese Idee eines Fließbands, das aus sich selbst heraus immer leistungsfähiger werden kann und dadurch immer mehr Wert produziert, bringt eine Spekulation mit dem Fließband hervor. Um dies zu illustrieren, müssen wir nur an die Führungspersonen denken, die sich von Institution zu Institution, von Firma zu Firma bewegen. Sie mögen nichts wissen über die Menschen oder die Maschinen, die an diesen Stätten wirken. Aber das ist egal. Sie wissen, wie sie das Fließband an diesen Orten immer effizienter machen können. Das ist ihre einzig notwendige Qualifikation. Auf der Ebene der Firma ist es Private Equity, das vorgibt, dies zu tun. Sie müssen nichts wissen über das Produkt der Unternehmen, die sie kaufen. Ja, sie verkaufen sich sogar genau aufgrund dieser Indifferenz gegenüber dem Produkt. Sie wissen, wie sie neuen Wert aus dem Fließband heraus generieren können. Ich füge auch gleich hinzu, dass wir zwar wissen, dass dies nicht die ganze Geschichte ist, dass die diesbezügliche Verleugnung in der Businesswelt jedoch fast allumfassend ist. Das meine ich, wenn ich sage, es gibt eine Spekulation mit dem Fließband – eine Wette, ein Investment, dass dieses Band immer schneller fließen kann, immer genauer, immer kreativer, immer mehr, unabhängig von Produkt oder Ziel.
Von Sonnenaufgang bis Sonnenuntergang
Aber was für das Kapital eine neue Welt der Spekulation eröffnet, ist ein neuer Albtraum der Dekonstruktion für die Arbeit. Ich verwende den Begriff Dekonstruktion hier mit seiner philosophischen Konnotation. Derrida mag vergeben werden, dass er das Operations Management nicht interpretiert hat, aber sein Nicht-zu-Ende-Denken hat eine Parallele genau an dem Punkt in der Geschichte, nämlich im Nicht-zu-Ende-Kommen der Arbeit, des Arbeitsprozesses selbst. Es wurde zwar bemerkt, dass das Nicht-zu-Ende-Kommen die Eigenschaft der neuen, immateriellen Waren sei, jedoch beschreibt dies nur die Oberfläche der Dinge. Die Klassenmacht, die das Kapital im logistischen Kapitalismus entwickelt, kommt nicht oder nicht nur von der nicht zu Ende gekommenen Ware, sondern von der nicht zu Ende kommenden Arbeit, die ihren Abschluss verhindert und sie mit Unvollständigkeit heimsucht, ja sogar mit dem Gedanken eines Wertüberschusses, der in jedem Moment des Arbeitens noch eingefangen werden muss, in jeder Fertigung der Linie. Nicht nur Derrida, sondern auch Bataille. Oder Bataille durch Derrida: Die begrenzte Ökonomie der Fabrik trifft auf die verallgemeinerte Ökonomie der algorithmischen Gesellschaft. Die Arbeit wird durch ihr Potenzial an Überschuss zerlegt, welches für das Management, auch wenn es in der Kreativitätsrhetorik verkleidet daherkommt, faktisch ein äußerst materielles Mittel ist, um immer mehr Zugriff zu verlangen, ohne je einer Schließung oder Begrenzung des Arbeitsvertrages zuzustimmen. Für das Management gibt es nun immer das Potenzial, immer die Metrik, auf mehr zuzugreifen, um mehr quantifizieren zu können. Um es klar zu sagen: Das ist die Bedeutung von allem, vom Nullstunden-Vertrag für Kaffee-Baristas über die Deregulierung von Kaffeemärkten für Kaffeebohnensortierer und die Mikro-Arbeitsaufteilung des mechanical turk bei Amazon bis zur privaten temporären Butler-‘App’ mit dem Namen Alfred. Es stimmt, weder hört Arbeit je auf, noch kommt sie ihrer Mythologie nach, wie es Peter Fleming richtigerweise in seinem neuen Buch dargelegt hat. Aber sie hört nie auf, weil sie nie ans Ende gekommen ist. Oder genauer weil das Fließband, und dadurch der Arbeitsprozess, nie abgeschlossen ist. In der Tat ist der Arbeitsprozess in aktiver Weise nicht ans Ende gekommen. Und nicht nur muss dieser Prozess konstant zerlegt werden, sondern er muss auch kontinuierlich wieder zusammengefügt werden. Wir müssen uns kollektiv fügen, um die Produktionslinie in der sozialen Fabrik zu fügen.
Wir müssen uns kollektiv fügen, um die Fertigungslinie zu fügen, weil der Arbeitsprozess formell nicht mehr in der Verantwortung des Managements liegt (falls es informell je so war). Die Verantwortung liegt bei den über die soziale Fabrik zerstreuten Arbeiter_innen. Und was bedeutet diese Verantwortung? Welche Form nimmt sie an? Verknüpfung, Flexibilität, Verfügbarkeit, Umstrukturierung auf Abruf, Übersetzbarkeit, kurz, Zugriff, radikaler Zugriff auf die Arbeit. Aber nicht nur auf die Arbeit, es bedeutet den vollen und uneingeschränkten Zugriff auf die Erde, auf all ihre organische und anorganische Materie, und auch auf das Kapital, jedoch normalerweise in der Form von Schulden. Und daher sagen wir besser und vor dem Hintergrund von Randy Martins bahnbrechender Arbeit: Es bedeutet den Zugriff auf die Finanzialisierung, das heißt, eine radikale Offenheit, finanzialisiert zu werden.
Der Berater
Es gibt natürlich Widerstand gegen diese Logik, wie es auch eine andere, selbstbestimmte Logik und Logistikalität in den Undercommons gibt. Aber diese Logik des nicht zu Ende kommenden Arbeitsprozesses und des Verlangens, uns zu fügen, hat einen mächtigen Träger. Diesen Träger der Logik des logistischen Kapitalismus werde ich den Berater1 nennen. Ich meine mit dieser Bezeichnung nicht spezifisch jene, welche sich selbst Berater_innen nennen. Genauso wenig meine ich damit den Akt, Beratung anzubieten und beratende Dokumente zu produzieren. Ich meine all jene, die den Virus des Arbeits-Algorithmus in sich tragen und verbreiten. Um vom Berater sprechen zu können, muss ich kurz auf die davorliegenden Figuren zurückgreifen, deren Erbe er ebenso ist wie auch ein angsteinflößender Vorreiter des (extra)legalisierten Diebstahls und der Gewalt.
Primitive Akkumulation, oder – wie ich vorziehe es zu nennen – Sklav_innen- und Kolonialkapitalismus ist durch das Aufkommen nicht des Zugriffs charakterisiert – Menschen leiden unter solcher Nachfrage, seit die Geschichte der Welt eine Geschichte des Klassenkampfes ist –, sondern durch diese radikale, unaufhörliche, psychotische Forderung nach dem Zugriff. Wenn man so will, könnte man etwas verkürzt sagen, dass dies auch die Differenz zwischen traditionellen Praktiken der Sklaverei, einschließlich derjenigen in Teilen Afrikas, und der ersten großen grauenhaften Logistik, des Afrikanischen Sklavenhandels ist. Totale Gewalt begleitete die irrsinnige Forderung nach totalem Zugriff auf das Fleisch der Afrikaner_innen, nach Arbeit und Sex. Angekündigt oder begleitet von einer ähnlichen Nachfrage nach aboriginalen Bevölkerungen und gefolgt von Varianten von Zwangsarbeit und migrantischer Sklaverei bis zum heutigen Tag. Das ist der Kern der primitiven Akkumulation. Der Träger dieser wahnsinnigen Forderung nach Zugriff war der Siedler/Kolonist. Doch der Kolonist stellte sich natürlich nicht als Träger dieser Beziehung vor, sondern unverhohlen als Träger von Eigentum und „Rasse“.
Mit dem Aufstieg des industriellen Kapitalismus – der Kolonist verschwindet nicht, auch wenn er manchmal zum Jay wird, oder zur Tochter des Bauers, wie wir an der Figur des Handelsreisenden sehen werden – bekommen wir eine neue Herrschaftsfigur, den Bürger. Vom Bürger kann man sagen, dass er das nationalistische Heteropatriarchat als kapitalistisches Gesellschaftsverhältnis hervorbringt. In anderen Worten sind die Klassenverhältnisse unterschiedlich ausgebildet, auch wenn beide Kapitalismen und beide Träger überlappen und auf unterschiedliche Art und Weise fortbestehen. Es ist diese Abstammungslinie, der ich die Hervorbringung des Beraters zuordne. Der Berater trägt das uneingeschränkte, irrsinnige Verlangen nach absolutem Zugriff in sich, und dies tut er, indem er den Algorithmus bei sich aufnimmt. Aus diesem Grund begegnen sowohl dem Nationalismus als auch dem Eigentum neue Antagonismen mit dem Berater, da sie auf der Beschränkung des Zugriffs basieren. (Und in der Tat können wir sagen, dass es gewisse Veränderungen im exklusiven heteromännlichen Privileg gibt, auch wenn diese, wie in den Fällen von Eigentum und Nation, von einer gewalttätigen Reaktion auf jeglichen neuen Zugriff begleitet werden, einen Zugriff, der in jedem Fall selbst eine Form von Gewalt darstellt, wie wir uns in Erinnerung rufen sollten.)
Der Berater ist gekennzeichnet durch einen doppelten Charakter, ähnlich wie die vorgängigen und immer noch wirksamen Figuren des Kolonisten/Siedlers und des Bürgers. Der Berater glaubt, er sei ein algorithmischer Agent, der aktiv Menschen, Firmen, Institutionen und sogar Länder umstrukturiert. Aber der Berater ist auch ein Problem für den Algorithmus, ein Hindernis für diese Umstrukturierung, obwohl sich der Berater dessen nicht bewusst ist, und sich als ein revolutionärer Agent versteht. Davon ist er allerdings weit entfernt. Wir können seinen doppelten Charakter erkennen, wenn wir die Herkunft des Beraters beim Handelsreisenden verorten. Der Handelsreisende wird wörtlich genommen zum Problem – zum ‘Handlungsreisenden-Problem’ in der kapitalistischen Wissenschaft der Logistik. Dieses Problem ist gut bekannt. Es handelt sich um die Frage, wie ein Handlungsreisender zu bewegen ist, oder ein Tanklastwagen, irgendetwas eben, das auf einer möglichst effizienten Route bewegt werden soll. Aber noch wichtiger ist die Frage, wie dies auf eine Weise geschieht, die Veränderungen in der Bedeutung davon vorwegnehmen kann, was am effizientesten ist. Anders gesagt ist es die Suche nach einem Algorithmus, der die kontinuierliche Optimierung verkörpert. Nun ist der Punkt aber, dass der Geschäftsmann zu menschlichen Fehlern neigt und an menschliche Zeit gebunden ist, so wie der Lastwagenfahrer auch. Dasselbe gilt für den Berater. Letzten Endes sind sie dem Algorithmus im Weg, und keineswegs sein Träger. Das ist der Grund dafür, dass es nicht darauf ankommt, was ein Berater tut oder sagt (so wie es alle bestätigen können, die schon einmal einem zugehört haben). Der Berater ist ein Modellversuch, ein Experiment nicht in der Bewegung und Auslieferung von Gütern, sondern in der Bewegung und Dekonstruktion des Arbeitsprozesses. Der Berater ist wie ein Agent, der es gewohnt ist, etwas anderes aufzulösen, in diesem Falle eine existierende Fertigungslinie, und der dann letztendlich sich selbst auflösen sollte, sobald diese Aufgabe erledigt ist. Das ist der Grund, wieso der Berater ohne sich dessen bewusst zu sein, ein Problem darstellt, eine Lösung, aber nur in diesem spezifischen, chemischen Sinne.
Natürlich hat der Berater, wie der Siedler und der Bürger auch, ein ‘Back-up’. Das, was Fred Moten und ich an einem anderen Ort Politik, Politik-Machen, Politik-Implementieren, Politik-Anschaffen genannt haben, das ist die Waffe der Wahl, wenn der Berater auf Widerstand stößt, wenn der Berater Planungen wittert in den Undercommons, eine andere Form des Zugriffs, eine andere Art des Fügens. Der Berater und seine Politik-Macher, seine Version von Night Riders erinnert uns daran, wieso Nahum Chandler Recht hat, wenn er auf die andauernde Bedeutung von Du Bois’ Begriff des demokratischen Despotismus pocht. Der Liberalismus hat nie den Staat von der Ökonomie getrennt, außer in der Ideologie, und genauso steht es um den Neoliberalismus. Diese beiden Figuren des Beraters und des Politik-Anschaffers sind im logistischen Kapitalismus nie inniger verbunden, als wenn sie nach Zugriff verlangen.
Hands up
Aber diese irrsinnige Forderung lässt wieder die primitive Akkumulation und ihr spezifisches, wenn auch ebenso psychotisches Verlangen nach Zugriff auf undifferenziertes Fleisch und Land in den Kolonien hervortreten. Damit kommt die Figur des Sklaven, die nie verschwand, zurück mit erneuerter Kraft der Unverfügbarkeit, die nichts anderes ist als radikale Verfügbarkeit für andere. Dies führt dazu, dass alle Träger_innen der Figur des Sklaven und der damit verbundenen Geschichten des totalen Zugangs, also alle zwangsarbeitenden, migrantischen, weiblichen, queeren Figuren als eine direkte Bedrohung der Produktionslinie erscheinen, über die Fertigungslinie der sozialen Fabrik zerstreute Saboteur_innen. Logistischer Kapitalismus geht einher mit einer Staatsform, die nach derselben Form des unmittelbaren Zugriffs verlangt. Sie stellt dich aber nicht zur Rede und macht damit aus dir einen Bürger. Sie fragt nur nach deiner ID, falls sie überhaupt nach irgendetwas fragt, bevor sie mit ihrer Gewalt ihren Zugriff auf dein Leben demonstriert.
Eine Form des absoluten Zugriffs zu erlauben, gegen und vor diesen gewalttätigen Forderungen nach Zugriff durch den logistischen Kapitalismus und seine psychotischen Vertreter, als radikal verfügbar, affiziert zu leben, wie Denise Ferreira da Silva es bezeichnen würde, das heißt, die andauernde Praxis auszuüben, ja zu erhellen, die Fred Moten und ich Haptizität nennen. Ein offenes Gefühl, als fühlend gefühlt zu sein. Sie konnten seine erhobenen Hände nicht sehen, aber sie waren erhoben, nur nicht zu ihnen, sondern zu uns. Sie hielten uns auf, diese hoch erhobenen Hände. Für sie sah es aus wie ein Dämon, zu viele Augen, zu viele Zungen, zu viele Hände. Aber für uns sieht es schön aus.
1 Anm. d. Ü.: Wir differenzieren die Figuren des Beraters, des Siedlers/Kolonisten und des Bürgers in der Übersetzung gendermässig nicht aus und verwenden bewusst die männliche Form, weil sie abstrakte Figuren eines jeweils anders verfassten heteronormativen und patriarchalen Kontextes darstellen.
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This talk was first given at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts in December, 2014. The talk is based on notes for my collaboration with Fred Moten. In the subsequent conversations Fred and I produced two more related pieces, Mikey the Rebelator, published in Performance Research Journal, and Michael Brown, published in Boundary 2. I would like to thank Anette Baldauf for the opportunity to present these notes in the form of a talk, and Gerald Raunig for encouraging me to write up these notes in the present form.
How can it be that jay-walking has become punishable by death? Making jay-walking a legal offense was part of the transition from colonial capitalism to industrial capitalism in the US. A ‘jay’ was someone from the country who walked in the middle of streets, fast becoming reserved for emerging automobile traffic. There was a public campaign to keep people from wandering in the street and thereby slowing up this traffic stream, this production line of cars. But when Michael Brown was shot down for jay-walking in Ferguson, Missouri, something had changed. Of course, it was also quickly pointed out that nothing had changed. But these two statements cannot be understood without each other. Because what had changed made what had not changed even more unchangeable. I will try to explain what I mean in what follows. But I begin simply with this proposition. Today’s logistical capitalism requires generalised access to us as never before but this unlimited access has a history amongst those who were both most subjected to it, and most liberated from it. I am speaking of course of the original logistics moment in capitalism, the slave trade, and its cruel cargo. But I am also speaking of history in which access has been not only denied but sabotaged and liberated. Michael Brown’s jay-walking was an act of sabotage, and in the protest movement of Ferguson we see the liberation of access at work once more, in the jaywalking footsteps of the black radical tradition. Cedric Robinson famously said the black radical tradition is the critique of Western Civilisation. Here I want to inherit it as the critique of Western idea and practice of access to others, an idea and practice that requires first the denial of access of others to oneself, as Denise Ferreira da Silva shows us, and then the development of the right to access to others, especially to what Hortense Spillers designates as the indeterminate flesh of others.
In case you think I am speaking in metaphors, or speaking romantically, or with an optimism of the will. Yes, I am, but I am also speaking materially - more materially indeed than all of the misplaced calls to link race and class (on the contrary, they will never be separated). More exactly, I would like to say Michael Brown’s sabotage was symbolically material. And in order to understand this we must have recourse to the way logistical capitalism has developed and why the denial of access and pursuit of other forms of movement comes into direct conflict (again) with this form of capitalism.
We will have to enter the hidden realm of operations management in the 1960’s and 1970’s, when industrial capitalism is beginning to shape shift into what we could not yet identify. We call it variously post-modern or post-industrial capitalism, globalisation or cognitive capitalism. But now we can see that one way to name it is as logistical. And by naming it this way we also come to explain how the long vicious history of state and extra-state violence against those who most embody this psychotic demand for access has now entered a new phase of intensity. This psychotic demand for more and more access has never gone away but it finds new life, and new life to suck, in the unlikely hidden abode of operations management.
Hidden abode
Two things happen to operations management in the 1970’s. The first is kaizen. The second is logistics. By the 1970’s the Japanese practice of continuous improvement, or kaizen, had become widely influential in operations management and the management practices it in turn influences. With kaizen the eye of management shifted its focus from the worker and the machine, to the assembly line. The assembly line was no longer the way to organise workers and machines, the workers and machines were there to organise the assembly line, which became an end in itself.
As Deborah Cowen rightly points out in her excellent book, The Deadly Life of Logistics, this is also the period in time when operations management notices logistics. The result will be a new understanding of how the assembly line is assembled, and as a result of this, in combination with kaizen, how it might be disassembled and reassembled through society to seek out continuous improvement through ever greater demands for access. When I say operations management notices logistics what I mean is that until this point, operations management restricted itself to what it could oversee within the walls of the factory. It concerns began at the entrance dock and ended at the exit gates. But as workers put pressure on the factory (and movements put pressure on the state) operations management began to look at the problems of securing supplies at one end and ensuring sales at the other end. And they began to look at these problems as production problems, as extensions of the assembly line beyond the factory doors, as continuous improvement of a continuous line. One could say, although here again it would be symbolically material to say so, that operations management followed the workers in their exodus from the factory.
By beginning to regard all the materials coming into the factory not only as part of the calculation of production, rather than just as costs at the outset of production, but especially by believing this calculation could be itself subject to kaizen, operations management, as much as any capitalist science, gave birth to the social factory. But it also allows us to understand the social factory from another angle. To do this we have to stay with operations management just a bit more to see how it is also the origins of everything from private equity firms, to the derivative, and most importantly to the figure of the consultant, to whom I will return.
With the shift in attention from the worker and the machine to the assembly line itself value comes to be spoken about differently by management. Management now sees the assembly line not as a static cost - while the men and machines in combination are what will produce surplus value through relative increases in productivity - but the reverse. It is the assembly line that is dynamic. It is the process where value is to be found, and especially value is to be found in the potential of the assembly line. With this potential comes speculation. (And of course the other obsession of management do not entirely disappear with the appearance of a new obsession. Indeed we could also see a speculative shift in the movement from personnel management to human resources management and from static book-keeping to dynamic forms of accounting in the continued attention to worker and machine – in both these shifting fields speculation, or the future right now, becomes the object of analysis.) This speculation on the production line is boosted tremendously by the incorporation of logistics and by advances in the algorithm.
Soon management began to find value in the improvement of the assembly line not just in the factory, but beyond, in all the moments of supply, distribution, and consumption occuring outside the factory gates. And the best way to do this was to apply the growing capacity of the algorithm, first through implementing a series of management systems internally, and then by linking algorithms at work in logistics, in transport and warehousing initially, and then also in consumption, first in customer relations, and then in what would one day become big data. This culminates in corporations like SAP and in 4G Logistics companies, where the firm is basically gone, not into finance, but into the assembly line. The idea that there was always a better way to arrange the assembly line, to arrange the flow of the process, to improve continuously that process, is given tremendous confidence by the algorithm. This is because in part at least the algorithm enacts this exercise, working on itself, especially in so-called genetic and evolutionary algorithms. The algorithm gives the impression of never being satisfied with itself, and it appears to improve itself. Indeed it has no goal but this, and it propels the fantasy that the assembly line too should be its own goal – who works on it and how it is mechanised or computerised or indeed what it makes are all secondary to its own goal of efficiency. And this idea of an assembly line that can itself become more and more efficient and therefore produce more and more value, produces a speculation on the assembly line. The easiest way to illustrate this is to think about these leaders who move from institution to institution or firm to firm. They may know nothing of the people or machines at work in these places. But it does not matter. They know how to make the assembly line in these place ever more efficient. This is their sole and only necessary qualification. At the level of the firm, this is what private equity claims too. They need not know anything about the product in the companies they are buying. Indeed they sell themselves precisely on an indifference to the product. They know how to get knew value out the assembly line. I hasten to add that even if we know this is not the whole story, the disavowal in the business world is almost complete in this regard. This is what I mean when I say there is a speculation on the assembly line – a bet or wager, an investment, that this line can flow ever quicker, ever more precisely, ever more creatively, indeed ever more, no matter what the product or goal.
Sunup to sundown
But what is new world of speculation for capital is a new nightmare of deconstruction for labour. I use deconstruction in its philosophical resonance. Derrida can be forgiven for not reading operations management but his unfinishing of thought has its parallel at exactly the same moment history in the unfinishing of work, of the labour process itself. While it has been remarked that this unfinishing is the property of new commodities - immaterial commodities - this describes only the surface of things. The class power that capital develops in logistical capitalism comes not from the unfinished commodity, or not alone, but from unfinishing work, preventing its closure, haunting it with incompleteness, and indeed with the thought of an excess of value yet to be captured in every labouring moment, every assembly of the line. Not only Derrida, but Bataille then. Or Bataille through Derrida: the restricted economy of the factory encounters the general economy of the algorithmic society. Work is undone by its excessive potential which for management, though it may be dressed in the rhetoric of creativity at work, is in fact a very material matter of demanding more and more access by never agreeing to close or limit the labour contract. There is for management now always the potential, always the metric, to access more in order to quantify more. This is the meaning, to put it bluntly, of everything from the zero-hour contract for coffee baristas to the deregulation of coffee markets for coffee bean sorters, to the micro-tasking of Amazon’s mechanical turk, to the private temporary butler ‘app’ called Alfred. It is true work never stops, nor does its mythology as Peter Fleming correctly points out in his new book. But it never stops because it is never finished. Or more precisely because the assembly line, and therefore its labour process, is never complete. Indeed the labour process is actively unfinished. And not only must this process constantly undone but it must be constantly reassembled. We now must assemble ourselves collectively in order to assemble the production line in the social factory.
We must assemble ourselves collectively to assemble the assembly line because the labour process is no longer formally the reponsibility of management (if it ever was informally). It is the responsibility of workers scattered through the social factory. And what is that responsibility? What form does it take? Connection, flexibility, availability, reorganisation on demand, translatability, in short, access, radical access to labour. But not just to labour, this means full and unfettered access to the earth, to all its organic and inorganic matter, and indeed to capital, though usually in the form of debt, and therefore we might better say with Randy Martin’s pioneering work access to financialisation, that is, a radical openness to being financialised.
The consultant
Of course there is both resistance to this logic and other self-directed logics and logisticalities at work in the undercommons. But this logic of unfinishing the labour process and requiring our assembly has a powerful bearer. I will call this bearer of the logic of logistical capitalism, the consultant. I do not mean by this designation strictly those who call themselves consultants. Nor do I mean even the act of offering consultation and producing consultative reports. I mean all those who carry and spread the virus of the algorithm of work. To speak of the consultant I have briefly to go back to the earlier figures of which he is both an heir and a frightening new advance in (extra-) legalized theft and violence.
Primitive accumulation, or what I would prefer to call slave and colonial capitalism is characterised by the emergence not of access – people have suffered from such demands so long as the history of the world has been the history of class struggle – but this radical, unceasing, psychotic demand for access. If you like this is the difference, in short-hand, between traditional practices of slavery, including in parts of Africa, and the first great horrible logistics – African chattel slavery. Total violence accompanied the insane demand for total access to the flesh of Africans, for labour and for sex. Prefigured or accompanied by a similar demand of aboriginal peoples and followed by versions of indentured and migrant slavery to the present day. This is the core of primitive accumulation. The bearer of this insane demand for access was the settler. But of course the settler did not present himself as bearing this relation. He presented himself openly as the bearer of property and race.
With the rise of industrial capitalism – the settler does not disappear though he sometimes becomes the jay, or the farmer’s daughter as we will see with the traveling salesman later – and we have a new figure of domination, the citizen. The citizen might be said to bear nationalist heteropatriarchy as capitalist social relations. In other words the class relations is established differently even if both capitalisms and both bearers overlap and persist in uneven ways. It is in this lineage that I place the emergence of the consultant. The consultant bears the unfettered, insane demand for absolute access, and this he does by hosting the algorithm. For this reason, both nationalism and property suffer new contradictions with the consultant, premised as they are on the restriction of access. (And indeed we might say some changes in the exclusive of heteromale privilege, although as with property and nation this is accompanied by a violent reaction to any new access, an access that is at any rate itself a form of violence, we should remember.)
The consultant is characterised by a two-fold character much like the previous and still operative settler and citizen. The consultant believes he or she is an algorithmic agent actively reorganising people, firms, institutions, and even countries. But the consultant is also a problem for the algorithm, an obstacle to that reorganisation, though the consultant is unaware of this, seeing himself or herself as a revolutionary agent. Far from it, however. If we take the consultant’s origins in the traveling salesman we can see this two-fold character. The traveling agent literally becomes a problem – the ‘traveling salesman problem’ in the capitalist science of logistics. This problem is well known. It is about how to move a salesman, or an oil truck, or anything really, on a route that is most efficient, but more importantly, in a way that can anticipate changes in what most efficient means. In other words, it is the search for an algorithm that embodies continuous improvement. Now the point is that the salesman is prone to human error and bound human time, as is the truck driver. It is the same with the consultant. Ultimately they are in the way of the algorithm, not is bearer. This is why it does not matter what a consultant does or says (as anyone who has listened to one will know). The consultant is a pattern experiment, an experiment now not in movement and delivery of goods, but movement and deconstruction of the labour process. The consultant is a like an agent used to dissolve something else, in this case an existing assembly line, and ultimately should then dissolve himself or herself when this job is done. This is why the consultant is, unknown to him or her, a problem, and a solution only in this other chemical sense.
Of course, the consultant, like the settler and citizen, has ‘back-up.’ What Fred Moten and I have elsewhere called policy, policy-making, policy implementation, policy hustling. This is the weapon of choice when the consultant meets resistance, when the consultant senses planning in the undercommons, another kind of access, another kind of assembling. The consultant and his policy-makers, his version of night riders remind us again why Nahum Chandler is right to insist on the continued importance of Dubois’s term democratic despotism. Liberalism never separated the state and the economy except in ideology and neither has neo-liberalism. These figures of the consultant and the policy hustler in logistical capitalism are more intimate than ever with each other as they demand access.
Hands up
But this insane demand brings to the fore again primitive accumulation and its specific if equally psychotic demand for access to undifferentiated flesh and land in the colonies. With this, the figure of the slave, who never went away, comes back with renewed powers of inaccessibility, which is nothing other than radical accessibility to others. It makes all who carry the figure of the slave and its related histories of total access, all the indentured, migrant, female, queer figures appear as direct threats to the production line, saboteurs scattered along the social factory’s assembly line. Logistical capitalism is accompanied by a state form that demands the same kind of immediate access. It does not call you out and by doing so make you a citizen. It just demands to see you ID, if it demands anything before it demonstrates access to your life with its violence.
To allow a kind of absolute access against and before these violent demands for access from logistical capitalism and its psychotic agents, to live as radically accessed, affected as Denise Ferreira da Silva would say, is to practice, indeed it is to illuminate the ongoing practice that Fred Moten and I have called hapticality, a open feel for being felt feeling. They could not see his hands up, but his hands were up, just not to them, but to us. They held us up, these hands up. It looked like a demon to them, too many eyes, too many tongues, too many hands. But to us it looks beautiful.
taken from transversal texts here
NOTES ON DELEUZE’S “LETTER TO A SEVERE CRITIC” (2): against Laruelle
François Laruelle’s explicit critique of Deleuze was published in French in 1995, in the same year as his THEORIE DES ETRANGERS, which is the book that Laruelle tells us inaugurates the third phase of his research, “Philosophy III”, where he has supposedly abandonned the scientism that vitiates much of his earlier work. (Note: it was published under the title “I, the Philosopher, Am Lying: A Response to Deleuze”, in English in THE NON-PHILOSOPHY PROJECT in 2012). However, this “response” bears all the signs of philosophical enclosure.
It is noteworthy that WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY is not just a work by Deleuze, as Laruelle’s “A Reply to Deleuze” would seem to imply. It was written in collaboration with Guattari, a non-philosopher, whose encounter with Deleuze allowed both of them to move outside the codes of standard philosophy, and to “practice immanence” as opposed to merely “saying immanence” . Laruelle produces a one-sided “philosophical” reading of the book, ignoring everything that Deleuze said over the preceding fourteen years about his own break with standard philosophy, and comes to the predictable conclusion that Deleuze is still doing philosophy, i.e. “philosophy” in his Laruelle’s sense, which has next to nothing to do with Deleuze and Guattari’s sense as expounded in the book Laruelle is replying to.
Yet Deleuze had already replied to this critique of talking about an outside of philosophy while remaining firmly ensconced within its confines, in the role of a conformist spectator profiting from the experiences of those experimenting the real. In LETTER TO A SEVERE CRITIC, first published in French in 1973, Deleuze discusses his own non-philosophical production of philosophy. He talks about how he lived a depersonalisation of love and not of submission in his encounter with Nietzsche, and how going further he was multiplied and singularised in his encounter with Guattari. The whole text is relevant because it is in the LETTER that he replies most clearly to the accusation that he is blocked inside philosophy, recuperating the marginals for his own academic profit without taking any risks himself.
Thus, Deleuze’s LETTER recounts the transformations produced by his reading of Nietzsche outside of philosophy, and by his encounter with Guattari whom he met in 1969, when he was 44 and Guattari was 39. They published A THOUSAND PLATEAUS IN 1981, after KAFKA and RHIZOME, when Deleuze was 56, Guattari 51. These are not the works of old age and fatigue, but are an explosion of vitality. Deleuze went on to revolutionise the approach to the cinema with his two cinema books. Their last book written together was WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY? published in 1991, Deleuze 66 and Guattari 61. It is essential to bear in mind that it is a collaborative work, and both voices together (the philosopher and the non-philosopher) reply to the question “what is it that I have been doing all my life?”
The affect in this book is not that of fatigue, nor does it incarnate a sort of after-time of the zombie-like “survival” of philosophical abstraction. The affect is “sobriety” and the time is ripe for them to “speak concretely”, the mood is not one of exhaustion but of “grace”. The book is not centered on a reflection on limits, these limits are assigned to the history of philosophy, but on a new creation of concepts outside the limits of standard philosophy (=the history of philosophy).
Deleuze and Guattari have already, when this book is published, analysed for over 20 years the different régimes of signs, and shown how signification is just one régime amongst many. They have shown how the standard philosophical book is based on the codification of fluxes, and have written together several books outside this philosophical codification, where a-signifying particles are connected to the outside. Philosophy is performance and transformation for them, before it is codified into signification.
Like Laruelle, Deleuze remarks that there are two possible readings of his texts and of his life. The malevolent reading, based on resentment, that judges him forever locked inside philosophy, and the benevolent or “amorous” reading, based on intensity, and machinic function that he is producing in relation to the immanent outside. For Deleuze there is no dualism where philosophy “observes” and “recuperates” while non-philosophy “lives” and “performs”, this is precisely the malevolent reading that is rejected in the LETTER, and at the beginning of RHIZOME, where the experimentation is inassignable. Strangely, Zizek and Laruelle converge on a similar reading of Deleuze’s evolution that simply dismisses the twenty year long collaboration between Deleuze and Guattari.
Deleuze explicitly demands that his texts be read not as composing a system of philosophy, but as assemblages of philosophical material to be used in relation to an outside. Whatever one may think of the degree of rupture with “standard” philosophy in DIFFERENCE AND REPETITION and LOGIC OF SENSE, it is clear that ANTI-OEDIPUS (1972) goes much further outside, and comes far closer to the plane of immanence, than Laruelle’s THÉORIE DES ÉTRANGERS (published over twenty years later), just as A THOUSAND PLATEAUS (1980) goes further in the expression of non-standard philosophy than Laruelle’s own book PHILOSOPHIE NON-STANDARD (2010, i.e. thirty years later).
There is neither standard philosophy nor anti-philosophy in Deleuze’s work, but the cry of ANTI-OEDIPUS “everything is to be interpreted in terms of intensity” is precisely a call for the disorganization of all systems, for their reduction to transcendental material to be used in non-standard ways, and for the reversion to immanence that Laruelle invokes. Laruelle is a good non-philosopher but he is not the first, nor does he go the closest to immanence.
To sum up this part of the argument, Laruelle and Deleuze both talk about going outside the bounds of traditional philosophy, and both use the term “non-philosophy” . However, the two conceptions are quite different, but Laruelle does not help us to get a clear view as he consistently imposes onto the discussion a definition of philosophy that is not pertinent to Deleuze’s text and thus caricatures it. Laruelle’s diagnostic that Deleuze’s text is “still philosophy” is thus tautologous, the predictable result of this Procrustean procedure.
Laruelle ‘s critique of the system of difference, as found in the work of Heidegger, Derrida, Foucault and Deleuze, repeats belatedly Deleuze’s own self-criticism (as expressed in the LETTER TO A SEVERE CRITIC) of his pre-Guattari phase as being still entangled in the domain of representation. More generally, Laruelle, despite his considerable merits, is systematically wrong when he assigns Deleuze to the realm of philosophical sufficiency (“representation”, in Deleuze’s terms). Despite his own deep and intense nonphilosophical voyage, Laruelle is incapable of reading Deleuze and Guattari’s collaborated works, up to and including WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY?, in terms of non-standard thought and of their relation with the non-philosophical outside, because he has not measured what their long collaboration brought to both of them.
If we approach the two philosophers in a non-partisan spirit we can see many similarities:
(1) the emphasis on pure immanence
(2) the critique of transcendent philosophy, called by Deleuze the “dogmatic image of thought”, called by Laruelle “philosophy” (or later, “standard philosophy”.
(3) the break with a philosophy of difference, Deleuze moved from difference to pure multiplicities in 1972 in ANTI-OEDIPUS with his encounter with Guattari, Laruelle 14 years later in PHILOSOPHIES OF DIFFERENCE
(4) the edification of a “quantum” thought, effectuated in Deleuze and Guattari’s THOUSAND PLATEAUS (1980) and 30 years later in Laruelle’s NON-STANDARD PHILOSOPHY.
In WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY? Deleuze and Guattari mention Laruelle twice explicitly.
“The non-philosophical is perhaps closer to the heart of philosophy than philosophy itself, and this means that philosophy cannot be content to be understood only philosophically or conceptually, but is addressed essentially to non-philosophers as well” (41).
Followed by note 5:
“5. François Laruelle is engaged in one of the most interesting undertakings of contemporary philosophy. He invokes a One-All that he qualifies as “non-philosophical” and, oddly, as “scientific,” on which the “philosophical decision” takes root. This One-All seems to be close to Spinoza” (220).
“The plane of philosophy is prephilosophical insofar as we consider it in itself independently of the concepts that come to occupy it, but non-philosophy is found where the plane confronts chaos. Philosophy needs a non-philosophy that comprehends it; it needs a non-philosophical comprehension just as art needs non-art and science needs non-science” (218).
Followed by note 16:
“16. Francçois Laruelle proposes a comprehension of non-philosophy as the “real (of) science,” beyond the object of knowledge: Philosophie et non-philosophie (Liege: Mardaga, 1989). But we do not see why this real of science is not non-science as well” (234).
Two observations:
1) WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY? was first published in French in 1991, i.e. well within Laruelle’s PHILOSOPHY II, which lasted from 1981 to 1995. Deleuze and Guattari pose the question of Laruelle’s scientism, that is to say of his continuing imprisonment in the presuppositions of the authority of science that characterise both State philosophy and Royal Science. In PRINCIPLES OF NON-PHILOSOPHY, published in French in 1995, Laruelle seems to accept this criticism as he declares that during Philosophy II he had been still under the sway of the principle of sufficient philosophy in the form of a scientistic submission to the “authority” of science.
2) Their second criticism is not so much of the “authority” of science but of the privileged relationship of philosophy with science, where they advocate a similar relationship with art too. In PRINCIPLES OF NON-PHILOSOPHY Laruelle analyses his PHILOSOPHY II phase as being based on two axioms that were supposed to be complementary, but that he later found to be conflicting in their loyalties:
1) The One is immanent vision in-One. 2) There is a special affinity between the vision-in-One and the phenomenal experience of “scientific thought” (34)
Axiom 1 is faithful to non-philosophy. Axiom 2, with its “special affinity” between the vision-in-One and science, is faithful ultimately to the ruses of philosophy. It was not until Philosophy V that Laruelle, in his published works (most notably in his magnum opus NON-STANDARD PHILOSOPHY), was liberated from the persistent “special affinity” with science in his actual practice of non-standard philosophy (works on non-photography and non-religion).
Laruelle indicates that anything can be given a reading that reduces and encloses it in philosophy, even his own texts. But he asserts that there is also a non-philosophical or democratic reading of these same texts:
“Do I practice terror? There are obviously two readings of my text. There is a philosophical reading, one in which I do practice terror. And there is a non-philosophical reading, which is obviously my reading” (here).
Insofar as Laruelle gives only a philosophical reading of Deleuze’s texts he is practicing terror (as Deleuze does when he talks of Hegel). Democracy would mean not only giving a non-philosophical reading of Deleuze, but acknowledging that he Laruelle is not the first non-philosopher and that his philosophical readings do not capture all. Some may even have gone farther than he has on many points. This is what I think is the case with Deleuze and Guattari’s collaborative works.
take from here
Marx’s Monetary Theory of Value, Fictitious Capital and Finance1
Abstract: Marx developed in Capital a monetary theory of value and capital, in radical critique of the Ricardian labor theory of value (and of all later developed versions of bourgeois economic theory). Marx’s theory deciphers the decisive role of finance, as a regulatory mechanism immanent in the capitalist production and reproduction process, and constitutes therefore an indispensable theoretical tool for gaining an insight into contemporary capitalist economies and their crises.
John Milios(2)
1. Marx’s Monetary Theory of Value
Marx’s theory of value, as developed in his mature economic writings of the period 1857-67, which was concluded with the publication of the first Volume of Capital, constitutes not a )modification’ or a ‘correction’ of Classical Political Economy’s theory of value but a new theoretical proposition, prefiguring a new theoretical object of analysis. Marx’s notion of value does not coincide with Ricardo’s concept of value as ‘labor expended’: it involves a complex conjoining of the specifically capitalist features of the labor process with the corresponding forms of appearance of the products of labor, making it possible in this way for the capital relation to be deciphered. Value becomes an expression of the capital relation. The Capitalist Mode of Production (CMP) emerges as the main theoretical object of Marx’s analysis (Heinrich 1999, Milios, Dimoulis and Economakis 2002).
Marx constructed thus a new theoretical discourse and a new theoretical ‘paradigm’ for argumentation. He showed that the products of labor become values because they are produced within the framework of the capital relation. He showed further that value necessarily manifests itself in the form of money. Money is thus the manifestation par excellence of (value and thus of) capital.(3)
From the Grundrisse (1857-8: Marx 1993: 776 ff),(4) to Capital (1867: Marx 1990: 174), (5) Marx insisted that value is an expression of relations exclusively characteristic of the capitalist mode of production. As ‘products of capital’ useful objects (use-values) are the bearers of value. Value registers the relationship of exchange between each commodity and all other commodities and expresses the effect of the specifically capitalist homogenization of the labor processes in the CMP (production for exchange and production for profit), as encapsulated in the concept of abstract labor (Milios, Dimoulis and Economakis 2002: 17-23).
Value is determined by abstract labor. But abstract labor is not an empirical magnitude that could be measured using a stopwatch. It is an ‘abstraction’ constituted (i.e. acquiring tangible existence) in the process of exchange (which does not take place just in the mind of the theoretician):
‘Let us suppose that one ounce of gold, one ton of iron, one quarter of wheat and twenty yards of silk are exchange-values of equal magnitude. […] But digging gold, mining iron, cultivating wheat and weaving silk are qualitatively different kinds of labour. In fact, what appears objectively as diversity of the use-values, appears, when looked at dynamically, as diversity of the activities which produce those use-values’ (Marx 1981: 29).
‘Social labour-time exists in these commodities in a latent state, so to speak, and becomes evident only in the course of their exchange. […] Universal social labour is consequently not a ready-made prerequisite but an emerging result’ (Marx 1981: 45).
Marx starts by developing his theory of value (and of the CMP) out of an analysis of commodity circulation. So as to be able to decipher the form of appearance of value as money he introduces the scheme of the ‘simple form of value’ in which, seemingly, a quantity of a commodity is exchanged for a (different) quantity of another commodity (x commodity A = y commodity B). Classical economists regarded this scheme as barter; they further believed that all market transactions can be reduced to such simple acts of barter (which are facilitated by money because its mediation dispenses with the requirement for a mutual coincidence of needs).
Marx shows that what we have in this scheme is not two commodities of pre-existing equal value being exchanged with each other (‘equal value’ implying value. measured independently in terms of quantity of ‘labor expended’ for the production of such commodities). What we have is one commodity (the commodity occupying the ‘left-hand position’, i.e. the relative value-form), whose value is measured in units of a different use-value (namely the ‘commodity’ which occupies the position of the equivalent and so serves as the ‘measure of value’ for the commodity in the relative form). The second ‘commodity’ (in the position of the equivalent: B) is not an ordinary commodity (unity of exchange value and use-value); it simply plays the role of the ‘measure of value’, of ‘money’, for the first commodity.
The value of the relative (A) is expressed exclusively in units of the equivalent (B). The value of the latter (of B) cannot be expressed, as it does not exist in the world of tangible reality:
‘But as soon as the coat takes up the position of the equivalent in the value expression, the magnitude of its value ceases to be expressed quantitatively. On the contrary, the coat now figures in the value equation merely as a definite quantity of some article’ (Marx 1990: 147).
In other words the simple form of value tells us that x units of commodity A have the exchange value of y units of the equivalent B, or that the exchange value of a unit ofcommodity A is expressed in y/x units of B. The ‘simple form of value’ as propounded by Marx measures only the exchange value of commodity A in units of the equivalent B.
The following scheme illustrates Marx’s analysis of the simple value-form:
From analysis of the simple value-form, Marx has no difficulty in deriving the money form. He utilizes two intermediate intellectual formulae for this purpose: the total or expanded and the general formfor expressing value. The latter form in this developmental sequence (the general form of value) is characterized by one and only one equivalent in which all commodities express their value. These commodities are thus always in the position of the relative value-form. Only one ‘thing’ has come to constitute the universal equivalent form of value (Marx 1990: 161).
The first feature of money is its ‘property’ of being the general equivalent. Thus the relation of general exchangeability of commodities is expressed (or realized) only in an indirect, mediated sense, i.e. through money, which functions as general equivalent in the process of exchange, and through which all commodities (having been inserted into the relative position) express their value.
Marx’s analysis does not therefore entail reproduction of the barter model (of exchanging one commodity for another), since it holds that exchange is necessarily mediated by money. Money is interpreted as an intrinsic and necessary element in capitalist economic relations.
‘Commodities do not then assume the form of direct mutual exchangeability. Their socially validated form is a mediated one’ (MEGA II.5, 1983: 42).
In Marx’s theoretical system as developed in Capital, there cannot be any other measure (or form of appearance) of value. The essential feature of the ‘market economy’ (of capitalism) is thus not simply commodity exchange (as asserted by mainstream theories) but monetary circulation and money:
‘The social character of labour appears as the money existence of the commodity’ (Marx 1991: 649).
2. Money as Capital
Having defined value-as-a-social-relation in terms of (1) capitalistically expended (abstract) labor, which transforms individual into social labor (2) the general exchangeability of commodities and (3) money as the general equivalent, Marx argues that money does not only play the role of a ‘means’ or a ‘measure’, but also tends to take on the role of an ‘end in itself’ (hoarding, means of payment, world money). Here we have to do with a preliminary definition of capital, with the (provisional and ‘immature’) introduction of the concept of capital: money functioning as an end in itself. The method that Marx utilises to fulfil his theoretical project is the ‘gradual building up’ of concepts, by moving on successive levels of theoretical development and including constantly new determinations to these concepts.(6)
In order to be able to function as an end in itself, money has to move in the sphere of circulation in accordance with the formula M–C–M, where M stands for money and C for commodity. Due to the homogeneity of money, however, this formula is meaningless unless the contingency is one of quantitative change, i.e. increase in value: The circulation must involve the ‘creation’ of surplus-money, in which case the formula would become M–C–M΄ where M΄ stands for M+ΔM .
But money can function as an ‘end in itself’ only when it dominates the sphere of production, incorporating it into its M–C–M΄ circulation, i.e. when it functions as (money) capital implementing the capital relation. The exploitation of labor power in the production sphere constitutes the actual presupposition for this incorporation and this movement. Thus
‘the circulation of money leads […] to capital’’ (Marx 1993: 776).
In the Marxist theory of the capitalist mode of production both value and money are concepts that cannot be defined independently of the notion of capital. They contain (and are contained in) the concept of capital. Being a monetary theory of value, Marx’s theory is at the same time a monetary theory of capital.
The motion of money as capital binds the production process to the circulation process, in the sense that commodity production becomes a phase or a moment (albeit the decisive moment for the whole valorization process) of the total circuit of social capital: M—C ( = Mp+Lp) [PC΄]—M´, where M stands for money, C for the input-commodities: means of production (Mp) plus labor power (Lp), C΄ for the output-commodities of the production process (P), which is finally realized in ‘more money’ (M´).7
‘Value therefore now becomes value in process, money in process, and, as such, capital. […] The circulation of money as capital is […] an end in itself, for the expansion of value takes place only within this constantly renewed movement’ (Marx 1990: 256, 253).
Capitalist exploitation is not perceived as a simple ‘subtraction’ or ‘deduction’ from the product of the worker’s labor but is seen as a social relation, necessarily expressing itself in the circuit of social capital and in the production of surplus-value, which takes the form of making (more) money. The question of the ‘measurement of value’ can only be stated at the level of its forms of appearance, i.e. in monetary terms.
3. Fictitious Capital and the Regulatory Role of Finance
Summarizing Marx’s analysis in Capital, a comprehensive introductory definition of capital could be the following: a historically specific social relation that expresses itself in the form of ‘money as an end in itself’ or ‘money that creates more money’. At this level of generality, the capitalist occupies a specific position and plays a specific role. He/she is, and behaves as, the embodiment of autonomous movement of value, embodying the ‘self-movement’ of capital M-C-M΄. The theory of capital is not an analysis of the actions of the capitalist. It is not a response to the actions of a subject. On the contrary, it is the movement of capital that imparts ‘consciousness’ to the capitalist. The power of capital is impersonal. In reality it is the power of money as such (Marx 1990: 165-6, Balibar 1984).
Proceeding to a more concrete level of analysis in Vol. 3 of Capital, Marx acknowledges that the place of capital is in general occupied by more than one subject: a money capitalist and a functioning capitalist. This means that a detailed description of capitalism cannot ignore the circulation of interest-bearing capital, which depicts the structure of the financial system. Marx’s argumentation might be represented in the following schema:
In the course of the lending process, the money capitalist Α becomes the recipient and proprietor of a security S, that is to say a written promise of payment (contingent in character) from the functioning capitalist Β. This promise certifies that A remains owner of the money capital M. He does not transfer his capital to B, but cedes to him the right to make use of it for a specified period. We will recognize two general types of securities: bonds SB and shares SS. In the case of the former the enterprise undertakes to return fixed and prearranged sums of money irrespective of the profitability of its own operations. In the latter case it secures loan capital by selling a part of its property, thereby promising itself to paying dividends in relation to its profits. If the company has entered the stock exchange and what is involved is share issue, then capitalist B corresponds to the managers and capitalist A to the legal owner (Sotiropoulos, Milios and Lapatsioras 2014).
In any case, in the hands of B the sum M functions as capital. Money taken as the independent expression of the value of commodities enables the active capitalist B to purchase the necessary means of production Mp and labour power Lp for organizing the productive process. The latter takes place under a regime of specific relations of production (comprising a specific historical form of relations of exploitation) and in this way is transformed into a process for producing surplus value. The money reserve that B now has at his disposal is the material expression of his social power to set in motion the productive process and to control it.
Four very basic consequences are implied by this analysis and are, briefly, as follows.
Firstly, the place of capital (the incarnation of the powers stemming from the structure of the relations of production) is occupied by agents that are both ‘internal’ to the enterprise (managers) and ‘external’ to it (share and bond holders). Marx’s general conception abolishes the basic distinction drawn by Keynes between the productive classes ‘within’ the enterprise and the parasitical class of ‘external’ rentiers. In his own words:
‘in the production process, the functioning capitalist represents capital against the wage-labourers as the property of others, and the money capitalist participates in the exploitation of labour as represented by the functioning capitalist’ (Marx 1991: 504).
The secondary contradictions developed between the managers and the big investors certainly do exist but they evidently pertain to a more concrete level of analysis.
Secondly, the pure form of ownership over capital (whether it is a question of money or productive capital) is the financial security, corresponding, that is, to ‘imaginary money wealth’ (Marx 1991: 609). The ownership title is a ‘paper duplicate’, either of the money capital ceded in the case of the bond SB, or of the ‘material’ capital in the case of the share SS. Nevertheless the price of security does not emerge either from the value of the money made available or from the value of the ‘real’ capital. The ownership titles are priced on the basis of the (future) income they will yield for the person owning them (capitalization in accordance with the current interest rate that incorporates risk), which of course is part of the surplus value produced. In this sense they are sui generis commodities plotting a course that is their very own (Marx 1991: 607-9, 597-8).
Thirdly, every enterprise is Janus-faced comprising, on the one hand, the production apparatus per se and, on the other, its financial existence, its shares and bonds, which are being traded on the global financial markets. The financial ‘mode of existence’ of capitalist property – as a promise and at the same time a claim for appropriation of the surplus value that will be produced in future – brings into existence a broader terrain within which each flow of income can be seen as revenue corresponding to a ‘fictitious capital’ with the potential to find an outlet on secondary markets (Marx 1991: 597-9). Hence, the potential for securitization is inherent in the movement of capital.
Fourthly, on the basis of Marx’s analysis, we can understand one of the basic characteristics of contemporary neoliberal capitalism, i.e. the increase in non-bank funding of credit, both by states and by enterprises. Above and beyond the other consequences, this places at the center of the financial markets risk management, that is to say the factoring in of the contingency of non-achievement of the expected yield (particularly in an international market where a number of diverging forces are affecting profitability). Because the very character of production of surplus value as well as the overall claims being placed on the latter is contingent, risk management is organically linked to capital movement as such.
The theoretical sketching that we tried to present above allows us to apprehend the phenomenon ofcapitalist globalization and financialization as a complex technology of power, the main aspect of which is the organization of capitalist power relations. It is a technology of power formed by different institutions, procedures, analyses and reflections, calculations, tactics and embedding patterns that allow for the exercise of this specific, albeit very complex, function that organizes the efficiency of capitalist power relations through the workings of financial markets.
4. The Present-Day Relevance of Marx’s Analysis:
Neoliberalism as Capital Discipline
The above theoretical framework put forward by Marx in Capital has a number of less visible but more crucial implications for the analysis of present-day capitalism.
(1) The capitalist firm is totally immersed in class struggle. The functioning capitalist (whether she is a small capitalist or one of the top managers of a large enterprise) is the point of articulation between the two distinct fields of capital movement. On the one hand, she is called upon to achieve efficient organization of surplus value production inside the factory. This process generally entails a persistent endeavor to modernize the means of production, economize on constant capital and reduce labor’s share of the net product.8 But none of these procedures are mere technical decisions to be taken. They are the mutable outcome of class struggle. Therefore, on the other hand, the capitalist enterprise is the location for the organized confrontation of social forces and in this sense comprises, on a continuing basis, a political field par excellence. It bears the inherent imprint of class struggle, a reality sharply in conflict with the orientation of neoclassical or most heterodox approaches.
(2) Organized financial markets favor movement of capital worldwide, intensifying capitalist competition. In this way they contribute to the trend towards establishment of a uniform rate of profit in the developed capitalist world, at the same time securing more favorable conditions for valorization (exploitation) of individual capitals.(9) Keynes believed that completely illiquid markets would be efficient in the mainstream sense, because ‘once investment was committed, the owners would have an incentive to use the existing facilities in the best possible way no matter what unforeseen circumstances might arise over the life of plant and equipment’ (Davidson 2002: 188). But such a view is very far from the truth. Illiquid financial markets (or highly regulated markets) mean that capital, not being able easily to move to different employment, remains tied up in specific ‘plant and equipment’ for reasons that are not necessarily connected with its effectiveness in producing surplus value (profitability). Or, to put it differently, capital’s inability to move generates more favorable terms for the forces of labor, given that less productive investments are enabled to survive longer.
Capital does not necessarily have to be committed to a particular employment for a long period of time. Given the liquidity of financial markets, it is always in a position to reacquire its money form without difficulty and seek new more effective areas for its valorization. Capital is always on the lookout for opportunities to make a profit, which cannot come from maintaining effective demand but must come from intensifying class exploitation. What capital is ‘afraid of’ is not dearth of demand but dearth of surplus value (Mattick 1980: 78-79). Capital is not obliged to provide for labor employment. On the contrary, a reserve army of unemployed labor is always welcomed by employers. It keeps real wages down and paves the way for compliance with the capitalist’s strategies of exploitation (Marx 1990: 781-802). Moreover, flexibility of labor is not only a prerequisite for mobility of capital. It is also the method capital finds most suitable for adjusting to fluctuations in the capitalist economic cycle.
(3) Financial markets generate a structure for overseeing the effectiveness of individual capitals, that is to say a type of supervision of capital movement. Businesses that fail to create a set of conditions favorable for exploitation of labor will soon find ‘market confidence’, i.e. the confidence of capital, evaporating. These businesses will either conform to the demands of capital or before long find themselves on a downhill path. In this manner capital markets ‘endeavor’ (not always reliably) to convert into quantitative signs ‘political’ events within the enterprise.
On the one hand, the manager assumes a critical intermediary function, becoming the point of articulation between the ‘despotism of the factory’, which he himself must ceaselessly impose, and the market discipline, to which he himself is permanently subject (Balibar 1984). On the other hand, outside of the precincts of the firm, money capitalists come up against a ‘performance chart’ that is shaped by the financial markets and to a significant extent ‘monitors’ the conditions of accumulation and valorization that prevail at every moment in production (in relation to different parts of the world). In this way the organized financial markets exercise a critical function: they reward profitable and competitive companies and at the same moment punish those that are insufficiently profitable.
The decisive criterion is that the value of the company’s securities (shares and bonds) as they are assessed by the international markets, should be maximized.(10) Thus, equity holders’ and bondholders’ interests are basically aligned with respect to enterprise profitability.(11) The demand for high financial value puts pressure on individual capitals (enterprises) for more intensive and more effective exploitation of labor, for greater profitability. This pressure is transmitted through a variety of different channels. To give one example, when a big company is dependent on financial markets for its funding, every suspicion of inadequate valorization increases the cost of funding, reduces the capability that funding will be available and depresses share and bond prices. Confronted with such a climate, the forces of labor within the politicized environment of the enterprise face the dilemma of deciding whether to accept the employers’ unfavorable terms, implying loss of their own bargaining position, or whether to contribute through their ‘inflexible’ stance to the likelihood of the enterprise being required to close (transfer of capital to other spheres of production and/or other countries). Evidently the dilemma is not only hypothetical but is formulated pre-emptively: accept the ‘laws of capital’ or live with insecurity and unemployment.
This pressure affects the whole organization of the production process, the specific form of the collective worker, and the income correlation between capital and labor. It ultimately necessitates total reconstruction of capitalist production, more layoffs and weaker wage demands on part of the workers. Restructuring of enterprise, above all, means restructuring of a set of social relations with a view to increasing the rate of exploitation. It is thus a process that presupposes on the one hand an increasing power of the capitalist class over the production process itself, and on the other a devalorization of all inadequately valorized capital (downsizing and liquidating enterprises) and thus economizing on the utilization of constant capital (which is assured by takeovers). It therefore presupposes not only increasing ‘despotism’ of manager over workers but also flexibility in the labor market and high unemployment (overt or otherwise).(12)
In developed capitalism the key role of financial markets does not have only to do with supplying credit to companies. For example, most trades of shares in listed companies consist of movements from one shareholder to another, with no new capital being supplied.(13)The complementary function of financial markets is to ‘monitor’ the effectiveness of individual capitals, facilitating within enterprises exploitation strategies favorable for capital. Financial markets commodify the claims on future surplus value. The striking growth of financial derivatives since the early 1980s assists in the consummation of this monitoring process of scrutinizing corporate asset portfolios (i.e. scrutinizing firms’ capacity for profit making) by commodifying the risk exposure.(14)
In conclusion, Marx’s theoretical analysis in Capital allows us to comprehend neoliberalism not as an anti-productionist agenda of certain parasitic strata of the society (financial speculators and rentiers), but as the par excellence strategy for capitalist hegemony. Apart from theoretical consequences, this finding has important political implications: the Keynesian or heterodox discourse about the community of interest of those ‘inside’ the enterprise (laborers and managers) as against the ‘outsiders’ of the financial markets is a figment of imagination. Such an outlook narrows the strategic horizon of the workers’ movement to defense of an ‘improved’ capitalism, that is to say a ‘better’ system of class domination and exploitation.
It is however worth noting that the ‘wisdom of the markets’, an important element in constructing the core of the neoliberal model, prescribes market evaluation of property (mark-to-market value). ‘Periodically’ this appears to be the Achille’s heel of the whole system. The fall in value of the securities spoils the balance-sheets of the institutions maintaining them and protracts lack of trust between the players spreading uncertainty. In other words the conditions for increase in class domination of capital appear simultaneously as conditions undermining that domination. The crisis designates the moment of convergence of all the abovementioned contradictions.
Besides, the subjection of all parts of social life to the unfettered function of markets and the dictate of profitability may function, beyond certain limits, as ‘political risk’ for the neoliberal establishment, since it can easily trigger uncontrolled social outbreaks.(15)
References
Balibar, E. (1984) ‘Marx et l’ Entreprise’ Politique Aujourd’hui, No 5, July-August, 24-32.
Bryan, D. and M. Rafferty (2006) Capitalism with Derivatives, A Political Economy of Financial Derivatives, Capital and Class, New York and London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Davidson, P. (2002) Financial Markets, Money and the Real World, Cheltenham (UK) and Northampton (USA): Edward Elgar.
Deakin, D.( 2005) ‘The Coming Transformation of Shareholder Value’, Corporate Governance: An International Review, 13:1, 11-18.
Dumenil, G. and D. Levy (2004) Capital Resurgent, Harvard University Press.
Fama, E. F. and French, K. R. (2001) ‘Disappearing dividends: changing firm characteristics or lower propensity to pay?’, Journal of Financial Economics, 60, 3-43.
Heinrich, M. 1(999) Die Wissenschaft vom Wert, Überbearbeitete und erweiterte Neuauflage, Berlin: Westfälisches Dampfboot.
Jensen, M. C. (2001) ‘Value Maximisation, Stakeholder Theory, and the Corporate Objective
Function, ’ European Financial Management, 7(3): 297-317.
Marx, K. internet (1881) ‘Notes on Adolph Wagner’s “Lehrbuch der politischen Ökonomie” (Second Edition), Volume I, 1879’, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/01/wagner.htm
Marx, K. (1981) A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. London: Lawrence &
Wishart.
Marx, K. (1990) Capital, Volume one, London: Penguin Classics.
Marx, K. (1991) Capital, Volume three, London: Penguin Classics.
Marx, K. (1993) Grundrisse, London: Penguin Classics.
Marx/Engels Gesamtausgabe (MEGA) II, 2, (1980), Ökonomische Manuskripte und Schriften 1858-1861, Berlin: Dietz Verlag.
Marx/Engels Gesamtausgabe (MEGA) II, 5, (1983), ’Das Kapital’ und Vorarbeiten, Marx, Das Kapital, Erster Band, Hamburg 1867, Berlin: Dietz Verlag.
Marx-Engels-Werke (MEW), Bd. 19 (1976) , Berlin: Dietz Verlag.
Mattick, P. (1980) Marx and Keynes, London: Merlin Press.
Milios J., D. Dimoulis and G. Economakis (2002) Karl Marx and the Classics. An Essay on Value, Crises and the Capitalist Mode of Production, Aldershot: Ashgate.
Sotiropoulos D. P., J. Milios, and S. Lapatsioras (2014), A Political Economy of Contemporary Capitalism and its Crisis. Demystifying Finance, Abington and New York: Routledge.
1 Paper presented at the second international seminar on the 150th anniversary of The Capital (1867-2017): ‘The thought of Marx in the 21st century, and the Capital – Labor relations in The Capital’, organized by the Facultad de Ciencias y Educación Proyecto Académico de Investigacion y Extensión de Pedagogía of the Universidad Distrital Francisco Jose de Caldas, 3-6 November 2015, Bogota – Colombia.
2 Professor of Political Economy, Department of Humanities, Social Sciences and Law, National Technical University of Athens. Email: john.milios@gmail.com
3The product of labour ‘cannot acquire universal social validity as an equivalent-form except by being converted into money’ (Marx 1990: 201).
4 ‘The concept of value is entirely peculiar to the most modern economy, since it is the most abstract expression of capital itself and of the production resting on it. In the concept of value, its secret is betrayed. […] The economic concept of value does not occur in antiquity’ (Marx 1993: 776 ff.).
5 ‘The value form of the product of labour is the most abstract, but also the most general form of the bourgeois mode of production as a particular kind of social production of a historical and transitory character’ (Marx 1990: 174).
6 The point of departure shall always be a ‘simple’, i.e. easily recognizable form, which though may lead to the ‘inner’-causal relationships: ‘De prime abord, I do not proceed from “concepts, ” hence neither from the “concept of value, ” and am therefore in no way concerned to “divide” it. What I proceed from is the simplest social form in which the product of labour presents itself in contemporary society, and this is the “commodity.” This I analyse, initially in the form in which it appears ’ (MEW 19: 368, Marx-Internet 1881). ‘The simple circulation is mainly an abstract sphere of the bourgeois overall production process, which manifests itself through its own determinations as a trend, a mere form of appearance of a deeper process which lies behind it, and equally results from it but also produces it – the industrial capital’ (MEGA II, 2, 1980: 68-9).
7 The capitalist appears on the market as the owner of money (M) buying commodities (C) which consist of means of production (Mp) and labor power (Lp). In the process of production (P), the C are productively used up in order to create an outflow of commodities, a product (C΄) whose value would exceed that of C. Finally he sells that outflow in order to recover a sum of money (M΄) higher than (M).
8 Marx (1991: 170-240), Milios et al. (2002).
9 See Marx (1990), Marx (1991: 295-300).
10 For the shareholder value maximization strategy see Jensen (2001).
11 It should be noted that the high profitability of a capitalist firm usually translates into high share prices, but at the same time the low risk that goes with being a healthy firm reduces the rate of discount and thus increases the value of the bonds being issued.
12 Marx’s analysis shows that the ability of the capitalist class to reorganize production, is not a technical aspect of the economy but an outcome of the social relation of forces, anchored in class struggle. ‘[W]ithin the capitalist system all methods for raising the social productivity of labour are put into effect at the cost of the individual worker; all means for the development of production transform themselves into means of domination over, and exploitation of, the producers; they distort the worker into a fragment of a man, degrade him to the level of an appendage of a machine […] But all methods for the production of surplus-value are at the same time methods of accumulation; and every extension of accumulation becomes, conversely, a means for the development of those methods. It follows therefore that in proportion as capital accumulates, the lot of the worker, be his payment high or low, must grow worse.’ Marx (1990: 799).
13 The stock market is not the main means for obtaining investment capital. Even in the extreme case of market-based systems (such as those of the USA, UK and Australia), the main loan sources are retained earnings, bank loans, and bond issues (Bryan and Rafferty 2006; Dumenil and Levy 2004; Deakin 2005). At the same time, it is useful to note that in contrast to what is often asserted by heterodox authors, since the beginning of the 1980s joint-stock companies have become steadily less willing to distribute dividends (Fama and French 2001).
14 ‘With derivatives, the ability to commensurate the value of capital assets within and between companies at any point in time has been added as a measure of capital’s performance alongside and perhaps above the capacity to produce surplus over time. […] Derivatives separate the capital of firms into financial assets that can be priced and traded or “repackaged”, without having either to move them physically, or even change their ownership’ (Bryan and Rafferty 2006: 97).
15 It is characteristic that Franklin D. Roosevelt in his speech at Madison Square Garden, New York City on October 31, 1936, presented his New Deal policies as the golden mean between ‘organized money’ and ‘organized mob’. ‘We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.’ See: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=15219.
taken from here
Das Geschenk des Selfies/Gift of the Selfie
Auch wenn man fest davon überzeugt ist, dass Selfies die niedrigste Form aller künstlerischen Ausdrucksweisen sind, kommt man um wiederholte Diskussionen über die Werte oder den Werteverfall, den sie verkörpern, nicht herum. Der Widerwille gegenüber den Selfies hat seinen Ursprung in einem ethischen Instinkt, der alles auf die Ernsthaftigkeit der Absicht prüft; und diese Ablehnung des Selfies als oberflächlich, selbstverliebt und kindisch ist in sich ein Selbstportrait des Gegners als solider Bürger, für den Kunst eine höhere Funktion hat als die Selbstvermarktung und die Zerstörung aller ästhetischen Werte. Denn so viel ist richtig: das Selfie verlangt nichts weniger als die Vernichtung aller früheren Kunstformen. Dadurch beansprucht es, die erste Kunstform im Zeitalter des Netzwerks zu sein.
Gibt es irgendjemanden, der das hier liest und der in den letzten 24 Stunden zu keiner Zeit online war? Die Frage ist: wie fühlt sich das an? Vielleicht fühlt es sich nicht mehr wie beim ersten Mal an, weil wir schon so sehr daran gewöhnt sind. Bei genauerem Hinsehen unterscheidet es sich jedoch ziemlich von den meisten anderen Dingen. Wenn ich an meinem Schreibtisch sitze, kann ich sagen, dass das Buch näher zu mir liegt als die Kaffeetasse und dass der Sessel weiter weg steht als das Telefon. Aber was bedeutet es zu sagen, dass online etwas näher oder weiter weg ist? Online lassen sich Entfernungen nicht in Metern oder Fuß messen, sondern in Klicks. Wie viele Klicks braucht es, um das Buch, das ich will, bei Amazon zu bekommen? Wie oft muss ich über den Bildschirm streichen, bis ich bei den Nachrichten angelangt bin? Dieser Unterschied lässt folgern, dass in der Welt des Internets eine andere Logik operiert, und darauf basierend entsteht die Forderung nach einer Kunst, die diese Veränderung verarbeitet, indem sie sie zur Erfahrungsmöglichkeit macht. Nicht nur weil die früheren Kategorien des Raums (nah / weit, oben /unten, davor / dahinter) im Raum des Netzwerks nicht zu greifen scheinen, sondern auch, weil für andere binäre Kategorien dasselbe gilt. Klassifizierungen wie „gut“ und „schlecht“, „Original“ und „Kopie“ und so fort sind online unwichtiger als Fragen nach der Anzahl der „Likes“, die ein Selfie bekommt, wie es gehashtagged ist, wie es retweetet und geteilt wird. Solche Erwägungen, und nicht die Fragen nach dem ästhetischen Anreiz, entscheiden über seine Wirkung.
Für Walter Benjamin ist „die Sprache die höchste Verwendung des mimetischen Vermögens; [da] sie nun das Medium darstellt, in dem sich die Dinge … begegnen und zueinander in Beziehung treten.“ 1 Für Benjamin ist die Sprache der Schmelztiegel allen Lebens, da sie gleichzeitig Ausdruck von Rationalität als auch von Fantasie und Sinnlichkeit ist. Doch diese Art zu denken wird zunehmend überflüssig, da das Netzwerk und nicht die Sprache der perfekte Ausdruck von Leben ist, das durch Computertechnologie produziert und erhalten wird. Nicht nur das Selfie, sondern auch die morgendlichen Cornflakes und die Milch, Schuhe und Socken, Flugzeuge am Himmel, das Wasser in der Leitung und Babys im Kinderwagen sind das Resultat komplex vernetzter Abläufe, die für uns überwiegend unsichtbar und deshalb leicht zu vergessen sind. Es ist sehr gut möglich, dass das Selfie die erste Kunstform ist, die eine eingehende Betrachtung unserer vernetzten Lebensumstände bietet, denn das Selfie ist das Wechselspiel von zwei Kräften: zum einen zeigt es auf jemanden verankert in Zeit und Raum, zum anderen offenbart es durch seine sofortige Verbreitung, dass alle Räume gleich weit entfernt sind und dass alle Zeit in diesem einen Moment enthalten ist.
Das Selfie ist das erste Kunstwerk des Netzwerkzeitalters, weil es sich nicht mit Beschreibung, Repräsentation oder Imitation zufriedengibt. Während das Selfie selbstverständlich etwas beschreiben oder darstellen kann, macht es gleichzeitig noch etwas völlig anderes. Es artikuliert eine Form von Gegenständlichkeit, die real und absolut gegenwärtig, aber gleichzeitig auf mysteriöse Weise unzugänglich und virtuell ist: genau wie die Abläufe, die die Cornflakes auf den Tisch oder das Baby in den Kinderwagen bringen. Mit anderen Worten, es ist gleichzeitig ein Bild von etwas oder jemandem und die Verkörperung einer Beziehung, die man unmöglich darstellen aber sehr wohl erfahren kann. Das Selfie birgt eine neue Form der Gegenständlichkeit, die mehrschichtig und mehrdeutig konstruiert ist und nicht auf dem strikten Gegensatz von Subjekt und Objekt basiert, der allem metaphysischen Denken zugrunde liegt. Das Selfie kommt nicht ohne Subjekt und Objekt aus, aber es zerstört die Vorstellung einer stabilen, fixierbaren Identität, die sich im Gegensatz zur Welt befindet. In jedem einzelnen Selfie erfindet sich das Selbst neu, und weil es keine vorgefertigte Identität besitzt, artikuliert sich das Selbst rein über Stil. In jedem Café, mit jedem neuen Outfit und veränderter Frisur, unter jeder neuen Sehenswürdigkeit erfindet sich das sogenannte Selbst neu. Das Selfie lehrt uns also, dass das Leben aus Netzwerken besteht, und wenn ich mich von einem Netzwerk ins nächste bewege bleibe ich nicht derselbe, mein „Ich“ verändert sich durch Anpassung an Kontexte, Dialoge und Möglichkeiten, die dieses oder jenes Milieu bieten. Das Selfie in einem Weinlokal, das Selfie am Strand und das Selfie bei einer Party sind allesamt Zeugnisse der Wandelbarkeit der Elemente, die dieses schwer greifbare „Selbst“ ausmachen. Gilles Deleuze stellte fest, dass es die Psychoanalytiker, Politiker und Priester sind, die uns glauben machen wollen, das Selbst sei ein Monolith, das Selfie hingegen führt es uns als Konstrukt vor. Identität und Subjektivität verschwinden zwar nicht durch die Logik des Selfies, aber sie verlieren an Beständigkeit und Tiefe. Das Selbst ist nicht dauerhaft und beständig, sondern eher daran gebunden, sich ständig neu zu erfinden und anzupassen. Dieses zerbrechliche und mehrdeutige Selbst bedient sich der Mannigfaltigkeit des Selfies. Was wir bisher für eine eindeutige, unverrückbare Individualität hielten, wird durch das Selfie als mannigfaltig und fragmentarisch enthüllt. Dies offenbart eine völlig neue Sichtweise auf Subjektivität und Identität und eröffnet uns die Möglichkeit, nicht mehr in binären und gegensätzlichen Kategorien, sondern zugunsten der Vielfältigkeit zu denken. Man ist nicht mehr Jude oder Christ, weder schwarz noch weiß, weder schwul noch hetero, weder Arbeiter- noch Mittelschicht, vielmehr vereinigt man in sich von all dem etwas, nur für diesen Moment. Die Ethik des Selfies steckt in einem Vorgang, der sich weder durch einen gesteigerten Individualismus noch durch eine erweiterte Sozialisierung erklären lässt. Sie ist weder ein Teilchen noch eine Welle, sondern ein Zustand der Unentschiedenheit. Sie ist Ausdruck der Forderung danach, dass sowohl der Bildinhalt als auch die dazugehörigen Produktionsmittel uns immer und vollkommen bewusst sind. Aus diesem Grund ist das Selfie-Bild vor allem schwierig, denn es verlangt von uns, dass wir seine Technik im gleichen Maße wie seinen Inhalt bedenken. Theodor Adorno hat bereits gesagt: „Die Moral des Denkens … hat nämlich die Forderung, gleichzeitig die Phänomene als solche sprechen zu lassen … und doch in jedem Augenblick ihre Beziehung auf das Bewußtsein als Subjekt, die Reflexion präsent zu halten“2. Mit anderen Worten ist Ethik hier eine zweifache Auseinandersetzung mit den „Dingen an sich“ und mit der Art und Weise wie unser Bewusstsein sie aufnimmt. In Anlehnung an Adorno sollten wir darauf bestehen, dass das Selfie als Bild sowie als Resultat vernetzter Abläufe zu uns sprechen darf. Die Ethik des Selfies ist nicht in dessen Subjekt verortet, sondern in den verzweigten und ungelösten Spannungen zwischen dem Subjekt und den Techniken, Abläufen und Institutionen, durch die das Subjekt sein Sein erfährt.
In Die Sorge um sich führt Foucault eine brillante Analyse sexueller Ethik durch, „die um die Frage nach sich kreist, nach seiner Abhängigkeit und seiner Unabhängigkeit, nach seiner allgemeinen Form und nach dem Band, das man zu den anderen knüpfen kann und muß, nach den Prozeduren, durch die man Kontrolle über sich ausübt, und nach der Weise, in der man die volle Souveränität über sich herstellen kann.“ 3 Für Foucault ist es nicht das Selbst, das sexuellen Verkehr sucht, sondern es ist die Praktizierung der Lust, mit all ihren nuancierten Techniken, Vorschriften und Verboten, die genau dieses „Selbst“ als einen Ort der intensiven und zwanghaften Auseinandersetzung mit dem eigenen Organismus entstehen lässt. Das Netzwerk, als die universelle erogene Zone konzipiert, ist die aktuelle Form des Organismus, und Computertechnologien, verknüpft mit Techniken der Lust wie dem Selfie, tragen durch ständige Reproduktion zu seiner Vervielfachung bei. Bei dieser Online-Existenz wird nicht zwischen Zielen und Mitteln unterschieden und sie ist keiner im Vorfeld festgelegten Logik verhaftet. Stattdessen wird sie gänzlich von der „Beschäftigung mit sich“, von einer verstärkten Hinwendung zur Instabilität der Identität (sexuell oder anderweitig) und von einer gesteigerten Betonung der „Anfälligkeit des Individuums gegenüber den diversen Übeln, welche die sexuelle Aktivität hervorrufen kann“ 4 abgeleitet. Entgegen der herrschenden, fundamentalistischen Version von sexueller Enthaltsamkeit als Tugend und Promiskuität als Sünde und dem dazugehörigen Diskurs von Herrschaft und Macht schlägt Foucault eine neue Herangehensweise an das Selbst vor. Anstatt es zu beurteilen (Tugend/ Sünde, Lust / Schmerz) sieht er darin eine äußerst problematische, ungeklärte und unangenehme Technologie, mit der wir uns um uns selbst sorgen. Das Selbst erfindet sich durch Lustpraktiken. So deutet Foucault an, dass die Auffassung vom „Selbst“ – verstanden als Technologie der Sorge um den eigenen Körper – mit der von der Gesellschaft auferlegten Dialektik der Hierarchien des Lusttriebs bricht, die Vergnügen an Legalität, Moralität und Angemessenheit messen und einstufen. Auf ähnliche Weise scheint mir das Selfie eine Ablehnung der Hierarchie zu suggerieren, die von Platos Unterscheidung zwischen dem Original und der Kopie befehligt wird und die ihre disziplinarische Kraft dem pädagogischen Grundsatz verdankt, Erscheinungen und Oberflächen zu misstrauen, weil sie hohl und sinnlich sind und letztendlich in die Irre führen.
In Platons Höhle wird unterschieden zwischen Erscheinungen als fehlbaren Sinneseindrücken und tatsächlichem Wissen als ausschließlichem Produkt der rationalen Logik und Vernunft. Das Problem dieser Analyse, die von Platon in Bewegung gesetzt wurde und sich bis heute in allen Bereichen der Kunst- und Medienwissenschaften großer Beliebtheit erfreut, ist, dass das Rationale dem Sinnlichen, die Analyse der Erfahrung und ganz allgemein ausgedrückt das Gehirn den Genitalien vorgezogen wird, mit der bedauerlichen Folge, dass es auch die Gegenwart auslöscht, als den Moment, in dem etwas passiert, aus dem einfachen Grund, dass dieses „Etwas“ – egal ob als Berührung, als Streichen, als Zug, als Lecken oder als Klicken – immer schon passiert, ins Gedächtnis verbannt und zum Zeitpunkt der Analyse durch den rationalen Geist bereits Teil der Vergangenheit ist. Platons Höhle ist das Urbild einer Zeitmaschine, denn sie legt die Bedingungen fest, die zur Herrschaft der tickenden Uhr über unser Leben führen. Für Platon sind Vernunft und Logik die höchsten Formen der Wahrheit, tiefer und bedeutsamer als die täuschende Oberfläche des Bildes. Die Vernunft folgt stets auf die Erfahrung und legt so eine lineare Chronologie fest: erst die Erfahrung, dann die Vernunft. Bei dieser Methode verlieren wir etwas: das Hier und Jetzt des Moments. Johnny Golding hat es so formuliert: „das Hier und Jetzt mit all seiner Akne und seinem Gestank, das lodernde Paradox von Vitalität, Wut, Grausamkeit, Freude, Schwäche, Intelligenz, Dummheit und Versuchung.“ 5
Wenn man es nicht in einem (sozialen) Netzwerk hochlädt, ist es kein Selfie, sondern ein unzugängliches Selbstportrait. Aus diesem Grund ermöglicht das Selfie eine Beziehung zur Zeit, die sich von der linearen Zeitvorstellung aus Platons Höhle unterscheidet. Dem Selfie geht es nicht darum, Geschichte zu machen, wenn es einen vergänglichen Moment für die Nachwelt festhält. Kurz, es ist keine Fotografie im traditionellen Sinne des Einfrierens eines Moments und dessen Verfügbarmachens bis in alle Ewigkeit. Genau genommen hat das Selfie mit der Vergangenheit überhaupt nichts zu tun, vielmehr verkapselt es den gegenwärtigen Moment als „ekstatische
Temporalität“.6 Das bedeutet, dass die repräsentationale Gesetzmäßigkeit der traditionellen Fotografie durch die Einführung einer Dimension, die schon immer Bestandteil des fotografischen Bildes war, aber bis zum Auftauchen des Selfies kurzerhand vergessen war, unterbrochen wird. Dies ist die Dimension des Teilens, der Verbreitung und Verteilung.
Die Fotografie war schon immer eine distributive Kunstform, nichts anderes als eine Fotokopie, aber in der traditionellen Auffassung ist die horizontale Verbreitung des Bildes, die ihm innewohnende Möglichkeit vervielfacht, kopiert und reproduziert zu werden, immer nebensächlich im Vergleich zu dessen Inhalt. Nicht umsonst „ist der Inhalt König“, aber was genau verbirgt sich hier dahinter, wenn wir den Inhalt kopieren, teilen und verbreiten? Es ist das, was dem König als Inhalt Untertan ist. Aber all das verändert sich mit dem Selfie, weil Teilen hier nicht auf den Inhalt folgt und keine Nebensache ist. Das Teilen des Selfies ist sein Inhalt, und in diesem Vorgang des Teilens wird unser eigenes „Ich“ verkompliziert, problematisiert und als Beziehung zu anderen wahrgenommen, einer Beziehung, die durch eine Kultur des Teilens entstanden ist. Dies ist nicht mehr das Ich aus Descartes‘ Cogito, in welchem sich das Subjekt seiner selbst immer sicher ist, da das Denken das unbestreitbare Fundament seiner Existenz ist. Das Selfie suggeriert einen Versuch zur Selbsterkenntnis, der zum Scheitern verurteilt ist, bei dem wir Dinge verpassen und zu keiner Form der Wahrheit gelangen.
Das Selfie ist möglicherweise die erste weitverbreitete Form der Fotografie, der es explizit nicht um Wahrheit geht. Das Selfie ist subversiv, schon alleine deswegen, weil es im Allgemeinen verpönt ist, seinen Körper in der Öffentlichkeit zu zeigen ohne finanziellen Nutzen daraus zu ziehen7, aber auch weil die charakteristischste Eigenschaft des Selfies seine sofortige Teilbarkeit ist: Die Logik des Selfies unterscheidet nicht zwischen den Vorgängen des „Machens“, „Erstellens“ oder „Knipsens“ und den des Hochladens und des Teilens. Das Schießen und das Teilen sind in einem verschmolzen: zwei logische Konzepte, die über Jahrtausende voneinander getrennt waren, werden in einem Vorgang vereint, der uns in die unangenehme Wahrheit blicken lässt, dass jeder rationale Vorgang auch ein sinnlicher ist, da hier die repräsentationale Logik genau im gleichen Raum sagt: „Das bin ich“, in dem die Logik des Teilens, der Vertrautheit und der Begierde verkündet: „Das ist jetzt“.
Weil das Selfie „zum Teilen gemacht“ ist, kann es nicht mit den Mitteln der semiotischen Analyse verständlich gemacht werden, die versucht, Fotografien anhand indexikalischer Symbole, die das (abwesende) Objekt bedeuten, zu erklären. Der Versuch, das Selfie aus der Perspektive der Medien- oder Kunstwissenschaft zu betrachten, ist deshalb nicht ganz befriedigend. Der Gedanke der Sorge, der im Vorgang des Teilens verkörpert ist, ist kein Symbol, kein Zeichen und kein Sprechakt. Auch wenn es all das sein kann, ist es doch noch etwas anderes, das linguistische Codes transzendiert. Menschen können sich nur etwas vorstellen, das außerhalb ihrer selbst liegt, von ihrem Sein getrennt ist. Aber Teilen ist nicht vom Menschsein getrennt, es liegt nicht außerhalb, sondern, ganz im Gegenteil, es macht das Menschsein möglich. Als Heidegger sich der Frage des Teilens widmete, bedachte er den Krug. Gleich dem Selfie kann der Krug seinen Inhalt teilen, und für Heidegger offenbarte sich im Ausschenken des Weins das Teilen als Wesen des Seins: „Im Geschenk des Gusses weilen Erde und Himmel. Im Geschenk des Gusses weilen zumal Erde und Himmel, die Göttlichen und die Sterblichen. Diese Vier gehören, von sich her einig, zusammen.“ 8 Aber was – so könnte man sich fragen – teilen wir, wenn wir ein Selfie teilen? Geht es dabei um Pixel, Datensätze, Algorithmen oder Informationen? Mitnichten. Erst wenn wir aufhören, im Selfie ein Darstellungsmittel zu sehen (egal ob semiologisch, ästhetisch, ökonomisch oder kulturell), sind wir dazu fähig, die Bedingung seiner Selbst-Vervielfältigung ohne metaphysische Erschwerungen zu erforschen. Die Frage, die wir eigentlich stellen sollten, ist nicht, „was das Selfie darstellt“, sondern „wo es ist“. Denn es ist die letztere Frage, die ein Verständnis des Selfies als ein Feld selbstähnlicher Augenblicke ermöglicht, die sich nach der Logik der fraktalen Geometrie verwandeln und vervielfältigen und gleichzeitig doch selbstähnlich und voneinander unterscheidbar sind.9 Die Selbstähnlichkeit des Selfies verläuft sowohl auf der horizontalen als auch auf der vertikalen Achse. Das Selfie ähnelt nicht nur sich selbst mit all seinen Wiederholungen auf verschiedenen Bildschirmen und Geräten, es ist anderen Selfies selbstähnlich und doch klar von ihnen zu unterscheiden. Geben Sie „Selfie“ in ihre bevorzugte Bildsuchmaschine ein, und Sie werden mit einer Bildwand konfrontiert, einem schwebenden Archiv der Posen, Haltungen, Identitäten … aber das ist nicht alles. Da ist noch etwas, etwas weniger Sichtbares als ein Bild, aber dennoch genauso real oder greifbar. Dieses Etwas ist der Unterschied zwischen den Selfies, ein Unterschied, der sich nur durch ihre Selbstähnlichkeit manifestiert. Das ist es letztlich, was wir teilen: keine Aufnahme eines Gesichts, eines Sixpacks oder eines herausgestreckten Arms, sondern den Unterschied, der sich aus einem Archiv selbstähnlicher Selfies herausbildet. Dazu wieder Foucault: „[Es] stellt fest, daß wir Unterschiede sind, daß unsere Vernunft der Unterschied der Diskurse, unsere Geschichte der Unterschied der Zeiten, unser Ich der Unterschied der Masken ist.“ 10 Für Foucault ist die eigentliche Aufgabe des Archivs nicht die Erhaltung von Erinnerungen, Identitäten, Ideologien und Strukturen. Was das Archiv archiviert, ist die Differenz zwischen den Versionen, Stilen und Strukturen. Denn die Differenz überragt die Identität als universellen, gemeinsamen Nenner und ermöglicht eine produktive Vielfalt räumlicher und zeitlicher Selbste. Was wir durch den Akt des Selfies teilen, ist die Möglichkeit, das Bild von seinem platonischen Unterbau der metaphysischen Einheit zu lösen, und die Aussicht, die repräsentationale Kraft der Fotografie hinter uns zu lassen, dadurch, dass wir das Selfie nicht als Aufbewahrungsort vorgefertigten Wissens, sondern als Anstoß zum Unterscheiden betrachten. Das Selfie eröffnet uns einen Diskurs über das Selbst und die Fotografie, der nicht an Indexikalität, Repräsentation oder Erinnerung gebunden ist, sondern stattdessen eine Auseinandersetzung mit den Kräften des Netzwerks anregt, die in einer Vielzahl von Fragmenten ihren Ausdruck finden und die zusammen genommen das Geschenk des Selfies ausmachen.
taken from here
Übersetzung: Katharina Volckmer
1 Walter Benjamin, „Lehre vom Ähnlichen“, Gesammelte Schriften II, Frankfurt a. M. 1985: 209.
2 Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia – Reflexionen aus dem beschädigten Leben, Frankfurt a. M. 2001: 130.
3 Michel Foucault, Die Sorge um sich. Sexualität und Wahrheit 3, Frankfurt a. M. 1989: 305
4 ebd.
5 Johnny Golding, „Ecce Homo Sexual: Ontology and Eros in the Age of Incompleteness and Entanglement“, Parallax, 20(3): 218.
6 Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, Tübingen 1984: §68a.
7 Katrin Tiidenberg und Edgar Gómez-Cruz, „Selfies, Image and the Re-making of the Body“, Body & Society, 2015: 1 – 26.
8 Martin Heidegger, „Einblick in das was ist. Bremer Vorträge 1949“, Gesamtausgabe, III. Abteilung: Unveröffentlichte Abhandlungen. Vorträge – Gedachtes. Band 79. Bremer und Freiburger Vorträge, Frankfurt a. M. 1994: 12.
9 François Laruelle, Le concept de non-photographie = The Concept of Non-Photography, New York 2012: 79 – 84.
10 Michel Foucault, Archäologie des Wissens, Frankfurt a. M. 1981: 18.
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Even someone convinced that selfies are the lowest form of artistic expression will find themselves repeatedly drawn into debates about them, and the values or the lack thereof they embody. The objection to selfies has its source in the ethical instinct that measures everything according to the seriousness of intention and the rejection of selfies as shallow, self-obsessed and puerile is itself a self-portrait of the objector as a solid citizen, for whom art performs a higher function than self-promotion and the destruction of all aesthetic values. For this much is true: the selfie asks for nothing less than to annihilate all forms of art that came before it, in this lies its claim to be the first art-form of the age of networks.
Is there anyone reading this who did not spend some time online in the last 24 hours? The question is, how does it feel. Perhaps it does not feel like the first time, as we are so used to it. But on second thoughts, it is rather different from most other things. Sitting at my desk, I can say that the book is nearer to me than the coffee cup, and that the armchair is more far away than the phone. But what does it mean to say that online something is nearer to me and something is more distant? Online distance is not measured by meters or feet, it is measured by clicks. How many clicks it takes to get to the book I want on Amazon? How many swipes to get to the news feed? This difference suggests that there is another logic working in the online environment, and from this a demand is emerging for an art that can handle this shift by offering it as a subject of experience. Not only because the old categories of space (near/far, bellow/above, in-front/behind) don’t seem to grasp the space of the network, but also because the same thing holds true in respect to other binary categories. Classifications of ‘good’ and ‘bad’, ‘original’ and ‘copy’ and so on, are less important online than such questions as how many ‘likes’ a selfie gets, how it is hashtagged, retweeted, shared. It is these considerations, and not questions of aesthetic appeal that determine its impact.
Walter Benjamin has said that language is the highest application of the mimetic faculty since ‘it is now language in which objects meet and enter into relationship with each other’ (Benjamin 2005). For Benjamin, language is the melting pot of all of life because it is both an articulation of rationality and an expression of imagination and sensuousness. But this way of thinking is rapidly becoming redundant as it is the network, and not language that is the perfect expression of life that is produced and sustained by computational technologies. Not only the selfie, but also the morning cereal and the milk, the shoes and the socks, the planes in the sky, the water in the taps and the babies in the prams are the outcomes of complex networked operations that are for the most part concealed from view and therefore easy to keep out of mind. It is just possible, that the selfie is the first art form that offers a concentrated meditation on the networked condition of life because the selfie is the interplay of two forces: on the one hand it points to someone in space and time, but on the other it manifests in its instant distribution that all spaces are equidistant and that all time is just this instant.
The selfie is the first artwork of the network age because it is not content with description, representation or imitation. While the selfie of course can represent and describe it is also doing something entirely different, it articulates a form of materiality that is real, fully present but also mysteriously inaccessible and virtual: like the process that delivers the cereal to the table or the baby to the pram. In other words, it is both an image of something or someone and it is an embodiment of a relationship that is impossible to represent but possible to experience. The selfie suggests a new form of materiality that is constructed, plural and multiple, rather than based in the rigid opposition between the subject and the object that underpins all of metaphysical thinking. The selfie does not get rid of the subject and the object, but it destroys the notion of fixed and stable identity and the opposition between it and the world.
In each and every selfie the self is re-invented anew and because it has no pre-established identity, the self is being articulated purely in terms of style. In each coffee-shop, with every change of outfit and hairdo, under each new landmark the so-called self is being re-invented. In other words, the selfie teaches that life is made of networks, and as I move from one network to another I am not the same, my own ‘I’ is changing to adapt to the contexts, dialogues and possibilities afforded by this or that milieu. The selfie in a wine bar, the selfie on the beach and the selfie at a party are testimony to the changing nature of the elements that constitute this elusive ‘self’. Gilles Deleuze observed that it is the psychoanalysts, politicians and priests who want us to believe that the self is a monolith, the selfie on the other hand suggests that it is a construction.
Under the logic of the selfie identity and subjectivity do not disappear but they loose their solidity and depth. The self is not permanent and solid, rather it is dependent on continuous reinvention and adaptation. This fragile and plural self rides the multiplicity of selfies. What we used to think of as a monumental singular individuality is exposed by the selfie as multiple and fragmented. This is an entirely different way of thinking about subjectivity and identity that puts forward the possibility of discarding binary and oppositional thinking in favor of multiplicity. One is neither Jew or Christian, neither Black or White, neither gay or straight, neither working or middle class, rather one is assembling something out of all of the above just for this instant.
The ethics of the selfie lie in a procedure that cannot be explained neither by heightened individualism nor by extended socialization, it is neither a particle nor a wave, but a state of undecidability. It is an expression of a demand that both the content of the image and its means of production will be fully present to consciousness at all times. For this reason, the selfie picture is first and foremost difficult because it requires that we consider its technique on the same level as its content. Theodor Adorno already said that ‘the morality of thought […] lies in simultaneous demands that phenomena be allowed to speak as such […] and yet that their relation to consciousness as the subject, reflection, be at every moment maintained.’ (Adorno 2005, p. 74). In other words, ethics is a dual concern with the ’things themselves’ and with the way consciousness grasps them. Following Adorno, we must demand that the selfie is allowed to speak as an image and as a product of networked operations. The ethics of the selfie is located not in its subject but in the interrelated and unresolved tension between the subject and the techniques, processes and institutions by which the subject is coming into being.
In ‘The Care of the Self’ Michel Foucault conducts a brilliant analysis of sexual ethics that ‘revolves around the question of the self, of its dependence and independence, of its universal form and of the connection it can and should establish with others, of the procedures by which it exerts its control over itself, and of the way in which it can establish a complete supremacy over itself’. (Foucault 1990, pp. 238-9) For Foucault, it is not the self that desires sexual intercourse, but it is the practice of pleasure, on all its nuanced techniques, regulations and prohibitions, that creates this very ‘self’ as a site of intensive and obsessive attention to the organism. The network, conceived as the universal erogenous zone is the current form of the organism, and computational technologies meshed with technologies of pleasure such as the selfie help it to multiply through continuous reproduction. This is an ethics of online existence that does not separate between aims and means and does not adhere to a pre-defined logic. Instead it is derived entirely from ‘self-preoccupation’ from heightened attention to the instability of identity (sexual or otherwise) and from and increasing emphasis on the ‘frailty of the individual faced with the manifold ills that sexual activity can give rise to’. (Foucault 1990, p. 238)
Against the dominant fundamentalist narrative of sexual austerity as virtue and promiscuity as a sin, and the accompanying discourse of domination and power, Foucault proposes a way of thinking about the self not in a judgmental way (virtue/sin, pleasure/pain) but as a deeply problematic, unresolved and uncomfortable technique of caring for oneself. The self is invented through practices of pleasure. In this way Foucault suggests that the notion of ‘self’ – understood as a technology of caring for one’s own body – breaks with the dialectics imposed by the social organization according to libidinal hierarchies that rank pleasures on scales of legality, morality and acceptability. Similarly, it seems to me that the selfie might suggest a rejection of the hierarchy that takes its marching orders from the Platonic distinction between original and copy, and that derives its disciplinary force from the pedagogical dictum to mistrust appearances and surfaces because they are shallow, sensuous and ultimately misleading.
In Plato’s cave, a line is being drawn between appearances, as the fallible impressions for the senses, and true knowledge that can be arrived at by rational logic and reason alone. The problem with this analysis, that was set in motion by Plato but is alive and kicking in all forms of contemporary visual and media studies, is that this privileging of the rational over the sensual, of the analysis over experience and generally speaking of the brain over the genitals, has the unfortunate consequence that it also obliterates the present, as the moment in which something happens, for the simple reason that this ‘something’ – weather a touch, a swipe, a sniff a lick or a click – is always already occurred, moved to memory, became part of the past by the time it is analyzed by the rational mind. Plato’s cave is the prototype of a time-machine because it sets up the conditions that lead to the rule of the ticking clock over our lives. For Plato reason and logic are the highest form of truth, deeper and more meaningful than the deceiving surface of the image. Reason always comes after the experience and so linear chronology is being established: first experience, then reason. And this what is being lost in this procedure: the right here, right now of this moment. As Johnny Golding puts it: ‘right here, right now, in all its acne and smells, burning with the paradox of vitality, anger, cruelty, joy, weakness, intelligence, stupidity and temptation’. (Golding 2014, p. 2)
If it was not uploaded to the (social) network it is not a selfie but an arcane self-portrait. For this reason, the selfie suggests a completely different relationship to time than the linear time of Plato’s cave. The selfie is not concerned with the historical past, with arresting a fleeting moment for posterity. In short, it is not a photograph in the traditional sense of freezing something and making it available for all future instances. Correctly understood, the selfie does not belong to the past at all, rather it encapsulates the present moment as the ‘ecstatic temporality of the is’. (Heidegger 1991, p. 41) What this means is that the representational regularity of traditional photography is disrupted by the introduction of a dimension that was always already part of the photographic image, but summarily forgotten about until the arrival of the selfie. This is the dimension of sharing, of dissemination and distribution.
Photography have always been a distributive art form, it is nothing else than a photo-copy, but in traditional theory the horizontal distribution of the image, its inherent ability to be duplicated, copied and re-produced is always considered secondary to the content. Famously ‘content is king’, but in this case what is the copy, the sharing, the dissemination of content? It is that which is subservient to the content-king. But the selfie changes all that because here sharing does not come after content, nor is it secondary to it. The sharing of the selfie is its content, and in this act of sharing the very ’I’ is being complicated, problematized and situated as a relationship with others, a relationship that is established by an economy of sharing. This is not the I of Descartes’ Cogito in which the subject always knows himself by taking thought as the undeniable ground of its existence. The selfie suggests an attempt at self-cognition that is predisposed to failure, to missing out and not arriving at any form of truth.
The selfie is perhaps the first form of popular photography that does not make truth its explicit goal. The selfie is subversive, not only because displaying one’s body in public for no financial gain is usually frowned upon (Tiidenberg, & Cruz 2015), but also because the defining quality of the selfie is its instant sharability: The logic of the selfie does not distinguish between the act of ‘taking’, ‘making’ or ‘snapping’ and the act of uploading and sharing. The shooting and the sharing are fused into one: two logics that have been kept separate for millennia are brought together in the act that allows us to glimpse an inconvenient truth, namely that every rational act is also a sensual act, because here the representational logic states ‘this is I’ precisely at the same space in which the logic of sharing, of intimacy and of desire announces ‘this is now!’.
Because the selfie is ‘made for sharing’ it cannot be comprehended with the tools of semiotic analysis that seeks to explain photographs in terms of the indexical symbol that signifies the (absent) object. For this reason, approaching the selfie from the perspective of media studies or art history would, at best, get only half the picture. The notion of care that is embodied in the act of sharing is not a symbol, it is not a sign, or a speech act. It can of course be all these things, but it is also something else that transcends linguistic codes. Human beings can re-present to themselves only that which stands outside themselves, only that which is external to their being. But sharing is not external to being human, it is not outside, it is, on the contrary, precisely that which makes the human possible. When Heidegger attended to the question of sharing he considered a jug. Like the selfie, the jug has the ability to share its contents, and for Heidegger in the outpouring of the vine from the jug the essence of being as sharing is disclosed: ‘In the gift of the pour, the earth and sky abide. In the gift of the pour there abides at the same time earth and sky, divinities and mortals. These four, united in themselves, belong together’. (Heidegger 2012, p. 11)
But what – one might ask – is being shared in the sharing of the selfie? Are we talking about pixels, packets of data, algorithms or information? Not at all. Once we cease to try to understand the selfie in terms of representation (whether semiological, aesthetic, economic or cultural) we are free to explore its condition of self-replication without any metaphysical baggage. The right question to ask is not ‘what the selfie represents’ but ‘where is it’, as it is the later question that opens up the possibility of conceiving the selfie as a field of self-similar instances that mutate and replicate according to the logic of fractal geometry while maintaining both self-similarity and difference from itself. (Laruelle 2011, pp. 79-84) The self-similarity of the selfie proceeds along the horizontal as well as the vertical axis. The selfie is not only similar to itself in all its iterations on various screens and devices, it is also self-similar to and different from all other selfies.
Type ‘selfie’ into your favorite image search engine and you will be looking at a wall of pictures, an on-the-fly archive of poses, postures, identities… but this is not all. There is something else there, something less visible than the pictures but not less real or tangible. This something is the difference between the selfies, a difference that can only become manifest due to their self-similarity. This is finally what is being shared: not the picture of a face, a six pack or a protruding arm, but a difference that is emerging out of an archive of self-similar selfies. Foucault again: ‘[the archive] establishes that we are difference, that our reason is the difference of discourses, our history the difference of time, our selves the difference of masks.’ (Foucault 1989, p. 131) For Foucault, the real purpose of the archive is not to preserve memories, identities, ideologies and histories. What the archive archives is the difference between versions, styles and structures. It is this difference that overcomes identity as the universal common denominator and it is this difference that allows for a prolific multiplicity of spatial and temporal selves.
What is being shared in the act of the selfie is the possibility of detaching the image from its foundations in Platonic metaphysical unity and the chance of overcoming the representational force of photography by considering the selfie not as a container of some pre-given knowledge but as a force of difference. The selfie opens up a possibility of a discourse about the self and about photography that is not bound to indexicality, representation or memory but instead suggests a meditation on the forces of the network expressed through the plurality of fragments that taken together constitute the gift of the selfie.
References
Adorno, T.W., 2005, Minima Moralia : Reflections on a Damaged Life, Verso, London ; New York.
Benjamin, W. 2005, Doctrine of the Similar, in Selected writings Vol. 2. Pt. 2. 1931 - 1934, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass; London, England, p. 7.
Foucault, M., 1989, The archaeology of knowledge, Translated by Sheridan Smith. Routledge, London; New York.
Foucault, M., 1990, The care of the self, Penguin Books.
Golding, J., 2014, Ecce Homo Sexual: Ontology and Eros in the Age of Incompleteness and Entanglement, Parallax, 20(3), pp. 217-30.
Heidegger, M., 1991, Nietzsche; The Eternal Recurrence of the Same, Harper, San Francisco.
Heidegger, M., 2012, Bremen and Freiburg lectures: insight into that which is and basic principles of thinking, Indiana University Press, Bloomington.
Laruelle, F., 2011, Le concept de non-photographie = The concept of non-photography, Translated by R. Mackay. Urbanomic ; Sequence Press, Falmouth, UK; New York.
Tiidenberg, K. & Cruz, E.G., 2015, Selfies, Image and the Re-making of the Body, Body & Society, pp. 1-26.
June, 1972 & A chief who does not command:
“Primitive society has always been considered a place of absolute difference in relation to western society, a strange and unthinkable space of absence - absence of all that constitutes the observers’ socio-cultural universe: a world without hierarchy, people who obey no one, a society indifferent to possession of wealth, chiefs who do not command, cultures without morals for they are unaware of sin, classless societies, societies without a State, etc. In short, what the writings of ancient travelers or modern scholars constantly cry out and yet never manage to say is that primitive society is, in its being, undivided.”1 – Pierre Clastres, Archaeology of Violence
/0/. A Permanent Exercise in the Decolonization of Thought
In June of 1972, Pierre Clastres participated in a roundtable discussion on Anti-Oedipus, where Deleuze and Guattari were present as respondents. After a long period of questions and criticisms from other participants (through which Clastres remained silent) he interrupted the conversation with this striking claim: “Deleuze and Guattari have written about Savages and Barbarians what ethnologists up to now have not.”1 Now, given the ethos of the French philosophical scene at this time such laudatory remarks tend to suggest a tinge of irony if not a complete lack of seriousness.2 However, if there is something serious intended by this claim it is due to a shared assumption by Clastres and D&G; namely, that true philosophical and anthropological thinking must become a “permanent exercise in the decolonization of thought.”3
For Clastres, this means acknowledging and addressing the covert forms of eurocentrism that persist within the epistemic framework of anthropology. Thus, what was signaled by the remark with which we began is something like the truth of the socio-political embeddedness of the knowing-subject: it is the ethnographer’s and anthropologist’s subject matter that obliges them to enter into a relation with that ‘unthinkable space of absence’; the absence of all those social cues and normative values that render European social life as an intelligible and lived reality. If the ethnographer can successfully excise these dogmatic presuppositions (as Clastres thinks is possible and as we will see below) they wouldn’t merely benefit from a certain level of epistemic certainty about their subject matter. Additionally, and perhaps most importantly, one would understand the positive reason for why certain societies are without States: namely, that non-State societies have intentionally constructed an entire way of living that is antithetical to State capture. In Clastres’ words, they are societies against the State.
For Deleuze, we see a similar notion as early as Difference and Repetition regarding the nature of ‘social Ideas’ and constructing a Thought that is adequate to Ideas themselves:
“In short, the economic is...the totality of the problems posed to a given society. In all rigour, there are only economic social problems, even though the solutions may be juridical, political, or ideological, and the problems may be expressed in these fields of resolvability...Not that the observer can draw the least optimism from this, for these ‘solutions’, may involve stupidity or cruelty, the horror of war or ‘the solution of the Jewish problem’.”4
For Clastres, as with Deleuze (with and without Guattari), attaining a Thought that is adequate to its Idea does not guarantee the moral virtue, or constitute the innocence and objectivity, of the thinker: the Idea may clarify the various fields of resolution to the economic problem but the Idea does not legislate its outcomes due to some innate moralizing logic of establishing an equivalence between a problem and its resolution.5 Thus, in order to understand the points of convergence between these thinkers we’ll begin with an explication of Clastres’ analysis of the function of war and violence in what he calls ‘Primitive’ societies.6 Then, we will turn to Deleuze and Guattari’s chapter on Nomadology in order to see how Clastres’ ideas inform their understanding of the nomadic war machine and the State. Finally, we will conclude by developing some of the main consequences regarding the differences in how Clastres and Deleuze and Guattari define the nomadic war machine, how Deleuze and Guattari break from Clastres’ analysis, and the significance of this break in how the latter understand what is truly revolutionary in politics and what is revolutionary in society as it presently exists.
/1/. War Is ‘The Pure and Social Form of Violence’
In order to address the limits and errors of anthropology, Pierre Clastres resurrects the question of the role of violence and warfare in non-State societies. For Clastres, the question of war has marked the internal limit of various anthropological accounts - where this limit is constituted by the inability to understand warfare from the perspective of non-State groups. Historically, war in societies without a State has continuously been ‘accounted for’ by its reduction to something other than itself (as a mere doubling of biological aggression; as the struggle over the scarcity of resources; or as the symptom of an unsuccessful transaction between two different social groups).7 While each account of war is academically significant for Clastres, it is the exchangist framework of Lévi-Strauss that is given the closest treatment since it is via structural anthropology that we are closest to, and yet farthest from, alleviating ourselves of the eurocentric horizon of anthropological study. Thus, Clastres cites the following passage from the Elementary Structures of Kinship as emblematic of this exchangist perspective:
“...in Lévi-Strauss’s great sociological work, Elementary Structures of Kinship, at the end of one of the most important chapters, “The Principle of Reciprocity”: [Lévi-Strauss writes] “There is a link, a continuity, between hostile relations and the provision of reciprocal prestations: exchanges are peacefully resolved wars, and wars are the result of unsuccessful transactions.””8
Thus, according to Lévi-Strauss, war in pre-State societies is what happens when the diplomatic exchange between autonomous social groups fails. However, says Clastres, Lévi-Strauss’s assertion that exchange is logically prior to war cannot obtain for two main reasons. First, drawing on the work of anthropologist Marshall Sahlins9, exchange does not precede war in pre-State societies due to Sahlins’ discovery that the true basis of non-state societies was predicated on an economy of abundance as opposed to economies of scarcity. Given this economic relationship between non-state societies and their territorial milieu the logical relationship between exchange and violence appears as suspicious; if for no other reason than the unquestioned assumptions Clastres finds at the heart of the the exchangist hypothesis:
“One would assume, all things being equal for all local groups, a general absence of violence: it could only arise in rare cases of territorial violation; it would only be defensive, and thus never produce itself, each group relying on its own territory which it has no reason to leave.”10
Thus, Clastres wonders, what motivates the exchange among social groups when each group, due to abundance and surplus, is materially and economically self-sufficient? That is, how can Lévi-Strauss posit the logical priority of exchange over war if exchange appears as superfluous from the perspective of each social groups relative autonomy and natural condition of affluence?
It is for this reason, says Clastres, that we need to understand that it is not exchange that explains war, but it is war that gives rise to exchange among different non-State social groups. In other words, war is not the negative side of the positive definition of non-State societies. Rather, war constitutes one of the fundamental and positive features of non-State societies as such. If war is given logical priority over exchange it is not simply because war comes before peace; rather, war is given logical priority due to the autonomous, autarkic, and self-sufficient desire of societies without a State. As Clastres writes
“At its actual level of existence...primitive society presents two essential sociological properties that touch upon its very being: the social being that determines the reason for being and the principle of the intelligibility of war. The primitive community is at once a totality and a unity. A totality in that it is a complete, autonomous, whole ensemble, ceaselessly attentive to preserving its autonomy: a society in the full sense of the word. A unity in that its homogenous being continues to refuse social division, to exclude inequality, to forbid alienation. Primitive society is a single totality in that the principle of its unity is not exterior to it: it does not allow any configuration of One to detach itself from the social body in order to represent it, in order to embody it as unity. This is why the criterion of non-division is fundamentally political: if the savage chief is powerless, it is because society does not accept power separated from its being, division, established between those who command and those who obey.”11
What gives non-State societies their ‘reason for being’ is simultaneously the relative abundance of nature and the political aim of the autonomous self-determination of each social group for-themselves. It is here that we encounter the economic and political reason for constructing a society without a State: not only is non-State society self-sufficient economically but it is also self-determinant politically. What is implied in Clastres’ analysis is not only the necessary corrective to the eurocentric practices of anthropology and ethnography;12 additionally, implied here is the claim to the existence of a socio-political intentionality on the part of non-State societies. Thus, it is not enough to say the nomads lacks a State and thus lack (civil) society. What Clastres demonstrates is that the nomad finds nothing of value in being assimilated into the State apparatus itself; and this lack of value attributed to assimilation from the perspective of non-State social groups is, in itself, a socio-political prescription. Hence Clastres’ well known formula of non-State societies as not simply being without a State; rather, they are social wholes fundamentally against the State. Thus, one of the fundamental features of non-State societies; one of their positive definitions; is the intentional organization of a society that seeks to ward off integration into the State apparatus.
But what does this mean for war as the other positive determination of societies against the State? Given what has been said, war must now be understood as the social and political mechanism by which each autonomous social group ensures its autonomy relative to all neighboring groups. When Clastres characterizes war in non-State societies as the ‘pure and social form of violence’ we must understand two things. First, war in its pure form, is never something embarked upon for-itself or for the purposes of simply eliminating a rival group; war is not the object of nomadic society. Rather, it is the means by which the autarkic principle (the true objective of nomadic society) is preserved at each step of the way. War, as the social form of violence, responds to the problems we encountered with Lévi-Strauss’s exchangist account. If war in its pure form is understood to be the means to secure the political desire for autonomy respective to all rivalling non-State groups, war in its social form is the cause of, or the sufficient reason for, exchange to take place. Why? Because, says Clastres, one never wages war without acquiring the means for a successful campaign. For non-State societies the means for success are not simply economic or technological; rather, each social group “is resigned to alliance because it would be too dangerous to engage in military operations alone, and that, if one could, one would gladly do without allies who are never absolutely reliable. There is, as a result, an essential property of international life in primitive society: war relates first to alliance; war as an institution determines alliance as a tactic [...] We see now that seeking an alliance depends on actual war: there is sociological priority of war over alliance. Here, the true relationship between exchange and war emerges. Indeed, where are relations of exchange established, which socio-political units assume a principle of reciprocity? These are precisely the groups implicated in the networks of alliance; exchange partners are allies, the sphere of exchange is that of alliance. This does not mean, of course that were it not for alliance, there would no longer be exchange; exchange would simply find itself circumscribed within the space of the autonomous community at the heart of which it never ceases to operate; it would be strictly intra-communal. Thus, one exchanges with allies; there is exchange, because there is alliance.13
War as ‘the pure and social form of violence’ is finally revealed as it exists within non-State societies: as the means by which each rival group ensures their relative autonomy from all other groups14 and as the basis on which alliances are formed and exchanges made. Thus Clastres writes, and in a manner reminiscent of Deleuze and Guattari, that to understand the function of war and violence in non-State societies necessarily means to understand that “[A]s long as there is war, there is autonomy: this is why war cannot cease, why it must not cease, why it is permanent...the logic of primitive society is a centrifugal logic, a logic of the multiple. The Savages want the multiplication of the multiple.”15
At this point it is worth recalling Deleuze and Guattari’s own attempt to properly pose the question of what defines the nomad/nomadic existence in relation to the life of the migrant: “The nomad has a territory; he follows customary paths...But the question is what in nomad life is a principle and what is only a consequence.”16 War is the principle on which nomadic life is predicated; of life in societies against the State; and exchange is merely the consequence of the tactical alliances established in this permanent war of ‘multiplying the multiple’, or of ensuring the relative autarky of nomadic social groups as such. And in line with Clastres’ positive determination of war in non-State societies, Deleuze and Guattari write, “Primitive war does not produce the State any more than it derives from it. And it is no better explained by exchange than by the State...war is what limits exchange, maintains them in the framework of “alliances”; it is what prevents them from becoming a State factor, from fusing groups.”17
/2/. The Nomadic War Machine Contra State-Capture
Now we are in a better position to interrogate Deleuze and Guattari’s various claims about the war machine and its relation to the State18: that war is against the State19; the war machine is an exteriority and the State an interiority20; the State is sovereignty21 and its concern is to conserve a certain organization of power relations22; and so on. For Deleuze and Guattari, one of the recurring themes that is explored through their references to Clastres’ work in Chapters 12 and 13 of A Thousand Plateaus is the historical antagonism between non-State and State forms and the politico-economic sovereignty each implies. That is to say, then, Deleuze and Guattari do not speak about the civil war of the nomads against State-capture to simply valorize a permanent and savage war against the idyllic order of civil society for-itself. Rather, the nomad and the State allow us to establish a continuum of the differing ways in which political and economic power is distributed, and how it can potentially circulate, ossify, transform, and be commandeered by internal or external forces under certain social and determinate conditions. In other words, the nomadic war machine and the State apparatus of capture are two objective tendencies; of deterritorialization and reterritorialization, respectively; that coexist in any ordering of society.23 Thus, Deleuze and Guattari write, “...the integration of the nomad into the State is a vector traversing nomadism from the very beginning, from the first act of war against the State.”24
It is for this reason that Deleuze and Guattari treat the State as an endogenous and exogenous feature of non-State societies and the nomadic war machine as the anticipation and warding off of State capture. In other words, the State can arise from within a group or come from the outside in variable forms (colonialism, primitive accumulation, conquest, invasion, etc.). To ward off the State-as-internal threshold of every non-State formation, political authority is continuously mobile and distributed amongst the members of the group. In those social formations whose aim it is to ward off the State, positions of power are always made relative to the social group as a whole. Hence Clastres’ example of the chief whose only means of maintaining political authority is through prestige25; or Deleuze and Guattari’s treatment of bands, packs, and groups where there is a ‘perpetual blackmail’ on those who possess a certain amount of power and where this minimal degree of sovereignty can dissolve at any moment. This nomadic-social distribution of sovereign power seeks to ensure that power never stays in one’s hands long enough for it to become a force that re-centers/captures nomadic societies relations to serve ends other than the group considered as a whole.
By contrast, in those instances where the State manifests as an exogenous possibility to the nomad, the war machine has war only as the means to ward off State-capture. In any case, whether the State is considered as endogenous or exogenous possibility of non-State societies, the nomadic war machine encounters war as its supplement in its ultimate goal of ensuring autarkic and autonomous collective self-determination. Thus, when Deleuze and Guattari characterize the State as an overcoding, reterritorializing, apparatus of capture, it is precisely because whether considered as an endogenous or exogenous feature of social organizations, the capture of the nomad by the State is the effectuation of the reorganization of the political and economic relations of nomadic society and transforms the nomad into an organ for aims established by the State-as-Organism.26
/3/. The Most Savage Fruit of Alienation27
Despite the revolutionary promise of the nomadic war machines relation to the State, Deleuze and Guattari are quick to note that “...the present situation is highly discouraging. We have watched the war machine grow stronger and stronger...we have seen it assign it as its objective a peace still more terrifying than fascist death…”28 What happened, then, in this long history of the struggle between nomadic war machines and State societies, that solicits the caution of our schizo-philosophers? Quite straightforwardly, it is the construction of the capitalist world market; the emergence of which confronts the nomadic war machine as its most formidable enemy precisely because both the nomad and Capital seek to weaponize the processes of deterritorialization and their lines of flight to effectuate a truly destratified circulation of political sovereignty and economic power. If globally integrated capitalism constitutes one kind of war machine insofar as its moments of reterritorialization fall back onto a more fundamental process of deterritorialization29 this is due to the capitalist transformation of the function of the State as an apparatus of capture:
“To the extent that capitalism constitutes an axiomatic (production for the market), all States and all social formations tend to become isomorphic in their capacity as models of realization: there is but one centered world market, the capitalist one, in which even the so-called socialist countries participate. Worldwide organization thus ceases to pass “between” heterogenous formations since it assures the isomorphy of those formations. But it would be wrong to confuse isomorphy with homogeneity. For one thing, isomorphy allows and even incites, a great heterogeneity among States (democratic, totalitarian, and especially, “socialist” States are not facades) [...] When international organization becomes the capitalist axiomatic, it continues to imply a heterogeneity of social formations, it gives rise to and organizes its “Third World.””30
It is here that we see the similarity and difference between the nomadic war machine and capitalism as a worldwide organization of society: namely, the pure war effectuated by nomadic societies is doubled in the pure war effectuated by the capitalist axiomatic of production for the market. Thus, in both instances, the defining tendency of nomadic and capitalist society is one which seeks to retain the qualitative differences that define particular social groups (or, for capitalism, different nation-States). However, capitalism appears as the perfect double of the nomadic war machine in that it has found an other mode for the distribution and circulation of political sovereignty and economic resources that no longer relies on returning the fruits of Capital to the interests of Labor.
Thus, if it was the case with those societies against the State that sovereign power was continuously distributed to avoid its accumulation in the hands of a single individual and the abundance of resources was expended for benefit the group as a whole; the axiomatic of capital (production for the market) supplants and modifies the anti-State forms of sovereign power. Now it is capital that functions as the sovereign insofar as it is the axiomatic of the market that determines how resources, value, and commodities are distributed, and requires a continuous kind of warfare in the form of primitive accumulation for the infinite expansion of capital.31 In other words, the objective tendency of a deterritorialization that only reterritorializes on itself which defines the nomadic war machine as such, is actualized in both nomadic groups and capitalism where each actualization presents a means of organizing society, where one actualization necessarily excludes the other: either social relations are nomadically-mediated phenomena, or social relations are market-mediated phenomena. Thus, if it is the case that in non-State societies every kind of relation found therein is mediated by the nomadic-collective interest of the group considered as a whole; it is with the existence of globally integrated capitalism and its appropriation of the war machine that all hitherto existing relations in society are now mediated by the axiomatic (or principles) of the market as such.
And if only to add insult to injury, as Deleuze and Guattari mentioned in the previous passage, the capitalist world market affords nation-States a certain heterogeneous existence and simply requires their isomorphy in their adherence to the capitalist axiomatic as sovereign power and as economic interest. Thus if it was the aim of ‘societies against the State’ to ward off various forms of instantiated divisions within their social group (‘to forbid alienation’), Capital abides by the wishes of non-State societies since political and economic power has moved elsewhere.
To merely be against the State now appears as the most savage fruit of alienation under globally integrated capital since the restitution of political and economic power can no longer simply be achieved within, and/or against, the nation-State itself. It is for these reasons that Deleuze and Guattari will define two kinds of war machines. One the one hand, we have the capitalist world-war machine that makes war its object through the continuation of primitive accumulation; even to the extent that the perpetual war required at the level of anti-State societies is equated with a globalized perpetual peace (via phenomena such as the ‘war on terror’). On the other hand, there is the nomadic war machine that encounters war only as its supplement in the midst of its overall project of constructing a smooth space in order to avoid moments of capture, which function according to sovereign-Faciality; and to avoid the ossification of political power which produces a veritable fascism, whether internal or external to social formations as such. Thus, and with emergence of the world wide ecumenical machine of capitalism, it is no longer simply the State that imposes itself upon anti-State social groups in the same way that the Organism imposes a certain order and appropriates the capacities of its organs; now it is Capital as worldwide axiomatic that imposes itself as the Organism that gives a specific order to States and non-State social formations alike.
At this juncture we need to recall the following: it is in the same moment where Deleuze and Guattari find various merits in Clastres’ attempts to overcome the eurocentric blindspots internal to anthropological analysis, that they also find Clastres’ definite limit. Namely, Clastres’ account of societies against State-capture fails at the moment it would need to provide an analysis of how the State emerged in contrast to non-State societies. As they write,
“[T]he more deeply Clastres delved into the problem, the more he seemed to deprive himself of the means of resolving it. he tended to make primitive societies hypostases, self-sufficient entities (he insisted heavily on this point). He made their formal exteriority into a real independence. Thus he remain an evolutionist, and posited a state of nature. Only this state of nature was, according to him, a fully social reality instead of a pure concept, and the evolution was a sudden mutation instead of a development.”32
Hence, the war machine that was discovered in Clastres’ research and the war machine that is evoked in Deleuze and Guattari’s references to Clastres undergoes a transformation. No longer is war simply the instance of conflict between State and non-State groups (this conflict is rather one instantiation of the absolute and unconditioned Idea of war itself).33 Rather, war is understood as the more general, and objective, tendential process that defines any social organization.
It is for these reasons that Deleuze will remark later in his life, and with regards to his project with Guattari, that “we think any society is defined not so much by its contradictions as by its lines of flight, it flees all over the place, and it's very interesting to try and follow the lines of flight taking shape at some particular moment or other.”34 In other words, what is of principle for any social formation, and what only subsequently produces contradictions as its consequence, are the ways in which any ordering of society is subject to individuals, resources, processes, etc., that fail to be exhaustively incorporated into the dominant social order.
Thus, if the orthodox Marxist continues to proclaim that the history of all hitherto society is the history of class struggle, Deleuze and Guattari reply that the history of all hitherto societies is the negotiation of that which can and cannot be adequately incorporated, captured, normalized, and adjusted toward the ends of the political and economic order. And within their universal history of apparati of capture and lines of flight, Capitalism emerges as a monstrous hybrid between the nomadic distribution of sovereignty and economic abundance characteristic of non-State societies and the colonial and imperial war machine in order to maintain worldwide hegemony. That is, what Capital takes from the nomadic war machine is its aptitude for constructing a Body without Organs where there is a continuous circulation of political sovereignty and economic power while at the same time marrying this nomadic BwO to the order imposed on the organs by the Organism of State-capture. It is at this point in their analysis of Capital that it is worth highlighting their agreement with Marx’s characterization of the relationship between Labor and Capital in the Grundrisse. As Marx writes,
“The production process has ceased to be a labour process in the sense of a process dominated by labour as its governing unity. Labour appears, rather, merely as a conscious organ, scattered among the individual living workers at numerous points of the mechanical system [...] In machinery, knowledge appears as alien, external to him; and living labour [as] subsumed under self-activating objectified labour.”35
In Deleuzo-Guattarian terms, Capital is peculiar since it is a BwO that acts upon its organs in ways that are similar to the subjugation inflicted by the Organism. It is due to this peculiarity that they write, in a more sober moment, that the war machine has grown stronger only to produce something more terrifying than fascist death: namely, the world war machine of which Capital constructs a BwO that allows the flow and circulation of all of its elements in a productive manner while the very same BwO exploits the productive capacities of its organs for ends other than those elements that constitute the BwO as such.36
Thus, and given this relationship between labor-as-organ of capitalism’s worldwide Organism, we can reasonably wonder if, on this account of the relationship between nomadism and capitalism, there is some significant difference between Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the Nomad and Marx’s concept of Labor. That is, can we justifiably equate this concept of the nomad with the Marxian concept of Labor? Additionally, if Deleuze and Guattari want to remain Marxists, we must also ask if they simply appropriate Marx’s understanding of Labor wholesale or if Deleuze and Guattari offer a transformation of the social antagonism as first schematized by Marx himself?
/4/. Between the Revolutionizing Tendencies of Capital and the Revolutionary Praxis of Minorities Exists A World of Difference
While it may appear as if there is little to no significant difference between the nomad and Labor, it is important to understand that the difference between labor and the nomadic war machine is the difference between Labor, which is understood as the organization of a people along certain lines of flight or certain points of tension within capitalism itself, while the nomadic war machine is simply one of the objective tendencies that defines social formations under specific socio-determinate conditions. Thus, contrary to the apparent identity between the nomad and Labor, we can neither equate Labor nor Capital with the nomadic war machine itself. Rather, Labor and Capital are two qualitatively different attempts to utilize, organize, and weaponize those tendential processes of global society that either seek to push Capital to the point of its radical transformation and towards the realization of global communism; or to continuously establish more axioms that temporarily resolve the crises of Capital through its organs that perpetuate capital’s realization of value (legal, juridical, military, political, etc.).
It is for this reason that Deleuze and Guattari write, “[T]he question is therefore less the realization of war than the appropriation of the war machine.”37 Thus the question of the nomad’s relationship to Labor is not a question that seeks to establish their essential identity. Rather, the question posed by the nomadic war machine, understood as the various tendencies of deterritorialization within a given social formation, is a socio-economic problem that is posed to both Labor and Capital; where both Labor and Capital are two ways of resolving the socio-economic problems posed to a given society and thus involve qualitatively different appropriations of the nomadic war machine as such.
Thus, there is an important difference between the revolutionary potential of those nomadic tendencies that push social formations toward points of structural transformation and the subsequent politics that ensues given how social formations make use of the variable processes of deterritorialization. Namely, the revolutionary organization of Labor over and against Capital is not simply one of capitalism’s ‘revolutionizing tendencies’ that force capital’s ever growing expansion across the globe.38 Rather, it is the means by which Labor uses the lines of flight that define capitalist society as the grounds for the abolition of capital itself. Thus, what is definitive of revolutionary politics on the one hand, cannot be equated to the revolutionizing tendencies of the capitalist mode of production, on the other; and between a revolutionary tendency and a revolutionary praxis exists an entire future-world of difference.
Thus, if one is to search for a term that serves the same function as Marx’s concept of Labor; and if one acknowledges the difference in kind between the revolutionizing tendencies of capitalism and revolutionary politics; one would do better in finding something akin to Labor in Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of the minor/minoritarian. As they write:
“The power of minority, of particularity, finds its figure or its universal consciousness in the proletariat...We have often seen capitalism maintain and organize inviable States, according to its needs, and for the precise purpose of crushing minorities. The minorities issue is instead that of smashing capitalism, of redefining socialism, of constituting a war machine capable of countering the world war machine by other means.”39
Thus, against this common misconception that Deleuze and Guattari privilege deterritorialization for-itself prior to any concrete determination of how society should be globally arranged, what is truly revolutionary according to our authors and what social position in contemporary capitalism possesses the revolutionary force that Marx identified in the relation of Labor to Capital at the end of the nineteenth century, is the manner by which various social groups engage with the revolutionizing tendencies of capital in order to construct a revolutionary political praxis.
For Deleuze and Guattari, it is the minority groups that serve the function of Marx’s nineteenth century proletariat; not because the economic conditions that constitute class relations lose their significance. Rather, the minor/minoritarian speaks to the fact that, during the time of their writing, the economic conditions that constitute class relations, and thus the very makeup of the composition of the working class itself, is becoming increasingly a heterogenous composition of marginalized and exploited individuals viz-á-viz globally integrated capital.
/5/. War Machines In The Age Of Capitalist Reproduction
When we began with the nomads of Clastres who could have predicted that we would end with the nomadic war machines mutation into the worldwide ecumenical war machine of Capital? Least of all Clastres himself, who would be horrified by capitalism’s hybrid BwO that mimics the nomadic distribution of sovereignty and resources while constantly assimilating and/or capturing everyone and everything, which attempts to break free from capital, through the steady addition of capitalist axiomatics. From the present in which Deleuze and Guattari were writing, Capital’s BwO appears as the nomadic war machine with its specific mode of circulation and distribution that Clastres’ account could never have anticipated. It is precisely for this reason that Deleuze and Guattari remain unsatisfied with Clastres’ attempts to define the war machine as something specific to the War (as pure and social form) waged by societies against State capture. To the contrary, it was the nomads who weaponized the process of deterritorialization relative to their determinate social conditions while the war machines themselves are never circumscribed by, and subject to, specific spatio-temporal determination.
It is due to the fact that Clastres’ non-State societies can no longer be treated as synonymous with the nomadic war machine (where the nomadic war machine is now understood as the processes of deterritorialization as such); and that the nomadic war machine now appears to find its role and function within Capital’s BwO as those various revolutionizing tendencies found within capitalist society; that the conditions for revolutionary politics itself can no longer satisfy itself by simply replicating the lines of flight that move one toward certain thresholds of societal transformation. As we saw, to simply equate revolutionary political praxis with the revolutionizing tendencies of capital only guarantees the continuation of capitalism by other means (military campaigns, the guarantee of political emancipation through a form of human rights that remains compatible with the axiomatic of the capitalist market40, etc.).
It is for these reasons that Deleuze and Guattari evoke the minor and minoritarian composition of class constitution under contemporary capitalism; if only to underscore the increasing severity of the means of value extraction that no longer confines itself to the factory. Thus, it is with the criticisms of Clastres, the redefinition of the war machine, and the distinction between tendency and praxis that we, here, recall what Nicholas Thoburn has already so eloquently articulated: what is constitutive of revolutionary praxis (as opposed to tendency) is how minority groups “engage with the ‘objective’ lines of flight immanent to the social system [...] For Marx and Deleuze and Guattari, capitalism is a radically transformative social system that is premised on lines of flight; it was born through a new means of mobilizing and conjoining flows of money and flows of labour. The essence of capital is that it continually sets free its lines of flight - its made scientists, its countercultures, its warmongers - in order to open new territories for exploitation. It is thus a perpetual process of setting and break limits. Politics is not an assertion of a class or minority identity, but is a process of engagement with these ‘objective’ lines of flight. Inasmuch as an assemblage ‘works’ in a social system, its lines of flight are functional to it - they are not in themselves revolutionary. Politics thus seeks to engage with these flows (of people, ideas, relations, and machines in mutual interrelation) and, in a sense, push them further or take them elsewhere, against their immanent reterritorialization in fashions functional to the realization of surplus value. This is why for Marx the communist movement needs to follow a path through the flows of capitalism, not oppose an identity to it, and why Deleuze and Guattari suggest that minorities do not so much create lines of flight, as attach themselves to them (cf. Deleuze and Parnet 1987: 43).”41
- Pierre Clastres, Archaeology of Violence, trans. Jeanine Herman, (Semiotext(e): Los Angeles, 2010), p. 259
- Desert Islands, ‘Deleuze and Guattari Fight Back…”, (Semiotext(e): Los Angeles, 2004), p. 226.
- For example, consider the puzzlement inflicted upon present day academics by Foucault’s provocation that perhaps, one fine day, this century will be Deleuzian.
- Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Cannibal Metaphysics, trans. Peter Skafish (Univocal: Minneapolis, 2014), p. 48
- Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton (Columbia University Press: New York, 1994), p. 186
- There is a much more sophisticated argument behind this specific claim regarding the relationship between Ideas, Thought, and the identity between Ideas and their participants/claimants/copies, etc. Briefly, in Deleuze’s immanent critique of the Platonic dialectic, he finds two important features. First, that Plato gave the proper task to Thinking by orienting Thought toward the relationship between claimants and their Idea. Second, Plato’s error was in attempting to establish a logical identity between Idea and thing; between a model and its copy. This error is what is repeated throughout the history of philosophy, which assumes that difference can only be thought on the basis of, and through, Identity (A=A). For Deleuze, by contrast, the Platonic Idea is the true object of thought insofar as it lacks the means to provide us with any equivalence between Ideas and things, models and copies. Thus, in a certain sense, what Aristotle criticizes Plato for (by attempting to utilize myth as the mediating term of equivalence) is precisely what Deleuze finds of value in Plato’s dialectic. To proceed by problems means, prior to any identity/equivalence, grasping all the differences which lay a claim to the Idea itself. Thus, for Deleuze, Ideas are the true objects of Thought not because it gives us the means of establishing identity-as-reciprocity; where the subject and its predicates are essentially identical. Rather, Ideas are the true objects of Thought because they establish the relation of Identity-as-Inclusion: the subject and its predicates are qualitatively different but cannot be thought separately. Identity-as-Inclusion provides one with the means to think differences-in-themselves, without conflating them with some general or common term.
- For the purposes of this presentation I have chosen to use the terms non-State and pre-State societies as a substitute for Clastres’ more dated terminology of ‘Savage’ and ‘Primitive’ society. Also of interest for our purposes: at certain points in A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari will call non/pre-State societies ‘counter-State societies’.
- Briefly, the three frameworks breakdown as follows: The Naturalist interpretation accounts for violence/war by reducing its social manifestations to biological necessity: humans are naturally aggressive and in pre-state societies the use of violence is a means for the survival of hunter-gatherers (the hunter does violence, and kills, the hunted animal). The problem here is that war, then, is seen as the mere double of the necessary violence of the hunter. So war, if it is this very same violence, is the hunting of other humans with the aim of satisfying hunger. However, says Clastres, even the phenomena of cannibalism isn’t sufficiently explained by this naturalist framework since it would be easier in the life of non-state societies to hunt non-human animals. The Economist interpretation accounts for violence/war by interpreting war as indicative of the poverty of ‘primitive’ life; where, due to the underdevelopment of the productive forces (e.g., the lack of technological means for things such as agriculture), war is fought over the scarcity of resources. The Economist position asserts a metaphysical economy of scarcity as the natural precondition of non-state social life. For Clastres, this idea appears to be disproven by the research of Marshall Sahlins whose field work proposes that life in pre-state societies was actually predicated on an economy of an abundance of resources; where the majority of time is understood as leisure-time since the labor-time is reduced to a minimum. The Exchangist framework, which is developed above, is attributed to Lévi-Strauss’s thesis that “exchanges are peacefully resolved wars, and wars are the result of unsuccessful transactions.”
- Archaeology of Violence, p. 252-3
- Marshall Sahlins, Stone Age Economics (Chicago: Aldine•Altheron, Inc., 1972). Sahlins’ ethnographic work that discovers abundance and surplus as the true economic infrastructure of pre-State societies is explicated in the first chapter of this text entitled ‘The Original Affluent Society.’
- Archaeology of Violence, p. 258
- ibid., p. 261, my emphasis. One important implication here is Clastres’ equivalence between a divided society and the idea of alienation. Clastres also mentions at an earlier point in the text that bracketing the gendered division of labor within non-State societies, these social formations exist as fundamentally undivided since each member of the social whole is “polyvalent in a way; men know how to do everything men should know how to do, women know how to do everything women should know how to do. No individual is less knowledgeable or less capable; no individual can fall victim to the enterprises of another more talented or better-off…”(p. 259).
- i.e., societies without a State are not in some state of nature but are social wholes that attain a certain degree of economic and political autonomy
- ibid., p. 267
- Clastres’ phrasing: “the permanence of the dispersion, the parceling, the atomization of groups.” ibid., p. 274
- ibid., p. 274
- ATP, p. 380, my emphasis.
- ibid., p. 358, my emphasis.
- While I have not spent much time in this essay defining the State, as understood by either Clastres or Deleuze and Guattari, it is important to understand that the basic features of the State are the overcoding of pre-existent codes; reterritorialization of the smooth space of nomadic life; the consolidation of power along the vertical axis of sovereign-Faciality as opposed to the continuous distribution of sovereign power among the members of a group. So in other words the State ‘captures’ nomadic life and this ‘capture’ means the reorganization of the political and economic relations of nomadic society and transforms the nomad into an organ for aims established by the State-as-Organism. And it is on the basis of these contrasting features of non-State and State societies that we can understand Deleuze and Guattari’s remark from the Faciality chapter: “European racism as the white man’s claim has never operated by exclusion, or by the designation of someone as Other: it is instead primitive societies that the stranger is grasped as an “Other”...From the viewpoint of racism, there is no exterior, there are no people on the outside. There are only people who should be like us and whose crime it is not to be”, ibid., p. 178.
- “...the State was against war, so war is against the State...”, ibid., p. 357.
- “The exteriority of the war machine is also attested to by ethnology”, ibid., p. 357.
- “The State is sovereignty. But sovereignty only reigns over what it is capable of internalizing, of appropriating locally”, ibid., p. 360.
- “The concern of the State is to conserve”, ibid., p.357.
- However, this is not to say that non-State societies and societies with State-forms are simply the appearance of a more fundamental tendency of deterritorialization and reterritorialization. Rather, non-State and State societies are two actualizations of these tendencies. However, and this will become important for Deleuze and Guattari as this essay progresses, we risk falling into a certain trap by simply treating non-State societies as synonymous with the nomadic war machine as such and treating State societies as synonymous with some practical ossification of power that exists as an exogenous factor to social formations.
- ibid., p, 420.
- “...the chief, who has no instituted weapon other than his prestige, no other means of persuasion, no other rule that his sense of the group’s desires.” ibid., p. 357.
- Most importantly, it is by understanding how State capture constitutes precisely this relation of the nomad-as-organ and the State-as-Organism, that we can comprehend the specificity of the kind of systemic oppression effectuated through processes of normalization. For Deleuze and Guattari, this is most transparent in the emergence of European colonialism and its systemic institution of racism:“European racism as the white man’s claim has never operated by exclusion, or by the designation of someone as Other: it is instead primitive societies that the stranger is grasped as an “Other”...From the viewpoint of racism, there is no exterior, there are no people on the outside. There are only people who should be like us and whose crime it is not to be”, ibid., p. 178.
- I am indebted to Andrew Culp for this specific phrasing from his review essay ‘The Savage Fruit of Alienation,’ http://theanvilreview.org/print/the-savage-fruit-of-alienation/
- ibid., p 422.
- “With the nomad, on the contrary, it is deterritorialization that constitutes the relation to the earth, to such a degree that the nomad reterritorializes on deterritorialization itself”, ibid., p. 381.
- ibid., p. 436-7.
- Or, if one prefers retaining the Hegelian terms familiar to Marx, we might say that Capital is both in-itself and for-itself.
- ibid., p. 359.
- “...the nomad war machine does not appear to us to be one case of real war among others, as in Clausewitz, but on the contrary the content adequate to the Idea, the invention of the Idea, with its own objects, space, and composition of the nomos,” ibid., p. 420.
- Gilles Deleuze, Negotiations, trans. Martin Joughin, (Columbia University Press: New York, 1995), p. 171.
- Karl Marx Grundrisse, trans. Martin Nicolaus, (Penguin: New York, 1973), pp. 693-5.
- Regarding Deleuze and Guattari’s treatment of the State as it relates to globally integrated capitalism, it is important to highlight Eugene Holland’s text Nomad Citizenship, since Holland develops the concept of what he terms the ‘Death-State’ as the concept through which we can understand the recent developments of late capital and the political and economic transformations this has for the existence of the nation-State. For Holland, while it remains true that neoliberalism continuously curtails the influence of nation-States on the global economy it is equally true that the repressive function of the State has been on the rise, and for no accidental reason. “The Death-State entails the violence of permanent war, conducted, as we have seen, to produce both surplus-value for an important sector of capital and surplus power for the neo-despotic State-along with the abject submission in its citizens [...] State power thus derives not just from being in the position to decide and declare who is friend and who is enemy but from being in the position to demand the ultimate sacrifice: to give one’s life for one’s country. Because of this demand, the Death-State enjoys a monopoly not only on violence but also on citizenship, on people’s sense of belonging and the degree and kind of their investment in social groups” (Nomad Citizenship, p. 62). For more see Eugene W. Holland, Nomad Citizenship: Free-Market Communism and the Slow-Motion General Strike, (Minnesota University Press: Minneapolis, 2011), pp. 31-63.
- ATP, p. 420.
- This is the political valence of their well known statement that we should never believe that a smooth space will suffice to save us; ibid., p. 500.
- ibid., p. 472
- As Deleuze and Guattari write “Human rights are axioms. They can coexist on the market with many other axioms, notably those concerning the security of property, which are unaware of or suspend them even more than they contradict them...Rights save neither men nor philosophy that is reterritorialized on the democratic State. Human rights will not make us bless capitalism.” Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, What Is Philosophy?, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchill, (Verso: New York, 2009), p. 107.
- Nicholas Thoburn, Deleuze, Marx and Politics, (Routledge: New York, 2003), p. 29.
taken from here
Schneller als die Sonne – Schlafen mit toten Dingen & Vorwärts und vergessen
Allem Gerede von Datenautobahnen, Hochgeschwindigkeitszügen und Kopfschmerztabletten mit beschleunigter Wirkung zum Trotz: In Wahrheit steht alles still. Nur das nervöse Zucken immer engerer Produktionszyklen erweckt den Anschein von Bewegung – wie bei einer Fahrt auf einem Karussel, das auf der Stelle rotiert. Eine Ordnung versucht seit vierzig Jahren, ihr eigenes Ende hinauszuzögern. Für diesen Aufschub entschleunigt sie sich ständig durch immer mehr Sicherheit und Kontrolle, durch den Verzicht auf Fortschritt und den aggressiven Ausbau einer leerlaufenden Kommunikation. Mit kybernetischer List hat sie jede Vorstellung von der Zukunft abgeschafft.
Nach seinem viel beachteten Essay "Morgen werde ich Idiot", in dem er als Ausweg aus der kybernetischen Kontrollgesellschaft die Verweigerung vorschlug, richtet sich Hans-Christian Danys Hoffnung in diesem Buch auf die Wiederbelebung eines Imaginären, das sich auf das Unbekannte einlässt. Kann in der besseren Welt vielleicht nur ankommen, wer die Annahme aufgibt zu wissen, wie diese bessereWelt aussehen wird?
Die Zukunft kann nur unbekannt sein, und was gibt es Verführerischeres als das Geheimnis? Vielleicht liegt ein Schlüssel auch zur gesellschaftlichen Veränderung in Zufall und Hingabe. Ganz sicher findet er sich in der Euphorie des Lebens.
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„is it possible not to love žižek?“ on slavoj žižek’s missed encounter with deleuze
The following text can be read fast-forward or in slow-motion. The fast-forward version provides the main argument, the slow-motion version provides the argument plus more detailed commentaries.
We have come to love Slavoj Žižek for his extremely witty mappings of Lacanian theory onto philosophy, global politics and late-capitalist economics through popular culture - in particular through the movies - which means that in order to read Žižek properly one needs to love both high culture and low comedy. In fact reading his books is in itself a lot like watching a Marx brothers movie. As with the Marx brothers, who can only act so madly because they are always in complete control of their madness [like Salvador Dali said, "the only difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad"] Žižek's quirkiness functions so well only because below the sprezzatura, the rhetorical fireworks and the surprising turns, his texts are invariably informed by the stringency, the analytical power, the inherent elegance and the consistency of the Lacanian logic. Actually, Žižek is not only one of the most prominent but also one of the most hardline Lacanians we have at the moment. One does well, therefore, to grant a number of conceptual givens when opening one of his books: 1. topologically, the Real is a mere cut|twist aligning the Imaginary and the Symbolic. It is, quite paradoxically, both the excluded|impossible outside of the symbolic order and its 'stupid,' non-sensical kernel. 2. temporally, the Lacanian subject is always already immanent to the various orders of representation [in particular images and words] because it is invariably retrospective [nachträglich]. 3. as a result of 1. and 2., direct access to the Real is impossible. 'Close Encounters' with the Real as the hard, non-symbolizable kernel of reality, as in moments of jouissance|trauma, are invariably missed. ["The Real is the absent Cause of the Symbolic. The Freudian and Lacanian name for this cause is, of course, trauma" (The Metastases of Enjoyment: Six Essays on Woman and Causality (London: Verso, 1994. 30)). In other words, the Real is the "non-integrated surplus of senseless traumatism" (The Sublime Object of Ideology (London: Verso, 1989) 43)].
The main lesson to be drawn from these Lacanian givens and in Žižek especially from their Hegelian roots is that a fundamental and constitutive negativity|lack within the symbolic order, embodied by the phallus as 'the signifier of the signifier' ["the point of non-sense sustaining the flow of sense" (Organs 27)], opens up a fundamental positivity. In more psychoanalytic terms, castration is the prerequisite for emancipation.¶ The true measure of the "axiomatics" (ix) of the Deleuzian project lies in the extent to which it questions these givens which is why, in order to engage with this project, they should be put up for debate, at least provisionally. Unfortunately, Žižek never goes that far. Organs without Bodies [symptomatically, Žižek does not acknowledge that the the term 'organ without a body,' which seems to be another of Žižek's clever reversals, is actually a Deleuzian term.
As Deleuze notes in A Thousand Plateaus, in a quote that directly 'adresses' most of Žižek's concerns about Deleuze, "it is not at all a question of a fragmented, splintered body, of organs without the body (OwB). The BwO is exactly the opposite. There are not organs in the sense of fragments to a lost unity, nor is there a return to the undifferentiated in relation to a differentiable totality. There is a distribution of intensive principles of organs, with their positive indefinite articles, within a collectivity or multiplicity, inside an assemblage, and according to machinic connections operating on a BwO. Logos spermaticos. The error of psychoanalysis was to understand BwO phenomena as regressions, projections, phantasies, in terms of an image of the body. As a result, it only grasps the flipside of the BwO and immediately substitutes family photos, childhood memories, and part-objects for a worldwide intensity map. It understands nothing about ... indefinite articles nor about the contemporaneousness of a continually self-constructing milieu" (A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (London: Athlone Press, 1988. 164))]
reads as if Žižek wanted to posthumously convince Deleuze that he should have adopted the Hegel|Lacan matrix. In fact, Žižek argues, despite Deleuze's surface rhetorics against Hegel in particular and anything Hegelian in general, Deleuze did unconsciously adopt these givens. From this claim it is only a small step to another one of Žižek's 'intriguing' propositions. If we would expect Žižek to argue that in becoming more Hegelian Deleuze should have become less Deleuzian, he argues something that amounts to the same thing but that sounds much more interesting: Deleuze should have been even more Deleuzian because he was 'in actual fact' almost the Hegel he disliked so much.
"In Witold Gombrowicz's novel Pornografia, the young girl Henia tells Witold, the narrator, that although her parents have seen her make love to a young member of the Resistance, 'in actal fact' they do not know anything about it. This paradox is utterly inexplicable to Witold: "I asked her if her parents suspected anything ... to which she replied: 'they certainly suspect something because they caught us at it. But in actual fact they don't suspect anything.' 'In actual fact' – what a brilliant expression! A magical expression which concealed everything" (Pornografia (New York: Grove Press, 1967. 61)).
According to this logic, only to be even more Deleuzian would have turned him fully into Hegel.
Consider in this context the logic of the following: "beneath this Deleuze, (the popular image of Deleuze based on the reading of the books he co-authored with Felix Guattari), there is another Deleuze, much closer to psychoanalysis and Hegel, a Deleuze whose consequences are much more shattering" (Organs xi). Does this not imply that Deleuze becomes consequential only to the degree that he turns into Hegel|Lacan?
Maybe it is this curious position of Deleuze vis-à-vis Hegel that makes it at times so difficult to detect a general position vis-à-vis Deleuze in Žižek's book, which often oscillates dangerously between admiration and fascination on the one hand and a fundamental critique ["buggery" (47)] on the other.
Between passages of serious engagement with Deleuze, Žižeks writes sentences like: "And to go a step further, is the practice of fist-fucking not the exemplary case of what Deleuze called the "expansion of a concept?" ... No wonder Foucault, Deleuze's Other, was practicing fisting" (Organs 188). Such a sentence is objectionable not because it is irreverent, politically incorrect or because it touches upon a taboo [all of that, in fact, would make it at least slightly interesting], but simply because it is irrelevant.
Žižek's argument, of course, is reminiscent of Freud's wonderfully laconic statement about the logic of negation. When a patient told Freud that he did not know the identity of a female figure that he had seen in his dream but that he was sure that it was 'definitely not his mother,' Freud simply notes: "We correct, it is the mother." Similarly, when Deleuze notes that his philosophy, whatever it might be, is 'definitely not Hegelian,' Žižek simply notes: 'We correct, it is Hegelian.' When Deleuze singles out Hegel for his vitriolics, he does so only because of a deep unconscious investment. His "urge to 'stupidize' Hegel" (48) is only the reverse side of a fundamental love|identity. Žižek sexualizes this love in an image itself taken from Deleuze: "what monster would have emerged if we were to stage the ghastly scene of the specter of Hegel taking Deleuze from behind" (47).
Deleuze's original goes like this: "I saw myself as taking an author fom behind and giving him a child that would be his own offspring, yet monstrous. It was really important for it to be his own child, because the author had to actually say all I had him saying. But the child was bound to be monstrous too, because it resulted from all sorts of shifting, slipping, dislocations, and hidden emissions that I really enjoyed." ("Letter to a Harsh Critic." Negotiations. 1972 - 1990 (New York: Columbia UP, 1995, 3-12. 6)).
What is Žižek's investment in this image, which curiously redoubles the one on another philosophical postcard? Anybody who has ever read one of Žižek's books knows that the two basic attractors around which his thought revolves are Lacan and Hegel. As the philosophical supplement to Lacanian psychoanalysis, Hegel is probably even more important to Žižek than he is to Lacan. He is a constant presence in Žižek's books, sometimes more, as in Tarrying with the Negative (Durham: Duke UP, 1993)
which, let me note in passing, contains the theoretical background on Hegel that Žižek reheats in Organs Without Bodies,
and sometimes less, but even when Žižek is not directly talking about Hegel, he is 'talking Hegel.' Not surprisingly, Žižek's deepest interest lately is the legacy of German idealism a.k.a. Hegel & Co. [For more on this interest, see the interview with Žižek in ebr]¶ For somebody so invested in Hegel, Deleuze, in his acknowledged and often repeated dislike of Hegel, must present a formidable irritation. He is the philosophical itch Žižek would love to scratch. Symptomatically, for a long time Deleuze was as absent from Žižek's work as Hegel was from Deleuze's.
Organs Without Bodies' primal scene lies in a chapter from The Metastases of Enjoyment, in which Žižek dealt for a first time in more detail with Deleuze.
The stakes, therefore, are high and they go something like this: If Hegel|Lacan can be saved from Deleuze by way of turning Deleuze into Hegel|Lacan, Žižek, and with him psychoanalysis, has scored big. [Derrida is a less threatening reference. Žižek had dealt with him en passant when he had argued that Lacan is not a poststructuralist.' If it turns out, however, that Deleuze is not Hegel|Lacan and that he refuses to be turned into them, Žižek is in trouble.¶ In a number of ways, the battle that rages over Hegel is reminiscent of the one that rages over Poe's purloined letter. If Hegel is the purloined philosopher, who is his rightful owner? Can Žižek return the 'original Hegel according to Žižek,' which means the true philosopher of immanence, to the boudoir of German Idealism and thus save the queen of philosophy from the hold that Deleuze, who has purloined Hegel and hidden him above his mantelpiece in the disguise of a Hegel exceedingly different from "that philosopher of immanence," potentially has over her? Has Deleuze indeed turned Hegel inside-out, as Žižek claims, which would mean that the return of the re-turned Hegel would restore the original Hegel, and with it, quite ironically, return Deleuze to himself, Organs without Body being the extended note that Žižek leaves because of the bad turn Deleuze has done Lacan|Žižek, 'in Vienna?'
In Duchampian terms, who has painted the moustache onto Hegel's face and who has erased it?
Or has 'in actual fact' Žižek purloined Hegel? Ultimately: why does Žižek's Hegel look so much like Deleuze and why does Deleuze's Hegel look so much like Lacan? How to read the 'excessive difference' between Žižek's and Deleuze's Hegel? ¶ Let's assume for the moment, with Žižek, that Deleuze has indeed purloined Hegel. What one needs for a re-turn to Hegel are of course green glasses, some pre-arranged pyrotechnics and a bi-part soul, capable of both observation and ad-measurement. One needs to be both a poet and a mathematician. Nobody in their right mind would ever doubt Žižek's powers of ad-measurement, which are daunting, to say the least. What, however, about those of observation? The true test of the success or failure of Žižek's book lies not in the consistency of his arguments as such, but in the degree to which he, and with him Lacan, can see|imagine the true measure of the Deleuzian project.
Before I get to the various misunderstandings that seem to me to define Žižek's encounter with Deleuze, a number of things about Organs without Bodies that are not directly related to Žižek's theoretical project, but which one should know in order not to be disappointed in the book. 1. Organs Without Bodies is over long stretches not about Deleuze at all The reason for this is not so much that Lacan and Deleuze mark "incompatible fields" (Organs xi) whose collision entails "over and above the symbolic exchange" (xi) a "traumatic impact" (xi) but simply because Žižek, probably even more so than in his other books, loves to digress. More than half of it [roughly 138 of its 226 pages]
is either not about Deleuze, or stands only in a very loose relation to his work. In particular, these are the chapters in the 'consequences' section [pages 111 to 148], two of which start off with short Deleuzian references to then go on to 'something completely different.' At such moments, one suspects that the Deleuzian argument is merely a rhetorical glue that holds together a number of textual [auto]samplings that round up once more Žižek's usual suspects: Bush, Slovenia, Cognitive Science, Hitchcock, the Palestine, the Left, the Right, the Middle, bad jokes, dumb movies.
In the first consequences chapter, Žižek deals with a number of topics that are, potentially, extremely pertinent to Deleuze, such as the concepts of emergence and autopoiesis. Unfortunately, he fails to connect them to the Deleuzian project. The second consequence chapter – in which Deleuze is mentioned exactly four times, once for his interest in Hitchcock (Organs 154-5), once in the context of a short reference to the Appendix of Logic of Sense (New York: Columbia UP, 1990,.161), once for a short passage about dark precursors (171) and once for a short reference to the Virtual and the Actual (173) - provides an excellent Lacanian rhapsody on Hitchcock's Vertigo, Lynch's Mulholland Drive and a number of minor movies. The third consequence chapter, which is for my taste the weakest part of the whole book, opens with the image of a yuppie who reads Deleuze on the subway and who uses him to legitimate his deep investment in the 'intensive field of late capitalism.' This conceit is of course based on a very common misreading of Deleuze that has to do mainly with the reception of Anti-Oedipus, which installed Deleuze and Guattari as masters of anarchy|revolt and made them either loved or hated because of what was read as their relentless unleashing of 'pure desire' into the symbolic arena. For better or worse, however, neither Deleuze nor Guattari have ever promoted such a 'summer of desire' [one need only read Guattari's Three Ecologies to get an idea of his 'humanism' (London: Athlone Press, 2000)]. "Is this logic where we are no longer dealing with persons interacting, but just with the multiplicity of intensities, of places of enjoyment, plus bodies as a collective/impersonal desiring machine, not eminently Deleuzian?" (Organs 188), Žižek wonders about the late-capitalist dance of intensities. Well, yes, in a way. But quite definitely not in the way that Žižek's question implies. If one could so easily equate Deleuze's delight in intensities with the intensities that are [un]bound within and co-opted by an 'intensive capitalism,' things would indeed be as easy as they are for Žižek. Fortunately, one cannot. There is a plane of pure intensity and multiplicity in Deleuze, of which more later, but it looks nothing like the plane of 'intensive capitalism.' Another topic in this section is Deleuze's reading of fascism as a molar machine, which might indeed call for a close analysis. If Žižek's claim is that for Deleuze everything bad is fascist, one should, however, be careful in talking about "the fascism of the irrational vitalism of Deleuze" (195), even if such a statement is meant slightly tongue-in-cheek. Never mind that Žižek might well be right in noting that Deleuze and Guattari "indulge here in a true interpretative delirium of hasty generalizations" (195). What is more interesting is that Žižek does precisely the same, which is a sign that he is losing his cool. The rest of the chapter is about Hardt and Negri as 'representatives' of Deleuze, something that is an extremely questionable and somewhat unfair assumption to begin with. The chapter ends with another one of Žižek's extended polemics against 'the Left.'
2. Where the book is about Deleuze –
especially its first 100 pages -
it relies on the surprisingly small slice of his work that Žižek considers "Deleuze proper" (20)
[Difference and Repetition (New York: Columbia UP, 1994), The Logic of Sense, Cinema I and II (London: Athlone, 1986; 1989), Proust and Signs (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), Masochism (New York: Zone Books, 1989)],
as if his other books were in some way not 'really Deleuze.'
This is unfortunate not only because it implies that it is possible to administer a clean cut between a proper and an improper Deleuze, but also because a number of questions Žižek has about Deleuze are answered in the 'improper' books [such as The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), Bergsonism (New York: Zone Books, 1988), Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004)].
3. The book is not for readers who want to learn something about Deleuze in the sense of being led through the complexities of his texts.
[Žižek hardly ever takes the time to deal directly and in detail with Deleuze's texts, their contexts, their internal logics or with the complex resonances between his various texts. Symptomatically, in central passages he relies on Manuel DeLanda [Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy (New York: Continuum, 2002)] rather than on Deleuze himself].
In fact, one does well to re-read Difference and Repetition and The Logic of Sense before reading Žižek in order not to immediately lose one's bearings. 4. Žižek seldom deals with the secondary literature that has accrued around Deleuze
[notable exceptions are Manuel DeLanda, Brian Massumi [A User's Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Deviations from Deleuze and Guattari (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992)] and, for what will turn out to be obvious reasons, Alain Badiou [Deleuze: The Clamor of Being (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000)].
5. The book disregards the extremely rich and dense discursive field defining Deleuze's relation to thinkers such as Michel Foucault, Michel Serres, Ilya Prigogine|Isabelle Stengers or René Thom. Invariably, the context of Žižek's argument is the wager between Deleuze on the one side and Hegel|Lacan on the other.
"Is not this Virtual ultimately the Symbolic as such?" (4) Žižek asks, in one of the first of the rhetorical questions that have become his stylistic trademark and that carry many of his provocative theses. [Give or take a few, Organs without Body contains 534 question marks. I stopped counting how many times Žižek is 'tempted' to either 'do' certain things or to 'assume' certain things].
This is surprising, especially when one considers that only moments before he had noted that the Virtual is identical to the "Real" (3)
in the sense of being the 'force-field' that organizes a specific attractor-landscape. Later on in the book, Žižek repeats that the Real "is on the side of the virtual" (173).
After these at first sight inconsistent theses, Žižek describes in detail and with his usual lucidity what he considers Deleuze to mean by 'the Virtual'
[Curiously, Žižek does not deal with Bergsonism here, which is full of the Virtual and the Actual. In fact, Bergson's notions of duration and of the Virtual are seminal references for Deleuze's philosophical machine, especially in relation to the itself highly Bergsonian notions of becoming and multiplicity ["the two fundamental characteristics of duration: continuity and heterogeneity" (Bergsonism 37)]. Duration [durée, as opposed to digital 'temps'] "is the virtual insofar as it is actualitzed, in the course of being actualized, it is inseperable from the movement of its actualization" (42-3). In this context, if "the possible is the opposite of the real ... the virtual is opposed to the actual" (96)]
and if one wonders why he didn't immediately go back and delete at least one of the initial theses after that description, one has not yet grasped his general project.¶ If the Virtual is "the infinite potential field out of which reality is actualized" (4, empasis added), then to identify the Virtual with the Symbolic means that it is not only a part of the field of language|representation but indeed that very field itself.
Only a couple of pages later, Žižek notes that the key to the paradox that the new comes into being through repetition is "of course, [note #1 for a reader's manual: whenever Žižek writes 'of course,' be particularly careful!] what Deleuze designates as the difference between the Virtual and the Actual (and which – why not? – one can also determine as the difference between Spirit and Letter)" (Organs 12). This mapping once more projects the Virtual|Actual couple into the field and logic of representation, this time via the concepts of 'the Spirit' and 'the Letter,' which are well-known Lacanian references refering to the sd|sr couple.
This in turn implies that when Žižek says reality, he actually means human|discursive|psychic reality.
Unfortunately, Žižek never provides definitions of key terms such as 'reality.' If he would, the task of untangling his text would be less difficult and the reasons for his 'misunderstandings' would be a lot more obvious.
To at the same time identify the Virtual with the Real, however, implies that it is not part of the representational field because the Real is famously 'without fissure' and therefore fundamentally absent|excluded from the Symbolic. Already at this point, one would like to sit down with Žižek and talk things over in more detail.
If "Being and Becoming" also relate "as Actual and Virtual" (Organs 25), Žižek's mappings make on the one side for the series: Virtual -> Real|Symbolic -> Spirit -> Becoming and on the other for that of: Actual -> Letter -> Being. Even if I have taken these references out of context here, one can imagine how difficult it would be to reconcile them.
Unfortunately, while one still ponders the possible implications, Žižek is already somewhere else. Jackson Pollock is calling
["perhaps Jackson Pollock is the ultimate 'Deleuzian painter" (Organs 5) Žižek notes. In Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation Deleuze himself provides the reasons why this is perhaps not quite true. Žižek's alignment of Pollok and Deleuze, however, is in iself indicative of Žižek's idea of Deleuze as an 'abstract expressionist' philosopher]
, Robert Altman, a soviet poster, The Handmaid's Tale. If Žižek is invariably in complete control when he talks about Lacan, it sometimes seems that in Organs Without Bodies he is running to stay ahead of having to answer his own rhetorical questions. vis-à-vis Deleuze, the lightness of Groucho and Co. gives way to the restlessness of Michel Poiccard [a.k.a Laszlo Kovacs] in Jean-Luc Godard's À bout du Souffle. At such instances, the book goes fully into a 'fast-forward' mode.
Consider Žižek's use of the term 'impersonal machine' to describe the human body. To elucidate this, it might not hurt to slow down a bit and go back to Leibniz, especially to Leibniz' differentiation between artificial and natural machines on which Deleuze comments in detail in The Fold and which are crucial to Deleuze's understanding of the body. ["Thus every organic body of a living being is a kind of divine machine or natural automaton, which infinitely surpasses any artificial automaton, because a man-made machine is not a machine in every one of its parts. For example, the tooth of a brass cog-wheel has parts or fragments which to us are no longer anything artificial, and which no longer have anything which relates them to the use for which the cog was intended, and thereby marks them out as parts of a machine. But nature's machines – living bodies, that is – are machines even in their smallest parts, right down to infinity. That is what makes the difference between nature and art, that is, between the divine art and our own." (Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. "Monadology." Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: Philosophical Texts (Eds. R. Francks & R.S. Woolhouse. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998. 267-81. 64)]. Or consider Žižek's claim about Deleuze's 'utopia' of pure intensity. Despite all of Deleuze's disclaimers, Žižek does not stop maintaining that "the ontology of productive Becoming clearly leads to the Leftist topic of the self-organization of the multitude of molecular groups that resist and undermine the molar, totalizing systems of power – the old notion of the spontaneous, nonhierarchical, living multitude opposing the oppressive, reified System, the exemplary case of Leftist radicalism linked to philosophical idealist subjectivism. The problem is that this is the only model of the politicization of Deleuze's thought available" (Organs 31). Žižek forgets|neglects to mention that Deleuze constantly highlights the feedback-loops between de- and reterritorialization; two tendencies that invariably operate together and whose relations following the logic of complex|chaotic systems [see in this context Deleuze's interest in Serres, Thom and Prigogine]. It is invariably their complicity that interests Deleuze. As he advises the reader at the end of the chapter on smooth and striated space in A Thousand Plateaus: "Never believe that a smooth space will suffice to save us (500). Again, however, Žižek cannot stay to consider any of these things, this time because Kevin Warwick from London is just around the corner, the "first cyberman" (Organs 16), and a longer digression on man-machine interfaces and intelligent clothing needs to be written].
¶ Of course, Žižek doesn't just say these things and 'damn the torpedos.' In fact, these initial, seemingly paradoxical theses contain the main argument of the book. The disarmingly simple answer to the question why Žižek can maintain that the Virtual is on the side of the Real when he himself has only pages before positioned it on the side of the Symbolic is that he can do so because his overall project is to prove precisely that, as I noted in the beginning, the Deleuzian Virtual is for him 'in actual fact' both the Symbolic and the Real, under the Lacanian condition that the Real is ultimately both the impossible outside of the Symbolic and its innermost, traumatic [non-sensical] kernel.¶ It is in his discussion of the Virtual that Žižek detects what he considers the "first crack" in Deleuze's edifice: "In a move that is far from self-evident," Žižek notes, Deleuze links the Virtual to "the traditional opposition between production and representation. The virtual field is (re)interpreted as that of generative, productive forces, opposed to the space of representations. Here we get all the standard topics of the molecular multiple sites of productivity constrained by the molar totalizing organizations, and so on and so forth" (19).
[Note #2 for a reader's manual: 'and so on and so forth' is Žižek's way of saying that the idea and its implications are both too obvious and too uninteresting to warrant further consideration].
Positing that it was Guattari who prompted Deleuze to link the Virtual to the field of production and the Actual to that of representation
["One is tempted to attribute the 'bad' influence which pushed him towards the second logic to Felix Guattari" (Organs 19-20), Žižek notes, using, throughout the book, Guattari as the political 'dummy' whom he opposes to a Deleuze who was "indifferent towards politics" (20)]
Žižek rescues Deleuze from this 'simply false' dichotomy only to plunge him, only one paragraph later, all the more deeply into the mire: "was Deleuze not pushed toward Guattari because Guattari presented an alibi, an easy escape from the deadlock of his previous position?" (20). Žižek, therefore, has Deleuze crawl, with Guattari's helping hand, out of a difficult deadlock [Logic of Sense] into a simple mistake [Anti-Oedipus (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983)]. Again, one would like to slow things down a bit, because the claim that Deleuze and|or Guattari ever separate these realms, although they do obviously play them out against each other, is hardly tenable. Instead, there is a topological inclusion of the field of representation in a more general field of production, the idea being that "the production of recording itself is produced by the production of production" (Oedipus 16). In the words of Pure Immanence, "Transcendence is always a product of immanence" (New York: Zone Books 2001. 31). As this is Deleuze's position in both Anti-Oedipus and Difference and Repetition, it is difficult to understand why Anti-Oedipus should be "arguably Deleuze's worst book" (Organs 20) while Difference and Repetition belongs to 'Deleuze proper.'
[Just for the record, in both Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus, the Virtual|Actual couple is virtually absent. It surfaces in A Thousand Plateaus only sporadically in conjunction with the vocabulary of 'planes of consistency,' 'bodies without organs,' and 'planes of immanence.' In A Thousand Plateaus, The Logic of Sense surfaces a number of times, especially in relation to notions of time [Aion and Chronos] and inrelation to the notion of "events" (Plateaus 86). There are presences of Difference and Repetition in Anti-Oedipus, as when Deleuze & Guattari note that "a false movement ... is produced on the recording surface" (Oedipus 10) or when they mention the difference between "passive syntheses" (26, 39) and a "disjunctive synthesis" (39, 75).
Both books proceed from the idea that there is invariably an intricate network of feedback-loops and translations between the two modes of production, the aim being to save the operational laws of the 'production of production' from being completely repressed in the operational laws of the 'production of recording,' because the law of "the production of recording ... is not the same as that of the production of production" (Oedipus 12).
If indeed there is a separation – by way of exclusion - between the two realms, it is, according to Deleuze, created by a psychoanalysis that has installed "a classical theater" in the place of "the unconscious as a factory" and in which "representation is substituted for the units of production of the unconscious" (Oedipus 24). In is thus psychoanalysis that has "stifled the order of production" by turning it into "[unconscious] representation" (296). It is against this "pious conception of the unconscious" (111) that Deleuze and Guattari stake a productive, material unconscious. ["We constantly contrasted two sorts of unconscious, or two interpretations of the unconscious ...the one productive, the other expressive" (381)]. This "unconscious does not speak, it engineers. It is not expressive or representative, but productive" (180) and thus it "belongs to the realm of physics; the body without organs and its intensities are not metaphors, but matter itself" (283). ["The unconscious no longer designates the hidden principle of the transcendent plane of organization, but the process of the immanent plane of consistency as it appears on itself in the course of its construction. For the unconscious must be constructed, not rediscovered" (Plateaus 284)]. To define the unconsicous as material and machinic calls for a "microphysics" (Oedipus 183) of the unconscious rather than a micrometaphysics. The Deleuzian unconscious, as "the Real in itself" (53), is thus staked against an unconscious that follows the "unary stroke of the signifier" (61). Maybe in his criticism Žižek lets himself be taken in too much by more polemically charged moments, as when Deleuze and Guattari note that the aim of schizoanalysis is "to overturn the theater of representation into the order of desiring-production" (271, my emphasis). What Deleuze and Guattari advocate in all of their books [in Anti-Oedipus they do so in a vocabulary of machines and productions] is thus a field of feedback-loops between a representative and a productive realm; a space in which each realm is 'in actual fact' included in the other. At no time, even within the most vitriolic passages, do Deleuze and Guattari separate physics from metaphysics. The idea is simply that the realm of metaphysics is 'born' from physics. When Deleuze notes in The Logic of Sense that "the event subsists in language, but it happens to things. Things and propositions are less in a situation of radical duality and more on the two sides of a frontier represented by sense" (Logic 24), this shows very clearly that there is no separation between representation and production in Deleuze. It is also a first indication that the Deleuzian topology is as complex as the Lacanian one.
The fact that Deleuze is not at all about substituting the level of of production for that of representation can be seen in such marvelously dead-pan passages as "we do not deny that there is an Oedipal sexuality, an Oedipal heterosexuality and homosexuality, an Oedipal castration, as well as complete objects, global images and specific egos. We deny that these are productions of the unconscious" (Oedipus 74).
[As an aside, Žižek's mapping of Deleuze onto 'empiricocriticism' should better be directed at theoreticians such as Judith Butler: "What we regard as the material world, nature, the common world, is the product of collectively organized experience, having a social basis" (Organs 21), as Žižek quotes Bogdanov, is an eminently un-Deleuzian and therefore an eminently Butlerian position].
Žižek's statement that 'molecular multiple sites of productivity [are] being constrained by the molar totalizing organization' does not at all exclude a sentence such as 'the molar totalizing organization [are] being contained in the multiple sites of productivity.'¶ So much for Deleuze's 'simply stupid' mistake. But what about his 'not so stupid' deadlock? Pointing to what he assumes to be a fundamental aporia in Deleuze's philosophy, Žižek notes that "either the Sense-Event, the flow of pure Becoming, is the immaterial effect (neutral, neither active nor passive) of the intrication of bodily-material causes, or the positive bodily entities are themselves the product of the pure flow of becoming" (Organs 21). Simply put, Žižek asks whether the material causes|generates the mental or whether the mental causes|generates the material? Only one of these statements can be true, this eminently Lacanian question implies, and Deleuze, according to Žižek, consistently fails to provide a consistent solution to this deadlock.¶ To properly address this 'deadlock,' one needs to flashback to the context in which the terms event, sense, body [material] and 'quasi-cause,'
[to which Žižek dedicates a whole chapter]
are developed in The Logic of Sense and one also needs, unfortunately, to prepare some of the conceptual ground of Deleuze's argument. So please bear with me for two pages of mathematics.¶ From a spatio-temporal perspective, quasi-causes are the result of a 'logic of cuts' that Deleuze models on what in the field of mathematics is called the 'Dedekind cut.' 'Dedekind cuts,' to which Deleuze refers directly in a number of texts including Difference and Repetition (172), denote a mathematical procedure to 'deal with' the problem of continuity by way of the concept of infinity; two terms that are the probably most seminal terms in Deleuzian philosophy. Dedekind cuts are named after the German mathematician Richard Dedekind, for whom the realization that a line is separated into two parts by a cut helped solving the problem of how 'to pass with facility and rigor from the discrete to the continuous and back;' in purely mathematical terms: of how to make the continuum of real numbers countable, and thus representable, in terms of classes of discrete, discontinuous rational numbers.
As Dedekind states in his paper "Continuity and Irrational Numbers," in his attempt "to secure a real definition of the essence of continuity. I succeeded Nov. 24, 1858." [Richard Dedekind. Essays on the Theory of Numbers (La Salle: The Open Court Publishing Company, 1984. 2)].
The routine of Dedekind cuts involves "regarding the domain of real numbers as a continuum, identifying it as it were with such aggregates as the totality of instants in duration, or the totality of points on a line"
[Tobias Dantzig. Aspects of Science (Macmillan: New York, 1937. 102)]. Dedekind proceeds from the image of a straight, continuous line on which the system of rational numbers is noted as, L: (1.2.3...). The mathematical problem is that "in the straight line L there are infinitely many points which correspond to no rational number" (Continuity 8), so that "the straight line L is infinitely richer in point-individuals than the domain R of rational numbers in number-individuals" (9, emphasis added). As Dedekind laconically notes, "the above comparison of the domain R of rational numbers with a straight line has led to the recognition of the existence of gaps" (10).
If each rational number is separated from the next one by a gap, Dedekind's objective is to create so many numbers that "the domain of numbers shall gain again the same completeness, or as we may say at once, the same continuity, as the straight line" (Continuity 9), his deceptively simple realization being that "if all points of the straight line fall into two classes such that every point of the first class lies to the left of every point of the second class, then there exists one and only one point which produces this division of all points into two classes, this severing of the straight line into two portions" (11). From this realization, Dedekind argues that "for brevity we shall call such a separation a cut [Schnitt] ... We can then say that every rational number ... produces one cut" (12-13). The "incompleteness or discontinuity of the domain ... of all rational numbers" (15) consists precisely in that "not all cuts are produced by rational numbers" (15). To re-constitute this continuity, Dedekind defines irrational numbers as cuts lying between the cuts produced by rational numbers. In Dedekind's procedure, therefore, every rational and every irrational number is literally identical to a cut. From this follows that if one considers the line as an infinity of numbers it once more "possesses ... continuity" (20). The 'continuous' line thus becomes 'identical' to an infinity of cuts; an infinity of recursive, forever fractally decreasing numerical intervals.
This logic of cuts already presides over the birth of infinitesimal calculus in the works of Leibniz, which is another reason why going back to Leibniz is so important in trying to understand Deleuze's philosophy. As Prigogine|Stengers note: "An infinitesimal quantity is the result of a limiting process; it is typically the variation in a quantity occurring between two successive instants when the time elapsing between these instants tends toward zero. In this way the change is broken up into an infinite series of infinitely small changes" [Order Out of Chaos (Toronto: Bantam Books, 1984. 58)]. Or as Herman Weyl states, Dedekind's idea is that "the continuum of real numbers can be thought of as created by iterated bipartition" [Philosophy of Mathematics and Natural Science (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1949. 89)]. As Weyl further notes, "in order to subject a continuum to mathematical treatment it is necessary to assume that it is divided up into 'elementary pieces' and that this division is constantly defined by repeated subdivision according to a fixed scheme ... The effect is that the continuum is spun over with a subdivision net of increasing [ultimately infinite] density" (90, my brackets). Dantzig stresses that in order to close the gap, one has to take recourse to a process "of which infinite divisibility may serve as an example." Through iterated cuts ["the prototype of all infinite process is iteration, an indefinite chain of identical operations, each step of which is being applied to the result of the preceding" (99)], "the irrational is reduced to the rational, the continuous to the discrete, the curvilinear and the skew to the straight and the flat" (28).
Paradoxically, mathematical continuity is defined through an infinite number of cuts into an 'ideal continuity.' These cuts break up the continuum while at the same time making it countable as a continuum.
It would be tempting to relate these two modes of continuity to Bergson's two multiplicities: "a numerical multiplicity, discontinuous and actual" (Bergsonism 38) and a multiplicity that " appears only in pure duration" (38). The second one "is a virtual and continuous multiplicity that cannot be reduced to numbers" (38).
I have gone into such detail not only because this mathematical conceit opens up an immensely rich 'context' for philosophiy and psychoanalysis in its evocation of a world of cuts, dis|continuities and infinities
[just think of what a Lacanian could do with a mapping of real, irrational and rational numbers onto the fields of the Real, the Imaginary and the Symbolic]
, but because Deleuze makes direct use of the Dedekind routine to think the 'difference' between material|physical [unconscious] continuity and sensual|metaphysical [conscious] discontinuity.¶ In a Deleuzian context, what is cut into is no longer a mathematical line, but the only – and repeatedly acknowledged – 'ideal' field in Deleuze; the virtual 'depths' of an eternal present, the time of which Deleuze calls 'Chronos.'
[One is tempted to map this realm onto what Lacan in Encore (New York: Norton, 1998) calls the realm of the 'first body'].
Opening up this 'chronic' present towards duration and thus to a 'difference' between a past and a future that can be so minimally small that it is 'impossible to be thought' – in fact it can be, as a limit, 'infinitely' small
[Deleuze's conceit of "a time smaller than thinkable time" has to do with this logic; a logic that in particular informs his notes on the Lucretian clinamen in The Logic of Sense]
- the cut[s] establish a 'chronological' time that Deleuze calls 'Aion' and that is differentiated from chronical time. Deleuze relates the chronic field to a 'pure materialism.' It is a field of "states of affairs" (Logic 4) that denote a "living present" (4) made up purely of passions, physical qualities, bodies, tensions and actions (4).
To backtrack for a moment to Deleuzes idea of a machinic body. When Žižek notes that "the Deleuzian 'schizo' merrily identifies with this infinitely complex machine that is our body: he experiences this impersonal machine as his highest assertion, rejoicing in its constant tickling" (Organs 15) he once again follows the common reading of Deleuze as celebrating the schizophrenic. For Deleuze, the condition of the schizophrenic, however, is anything but light, and 'merrily' must certainly be one of the worst word to describe it. Although it is exceptional, schizophrenia is a grave affliction that implies a fall into chronic depths and thus complete desubjectivication. In this context, maybe too much weight has been put onto the reading of schizo-analysis as relating directly to psychoanalysis. From a machinic and productive angle, schizo-analysis denotes the analysis of human as well as non-human cuts and thus of human and non-human machines, which, because they cut into an ideal continuity, are quite literally cuts; "system[s] of interruptions or breaks … Every machine, in the first place, is related to a continual material flow (hylè) that it cuts into" (Oedipus 36). Thus, cuts|sensations [sensations being themselves arrangements of cuts] are the 'reverse side' of production, because "to withdraw a part from the whole, to detach … is to produce, and to carry out real operations of desire in the material world" (41). As Deleuze notes, "the term hylè in fact designates the pure continuity that any sort of matter ideally possesses" (36, emphasis added). This 'ideal' of continuity implies to think of matter as on the chronic level folded|continuous rather than as broken down into smallest particles. Deleuze deals with this in his extended ventriloquy of Leibniz in The Fold: "a flexible or an elastic body still has cohering parts that form a fold, such that they are not separated into parts of parts but are rather divided into infinity in smaller and smaller folds that always retain a certain cohesion. Thus a continuous labyrinth is not a line dissolving into independent points, as flowing sand might dissolve into grains, but resembles a sheet of paper divided into infinite folds or separated into bending movements, each one determined by the consistent or conspiring surroundings" (6). Or in the original: "The division of the continuous must not be taken as of sand dividing into grains, but as that of a sheet of paper or of a tunic in folds, in such a way that an infinite number of folds can be produced, some smaller than others, but without the body ever dissolving into points or minima" (6). As Deleuze notes in another gloss on Leibniz, this ideal continuity lies in the microscopic|unconscious: "A dust of colored perceptions falls on a black backdrop; yet, if we look closely, these are not atoms, but minuscule folds that are endlessly unfurling and bending on the edges of juxtaposed areas, like a mist or fog that makes their surface sparkle, at speeds that no one of our thresholds of consciousness could sustain in a normal state. But when our clear perceptions are reformed, they draw yet another fold that now separates the conscious from the unconscious … folds over folds, such is the status of the two modes of perception, or of microscopic and macroscopic processes" (93). A 'return' to the corporeal thus implies a return to the depths of a non-subjective body without organs, while the phantasm 'is' quite literally the organisation of a surface connecting the chronic field to the chronological field and further to the field of representation; a field in which events are now always past or yet to come, while "a pure becoming, on the other hand, would involve both directions at once, a melting-freezing event which never actually occurs, but is "always forthcoming and already past" (58)].
The chronic, present present [hylé], which is 'eternal,' undivided and ideally 'continuous,' knows only causes. It cannot accomodate a logic of causes and effects for the simple reason that a logic of cause and effect relies on a smallest temporal gap|difference between past and future; on a minimal cut or, in Deleuze's terminology, a minimal machine [Deleuze's philosophy is a philosophy of an infinite number of nano- and macromachines and as such one of the privileged fields to open up the field of nanotechnology to philosophy and to literature [See N. Katherine Hayles. Nanoculture: Implications of the New Technoscience (Bristol: Intellect, 2004)]. This is also the context for Deleuze's idea in the eminently Bergsonian Cinema I to consider the mind itself as a 'gap|cut,' the germinal idea of which can be found in Bergson: "Thus the brain does not manufacture representations, but only complicates the relationship between a received movement (excitation) and an executed movement (response). Between the two, it establishes an interval" (Bergsonism 24)].
On every level, it is invariably between the 'fractal cuts' that 'becomings' take place, which means that the logic of becoming follows a fractal logic. The idea of the 'fractal infinity of becoming,' in fact, is why 'becoming imperceptible' is such a positive idea in Deleuze; an idea that is too easily hijacked from the mathematical and philosophical into the merely metaphorical realm.
The chronical cannot accomodate such cuts because it is a limit-case. It is a 'senseless' still, a photograph of the world taken with an infinitely short time of exposure.¶ The reasons why Deleuze considers the chronic field as one of 'only causes' and materialities are thus temporal and perceptual. Events, as perceived|cut movements, result from the movements of things but they are themselves not of the chronic realm. As Deleuze notes, "the first important duality was that of causes and effects, of corporeal things and incorporeal events" (Logic 23).¶
Although the only place where they can subsist [a term that echoes nicely with Lacan] is language, cuts|sense-events happen, according to Deleuze, on all levels of the [dis]organizations taking place in the world that involve perception or consciousness in any way, mode or form. If for Žižek consciousness means strictly human self-consciousness, for Deleuze, as he notes in a text quoted by Žižek, such perceptions or consciousnesses can well be "impersonal" and "prereflexive" (Organs 5), such as the minimal perceptions that define what Leibniz calls 'simple monads.' Once more, Leibniz' definition of infinite natural machines can help here because it nicely elucidates the various 'thresholds of perception' and 'thresholds of consciousness' that make up a field that includes simple monads and human monads. As the infinitely and ideally small differentiations that define 'pure Becomings' are part of the Leibnizian logic of a fractal regress into more and more infinitely small cuts|events, they follow a logic of "thresholds of perception" (Plateaus 281) and apperception rather than one of causation. This "generalized chromaticism" (97) of perception|consciousness ranges from "unconscious micropercepts" (213) to conscious perceptions and it leads to a "micropolitics of perception" (213). Such a general chromatics implies to no longer differentiate clearly between unconscious and conscious levels, because human 'levels of conscious perception' are not fine enough to perceive 'unconsicous' cuts in fields that are therefore 'consciously' perceived as 'ideally continuous' rather than as discontinuous, although, if conscious perception could zoom deeper into these fields, it would become aware that on finer, deeper levels, these 'continuous' fields are of course discontinuous arrangements of cuts. [See in this context also Deleuze's idea of 'non-human sexuality' in Anti-Oedipus]. Although the psychic field is thus the proper "field of integration," cuts and sense-events cannot be reduced to the field of the psychic. What makes psychic perception so fascinating is that it operates according to a differential logic that brings about a simultaneous differentiation and connection between the continuous|discrete and thus between the unconscious|conscious: "differential calculus is the psychic mechanism of perception, the automatism that at once and inseparably plunges into obscurity and determines clarity: a selection of minute, obscure perceptions and a perception that moves into clarity" (Fold 90, emphasis added). The purely physical, chronic realm, in opposition, operates according to cuts that organize and produce niveaus of intensities and tectonic shifts in material arrangements but which do not include processes of mathematical|perceptual 'integration.' While differential calculus is a "psychic mechanism" (96), physical mechanisms "do not work by differentials, which are always differentials of consciousness, but by communication and propagation of movement" (97). The difference is thus between "the psycho-metaphysical mechanism of perception, and the …physico-organic mechanism of excitation or impulsion (97). The passages between continuity [a.k.a. the analog] and 'dis'continuity [a.k.a. the digital] are thus defined as processes of zooming in or out of fractal dimensions, with the physical on one end and the psychic on the other. Through psychic differentializations, parts of the plane of immanence are folded into|onto what Deleuze and Guattari call a 'plane of transcendence|organization' and vice versa.¶
It is in the sense of expressing sub-propositional and pre-subjective ["pre-individual, non-personal, and a-conceptual" (Logic 52)] levels of perception|consciousness that Deleuze considers effects|sense|events as "neutral" (19), "impassive ... sterile" (20) and "indifferent to opposites" (35)
[Juggling a number of concepts, Žižek calls this field, which seems to truly and completely puzzle him "the sterility of the incorporeal becoming of the Sense-Event" (Organs xi)].
Logically, events make up an non-essential field of singularities
["to reverse Platonism is first and foremost to remove essences and to substitute events in their place, as jets of singularities" (Logic 53)]
; a field that Deleuze also calls a 'multiplicity. Topologically, events differ from actions|causes|bodies as surface differs from depth. Although they are not chronic causes, however, events play the role of causes within the chronological field, which is why Deleuze talks of of them as quasi-causes. Causes and quasi-causes relate to each other as the "destiny" (Logic 169) that defines the chronic depths and the effects|sense-events that define and happen on the chronological surface.¶ In the passage|translation from chronic depths to chronological surface the material realm is thus not given up. Rather, on the surface of sense material bodies are linked to immaterial relations between them, to events and to modes of their perception,
[At this point, one might talk more about Deleuze's relation – via people like Leibniz, Spinoza and La Mettrie - to what might be called an 'intelligent materialism']
which means that the operational logic of the quasi-cause and of the relation between matter and mind is not, as Žižek implies, that of replacement, opposition or causation but simply of a change of topological registers. The addition of chronological time, and with it pre- and postsubjective forms of perception|consciousness, causes a topological movement from a world of depth to a world of surface[s].¶ For every machinic aggregate, events happen in chronological space and time, which 'is' the virtual, chronical realm if you add to it the registers of perception|consciousness [In fact, Deleuze thinks of this 'addition' as a 'subtraction']. In other words. the chronological is the virtual as actualized. It is the field of conscious|unconscious, human|non-human machinic integrations and material 'impulses.'¶ Long story short: Žižek's 'deadlock' theory misses the Deleuzian point because it implies that the relation between sense-events
- the fact that he talks about 'the event' rather than 'evenuality in general' may be an echo of his reading of Badiou -
and bodies is one of causation and thus of ontology. The difference between event [the chronological quasi-cause] and body [the chronic cause] - immaterial effects and material causes – however is not the one between a causation or a generation of body from mind or vice versa. Rather, it has to do with two different topologics of time that concern the same field, once as infinitely cut and once as ideally continuous; once as virtual [chronic and without any form of perception|consciouness] and once as actual [chronological and traversed by an infinite number of levels and forms of perception|consciousness]. The ideal, unthinkable, chronical time is that of a smallest, no longer divisible moment; an eternally short, unthinkable moment of pure, a-subjective life [Being].
[For more of this, one would once more have to go to the appendix on the clinamen in The Logic of Sense and to books such as Michel Serres' The Birth of Physics (Manchester: Clinamen Press, 2000)].
The chronic moment is the only moment when material causes and immaterial effect are not 'always already' intimately linked [Becoming]. But!, Žižek, the tortoise to my hare, would point out: isn't that chronic moment precisely the moment of the Lacanian Real? Which only shows that maybe we have not yet reached the level of the basic misunderstanding|difference, which concerns semiotics and the elusive concept of reality.
Let's provisionally identify the Virtual, chronic realm with the Lacanian Real [remember that Žižek does precisely that!] and park it somewhere for later pick-up. This leaves us with the Actual, chronological surface ['the plane of immanence']; an infinitely complex, dynamic architecture of cuts and organizations. A multiplicity embodied in a material, itself entirely informed substratum. As this multiplicity is quite literally a multiplicity of embodies signs and signals, it can neither be reduced to 'simple' matter nor to a pure, immaterial field of information. A crucial Deleuzian point is that much of the information and its channels of transfer that traverses the chronological surface cannot be modeled on the double articulation of human language and thus on the 'logic and the materiality of the signifier.' ['Individuation' happens produced autopoietically within systems without being represented for and by a logically, structurally and spatially separated, organizing part of that system, which means that autopoiesis happens without a 'consicous' agency of global integration. In The Fold Deleuze deals with this in terms of the difference between 'being' and 'having' a body].
The chronological surface is pervaded by both natural and artificial regimes of signs, semiotic aggregates, tendencies, force-fields and dynamisms of which human and non-human systems partake both passively and actively; as affected|affecting. In fact, human and non-human systems are often, as in the case of the 'human aggregate,' recursively boxed into each other. As cuts operate on a thousand plateaus simultaneously, they are by no means the privilege of human consciousness
[Symptomatially, Deleuze states that "Bergson does not use the word "unconscious" to denote a psychological reality outside consciousness, but to denote a nonpsychological reality – being as it is in itself" (Bergsonism 56). Similarly, there is an "impersonal time" (82) thought of as 'unity:' "duration as virtual multiplicity is this single ... Time" (83)].
The chronological surface is thus a dynamic aggregate of infinitely many events; a complexity|multiplicity, a cluster of self-regulating, interconnected machines. As the psychic apparatusses remain a part of that field even while on some levels they function as the agencies that separate the human aggregate from this field, the psychic subject remains a part of – or immanent to - the field's overall dynamics. Simply put, Deleuze stakes the notion of a closed-off 'psychic reality' against 'physical reality' plus 'psychic reality' which makes: a 'lived reality' that goes beyond this closure.¶ While for Lacan, the unconscious is 'structured like|as a language' and thus fully part of the field of representation
["On the one hand, the unconscious ... something negative, something ideally inaccessible. On the other hand it is something quasi real. Finally, it is something which will be realized in the symbolic ... something which ... will have been." (The Seminar of Jacques Lacan Book I: Freud's Paper on Technique 1953-54 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1988. 158)],
for Deleuze the unconscious is 'structured like a machine' and thus part of the realm of imperceptible cuts. Serres has provided an extremely elegant version of such a both eminently physical and eminently informed unconscious 'in fractal descent:' "At this point the unconscious gives way from below [recedes into the depths]; there are as many unconsciousnesses in the system as there are integration levels. It is merely a question, in general, of that for which we initially possess no information. … Each level of information functions as an unconscious for the global level bordering it … What remains unknown and unconscious is, at the chain's furthermost limit, the din of energy transformations: this must be so, for the din is by definition stripped of all meaning, like a set of pure signals or aleatory movements. These packages of chance are filtered, level after level, by the subtle transformer constituted by the organism … In this sense the traditional view of the unconscious would seem to be the final black box, the clearest box for us since it has its own language in the full sense" (Michel Serres. Hermes: Literature, Science, Philosophy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1982. 80).¶ Even if we disregard the question of the Real|Virtual therefore, we are still faced with a decisive difference between the semiotics of the Lacanian [un]conscious, which is positioned on the 'plane|surface of language' – the final black box - and the semiotics of the Deleuzian [un]consicous, which is positioned on the itself fractal chronological plane|surface [the full multiplicity of boxes]. For Žižek, a semiotics is invariably a significant one, for Deleuze it is both productive and significant. For Žižek, sense is related only to the law of the signifier, for Deleuze, it is a hinge between productive and representational levels|cuts.
According to Deleuze, "the question here is not whether there are signs on every stratum but whether all signs are signifiers" (Plateaus 65), a question that calls for different semiotics of "natural codings operating without signs" (117). Ultimately, on these levels, "writing … functions on the same level as the real, and the real materially writes" (141). According to this logic, one can no longer separate "coded milieus and formed substances" (502).
Deleuze develops the conceit of the 'surface of sense' precisely to relate the realm of human|psychic cuts and the imperceptible, unconsicous realm of 'nonhuman cuts.'
Thought of as a membrane, the surface of sense relates the field of language and propositionality - "denotation, manifestation and signification" (Logic 12) to the field of non-human cuts. Although sense is inherent to language and produced by it, it functions as a hinge between "the expressed of the proposition" (22) [a.k.a. representations] and "states of affairs" (22) [a.k.a. productions]. It aligns words and bodies|things without being reducible to either one.
Deleuze differentiates, therefore, between the world of language and human consciousness, and a much larger world, of which human consciousness is part and parcel. From which, in fact, it emerges through a series of complex processes of 'individuation.'¶ Although the concept of the individual as a dynamic, machinic aggregate sounds quite different from the Lacanian definition of the subject as "a signifier is that which represents the subject for another signifier" [Écrits: A Selection (New York: Norton, 1977) 316], there are a number of elective affinities between Deleuze and Lacan in the way that the surface of sense encompasses the field of language. In fact, in the closing, eminently Lacanian passages of The Logic of Sense, Deleuze notes that "the phallus plays the role of the quasi cause" (210, emphasis added).
In Bodies without Organs this actually sounds as if it was Žižek's argument against Deleuze - "Is this [the phallus standing for an 'organ without body'] not a further argument for the claim that Deleuze's quasi cause is his name for the Lacanian 'phallic signifier?' (81); "Lacan appreciated so much The Logic of Sense: is the deleuzian quasi-cause not the exact equivalent of Lacan's objet petit a, this pure, immaterial, spectral entity that serves as the object-cause of desire?" (26).
It can play this role because it can stand for an organization of surfaces, from sexual to symbolized reality along 'phallic non-sense' [signifier of the signifier]. But quasi-causes also refer to sub-representative and sub-conceptual levels, which is where Deleuze parts from Lacan. To state that the phallus can 'play the role' of a quasi-cause does not automatically imply the instigation of the logic of the signifier as the 'only' one. Neither does it imply the reduction of an inherently multiplicitous field [n-1] to a field organized by one global logic [n+1] whose hegemony is instigated by a specific spatio-temporal logic. In other words, Deleuze argues against a phallic ontology [an essential phallocratism] although he acknowledges the 'probability' and the 'reality' of the phallic organization on local levels. In fact, all of Deleuze's polemics are ultimately directed against the concept of phallic castration understood as the result of the full inauguration of a closed discursive universe [including its conscious|representational unconscious] that is based on an originary lack. What Žižek means, like Deleuze, by "organ without body" (84) is indeed the opposite to a "body without organs;" the phallus as the signifier of castration. Spinoza's joy, as Žižek rightly notes, is definitely not the joy of the acceptance of phallic castration.¶ What Deleuze argues against, then, is not the representational, psychic realm as such, but the idea that this realm can be completely separated|cut off from the realm of physical reality. The danger is that of representation 'going global' and creating a unified, consistent field of representation
["We should understand that representation ... when it becomes subjective infinite ... effectively loses all consistency" (Oedipus 305) if it does not instigate, immediately, a symbolic order to give it an internal consistency]
that considers itself infinite, which means 1. without an 'outside' and, 2. without a material body.
Because a field of representation that is, like the house of Tessier-Ashpool [William Gibson. Neuromancer (London: Gollancz, 1984)], completely closed in on itself is 'always already' a field of "mediation" (Difference 8), it can only create a "false movement" (10). Because it operates by "concepts" (10) whose logic is based on identity, analogy, opposition and resemblance (29) it inevitably produces a "convergent" (68) system. Against this realm, Deleuze stakes a realm that operates with "simulacra" (126) and "natural" (77) or "direct" (77) signs, rather than representations and artificial signs (77); a realm that is divergent rather than "convergent" (68), based on ("extra-propositional and sub-representrative" (267)) ideas rather than concepts, "unconscious" (108) rather than conscious (192). It gives space to "local integrations" (98) rather than one global integration (98). It is "positive" rather than negative. It is "first" rather than "second."
Obviously, the 'problem' of the material body is of fundamental importance in Deleuze's philosophy. As he notes in Cinema II, "the body is no longer the obstacle that separates thought from itself, that which it has to overcome to reach thinking. It is on the contrary that which it plunges into or must plunge into, in order to reach the unthought, that is life. Not that the body thinks, but, obstinately and stubborn, it forces us to think, and forces us to think what is concealed from thought, life. Life will no longer be made to appear before the categories of thought; thought will be thrown into the categories of life. The categories of life are precisely the attitudes of the body, its postures ... To think is to learn what a non-thinking body is capable of, its capacity, its postures" (189). In Difference and Repetition, Deleuze calls the attempt to close discourse off from the material world and to relegate life 'into the negative' the "greatest effort of philosophy" (262): to "render ... representation infinite (orgiastic)" (262). Which brings us back to Hegel. The main reason why Difference and Repetition is suffused by an anti-Hegelian rhetoric is that Hegel is Deleuze's shorthand for a representational system gone 'infinite.'¶ Again however, Deleuze's idea is not to simply replace the representational level by the level of production - this is once more the idea that has given rise to the popular image of Deleuze as the prophet of anarchy - but to think of how the second can come to exist 'out of' and 'within' the first and how the first can be made to remain operative|subsisting in the second. According to Deleuze, the basic mistake does not lie in creating the representational realm ['planes of transcendence'], but in cutting it off from the productive one by one fundamental cut, such as the famously Lacanian one. To state that it can only relate to the productive realm negatively as a 'nothingness' – an argument that is of course completely consistent from within its own logic; obviously language can relate to anything outside of itself only as 1. a negativity and 2. through [more of] 'itself' - disregards a multiplicity of minute organizations and individuations that are constantly at play imperceptibly|unconsciously. The aim of Deleuze's critique is thus directed against any philosophical system that maintains that the productive realm is present in the representational realm only as fundamentally cancelled. In order to think such a field in which production is positively productive one has 1. to stop thinking in terms of stable, general ideas and abstract concepts and 2. to think a positive multiplicity out of which the realm of representation|thought autopoietically emerges.¶ While Deleuze's project is to think the relation between production and representation, Žižek's project is to think an infinite representation. While Deleuze aims at including 'intelligent matter' into his semiotics, Žižek wants to purify information by subtracting matter from it, which brings us back to Deleuze's 'deadlock.' Remember that Žižek's problem was that either the immaterial field causes the material one or that the material field causes the immaterial one. Žižek, in good Lacanian fashion, comes down squarely on the side of an immaterial realm that causes the material one in the sense that it 'produces it through representations.' He negotiates Deleuze's 'deadlock' via the process of the reduction of matter to nothingness|zero. Although he builds up an impressive phalanx of help for this project - "the digital information revolution, the biogenetic revolution and the quantum revolution in physics" (24) - the game Žižek plays is merely the upgraded version of the old Lacanian one. According to Žižek, who relies heavily on Badiou, if one can reduce living matter to processes of information one can then isolate a rest; a field of 'anorganic chemistry' – the 'dead matter' that provides the materials that can be used for any number of ideological purposes - from the realm of 'pure information in a void.' Somewhat ironically, in this move Žižek comes close to propose what Derrida has called a 'materialism without matter.'
"Materialism is not the assertion of inert material density of matter in its humid heaviness," Žižek notes, "such a 'materialism' can always serve as a support for gnostic obscurantism. In contrast to it, a true materialism joyously assumes the "disappearance of matter" (24); the fact that there is "only void" (24). Now 'inert material density of matter in its humid heaviness' does not sound much like a description of Deleuze's 'intelligent materialism.' It does not describe adequately the chronological, complexely structured and inherently superficial field of the sense-event. What it does sound more like is a description of the chronic realm under the condition that this realm is no longer an unthinkable virtuality but the actual[ized] lagoon from which the Deleuzian 'swamp monster' emerges into the town of philosophy. In other words, Žižek, quite predictably, reads the 'plane of immanence' as the chronic depths which he then identifies as the Lacanian Real.
Deleuze positions the chronic realm in a similarly 'unapproachable' position for the subject as Lacan does the Real [the notion of the subject, however, is something completely different in Deleuze because, on many levels, it 'contains' the chronic]. But even the chronological realm is much more inclusive than the field of the signifier, because it includes intelligent matter down to almost infinitely small, unconscious levels ["substances are nothing but formed matter. Forms imply a code, modes of coding and decoding" (TP 41)].
According to Žižek, Deleuze remains indebted to 'such a materialism' because of his "vitalism" (28), which is of course only true if Žižek's reading of the plane of immanence is correct. Once Deleuze has been painted into the corner of such a false materialism it is easy to oppose his naive belief in a 'simple oneness' to a 'more sober' belief in the proposition that "there is only Nothing" (26),
a statement that nicely resonates with Bergson's idea that 'there is always Something.'
According to Žižek, the Hegelian|Lacanian project implies to think "a positive notion of lack" (34): Hegel's and Lacan's "'positivization' of negativity itself" (50) actually creates something out of nothing.
Badiou develops this 'creation ex nihilo' via set-theory. This is what Spinoza had missed, which is why Žižek cannot really love Spinoza: "What eludes it is a positive notion of lack, a 'generative' absense" (Organs 34). In Bergsonism, Deleuze deals extensively with the notion of negation and lack: "In the idea of nonbeing there is in fact the idea of being, plus a logical operation of generalized negation, plus the particular psychological motive for that operation (such as when a being does not correspond to our expectation and we grasp it purely as lack, the absense of what interests us" (Bergsonism 17). He comments in particular on Bergson's "critique of the negative and of negation, in all its forms as sources of false problems" (18). According to Bergson|Deleuze, "differentiation is never a negation but a creation … difference is never negative but essentially positive and creative" (103).
If in Žižek's reduction of informational processes to purely mathematized "immaterial processes" (Organs 24) there are only mathematics and the void, in Deleuze, there are only the physical mathematics of living matter.
Notwithstanding Deleuze's 'misreadings' and 'stupifications' of Hegel, the lithmus test of Žižek's book is whether one can indeed read Hegel as an advocate of a universal autopoietics and thus of Deleuzian immanence or whether one should read the Hegelian project as directed at the closure of a self-contained psychic realm. If Hegel is an advocate of a universal autopoietics, then Deleuze is indeed wrong in differentiating himself from Hegel.
If the Hegelian question cannot be answered without going deeply into Hegelian philosophy, let's see whether Žižek reads Hegel as the advocate of a universal autopoietics and immanence. Žižek relates Deleuze's "becoming Hegel" (50) directly to Deleuze's notion of immanence, which constitutes a "subterranean link" (51) between the two. Žižek's claim is that "if there ever was a philosopher of unconditional immanence, it is Hegel" (51), which means that there is really no difference between Deleuze and Hegel because Hegel is 'always already' Deleuze. Unfortunately, Hegel's immanence – and here comes what I take to be the single most crucial sentence of Žižek's book - is "the immanence of our thought" (51, emphasis added), which means that it has absolutely nothing to do with Deleuze's concept of immanence. One really wonders how Žižek could have missed this obvious fact, as if he would stand in front of the Deleuzian map, unable to find the names written across it in giant letters! One is tempted here to quote Žižek against himself, although the context is different: "This insight seems so obvious, stating it seems so close to what the French call a lapalissade, that one is surprised how it has not yet been generally perceived" (20).
In the first consequences chapter "Science: Cognitivism with Freud" Žižek talkes about the split between inside and outside, noting that "the subject emerges when the 'membrane,' the surface that delimits the Inside from the Outside ... starts to function as their active mediator" (124). While Deleuze would agree, relating these mediations to 'processes of individuation.' What Žižek follows from this, however, is eminently anti-Deleuzian. To state that "the problem is not (only) how to pass from preorganic matter to life, but how life itself can break its autopoietic closure and ex-statically start to relate to its external other" (126) implies a fundamental separation|gap between life in general, or 'a life' (whose dynamics are 'autopoietically closed') and 'human life' (which is 'its external other'), which is thus identified with consciousness. For Deleuze, autopoietic processes define not only language [an eminently Lacanian point, as Lacan's afterword to his reading of "The Purloined Letter" testifies ["Présentation de la suite et Parenthèse de parenthèses." Écrits (Paris: Seuil, 1966) 41-61], but the whole surface of the sense-event. ["There can only be a simultaneous genesis of matter and intelligence" (Bergsonism 88)]. In Deleuzian terms: the Hegelian 'immanence of our thought' is a plane of transcendence within a much more inclusive 'plane of immanence.' What Hegelian immanence does have to do with – and by now this should not come as a surprise - is the Real, which is "not simply external to the symbolic, but, rather, the Symbolic itself deprived of its externality, of its founding exception" (Organs 52). Consciousness, Deleuze maintains, cannot itself be separated from its environs and from other processes of intelligent matter [a.k.a. a general, anonymous life]. In Žižek's reading of Hegel, immanence heralds the closure of consciousness onto itself, in Deleuze it heralds an opening of a 'machinic consciousness' to an infinity of other machines.
In an extended meditation on ethics, Žižek, order to inaugurate an 'ethics of castration,' has to read biological and chemical processes as following a logic of pure contingency ["the utterly meaningless Real of contingency" (Organs 130), "blind genetic contingency" (131)] and thus of pure chaos rather than a 'deterministic chaos.' Žižek comes to the conclusion that "faced with the genome I am nothing and this nothing is the subject itself" (138).
¶ At this point, Žižek's 'provocative' statements about the Virtual make perfect Lacanian sense, because once it is the Symbolic, it is also the Real and vice versa. If the Real is "an absolutely inherent limitation" (103), the Hegelian immanence of thought designates precisely the fields of the Symbolic and of the Real. If, as Žižek claims, Deleuze is more Hegelian than he would like to believe, this means that the Deleuzian Virtual can be integrated – via Hegel - into the Lacanian topology. To wrap this incorporation up, all Žižek needs to do now is to integrate the Virtual into the Lacanian temporality of Nachträglichkeit: Simply and temporally put, Hegelian "immanence is not the starting point but the conclusion" (59). Always within the dimension of the barred subject, immanence "designates the reemergence of the virtual in the order of actuality" (66). Like the trauma and like infinity, virtuality is fundamentally nachträglich. Mission accomplished.¶ If Hegel's immanence indeed stands in direct opposition to Deleuze's immanence, it is Žižek's misunderstanding of Deleuze that allows him to identify the two, while it is Deleuze's understanding of Hegel that causes him to differentiate his project fundamentally from that of Hegel. This claim, of course, calls for a close analysis of what the plane of immanence is for Deleuze.
The concept of the plane of immanence, which shows many similarities to the surface of sense, is extremely complex. It is an inherently dynamic field over which fluxes, forces and intensities ["continuums of intensity, blocs of becoming, emissions of particles, combinations of fluxes" (Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet. Dialogues (New York: Columbia UP, 2002. 105))], travel at various speeds and in various alignments. The plane of immanence is 'virtuality in real-time,' a field "peopled by ananymous matter, by infinite bits of impalpable matter entering into varying connections" (Plateaus 255). It "has haecceities for content" (263), it is the true "body without organs" (154); a space of "positive absolute deterritorialization" (134) and of "uninterrupted continuum" (154).
Its most important characteristics are 1. its unilaterality, 2. its "variable curvature" [Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. What is Philosophy? (New York: Columbia UP, 1994. 39)], 3. its "fractal nature" (39) and 4. the "infinite speed" (42) with which particles move over it. The first characteristic defines it as a one-sided 'projective plane'
a mathematical concept that denotes an infinite space that is folded back onto itself at what are called 'points at infinity,' and which therefore has only one side. In his book Vorlesungen über Nicht-Euklidische Geometrie (Springer: Berlin, 1928), Felix Klein describes the projective plane as a hemisphere with a line at infinity added to the rim ["We should attempt to imagine the projective situation long enough for it to be no longer too difficult to, for instance, pull some figure through the infinitely far away" (17)] on which opposite points are identified: "To every infinitely far away point of the plane there correspond … two points at the rim of the half-sphere; therefore, we have to regard … two of such diametrically opposed points as identical" (14). As Klein notes, "the simplest plane … that shows the same behaviour as the projective plane" (15) is a möbius-strip. Its 'infinite torsion|fold' which is defined by the topologics of the points at infinity on the projective plane fundamentally undecides the notions of inside and outside. The overall topology, which folds these extremes into each other and lays them out on the same plane|surface, is thus fundamentally unilateral ["the extreme can be defined by the infinite, in the small or in the large. The infinite, in this sense, even signifies the identity of the small and the large, the identity of extremes" (Difference 42)], which means that opposites should be thought in relation to a ground [the projective plane] on which they are identified.
The second characteristic defines it as a plane whose every locale is spatially irregular and which is thus 'always and everywhere' singular [a sphere, for instance, has a nonvariable curvature].
[See here in particular the use Deleuze makes of Bernard Cache: Earth Moves: The Furnishing of Territories (Cambridge: MIT, 2001)].
The third characteristic defines it as a space made up of infinitely many plateaus situated on a fractal number of dimensions.
In this context, one model|schema of matter is that of a 'fractal sponge,' whose structure is defined by an infinite regress|recursivity. "an infinitely cavernous or porous world … Mandelbrot's fractal dimension as a fractional or irrational number, a nondimension, an interdimension" (Fold 16). Deleuze links mathematical fractality specifically to the philosophical problem of infinity: "it is this fractal nature that makes the planomenon an infinite that is always different from any surface or volume determinable as a concept. Every movement passes through the whole of the plane by immediately turning back on and folding itself and also folding other movements or allowing itself to be folded by them, giving rise to retroactions, connections, and proliferations in the fractalization of this infinitely folded up infinity" (Philosophy 38-39). The plane is thus inherently superficial: "the continuity between reverse and right side replaces all the levels of depths" (Logic 11).
In order to think the 'transfers' between these fractal plateaus [microsurfaces and macrosurfaces], Deleuze and Guattari employ notions of infinite scales and scalings.
There can be no true end to the scale because true continuity implies infinity, which is where the notion of 'infinite speed' becomes important.
The fourth aspect of the plane of immanence is that it is not only spatially infinite [a projective plane] but also temporally infinite [particles that move over it are ideally infinitely fast]. This characteristic defines it as fundamentally dynamic|kinetic and it implies that movement on some of its levels happens too fast to be thought, which means that the mind is not only a machine of reduction but also one of deceleration.
"The link between consciousness and complexity does not reside in the fact that 'when things become too complex, consciousness has to enter,' but, on the contrary, that consciousness is the medium of the radical simplification of the complexity" (Organs 142). Although for Žižek this concerns 'psychic complexity,' the idea is eminently Deleuzian because Žižek, like Deleuze, considers the mind as a machine of reduction. As he states in Bergsonism, "perception is not the object plus something, but the object minus something" (24-5) and further, linking the mind to bifurcation-points and thus to multiplicity, openness and to a deterministic chaos, the brain "divides up excitation infinitely" (52) and "in relation to the motor cells of the core it leaves us to choose betweeen several possible reactions" (53).
Deleuze and Guattari develop their notion of infinite speed from the fact that the 'virtual' movements that ideally define it follow the dynamics of a deterministic chaos.
["in fact, chaos is characterized less by the absence of determinations than by the infinite speed with which they take shape and vanish" (Philosophy 42). In this context, "chaos is defined not so much by its disorder as by the infinite speed with which every form taking shape in it vanishes … chaos is an infinite speed of birth and disappearance" (118). Infinitely small, unconscious perceptions move over the plane of immanence with infinite speed ['at the speed of chaos'], while conscious perceptions are defined by being no longer infinitely small and no longer infinitely fast. ["From a psychic point of view, chaos would be a universal giddiness, the sum of all possible perceptions being infinitesimal or infinitely minute; but the screen would extract differentials that could be integrated in ordered perceptions" (Fold 77). Or, as Guattari states, the "plane of machinic interfaces" (Chaosmosis: An Ethico-Aesthetic Paradigm (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1995. 58)) is defined by "a deterministic chaos animated by infinite velocities. It is out of this chaos that complex compositions, which are capable of being slowed down in energetico-spatio-temporal coordinates or category systems, constitute themselves" (59)].
It is always on this fundamentally multiplicitous plane that human movement [spanned out between the physical and the psychic] takes place. Via the reductive machines of perception|consciousness, the subject machine cuts into this plane and assembles specific arrangements.
Part of subjectivation consists of 1. assembling the illusion of bilaterality for the subject [this happens through the agency of the skin-ego, which projects|refracts the physical borders of the body into the psychic realm where it creates a similarly 'closed' form|system] and 2. of slowing down the infinite speed of the virtual through specific actualisations. In this way, one creates planes of consistency within the plane of immanence: "It is only in appearance that a plane of this kind 'reduces' the number of dimensions; for it gathers in all the dimensions to the extent that flat multiplicities - which nonetheless have an increasing or decreasing number of dimensions - are inscribed upon it....Far from reducing the multiplicities' number of dimensions to two, the plane of consistency cuts across them all, intersects them in order to bring into coexistence any number of multiplicities, with any number of dimensions. The plane of consistency is the intersection of all concrete forms...The only question is: Does a given becoming reach that point?" As such, the plane of consistency "has nothing to do with a ground buried deep within things, nor with an end or a project in the mind of God" (Plateaus 254). Inscribed on the plane of consistency are "haecceities, events, incorporeal transformations that are apprehanded in themselves; nomadic essences, vague yet riotous; continuums of intensities or continuous variations … becomings, which have neither culmination nor subject, but draw one another into zones of undecidability; smooth spaces; composed from within striated space" (507). As the space of chaotic machines, the plane of immanence is, somewhat like Freud's 'interior foreign country' ['inneres Ausland,' Sigmund Freud. Studienausgabe Bd XV (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1971. 62)], "that which must be thought and that which cannot be thought. It is the nonthought within thought. It is the base of all planes, immanent to every thinkable plane that does not succeed in thinking it. It is the most intimate within thought and yet the absolute outside. An outside more distant than any external world: it is immanence" (Philosophy 59). Although Lacan would say the same about the Real, the difference between these concepts lies in the modality of the inside|outside logic.¶ If one considers the plane of immanence as the underlying field of multiplicity, virtuality and potentiality from which forms are actualised, this calls for an opening up of culture to its ecological surrounds. As Deleuze states, "the interactions which organisms have with the organic and inorganic components of an ecosystem are typically of the intensive kind (in the enlarged sense), an ecosystem itself being a complex assemblage of a large number of heterogeneous components: diverse reproductive communities of animals, plants and micro-organisms, a geographical site characterized by diverse topographical and geological features, and the ever diverse and changing weather patterns." [Some of this meteorological and chaotic|complex context can maybe be felt in Lacan's aperçu that the unconscious looks 'like Baltimore in the early morning'].
The material realm in which production proceeds is thus neither defined by the logical negativity of the Lacanian Real, nor by the stability of an essential form|order. Rather, it is a positive, intensive field that cannot be separated from the countless processes of production that pass through it on all levels; and this includes the production of sense.
It is a field of a fundamental multiplicity and potentiality. The various movements of formation|production taking place on it are dynamic, 'sensitive to initial conditions' - this is why Deleuze and Guattari talk of this plane as being in a state of 'unstable equilibrium' - and, at each moment, open to unexpected changes and catastrophes, which means that the field follows the operations of a deterministic chaos. ["The universe is made up of modifications, disturbances, changes of tension and of energy, and nothing else" (Bergsonism 76)]. On the plane of immanence various machines unfold, through a number of routines, branching out dynamically into complex morphogenetic architectures and orders. Seen from this perspective, the human body - which literally is nothing but its development, because it is defined as a constant becoming rather than as a static being - consists of a series of un|folding routines, some of which can catastrophically develop into 'other bodies,' which means that through small variations|bifurcations, the folding sequence can shift into different parameters|attractors. From this field|space of virtualities singular facts and events or series are actualised. Deleuze defines the pure event – which is comparable to a catastrophic bifurcation point in the sense of René Thom - as pure freedom, because it implies this pure multiplicity. In this context, schizoanalysis is an attractoranalysis; an analysis of bifircation points that aims at breaking the symmetry of molar machines and thus bringing about threshold moments and passages between specific systems and specific lines of flight.
The multiplex logic of actualisations is responsible for change, a change that is more inclusive and certainly more radical than change thought of in merely cultural|representational registers. One of the lessons cultural studies might learn from Deleuze's theory of change|newness is, in fact, that the fields of performativity and hybridity will have to be thought of as including the machinic plateau of a physical unconscious. If they do not, they will invariably remain caught in a purely representational, and thus molar logic.¶
There are many ways to approach|accomodate the plane of immanence and various disciplines, such as philosophy, science and art deal differently with its spatio-temporal infinities. Each discipline, in fact, has developed different processes of cutting the plane and of slowing down elements travelling on it, which means, ultimately, that they negotiate the unconscious in different ways: "By retaining the infinite, philosophy gives consistency to the virtual through concepts; by relinquishing the infinite, science gives reference to the virtual, which actualises it through functions. Philosophy proceeds with a plane of immanence or consistency; science with a plane of reference. In the case of science it is like a freeze-frame" (Philosophy 118) while art creates "a plane of composition that is able to restore the infinite" (203) ["plane of immanence of philosophy, plane of composition of art, plane of reference or coordination of science; form of concept, force of sensation, function of knowledge; concepts and conceptual personae, sensations and aesthetic figures, figures and partial observers" (216)]. While philosophy integrates the infinite and thus the continuous in the sense of including it and being open to it, classical science integrates continuity mathematically in order to make it calculable, functional and thus finite. There is no unconscious to classical science, one might say; or, science represses the continuous|unconscious. In this sense, chaos theory might be said to open up science to the unconscious. Generally, if "the philosopher brings back from chaos […] variations that are still infinite but that have become inseparable on the absolute surface" (202), the scientist "brings back from the chaos variables that have become independent by slowing down … finite coordinates on a secant plane of reference" (202) while the artist "brings back from the chaos varieties that no longer constitute a reproduction of the sensory in the organ but set up a being of the sensory … on an anorganic plane of composition that is able to restore the infinite" (203).
¶ Ultimately, what is important is the 'difference' of the general topology of Deleuze and Lacan. In this context, it is interesting that both rely on the topology of unilateral space embodied by the projective plane. While the 'two sides' of the projective plane designate for Lacan the field of the signifier [the materiality of language] and of the signified [the ideality of sense] respectively, with the Real nothing but the twist that inaugurates the topology, in Deleuze, they designate the conjunction of the field of discourse [the signifier|signified couple] and of representation on the one side and intelligent matter on the other. Ironically, the Deleuzian topology – which is of course in many ways a 'critical response' to the Lacanian one - is to a large extent developed in The Logic of Sense, one of the books Žižek's argument is centered on. In fact, the surface of sense is quite literally a projective plane.
Maybe the difference between Deleuze and Lacan can be felt best in the way that they think 'pure life.' Žižek – as well as Agamben, one might note - can only think of 'pure life' as an extraordinary event, such as the moment of a terrible, violent jouissance. For Deleuze, pure life – although as unthinkable as for Lacan - is mostly unspectacular: a non-subjective, asiginifying singularity: "We will say of pure immanence that it is A LIFE, and nothing else" (Immanence 27). Deleuze is always at his most lyrical when he describes the singularity of 'non-human' life: "there is a mode of individuation very different from that of a person, subject, thing, or substance. We reserve the name haecceity [it-ness] for it. A season, a winter, a summer, an hour, a date have a perfect individuality lacking nothing, even though this individuality is different from that of a thing or a subject. They are haecceities in the sense that they consist entirely of relations of movement and rest between molecules or particles, capacities to affect and to be affected" (Plateaus 261).
Already in Bergsonism, Deleuze had found the question that was to occupy him – as well as Lacan! - all of his life "how, and under what conditions, does life in fact become self-consciousness" (52). In trying to elucidate this question, he himself paid a lot of "what Bergson calls 'attention to life'" (70). As Deleuze notes à-propos his reading of Dickens, "we shoudn't enclose life in the single moment when individual life confronts universal death. A life is everywhere, in all the moments that a given living subject goes through … an immanent life carrying with it the events or singularities that are merely actualized in subjects and objects. This indefinite life does not itself have moments … but only … between-moments; it doesn't just come about or come after but offers the immensity of an empty time where one sees the event yet to come and already happened, in the absolute of an immediate consciousness" (Immanence 29). To immediately separate this from a Lacanian logic, this consciousness is not a human – and thus a Hegelian - consciousness. Rather, it is "a pure stream of a-subjective consciousness, a pre-reflexive impersonal consciousness, a qualitative duration of consciousness without a self" (25). In fact, "sensation is only a break within the flow of [this] absolute consciousness" (25).
"What, in fact, is a sensation? It is the operation of contracting trillions of vibrations onto a receptive surface. Quality emerges from this, quality that is nothing other than contracted quantity" (Bergsonism 74).
¶¶ After all is said and done, one still would like to sit down and talk with Žižek about it all in more detail. Maybe my reading of Deleuze is problematic. Maybe there are moments of inconsistency in Deleuze. Ultimately, to be a Lacanian is fine, and to be a Deleuzian is fine as well. Both systems have their own internal consistency, logic and beauty. But in order to really talk, one first has to try and find the lines and the vectors that make up the cosmos of the 'other.' Žižek either never took the time for that or he was not able to distance himself enough from the Lacanian logic. Ultimately, the desire to incorporate Deleuze – to sublate him into his own brand of Hegelianism – must have been just a bit too strong for Žižek to really connect with Deleuze. As a result, the book is ultimately a failure. Not because it does not make sense [it is quite easy to follow its Lacanian arguments, and from that perspective, his critique of Deleuze is 'in actual fact' quite predictable], but because it is too often curiously 'beside the point.' One wonders what kind of love Žižek meant when he talked, in connection with Deleuze, about his "true love for a philosopher" (Organs 3). Is it possible to love Deleuze? Žižek, it seems, can love Deleuze only when he has first dressed him up in Hegelian drag. .
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Gilbert Simondon, Hochfrequenz-Handel und Ökotechnie
Folgt man der Theorie über die technischen Objekten, wie sie der französische Theoretiker Gilbert Simondon (Simondon 2012) entwickelt hat, und daran anschließend den Aussagen Frédéric Neyrats im Sammelband Die technologische Bedingung (Hörl 2011), so gilt es für die heutigen hypertechnisierten Gesellschaften die je schon gestörte Identität von Natur und Technik (weder gibt es eine totale Integration der Natur in die Technik noch ist die Technik als Ausdruck der Natur zu verstehen) grundlegend neu zu konzipieren, indem man die Maschinen bzw. technischen Objekte, die keineswegs die menschlichen Organe prothesenartig verlängern oder dem Menschen nur als Mittel zum Gebrauch dienen, zunächst in ihrer reinen Funktionsweise affirmiert, sodass sie in ihrer unabschließbaren Supplementarität endlich den Status von kohärenten und zugleich individuierten Systemen erlangen können, deren Lokalisierungen in komplexe Maschinenverbände bzw. Netze eingebettet sind. (Ebd.:37) Günther Anders hatte fast zeitgleich mit Gilbert Simondon von Maschinen als Apparaten gesprochen, allerdings von einer Apparatewelt, die den Unterschied zwischen technischen und gesellschaftlichen Gestaltungen hinfällig und damit generell die Unterscheidung zwischen beiden Bereichen gegenstandslos gemacht habe. (Anders 1980: 110) Jedes einzelne technische Gerät sei, so Günther Anders, in ein Ensemble integriert, sei selbst nur ein Geräte-Teil, ein Teil im System der Geräte – der Apparate -, womit es einerseits die Bedürfnisse anderer Geräte befriedige, andererseits durch seine reine Anwesenheit bei anderen Geräten das Bedürfnis nach neuen Geräten stimuliere. Anders schreibt: »Was von diesen Geräten gilt, gilt mutatis mutandis von allen … Von diesem System der Geräte, diesem Makrogerät, zu behaupten, es sei ein ›Mittel‹, es stehe uns also für freie Zwecksetzung zur Verfügung, wäre vollends sinnlos. Das Gerätesystem ist unsere ›Welt‹. Und ›Welt‹ ist etwas anderes als ›Mittel‹. Etwas kategorial anderes.--« (Anders 2002: 2) Oder um es mit den Begriffen von Simondon zu sagen, wir sollten angesichts unserer postindustriellen Situation von technischen Objekten sprechen, deren Elemente stets Rekursionen bilden und innere Resonanzen zueinander unterhalten, während die Objekte zugleich in äußeren Resonanzen zu anderen technischen Objekten stehen, um als offene Maschinen die ihnen eigene Technizität in Ensembles ausspielen zu können. Zusätzlich entwickeln viele technische Entitäten eine plurale Funktionalität, exekutieren anstatt einer Funktion mehrere Funktionen innerhalb eines Maschinensystems, man denke etwa an den Verbrennungsmotor, dessen Kühlrippen neben der Funktion der Kühlung die der Verstärkung annehmen, wenn sie der Verformung des Zylinderkopfs entgegenwirken. (Vgl. Hörl 2011: 97) Simondon hat sich der zutiefst pessimistischen Sichtweise über die postindustriellen Technologien, wie sie bei Günther Anders zu finden ist, nicht angeschlossen, vielmehr hat Simondon in denjenigen technischen Objekten, die sich der hylemorphistischen Gegenüberstellung von Form und Materie entziehen, wie sie im Arbeitsmodell qua durch Werkzeuge zu formende Materie noch angedacht ist, gerade eine Möglichkeit ausgemacht, dass die Technik sich der Autonomie der Natur annähert, eine Tendenz, die zur dynamischen Geschlossenheit der technischen Objekten selbst führt, indem diese u. a. einen Teil der natürlichen Welt inkoporieren, und dies durch die Herstellung assoziierter Milieus, der Verbindung ihres Inneren (Resonanz verschiedener Teile und Multifuktionalität der Teile) mit dem Außen, mit anderen Objekten, seien es natürliche oder künstliche Objekte. Dabei kann sich das technische Objekt nicht komplett von einem Zuviel an Abstraktion trennen, das gerade das sog. artifzielle, heteronome Objekt auszeichnet, und die Kraft zur Abstraktifizierung schreibt Simondon vor allem dem Menschen als seinem konstitutiven Zutun zur Technik zu, der es damit aber gerade verhindert, dass die technischen Objekte sich in offenen Gefügen konkretisieren und ihre Tendenz zur Autonomie ausspielen können. (Ebd.: 154) Simondon lässt sich jedoch keineswegs von der These verführen, dass in einer postindustriellen Zukunft rigoros alles Lebendige den offenen technischen Ensembles unterstehen müsse, im Gegenteil befürtwortet Simondon ein gesellschaftlches Konzept der technischen Ensembles oder der offenen Maschinenverbände, in denen das Humane mit der »Gesellschaft der technischen Objekte« koexistiert. Wo aber der Mensch zu stark dominierend ins Technische eingreift, haben wir es mit heteronomen artifiziellen Objekten zu tun, wohingegen das technische Objekt zu einer Autonomie zumindest tendiert (es kann die Abstraktion nicht ganz aufgeben), die das natürliche Moment inkludiert, i.e. zur Geschlossenheit und Konsistenz eines maschinellen Systems. Paradoxerweise verhindert für Simondon also gerade das Artifizielle die Technik daran natürlich zu werden. (Ebd.: 154) Abstrakte Künstlichkeit verweist Simondon zufolge immer auf einen Mangel an Technizität, wohingegen das technische Objekt sich in kohärenten Prozessen konkretisieren soll, wobei es gilt jede lokale Operation des technischen Objekts in eine übergreifende Anordnung der maschinellen Ensembles zu integrieren. (Hegel definiert das Konkrete als dasjenige, was das Relationale einschließt, während das Abstrakte ihm eher als einseitig oder isoliert gilt. Die Terme »konkret« und »abstrakt designieren daher keine Typen von Entitäten, wie etwa das Mateielle und Immaterielle, sondern man benutzt sie, um die Art und Weise zu bezeichnen, wie das Denken in Relation zu den Entitäten steht. So kann sich das Abstrakte als das Konkreteste erweisen und das Konkrete als das Abstrakteste. Ein materialistisches Konzept muss erklären können, was die Realität einer begrifflich geformten Abstraktion konstituiert, ohne diese Form zu hypostatisieren. Es muss zeigen können, wie Abstraktionen durch soziale Praktiken behandelt werden, wobei letztere mehr als nur die Materie formende Arbeitsprozesse sind, wenn sie sich letzten Endes in ganz spezifischer Weise neu aufzustellen, das heißt in Relation zu technischen Objekten selbst konkretisieren, wie dies Simondon vorschlägt.) So fungiert das technische Objekt stets in assoziierten Milieus, d.h., es steht mit anderen technischen Objekten in Verbindung oder es genügt sich selbst, und dabei muss es stets die Natur beachten.
Simondos technische Objekte verweisen auf ihre Einbettung in Netz-Strukturen, wobei er die zeitgenössische Ankopplung der technischen Objekte an die digitale, informations- und rechenintensive Ökologie neuer Medien schon in den 1960er Jahren vorausahnt, das Dispositiv digitaler, transformatorischer Technologien inklusive einer durch maschinische Geschwindigkeiten verformten, nichtintentionalen und verteilten Neo-Subjektivität. Fast schon im Gleichklang mit der Kybernetik ist sich Simondon bewusst, dass die Maschine nicht als oder wie ein Werkzeug gebraucht wird, vielmehr wird sie bedient. Technische Objekte sind weder Prothesen des Menschen, noch kann umgekehrt der Mensch als Prothese der Maschinen vollständig aufgelöst werden. Zunächst sollte man die technischen Objekte rein in ihrer Funktionsweise konzipieren, und dies hinsichtlich ihrer erklärbaren Genese, in deren Verlauf sie sich Simondon zufolge zunehmend anhand einer immanenten Evolution konkretisieren (nicht abstraktifizieren), jenseits der Adaption und Zweckmäßigkeit ihres Gebrauchs oder ihrer Festschreibung als Mittel. Jedoch ist das technische Objekt kein eigenständiger kreativer Agent, es bleibt in einen ökonomischen und wissenschaftlichen Kontext eingespannt, und der Prozess seiner Konkretisierung macht die Synergetik geltend, das Zusammenwirken mit anderen funktionalen Subsystemen, indem diese die Funktionalität des technischen Objekts modifizieren und komplettieren. Das Movens der Konkretisierung des technischen Objekts inkludiert die Organisation funktionaler Sub-systeme, in die das technische Objekt eingeschaltet zum technischen Ensemble reift, das wiederum durch umfassende soziale, ökonomische und technische Prozesse und deren Strukturierungen gekennzeichnet ist. Konkretisierung bedeutet zudem die Tendenz zur Innovation, in der eine Reihe von durchaus konfligierenden Erfordernissen durch multifunktionale Lösungen von individuierten technischen Objekten befriedigt werden, indem diese kausale Kreisläufe herstellen, um die jeweiligen Erfordernisse zu integrieren. Technische Elemente (Teile der Maschine), technische Individuen (Maschine als Ganzes) und technische Ensembles (Maschinen als Teil sozialer, technischer und ökonomischer Systeme) stehen je schon in einem dynamischen Verhältnis, das potenziell einen Prozess des technologischen Wandels freisetzt. Dabei wird die Ökonomie jedoch nicht durch die Medien/Maschinen dominiert, vielmehr determiniert das Kapital und seine Ökonomie die technologische Situation.
Die gestörte Identität zwischen Natur und Technik verweist nach Ansicht des französischen Theoretikers Frédéric Neyrat auf das »Hyperjekt«, das die maschinelle Autonomisierung der Technik gegenüber humanen Aktanten sowie die materielle Substitution des Stofflichen durch das Künstliche bezeichnet, ohne dass man allerdings von einer totalen Integration der Natur in die Technik ausgehen muss. (Technik als Ablösung von der Natur, als Substitution von natürlichen Stoffen durch Kunststoffe, und als Ablösung der Technik vom Menschen qua maschineller Autonomisierung. Dabei gilt es davon auszugehen, dass Maschinen und ihre Materialien in einem Verhältnis der Interferenz stehen). Man kann das Hyperjekt als ein gegenüber Subjekt/Geist und Objekt/Natur eigenständiges Substitutions- und Autonomisierungsmilieu (Materialien und Maschinen) des Technischen identifizieren, wobei man bezüglich der Kontextualisierung der beiden Milieus nicht von Vereinigungen, sondern von Überlagerungen sprechen sollte, wenn man über die inneren und äußeren Resonanzen der technischen Objekte nachdenkt.
Die postindustrielle Technik, bspw. das Konzept der transklassischen Maschine bei Gotthard Günther, hält sich im Dazwischen von Natur und Geist auf, weil es gerade aufgrund der Prozesse der doppelten Ablösung verboten ist, die transklassische Maschine rein auf die wissenschaftlich-humane Kreation zu reduzieren, folgt sie doch einer eigenständigen Reflexionslogik. Es geht um die transklassische Maschine, deren wesentliche Funktion darin besteht, Informationen abzuliefern, zu transformieren und zu übersetzen. (Die Information artikuliert den Unterschied, der einen Unterschied macht, so sieht es Gregory Bateson, aber nicht insofern die kleinste Einheit der Information, ein Bit, wie Bateson annimmt, einfach, sondern wie Bernhard Vief in seinem Essay Digitales Geld (Vief 1991) schreibt, zweifach gegeben ist: Bits sind immaterielle, relative Teiler, sie stehen für eine Bewegung der Differentialität, die weder anwesend noch abwesend ist, und damit ist der Binärcode, die binäre Zahlenfolge, als ein Effekt der sie artikulierenden Alternanz positionierbar. Wie Lacan am Beispiel der kybernetischen Maschine gezeigt hat, ist das Artikulierte von derselben Odnung wie die symbolischen Register, wobei die Schalter der Schaltalgebra das Dritte jener Ordnung darstellen: Die Artikulation, die ja selbst weder offen noch geschlossen ist, zeigt die Möglichkeit der rein stellenwertigen Zustände erst an.) Die transklassische Maschine lässt sich weder auf das Objekt noch auf das Subjekt abbilden, vielmehr inhäriert sie eine dreiwertige Logik: Subjekt, Objekt und die transklassische Maschine als Hyperjekt. Das Hyperjekt gehört weder der Natur (Objekt) noch dem Geist (Subjekt) an, und damit untersteht es einer Exteriorität, die allerdings keineswegs als die Auslagerung des Inneren eines Subjekts zu verstehen ist, sondern eine unabhängige »Seinsregion« anzeigt - es beinhaltet eine Dreiwertigkeit, die ihre Unvollständigkeit per se ausweist, weil sie die Gegensätze (Subjekt und Objekt) nicht synthetisiert - im Gegenteil bleiben diese nicht-trivialen Maschinen (Heinz von Foerster) der vollständigen Analyse wie auch der Synthetisierung je schon entzogen. Allerdings muss sich das Konzept technischen Seins an dieser Stelle die Frage gefallen lassen, ob das Mediale technischer Objekte als Weisen der Zerstreuung in offene Räume oder der Zerstreuung des Raumes selbst ontologisch erfasst werden kann. Die Second Order Cybernetics hatte im letzten Jahrhundert eine eigene Konstellation von Begriffen geschaffen (Feedback, Autopoiesis, temporale Irreversibilität, Selbstreferentialität etc.), die längst in mathematische Modelle oder in die Computersimulation eingewandert ist. Zwar löst sich damit das materielle Substrat bzw. die Physikalität, auf denen jene Prozesse aufsitzen, keineswegs auf, aber es regieren hier doch die autonom-immanenten Relationen und Interaktionen einer vielfach gestuften Komplexität, wobei in jedem einzelnen kontingenten Prozess Komplexifikationen stattfinden: Systeme überführen zufällige Ereignisse in Strukturen wie umgekehrt ganz bestimmte Ereignisse Strukturen auch zerstören können, so dass ein Einzelsystem fast in jedem erdenklichen Fall eine kontinuierliche Fluktuation zwischen Desorganisation und Reorganisation wie eben auch zwischen Virtuellem und Aktuellem anzeigt. Gotthard Günther hat vor allem die ontologischen Implikationen dieser Wissensformen darzustellen versucht und dafür den Begriff der Polykontexturalität eingeführt. In einem polykontexturalen Weltzusammenhang sind die transklassischen Maschinen, die in einer Kuft bzw. als das Dritte zwischen Subjekt/Geist oder Objekt/Natur operieren, über eine Vielzahl von Objekten, Qualitäten und Differenzen gestreut. (Ebd.: 165f.) Diese transklassischen Maschinen sind denkbar als Ensembles von Universen, von denen jedes eine gleichwertige Forderung nach Objektivität erheben kann, ohne damit die Forderungen anderer Ensembles abbilden oder gar eliminieren zu müssen. Darin bezeichnet der Begriff der Kontextur ein Kontinuum potenzieller Realität, das mit jeder Quantifizierung seine Gestalt wechselt. Günther spricht daher von der Kontingenz des Objektiven selbst, dessen Differenz keine intelligible Hierarchie vermittelt, mit der Folge, dass wir es in diesen technologischen Feldern weniger mit Klassifikationen oder Taxonomien, sondern mit Entscheidungssituationen und flexiblen Praktiken zu tun bekommen. Hingegen operieren die uns bisher bekannten Computer lediglich autoreferentiell, das heisst sie können den Unterschied zwischen ihren eigenen Operationen und der Umwelt nicht in sich selbst prozessieren.
Frédéric Neyrat führt als eine vierte Ebene des Technischen das sog. Holojekt ein, das im Gegensatz zum Hyperjekt als ein Medium absoluter Anschlussfähigkeit sowohl auf das Subjekt als auch auf das Objekt verweist, auf die Überlagerung von beiden Komponenten, die stets kontinuierlich, instabil und endlos verläuft. (Ebd.: 168f.) Als solches inexistiert das Holojekt, wobei es aber seine Kontinuitätseigenschaften auf das Hyperjekt übertragen und damit diesem Gestalt geben kann, was wir dann schließlich einen organlosen Körper nennen, ein maschinelles Ensemble, das in all seinen Teilen maschinisch ist. Dabei kommt es keineswegs zur Fusionierung von Bereichen (Subjekt/Objekt, Wissen/Ding etc.), vielmehr gibt es hier gemäß der Quantenphysik Überlagerungen, bei denen beispielweise zwei Wellen ihre Identität beibehalten, wenn sie eine dritte Welle generieren, die allerdings weder eine Synthesis der beiden vorhergehenden Wellen noch deren Zerstörung darstellt, sondern François Laruelle zufolge eine nicht-kommutative Identität anzeigt. Das Konzept der Idempotenz, ein Begriff aus der Informatik, inkludiert eine Funktion, die mit sich selbst verknüpft oder durch die Addition weiterer Funktionen unverändert bleibt, sodass die generative Matrix als eine nicht-kommutative Identität durch alle Variationen persistiert, ohne je der Transzendenz zu bedürfen. Der Idempotenz ist das eigen, was das Holojekt laut Neyrat auszeichnet, das »sowohl als auch, als auch, als auch …«, wobei hinsichtlich der Idempotenz vor allem die Funktion des »und« abgestellt wird, also auf die Insistenz von konjunktiven Synthesen, und dies führt uns hin zu einer offenen technischen Struktur, in der sich das technische Objekt als ein »Zwischen« je schon mit einer gewissen Verspätung anzeigt sowie als eine unerschöpfliche Reserve des technischen Mediums selbst. In diesem Kontext postuliert Mc Luhans Formel »Das Medium ist die Botschaft« keine Idenität der Terme und ebenso wenig wird die Botschaft zu einem bloßen Effekt technischer Strukturen degradiert, vielmehr klingt im »ist« etwas an, das im Medium als Differenz, Virulenz oder Zerrissenheit wiederkehrt, ohne je stillgelegt zu werden. (Vgl. Lenger 2013) Die Botschaft des Mediums ereignet sich darin, dass sich die Differenz einem medialen »Zusammen« nur fügt, um als Disparation in ihm wiederzukehren und sich als Differenz zu wiederholen und damit seine bisherigen technischen Modi und Modifikationen zugleich zu unterlaufen. Jean-luc Nancy spricht an dieser Stelle von einer Ökotechnie der Kreuzungen, Verdrehungen und Spannungen, einer Technik, der das Prinzip der Koordination und der Kontrolle fremd ist, und als Struktion bezeichnet er dieses reine Nebeneinander, diese instabile Zusammenfügung ohne jeden Sinn. (Vgl. Hörl 2011: 61)
Alexander Galloway hat bezüglich der kybernetischen Situation die Black Box als einen Apparat definiert, bei dem vornehmlich die Inputs und Outputs bekannt bzw. sichtbar sind, wobei die diversen Interfaces seinen Bezug zum Außen herstellen. Während es in der Fetischismus Kritik der Ware bei Marx noch um die Dechiffrierung der mystischen Hülle ginge, um zum rationalen Kern vorzudringen, sei hingegen bei den heutigen postindustriellen Technologien, die unentwegt neue Waren wie Information hervorbringen, eine rein über Interfaces funktionierende Hülle offen und sichtbar, während gleichzeitig der Kern unsichtbar sei. (Ebd. 269) Die interaktiven Interfaces besetzen in den Black Boxes die Oberflächen und gestatten meist nur selektive Durchgänge vom sichtbaren Außen zum undurchsichtigen Innen. Black Boxes fungieren als in Netzwerken integrierte Knotenpunkte, deren externe Konnektivität einer Architektur sowie einem Management unterliegt, das weitgehend im Unsichtbaren bleibt. Laut Vilém Flusser kann der Fotoapparat als exemplarisch für die meisten Apparate und ihre Funktion gelten. Sein Agent beherrscht den Fotoapparat bis zu einem gewissen Maß aufgrund der Kontrolle des Interfaces, also anhand von Input- und Output-Selektionen, jedoch beherrscht der Fotoapparat den Agenten gerade aufgrund der Undurchsichtigkeit des Inneren der Black Box. Für Simondon würden sich heute gerade die digitalen Technologien mit ihren visuell attraktiven und »black-boxed« Interfaces als höcht problematisch erweisen. Diese Technologien beziehen ihre Popularität meist aus einer suggestiven Ästhetik der Oberfläche, und sie ziehen den User nicht an, weil sie ihm etwa eine befreiende Möglichkeit zur Indetermination der Technologie anbieten, zu flexiblen Kopplungen der Maschinen untereinander und mit dem Humanen, wie dies vielleicht Simondon für erachtenswert hält. Simondon hält nämlich daran fest, dass das prinzipielle Movens der technologischen Entwicklung nicht in einer Steigerung der Automation besteht, sondern eher die Emergenz und die Evolution derjenigen offenen Maschinen zu berücksichtigen hat, die für eine gesellschaftliche Regulation empfänglich sind. Bei den Black Boxes haben wir es hingegen mit technologischen Objekten zu tun, die man als Ensembles von lesbaren rationellen Funktionen beschreibt, und dies bezüglich ihrer möglichst reibungslos zu verlaufenden Input-Output-Relationen, wobei einerseits ihr Kern unlesbar bleibt, andereseits ihre dingliche Konstruktion im Diskurs allenfalls als ein eher zu vernachlässigender Referent noch besteht. Simondon fordert uns dagegen auf einen Blick in das Innere der Black Boxes zu werfen.
Darüber hinaus ist das Problem der Konnektivität hinsichtlich des Aspekts nicht-missionierender, transmittierender Maschinen zu beachten, denen eine Pluralität von Verfahren und Effekten eigen ist, und dies zeigt sich als eine Sache von höchster ökonomischer Relevanz an, wenn diese Maschinen dann entgegen einer eindimensionalen Wirkungskette multiple maschinelle Funktionen und Wirkungen in und mit ihren Komplexen hervorbringen, ja diese Funktionen setzen sogar Sprengungen bisheriger Maschinen frei und stellen damit neue Konjunktionen erst her. »Die Sphären der Produktions- und Energietechnologie, Verkehrs-, Informations- und Humantechnologie geben vage Feldbestimmungen von Maschinen an, in die das Maschinenumwelthafte bereits eingeschrieben ist«, schreibt Hans-Dieter Bahr (Bahr 1983: 277), und im Prinzip lassen sich damit die maschinellen Ensembles und Verfahren als transmittierende Informierungen beschreiben, Informierungen, in die auch natürliche, ökonomische und soziale Strukturen und Prozesse inklusive ihrer Aufschübe, Komplexifizierungen und Schichtenveränderungen eingehen, wobei es längst nicht nur um Kommunikationen, sondern auch um Absorptionen und Filterungen des Informationellen selbst geht, um die Manipulation der Daten qua Algorithmen - und damit wären die jeweiligen Relationen und Programmierungen/Funktionalisierungen auch im Inneren der technischen Objekte selbst zu decodieren, was jedoch die hegemonialen Technik-Diskurse geradezu verhindern. Im Gegensatz zur Verdunkelung des Inneren der Black Boxes plädiert Simondon für einen Diskus, der die vollkommene Transparenz der Maschinen in den Mittelpunkt stellt. Es gilt hier Potenziale und Relationen zu erkennen, die zuweilen in den Maschinen schon kondensiert sind, und die sich dann qua einer funktionalen Überdeterminierung der technischen Objekte konkretisieren. Für Simondon stellen die Maschinen so etwas wie Mediatoren zwischen Natur und Mensch dar, die wir u. a. in den Dikursen über Medien zu erfassen haben. Die Maschine wäre daher, wie Hans-Dieter Bahr das in seiner Schrift Über den Umgang mit Maschinen dargelegt hat, weniger als der Begriff eines Gegenstandes »Maschine«, sondern als eine diskursive Formation zu beschreiben. (Ebd.: 277). Jede (digitale) Maschine wird durch Programmierungen funktionalisiert, wobei sich jedoch sehr schnell zeigt, dass allein mit der Beschreibung und Instandhaltung der konstruktiven Funktionen eine Maschine längst noch nicht »funktionieren« muss, vielmehr sind die vielfältigen Dysfunktionalitäten der Maschinen zu berücksichtigen, die das funktionierende System der Input- und Output-Relationen jederzeit durchkreuzen können, Unfalle, Crashs, Krisen etc. (es kann durchaus vorkommen, dass eine Entschleunigung der Maschinengeschwindigkeit für eine Ökonomie als Ganzes kostensparend ist, man denke etwa an die nicht anfallenden (externen) Klimakosten, obgleich die Entschleunigung für das Einzelkapital kostenvermehrend wirkt; eine Maschine kann aufgrund der Konkurrenz zwischen den Unternehmen, also unter ökonomischen Gesichtspunkten durchaus veralten, obwohl sie materialiter noch voll funktionsfähig ist, eine Konstellation, die Marx moralischen Verschleiß nannte). Das Dazwischen der Maschinen bzw. die maschinellen Transmissionen sperren sich ganz gewaltig einer teleologischen Sichtweise: Die Outputs der komplexen Maschinen sind heute weniger denn je Gebrauchsgegenstände, die ja meistens schon weitere Maschineneingaben sind, sondern erzeugen viel stärker Komplexe von Wirkungen inklusive der unbeabsichtigen Nebenwirkungen, womit die Maschinen selbst ins Labyrinthische mutieren und deswegen andauernd neue Programmierungen und Funktionsweisen zur Orientierung und Kontrolle benötigen, um ihre Eingabeselektionen und Outputs instand zu halten, denn funktionieren sollen die Maschinen durch die Zufuhr von Programmen, Stoffen, Informationen und eben durch Steuerung der Input-Output-Relationen.
Mögliche Outputs der Maschinen können Gebrauchswerte, aber eben durchaus auch weitere Dysfunktionalitäten sein, die den kontinuierlichen Betrieb stören – die meisten dieser Outputs sind jedoch Eingaben in andere Maschinen. Maschinen senden also Energie- und Informationsströme aus, die von anderen Maschinen geschnitten oder unterbrochen werden, während die Quellmaschinen der ausgesendeten Ströme ja selbst schon Einschnitte oder Entnahmen aus anderen Strömen vorgenommen haben, die wiederum anderen Quellmaschine angehören. Jede Aussendung eines Stroms ist also ein Einschnitt in eine andere Aussendung und so weiter und so fort, so sehen es zumindet Deleuze/Guattari im Anti-Ödipus. (Deleuze/Guattari 1974: 11f.) Gleichzeitig zeichnet sich mit den maschinellen Einschnitten eine doppelte Teilung ab, wobei der Begriff des Einschnitts nicht als Bedeutung aus einem Innen aufsteigt, um sodann ins Innen eines anderen übersetzt oder transportiert zu werden, vielmehr ist in der Mit-teilung des Ein-schnitts etwas angezeigt, das als ein Außen schon »ist«, bspw. ein Netz von maschinellen Serien, die in alle Richtungen fliehen. (Lenger 2013) Jede Mit-teilung oder Translation vollzieht sich über einem unausdrücklichen Einschnitt, in den sich das Netz teilt. Diese Teilung bleibt in der Mitteilung zwar unausdrücklich, aber dies nur, weil ein offener Raum eröffnet wird, der es gestattet, dass sich im Prinzip alles mitteilen und ausdrücken lässt. Und diese Teilungen vollziehen sich heute über Interfaces. Gewöhnlicherweise bezeichnet man Interfaces als bedeutende Oberflächen. Eine Erweiterung der Begrifflichkeit findet statt, wenn man sie als Übergange oder Durchgänge konzipiert, als Schwellen, Türen oder Fenster beschreibt oder man sie darüber hinaus im Sinne einer Flexiblisierung der Eingabselektionen als Felder von Wahlmöglichkeiten versteht, wobei wir dann von einem Intraface sprechen können, das sich als unbestimmte Zone der Translationen von Innen und Außen ausweist. (Vgl. Galloway 2012) Das Intraface öffnet die maschinellen Gefüge in unbestimmter Weise auf assoziierte Milieus, womit wir es je schon mit offenen Maschinen bzw. Prozessen zu tun bekommen, in welche immer mehrere Intrafaces integriert sind, und zwar als Effekte der Translationen, die funktionieren oder nicht funktionieren, wobei selbst diese binäre Unterscheidung noch fraglich ist, wenn man bedenkt, dass maschinelle Transmissionen ohne Nebenwirkungen und Störungen einfach nicht auskommen.
Nun zeichnet sich die kybernetische Hypothese gerade dadurch aus, dass sie das technologische Objekt oder das technische System durch die Summe der Inputs und Outputs definiert, wobei Black Boxes (Computer, Datenobjekte, Interface, Codes) in Permanenz dysfunktionale Inputs zu eliminieren haben. Zu den ungünstigen Inputs zählen u. a. klimatische Verhältnisse, unvollständige Klassifizierungen, Einwirkungen anderer Maschinen, fehlerhafte Programme, Verschleiß und es liegt an den kybernetischen Maschinen diese Strukturen zu absorbieren und nach eigenen Kriterien zu korrigieren, und diese Transformationen wirken sich wiederum auf die Outputs aus. Wenn Maschinensysteme verschiedene Eingabetypen selektieren und transformieren, dann heißt dies gerade, dass eine Vielzahl von ökonomischen, sozialen, natürlichen, kulturellen, juristischen Funktionen zu ihren Eingaben wie eben auch zu ihren Ausgaben zählen. (Bahr 1983: 281) Hier zeigt sich nun ganz deutlich die disziplinierende Funktion des Rückkoppelungsmodus kybernetischer Regelkreise, der Versuch Outputs so auf Inputs zurückzukoppeln, dass in Zukunft dysfunktionale Inputs ausgeblendet oder eliminiert werden können, oder zumindest funktionalere Selektionen der Eingaben als bisher stattinden. Die Kybernetik ist also nicht nur durch Automatisierung gekennzeichnet, sondern vor allem auch durch den Mechanismus von Eingabeselektionen. Wird nun das humane Element herausselektiert, so spricht man vom Automaten. Dies widerspricht of course einer posthumanen Situation, wie sie sich Gilbert Simondon noch vorgestellt hatte: Wenn technische Objekte sich individualisieren, dann befinden sie sich stets auch in äußerer Resonanz, wobei die Resonanzen im Dazwischen von technischem Individuum und assoziiertem techno-logischen Milieu insistieren, sie schaffen im Dazwischen eine reskursive Kausalität. Die Kybernetik will aber das Dazwischen ganz seinem Automatismus oder seinen Eingabeselektionen unterwerfen, wobei man die Identität von Lebewesen und Maschine rein vom Gesichtspunkt des Automaten her denkt, während Simondon diese für ihn asymptotische Analogie zwischen Humanem und Maschine aus der Perspektive der je schon auf offene Räume und assoziierte Milieus hin orientierten Maschinen konzipiert, was wiederum einer gewissen Affirmation nicht-selektionsfähiger Inputs und einer Vielfalt von Strategemen entspricht, die sich selbst als Einschnitte, Teilungen und Durchquerungen der maschinellen Milieus fortschreiben. Maschinen als Medien konfigurieren Zwischenwelten, insofern sie eine Vermittlung ohne Extreme oder Pole anzeigen, da die Pole (Inputs und Outputs) sich eben oft als weitere Strategeme erweisen. Technologische Objekte sind heute in der Regel in digitale Netzwerke eingebettet, wobei die dazugehörige Architekur der Protokolle ihren Informationsaustausch untereinander regelt, der also über eine komplexe Topologie aus Verdichtungen und Verstreuungen wuchert und selbst hieraus würde für Simondon wahrscheinlich noch eine kulturelle Kraft erwachsen. Diese gebraucht nicht die Maschinen, sondern bestätigt, dass die kulturelle Würde gerade in der Anerkennung des reinen Funktionierens der technischen Objekte liegt, womit das Humane erst in einen Dialog mit den technischen Ensembles treten und dieser Dialog zu einer wahren Transindividualität führen kann. Wir sprechen hier generell von Technizität. Werden die Eingabe- und Ausgabeselektionen ausgehend von ihren durchkreuzenden Kontingenzen betrachtet, dann haben wir es nicht mit mehr Automaten, sondern tatsächlich mit offenen Maschinen zu tun – und Konkretisierung heißt dann, die Kontingenz der Funktionen sowie die Abhängigkeit der Elemente voneinander zu würdigen, um ihrer inneren Resonanz gerecht zu werden, was sie zu wahrscheinlichen Maschinen macht, die sich nicht am Ideal der Präzision messen lassen, sondern verschiedene Präzisionsgrade anzeigen, indem sie ihren Verwendungsbereich erweitern, sich auf neue Gebiete ausdehnen, bis sie, wie das im Falle der Computertechnik allerdings auf usurpierende Weise geschehen ist, alle Felder des Sozialen, Kulturellen, Ökonomischen und Technologischen besetzen oder zumindest tangieren. Es ist der Prozess der Disparation zwischen zwei Realitäten, im Sinne von Deleuze die Disparation zwischen Virtuellem und Aktuellem, welche schließlich die Information anders als das Digitale aktiviert und einen Prozess der Individuation in Gang setzt, der aus der Zukunft kommt. Die Information ist weniger auf der homogenen Ebene einer einzigen Realität, sondern mindestens auf zwei oder mehreren disparaten Ebenen angesiedelt, bspw. einer 3D-Topologie, die unsere posthumane Realität verknotet; es geht um eine Fabrikation der Realität, welche die Vergangenheit und die Zukunft in die Gegenwart faltet, und zwar als eine Individuation der Realität durch Disparation, die in sich selbst Information ist. Wenn die Individuation die Disparation des Virtuellen und Aktuellen umfasst, dann ist die Information immer schon da, schon das Jetzt einer künftigen Gegenwart. Was man Vergangenheit oder Gegenwart nennt, ist also hauptsächlich die Disparation einer immanenten Informationsquelle, die sich immer im Prozess ihrer Auflösung befindet. Für Simondon ist die Vorstellung von der Kapazität oder dem Potenzial eines technischen Objekts eng mit seiner Theorie der Individuation verknüpft. Das individuelle Objekt ist niemals im Voraus gegeben, es muss produziert werden, es muss koagulieren, oder es muss in einem laufenden Prozess Existenz gewinnen. Dabei ist das Präindividuelle kein Stadium, dem es an Identität mangelt, es ist kein undifferenziertes Chaos, sondern eher eine Bedingung, die mehr als eine Einheit oder eine Identität ist, nämlich ein System von höchster Potenzialität bzw. voller Potenziale, ein Exzess oder eine Übersättigung, ein System, das unabhängig vom Denken existiert.
Digitale Netzwerke umspannen heute nicht nur jenen Globus, den sie selbst generieren, sondern sie dringen bis in die sozialen Mikrostrukturen der kapitalistischen Ökonomie vor, deren humane Agenten sie wiederum der permanenten Adressierbarkeit, Online-Anwesenheit und informatorischen Kontrolle unterwerfen. (Lenger 2013) »Online« zu sein kondensiert heute zur hegemonialen Lebensform, ständig mobilisierbare Verfügbarkeit ist Teil einer flexiblen Normalisierung, die die User in toto mit der Ausübung von alltäglichen Wellness-, Kosmetik- und Fitnessprogrammen affirmieren, bis sie im Zuge ihrer permanenten Rekursion mit den Maschinen die Prozesse der Normalisierung schließlich ganz inkorporieren. Im Postskriptum über die Kontrollgesellschaften hatte Deleuze humane Agenten als »Dividuen«, als größtenteils a-physikalische, als endlos teilbare und auf Datenrepäsentation kondensierbare Entitäten beschrieben, die gerade wegen der Effekte von a-humanen Technologien der Kontrolle irgendwann ähnlich wie computer-basierte Systeme agieren. Zum gegenwärtigen Zeitpunkt können wir davon ausgehen, dass sich eine Homologie zwischen den postfordistischen Mangementmethoden, die in heroischen Litaneien nicht-hierarchische Netzwerke, Selbstorganisation, Flexibilität und Innovation propagieren, und den Neurowissenschaften feststellen lässt, die das Gehirn als ein dezentralisiertes Netzwerk von neuronalen Aggregaten beschreiben und eine neurologische Plastizität (Christine Malabou) als Grundlage für kognitive Flexibilität und Adaption hervorheben. Nach Catharine Malabou beeinflussen neuronale und soziale Funktionen einander solange, bis es nicht mehr möglich ist, sie noch zu unterscheiden. Zumindest gibt es die Möglichkeit, dass die menschliche Species mit der schnellen Übersetzung ihrer eigenen materiellen Geschichte in Datenströme, vernetzte Konnektivität, künstliche Intelligenz und Satellitenüberwachung tendenziell zu einem Abziehbild des Technologischen gerät. Wenn die Ereignisse - mobile Apps, technologische Geräte, ökonomischen Krisen, digitales Geld, Drohnenkriege etc. - in Lichtgeschwindigkeit prozessieren, dann kommt es definitiv zur Destabilisierung der Bezugssysteme der traditionellen Techno-Diskurse, deren Definitionen und Hypothesen als brauchbare Indikatoren für das, was die Zukunft eines hyper-beschleunigten Kapitalismus noch bringen könnte, zunehmend ausfallen. Die Verdunklung von klar definierten Grenzen zwischen Körpern und Maschinen, die Interpenetration von menschlicher Wahrnehmung und algorithmischem Code, das aktive Remixen der Ränder von Menschen, Tieren, Pflanzen und unbelebten Objekten - all das mündet in der Injektion eines fundamentalen technologischen Drifts in das Soziale, Kulturelle und Ökonomische, während aber die Ökonomie und ihre Maschinerien das Technologische nach wie vor determinieren. In die soziale Wirklichkeit implementiert beinhalten die wichtigen Signifikanten der technologischen Akzeleration heute Konzepte wie »Big Data«, »distant reading« und »augmented reality«, sie schließen die noch an die Schwerkraft gebundenen Worte und das Kapital als Macht in den schwerelosen Raum der Regime der Komputation. Es wird in Zukunft noch weitere Abwanderungen in diesen schwerelosen Raum geben, bspw. die der Gedanken in mobile Technologien, und wir werden es gleichzeitig mit einer anwachsenden Volatilität im Bereich der digitalen Finanz-Ökonomie zu tun bekommen, ausgelöst durch Trading-Algorithmen, die auf neuronalen Netzwerken und genetischen Programmierungen basieren, wir werden in die relationalen Netzwerke der Social Media ganz eintauchen, und nicht zuletzt wird man uns mit einem komplett distributierten Gehirn konfrontieren, das die Experimente in der Neurotechnologie modulieren. Nichts bleibt mehr stabil, alles ist in Bewegung.
Kommen wir nun zu den gegenwärtigen Maschinenensembles und ihren Umgebungen, zu den digitalen Netzwerken und ihren komplexen Ökologien des Materiellen und des Ökonomischen, in welche der Hochfrequenz-Handel (HFH) integriert ist. Die digitalen Technologien haben längst das gesamte finanzielle System durchdrungen - mit dem HFH hebt die fluide, planetarische Bewegung des finanziellen Kapitals, der ein Drive zur Gewalt der reinen Marktabstraktion eigen ist sowie zur Substitution der materiellen Erfahrung durch die diversen Modelle der Computersimulation, ganz leicht von der Produktion und von den Ordnungen des Konsums ab, um sich in einem geschlossenen, selbstreferentiellen, semiotischen System fortzuschreiben, das die Kalibrierung und Rekalibrierung der Maschine-Maschine-Relationen permanent forciert. Der Prozess der Dezimalisierung (das Auspreisen der Assets qua Dezimalzahl und nicht länger durch Brüche), der an den Finanzmärkten sich selbst beschleunigend etwa seit dem Jahr 2000 ins Rollen gekommen ist und den Spread zwischen den Kaufs- und Verkaufspreisen immer weiter reduziert hat, reflektiert und befeuert die Notwendigkeit immer höhere und zeitintensivere Transaktionssummen an den Finanzmärkten zu bewegen, damit die immer geringer ausfallenden Spreads überhaupt noch kompensiert werden können. Dabei halten die Händler die Positionen der jeweiligen Deals nur noch äußerst minimale Zeitspannen, wobei sie auch nur geringe Spreads realisieren, sodass sich die hohen Gewinne eben allein aus der Menge und der Geschwindigkeit von Transaktionen ergeben. Mit dem sog. direkten Handel, der es vor allem den großen institutionellen Investoren erlaubt, zwischen sich und dem jeweiligen Handelspartner sämtliche Mediatoren (inklusive der Börse) zu umgehen, sowie der Existenz von fast vollkommen automatisierten Infrastrukturen wird es für die Finanzunternehmen immer dringender auf die neuesten technologischen Innovationen zuzugreifen, um sie im Sinne einer akzelerativen Dynamik zu bewirtschaften, zu kontrollieren und wenn überhaupt noch möglich auch zu steuern. So infiltriert im gegenwärtigen HFH die digitale Automatisierung fast jeden Aspekt des Tradingprozesses, von der Analyse über die Ausführung des jeweiligen Geschäfts bis hin zu den Backend-Prozessen, wobei sämtliche Komponenten durch Algorithmen gesteuert werden. Ein HFH-System muss das Fine-Tuning jeder Programmierung sowie das der Speicherkapazitäten leisten, die Manipulation individueller Datenpunkte und -pakete, die Erfassung von Datenbanken und die Selektion der Inputs etc.. Es lässt sich also an den Finanzmärkten eindeutig eine Tendenz zur Hegemonialisierung der Automation feststellen. (Marx hatte zumindest ansatzweise in den Grundrissen die Automation als einen Prozess der Absorption der allgemeinen Produktivkräfte - Teil des sozialen Hirns - in die Maschine bzw. das capital fixe beschrieben, wozu auch das Wissen und die technologischen Fähigkeiten der Arbeitenden gehört (Marx 1974: 603), die nun eher der Logik des Kapitals folgen als dass sie noch Ausdruck der sozialen Arbeit sind.) Wenn man sich die Historie der Relation Kapital und Technologie vergegenwärtigt, dann erscheint es ganz offensichtlich, dass sich die Automation vom thermomechanischen Modell des klassischen Industriekapitalismus entfernt und sich in die elektronisch-berechnenden Netzwerke des zeitgenössischen Kapitalismus integriert hat. Die digitale Automation prozessiert heute en detail das soziale Nervensystem und das soziale Hirn, sie umfasst die Potenziale des Virtuellen, des Simulativen und des Abstrakten, des Feedback und der autonomen Prozesse, sie entfaltet sich in Netzwerken und dessen elektronischen und nervlichen Verbindungen, in denen der Bediener/User als quasi-automatisches Relais der pausenlos fließenden Informationsströme fungiert.
Algorithmen müssen im Kontext dieses neuen Modus der Automation diskutiert werden. Gewöhnlich definiert man den Algorithmus als eine Handlungsvorschrift, mit der ein Problem gelöst wird, und dies geschieht in einer Sequenz von endlichen, wohledefinierten Schritten oder Instruktionen, in Sets von geordneten Schritten, die mit Daten und berechenbaren Strukturen operieren, welche in Computerprogramme implementiert sind. Als solcher ist der Algorithmus eine Abstraktion, seine Existenz ist in die partikulare Programmsprache einer partikularen maschinellen Architektur integriert, die wiederum aus Hardware, Daten, Körpern und Entscheidungen besteht. Dabei verarbeiten die derzeit existierenden Algorithmen immer größere Datenmengen und prozessieren damit eine wachsende Entropie von Datenströmen (Big Data), sie generieren weit mehr als nur Instruktionen, die ausgeführt werden müssen, nämlich potenziell unendliche Mengen an Daten und Informationen, die wiederum mit anderen Algorithmen interferieren, um die diversen algorithmischen Prozesse zu reprogrammieren. Aus der ökonomischen Perspektive betrachtet handelt es sich bei den Algorithmen um eine Form des fixen Kapitals, in das soziales Wissen (extrahiert aus der Arbeit von Mathematikern, Programmierern, aber auch User-Aktivitäten) vergegenständlicht ist, wobei diese Form des fixen Kapitals nicht an sich verwertbar ist, sondern nur insoweit es in die monetäre Kapitalisierung hineingezogen wird, wobei es diese auch weiter antreiben und forcieren kann. Jedenfalls sind Algorithmen nicht als bloße Tools zu verstehen, sondern man sollte endlich begreifen, dass sie aktiv in die Analyse und das Processing der Datenströme eingreifen, um diese in ökonomisch relevante Informationen zu übersetzen und auch zu verwerten bzw. selbstreferentiell die jeweiligen Orders an den Finanzmärkten zu generieren und erfolgreich abzuschließen. Das heißt, der weitaus größere Anteil der finanziellen Transaktionen im Hochfrequenz-Handel läuft heute über eine reine Maschine-Maschine-Kommunikation, die die humanen Aktanten nicht mehr zu beobachten in der Lage sind, weil die Daten- und Informationsströme in a-humanen Hochgeschwindigkeiten über unsichtbare Apparaturen fließen und noch die Unterscheidung zwischen Maschine, Körper und Bild verflüssigen. (Vgl. Wilkins/Dragos 2013) Zwar variiert die Zusammensetzung bzw. Komposition von humanen und ahumanen Entitäten, wie eben auch in den verschiedenen HFH-Systemen, aber im Extremfall eliminieren einige der Finanzunternehmen fast jede menschliche Intervention in die automatisiert ablaufenden Transaktionen, sodass die von den Maschinen selbstreferentiell gelesenen Daten kontinuierlich in die die Prozesse steuernden Algorithmen ein- und zurückfließen, womit die Handelsentscheidungen weitgehend automatisiert ablaufen können. Jede menschliche Intervention kompliziert hingegen selbst diejenigen finanziellen Prozesse, in denen spezielle Fehler und Probleme entstanden sind. Zum Teil implementiert man schon heute die Algorithmen physisch in die Silikonchips: Die Vereinigung von Hardware und Software. Die zeitgenössische finanzielle Ökonomie wird in der Sektion HFH-Systeme also weitgehend unsichtbar durch Algorithmen gestaltet - bspw. scannen bestimmte Programme die Finanzmärkte permanent daraufhin ab, ob die von Algorithmen fixierten Indikatoren bestimmte Levels erreichen, die dann als Kauf- oder Verkaufssignale wirksam werden. Es gibt aktuelle Versionen von Algorithmen wie die »volume-weighted average price Algorithmen« (VWAP), die in Verbindung mit ökonometrischen Verfahren komplexe Randomness-Funktionen generieren, um die Größe und die Ausführungszeiten von monetären Transaktionen im Kontext globaler Handelsvolumina zu optimieren. (Ebd.) Wir haben es mit weiteren Typen von Algorithmen zu tun, die versuchen solche Transaktionen zu identifizieren und zu antizipieren, oder es gibt non-adaptive, low-latency-Algorithmen, die sowohl die Differentiale der Übertragungsgeschwindigkeiten in den globalen Finanznetzwerken »bearbeiten« als auch die korrelierenden materiellen Transformationen, die jene informationellen Relationen ermöglichen. Man setzt genetische Algorithmen ein, um die möglichen Kombinationen von Preisfluktuationen der Finanzderivate und -instrumente zu optimieren und das optimale Finetuning eines jeden Parameters innerhalb eines finanziellen Systems zu gewährleisten. (Ebd.) Die Implementierung der algorithmischen Systeme in die computerisierte Finanzökonomie stellt eine qualitativ neue Phase der reellen Subsumtion der Maschinerie unter das Kapital dar, sie zeigt den Übergang von der Kybernetik zur zeitgenössischen wissenschaftlichen Technizität an, die sog. »nano-bio-info-kognitive« Revolution, die auf verteilten Netzwerken und angeblich friktionsfreien Systemen (Supraleitern, ubiquitäres computing) aufsitzt. (Vgl. Srnicek/Williams 2013) (Reelle Subsumtion unter das Kapitals inkludiert, dass jeder Aspekt des Produktionsprozesses, Technologie, Märkte, Arbeiter, Poriduktionsmittel etc. unter der Dominanz des kapitalistischen Verwertungsprozesses stattfindet, desen Zweck die Selbstverwertung des Kapitals ist.) Dabei bleiben die Tradingprozesse an den Finanzmärkten in eine finanzielle Ökologie von mächtigen dominanten Playern integriert, die die selbstreferentiell operierenden Roboter (solche, die große Positionen liquidieren und solche, die Indexe beobachten) mit Informationen füttern und sie nur zum Teil noch steuern, während die HFH-Systeme zumindest in technischer Hinsicht sich an die Spitze der finanziellen Ökologie gesetzt haben. Die monetäre Seite der finanziellen Ökologie wäre dahingehend zu präzisieren, dass das digitale Geld heute in Serien von referenzlosen Zeichen prozessiert, die in die berechnende Automation von Simulationsmodellen integriert sind, in die Bildschirmmedien mit ihren automatisierten Displays (Graphiken, Indizes etc.) und eben auch in das algorithmische Trading (bot-to-bot Transaktion). Bernhard Vief hat in seinem Essay Digitales Geld (Vief 1991: 120ff.) schon früh darauf hingewiesen, dass es sich beim digitalen Geld um reines Zeichengeld handelt, dass heute wie eben fast alle anderen Zeichensysteme binär kodiert ist. Dabei erfüllen die Bits nicht nur alle Funktionen des bisherigen Geldes, sondern vermitteln darüber hinaus jeden beliebigen Austausch von Informationen. Für Vief sind die Bits Universalzeichen, mit deren Hilfe man verschiedene Zeichen und Zeichensysteme (Ton, Bild, Schrift, Logik, Werte etc.) übersetzen und verrechnen kann. (Ebd.: 120) Bits, reines Zeichengeld, kodieren nicht nur das Geld, sondern sie sind selber Geld und damit gleicht Vief zufolge das Geld einem Code.
Die Bedeutung der Geschwindigkeit war zwar schon immer essentiell für die Finanzmärkte, aber die technischen Infrastukturen ermöglichen heute das maschinelle Processing mit vollkommen a-humanen Geschwindigkeiten und den entsprechenden Beschleunigungen. (Ebd.) Die verwendeten Programme, die als rekursive Schleifen in die Märkte integriert sind, das heißt über Rückkoppelungen auf die Märkte einwirken, bleiben nur für kurze Zeit profitabel, womit die Programme laufend aktualisiert werden müssen, um die Reaktionszeiten weiter zu steigern, sodass nur noch die schnellsten Computersysteme Gewinne generieren, was für die Unternehmen wiederum zu enormen Kosten führt. In den HFH-Systemen werden die Profite hauptsächlich über eine kontinuierlich beschleunigende Fluktuation der jeweiligen Portfolios generiert – finanzielle Entscheidungen fallen in Millisekunden, Mikrosekunden, ja sogar in Nanosekunden. So prozessiert z. B. der neueste iX-eCute chip von Fixnetix heute Trades in nur 740 Nanosekunden. Dieser Chip kann über 330000 Trades in der Zeit eines Wimpernschlags (ca. 250 Millisekunden) abwickeln. Folglich haben die HFH-Systeme längst die temporale Tiefe von Nanosekunden (1 Bilionstel einer Sekunde) erreicht. Und so stieg auch das durchschnittliche tägliche Volumen der finanziellen Transaktionen der NYSE für die Periode 2005–2009 um 300%, während die Anzahl der täglichen Trades in derselben Zeit um 800% anwuchs. (Vgl. Durbin 2010: vi-viii) Obgleich die mit einem Trade in den HFH-Systemen erzielten Profite relativ gering gegenüber anderen Finanzinvestionen wie etwa komplexen Derivatprodukten bleiben, gewähren die durch digitale Maschinen generierten Investitionen doch relativ sichere Einkommen. Der Hochfrequenz-Handel markiert also zumindest in den USA einen wichtigen Einfluss auf die Strúkturen der Finanzmärkte. Man schätzt, dass die HFH-Systeme (ca 100 Unternehmen) derzeit für circa 70% des sog. Equity Market Volumens in den USA verantwortlich sind, für ein Drittel in den UK, und dies mit steigender Tendenz. (Ebd.) Während es siginifikant ist, dass der HFH inzwischen für einen großen Anteil der Markttransaktionen vor allem an den Finanzmärkten in den USA verantwortlich ist, bleibt er jedoch wegen der geringen Profitspannen nicht besonders bedeutend für die dominanten Finanzunternehmen, allenfalls tolerieren diese als mächtige Agenten diejenigen Unternehmen, die im HFH tätig sind, weil diese angeblich die benötigte Liquidität für die Märkte bereitstellen. (Srnicek//Williams) Dennoch partizipiert der Hochfrequenz-Handel an einem systemischen Vorteil, der selbst ein Resultat der Technizität des synthetischen Handels ist, wobei dieser für die sog. Outsider der Finanzmärkte vollkommen opak bleibt.
Heiner Mühlmann hat in seinem Buch Europa im Weltwirtschaftskrieg ausführlich beschrieben, wie der Hochfrequenz-Handel sich im Bereich der CDS-Systeme auswirkt. (Mühlmann 2013: 115f.) Wird bspw. von einem Finanzakteur während der Zeitspanne (to bis tn) zum Zeitpunkt (to) ein versicherungsnehmender CDS und zum Zeitpunkt (tn) ein versicherungsgebender CDS abgeschlossen, wobei der Akteur im ersten Fall eine Gebühr (a) bezahlt, im zweiten Fall eine Gebühr (b) kassiert, dann geht er davon aus, dass die kassierte Gebühr (b) höher ist als die Gebühr (a), weil in der angenommenen Zeitspanne die Wahrscheinlichkeit, dass ein Kreditereignis (Ereignis mit negativen Wirkungen) eintritt, steigt - und damit erhöht sich die Gebühr (b). Die Zeit (tn) ist das Intervall einer Aufschubzeit, an deren jeweiligem Ende ein unvorhersehbares Ereignis steht, das eine qualitativ neue Dynamik ins Spiel bringt. Während dieser Zeitspanne werden die n-Intervalle, die zwischen Versicherungskauf und -verkauf liegen, immer kürzer, oder anders gesagt, die Taktzahl pro Transaktion steigt unaufhörlich. Mühlmann weist auch darauf hin, dass die Gebührenbeträge pro Transaktion klein sind, aber die inverse Verknüpfung von Kauf und Verkauf der CDS bleibt profitabel, weil enorme Geldsummen, zusätzlich angeheizt durch die Politik des billigen Geldes durch die Notenbanken, in den Handel fließen, sodass sowohl die jeweiligen Geldsummen pro Transaktion als auch die Hochfrequenzmultiplikation der Transaktionen die Geringfügigkeit der Gebührengewinne kompensieren. (Ebd.: 155) Insgesamt besitzt die Zeitspanne bis zum Eintritt eines katastrophischen Kreditereignisses eine asymptotische Komponente, insofern man sich über spezifizierte Zeiträume der Katastrophe (Insolvenz etc.) infinitesimal annähert, aber paradoxerweise soll die Katastrophe schließlich doch nicht eintreten, da sie zumindest für bestimmte Teilnehmer unweigerlich zu Verlusten führt.
Das abstrakte Diagramm eines Tradingsystems besteht aus drei wesentlichen Komponenten: a) Tradingstrategien, b) Mathematik, die in Softwareprogramme integriert ist, und c) technologische Infrastruktur. (Srnicek//Williams) Der Hochfrequenz-Handel gilt als ein perfektes Beispiel für distributive Real-Time-Systeme, wobei Patterns aus den Feldern des komplexen Ereignis-Processing ein- und umgesetzt werden, inklusive tausende von individuellen Programmen, die sich zunehmend der Tendenz zur Konzentration des Processings im CPU des Computers widersetzen, indem sie entscheidende Aufgaben des Handels an spezielle Hardwarekomponenten delegieren. (Vgl. Durbin 2010: 8) Längst findet im HFH auch das GPU Computing (Grafikprozessor-beschleunigte Berechnung) Anwendung, bei dem man den Grafikprozessor (GPU) gemeinsam mit der CPU zur Beschleunigung des finanziellen Tradings einsetzt. (Ebd.) Parallelisierung gilt als das entscheidende Konzept aktueller GPUs, das auch in den finanzwissenschaftlichen Diskursen und Praktiken immer weiter perfektioniert wird, um bspw. die Auswertung und Berechnungen der Black Scholes Modelle inklusive aller Komponenten in Realtime zu gewährleisten. Dabei bliebt die Software der Finanzsysteme an die Modularität der jeweils zu bewirtschaftenden Komponenten gebunden und dient zugleich der strukturellen Ankopplung der Unternehmen an spezifische Kommunikationsnetzwerke . (Ebd.: 101-102) Kybernetische Feedbacktechnologien wären heute ohne die Modularität der digitalen Maschinen/Medien gar nicht zu denken, eine Strukturierung, bei der die Module, die alle auf eine identische Bauart zurückgehen, permanent neu zusammengesetzt werden können, ohne jedoch ihre Autonomie zu verlieren. Dabei erfordert der Modus der per se möglichen Neukombination von modularen Konstellationen ständig flexible Tests, mit denen das kontinuierliche Feedback überhaupt erst funktioniert. In den Finanzunternehmen tätige Softwareingenieure entwickeln solche Systeme hinsichtlich der Elastizität, Flexibilität und Profitabilität von finanziellen Ereignissen. Der Drift jede Surplusnanosekunde zu extrahieren, resultiert somit in mühsamen Prozessen des Designs und der Optimierung von Algorithmen und den entsprechenden spezifischen Finanzinstrumenten. (Vgl. Srnicek//Williams).
Während die populäre Perzeption im Kontext finanzwissenschaftlicher Diskurse nach wie vor die Wall Street als die zentrale Lokalisierung der globalen Finance ausmacht, sind es gerade Städte wie New Jersey und Chicago, in denen ein Großteil des amerikanischen Finanzsystems derzeit zumindest physisch angesiedelt ist. HFH-Hubs wie der NYSE-Standort Mahwah beherbergen viele der größten »matching engines« (Maschinen, deren Algorithmen Transaktionen aus der ganzen Welt bewerten, vergleichen, kaufen und verkaufen). (Ebd.: 16) Es gibt durchaus auch eine physische Konzentration der räumlichen Verteilungssysteme globaler Finance, und diese Nicht-Orte, Global Citys, gelten of course als stark zu beschützende Komponenten der jeweiligen nationalen Infrastrukturen. Die materielle Infrastruktur bzw. Hardware der finanziellen Systeme ist intrinsisch verteilt und vernetzt. Und seit die elektronischen Signale über optische Fiberkabel fließen, deren Übertragungsraten im Gigabit- bis Terabit-Bereich liegen, gilt die Distanz zwischen Sender und Empfänger von Informationen als eine Schlüsselvariable der temporalen Latenz der Systeme. Die Konkurrenzsituation zwischen den verschiedenen HFH-Tradern stimuliert also einen rasanten Wettlauf um die kürzesten Reaktionszeiten an den Märkten, was in der Regel dazu führt, dass Finanzunternehmen ihre HFH-Server unmittelbar an den Standorten der Börsenserver lokalisieren, wenn sie denn noch einen börsenorientierten Handel betreiben. Vorausgesetzt bleibt natürlich eine funktional einwandfreie Operationalität der Konnektivität, die den Parasiten, der für die Nichtoperationalität verantwortlich zeichnet, so gut wie möglich auszuschließen hat. Finanzunternehmen sehen sich als komplexe sozio-technische Systeme gezwungen, permanent die Produktion eines parasitären Rauschens zu bearbeiten und die ständig fluktuierenden Informationsgefälle zu reduzieren, indem sie mit einer hohen Rate von Datendurchlaufleistungen und dem Versuch der Glattstellung von Rauschen und Entropie im Rahmen einer finanziellen Ökologie operieren. (Vgl. Wilkins/Dragon 2013)
Ein Signal benötigt gegenwärtig achtzehn Millisekunden, um in Lichtgeschwindigkeit von New York nach London zu gelangen. Dieser temporale Gap bietet für einen Händler in New York eine Zeitspanne an, in der er neue Daten erkennen und bearbeiten kann, noch bevor ein Händler in London dies überhaupt registriert. Aber selbst die Lichtgeschwindigkeit kann im Hochfrequenz-Handel in gewisser Weise zu langsam sein, sodass bei einem Deal, den ein Händler von New York aus gleichzeitig einem Händler in London und Frankfurt anbietet, der Händler in London bevorzugt wird, weil das mit Lichtgeschwindigkeit gesendete Signal bis Frankfurt zu lange benötigt. Um die bestehenden Geschwindigkeitsgrenzen noch zu überschreiten, schneiden bestimmte Unternehmen sozusagen Löcher in sichtbare und unsichtbare Wände, um sich physisch so nahe wie möglich an den »matching engines« der zentralen Handelsplätze zu positionieren. Manche US-Unternehmen gehen heute, um die Latenzzeiten weiter zu verringern, so weit und legen ihre Kommunikationskabel durch Tunnel, die durch Berge geschlagen wurden, um bspw. die Übertragungszeiten zwischen Chicago und New York weiter zu reduzieren. Zur Maximierung der Profite muss man die räumlichen Relationen in der effektivsten Weise nutzen, womit die HFH-Systeme bezüglich ihrer Infrastrukturen tatsächlich parasitär werden, indem sie die Rechenzentren der Host basierten Dienstleistungen permanent im Auge behalten, um wenn möglich selbst diese Strukturen noch zu umgehen. Demzufolge verlangen die Imperative der Akzeleration geradezu danach, dass die Unternehmen alle störenden Intermediäre zunehmend eliminieren. Dies bedingt eine Tendenz zur räumlichen Konzentration der Finanzunternehmen in den hochvernetzten Global Citys, während die Unternehmen gleichzeitig einer Dezentralisierung folgen, die von der Simultaneität der Digitalität abhängt, um die multiplen Austauschsysteme an den Finanzmärkten inklusive ihrer Geschwindigkeiten, Rhythmen, Sequenzen und Metriken überhaupt noch profitkonform bewirtschaften zu können. Der technologische Fortschritt in der digitalen Ökonomie - komplexe, dynamische, integrierte Netzwerke - wird vom finanziellen Kapital diktiert, das heißt, dessen Investitionsentscheidungen bestimmen den Modus, mit und in dem Technologien entwickelt werden. Innovationen verlangen geradezu nach einer wolkigen und dichten Informationsstruktur, die ungeheure Massen an Daten und Informationen aufnimmt, speichert und weitergibt - Rohstoffpreise, Wechselkurse, Zinsraten, politische und soziale Faktoren etc. -, wobei die Medien, die sich im ständigem Austausch mit dem finanziellen Kapital sowie dem Technologiesektor befinden, als informationelle Marketingmaschinerien fungieren, man denke nur an die Endlosschleifen der Aktienkurse, die bei Fernsehkanälen wie CNN oder N-TV bei jeder Nachrichtensendung unter dem Bild mitlaufen, als ob die Aktienkurse das EKG des Körpers des globalen finanziellen Kapitals wären. Die technologisch-informationelle Architektur der HFH-Systeme scheint eine ganz entscheidende Rolle zu spielen, wenn es darum geht, die Latenzzeiten in den Netzwerken der finanziellen Systeme zu minimieren, wobei ein hoher Anteil der Daten und Informationen über aktuelle Preisbewegungen heute nicht über das öffentliche Internet, sondern über eines der größten Netzwerke in der Welt fließt – benannt als »Secure Financial Transaction Infrastructure« (SFTI). Als Teil des NYSE Euronext stellt die Company SFTI ein privates Highspeed-Computernetzwerk für die Finanzunternehmen in den USA, Europa und Asien zur Verfügung. Weil aber die Informationstransmissionen durch die Lichtgeschwindigkeit begrenzt sind, haben Physiker längst damit begonnen, planetarische Koordinaten von optimalen Handelsstandorten zu triangulieren, während andere Forscher glauben, dass Glasfaserkabel zur Optimierung der HFH-Systeme irgendwann zu langsam sind, und deshalb vorschlagen, die Kommunikationsstrecken durch den Erdkern zu führen, um die minimal langsamere Navigation auf der Erdoberfläche zu umgehen. Privatisierte Teilchenbeschleuniger würden dann Neutrinos generieren und enkodieren, um einen sub-molekularen Pfad durch die Erde zu bohren, um noch minimalste Zeitspannen gegenüber den Konkurrenten zu gewinnen. Am Ende könnte selbst die Erde noch zum Hindernis für die akzelerierende Kapitalzirkulation geraten. Bis dahin gilt die Erde zumindest als eine Ressoure des Kapitalismus, auf deren Grundlage die Expansion in einen ortlosen Horizont erfolgen soll, insoweit das Kapial selbst noch das Außen zu ökonomisieren gedenkt, um wenn möglich eine neue planetare Konstellation zu erzeugen. Der dromologische Aspekt der HFH-Systeme (Virilio) berührt demnach ihre unmittelbaren Verkörperungen und die dazugehörigen Standorte und erfordert die Verwandlung des gesamten Planeten in ein beschleunigendes Medium der Kapitalzirkulation, dessen technologisches Dispositv im HFH gegenwärtig multiple Netzwerkstrukturen sind. Das Makrolevel der derzeitigen Zirkulationen des Geldkapitals beinhaltet eine maschinelle Ökologie der Datenzentren und der Softwareprogramme auf der Grundlage einer hochoptimierten materiellen Infrastruktur. Es ist ganz offensichtlich, dass die Finanzunternehmen im Rahmen ihrer algorithmenbasierten und finegetunten HFH-Systeme an den Finanzmärkten um jede mögliche Exploitation der Nanosekunde kämpfen müssen, um schließlich an die Null-Zeit des Kapitals anzurühren. (Die Null-Zeit des Kapitals ist die Zeit der äußersten Beschleunigung. Wir haben es hier aber nicht mehr mit den gegenüberliegenden Polen von Null und Hypergeschwindigkeit zu tun, sondern mit einer (virtuellen) Tendenz zur Verschmelzung der Pole. Sowohl bei absoluter Ruhe als auch bei kontinuierlich wiederholter Hyperaktivität zeigt das zerebrale System bzw. das Elektroenzephalogramm nur noch ein durchschnittliches und flaches Muster an. Die Zeit gleitet endlos eine lineare Strecke entlang, oder sie ist in Kaskaden von entropischen Abfällen gehüllt. Ein weißes Rauschen ohne jegliche Information kennzeichnet schließlich die Situation, und dies sicherlich auch dann, wenn Null und Hypergeschwindigkeit eins zu werden drohen.)
Wenn die HFH-Systeme neben der dromologischen Risiko-Problematik noch weitere hohe Risiken in sich bergen, so lässt sich dies dadurch erklären, dass diese Systeme immer wieder neue Möglichkeitsfelder und damit neue Risiken generieren, deren Bewertung, Exekution und Revision weitere Möglichkeitsfelder eröffnet usw. Was wenige Momente vor einer Händlerentscheidung geschah, ist ebenso unwichtig, wie das, was wenige Minuten später sein wird, und somit ähnelt, so schreibt Arthur Kroker in der Panik-Enzyklopädie, der Handel im Endeffekt den flüssigen Bewegungen von Geldchips, die den Hyperpuls unvorhersagbarer Hochs und Tiefs an den Finanzmärkten in Permanenz modulieren. (Kroker/Kroker/Cook 1999: 104f.). Und wenn noch so kurzfristig ein Gleichgewichtszustand an den Märkten erreicht wird, so impliziert dies nicht notwendigerweise, dass Systeme deshalb auch ihren optimalen Zustand erreicht haben, weil es zu Vernetzungsgraden in den finanziellen Systemen selbst kommen kann, die so enorm komplexen sind, dass sie zwar geradezu perfekt designt aussehen, tatsächlich aber die funktionalen Verbindungen zwischen den Systemen eher stören als dass sie ihnen nützen. Man kann davon ausgehen, dass je näher die maschinellen Systeme an so etwas wie absolute Effizienz heranrücken, desto weniger werden sie die ihnen immanenten Ineffizienzen erkennen, wobei der Markt natürlich niemals vollkommene bzw. absolute Effizienz, die man zudem noch mit Gleichgewichtszuständen assoziiert, erlangen kann. Wenn die Märkte effizienter werden, dann gibt es definitiv auch immer weniger Möglichkeiten für die informierten Trader profitable Arbitrage auszunutzen (u. a. auch die Kalibrierung der Diskrepanz zwischen aktuellen Preisen und Basiswerten), während dann die uninformierten Noise-Trader zunehmend die Finanzmärkte zu dominieren beginnen.
Arbitrage-Möglichkeiten und ihre korrelierten Finanzprodukte existieren heute sowohl innerhalb als auch zwischen den jeweiligen Austauschsystemen. Die statistischen Arbitrage-Strategien und der sie inkludierende angeblich risikofreie Profit basieren auf der simultanen Bearbeitung von Preisdifferenzen für ähnliche oder identische Finanzprodukte an differenten Märkten; man analysiert z. B. die Relationen von zwei Finanzanlagen, um bei Veränderung der jeweiligen Komponenten einer singulären Finanzanlage Profite durch Arbitrage zu generieren. So gilt es zunächst die statistische Signifikanz der Bewegung von zwei Finanzanlagen zu erkennen, wobei es heute allerdings kaum noch um zwei Finanzanlagen geht, sondern meistens um komplexe Systeme, ja multiple Sets von Korrelationen zwischen einer enormen Anzahl von Finanzanlagen, die durch diverse Sektoren, Regionen und Märkte organisiert und strukturiert werden. Arbitrage soll angeblich auch dazu dienen, die an den Märkten auftretende Anomalien zu bewerten, zu nutzen und auszugleichen, um damit generell zu korrekten Preisfindungen an den Märkten beizutragen und Liquidität bereitzustellen – Arbitrage wird aber gerade von durchcomputerisierten Ordersystemen bearbeitet, die enorme Orders automatisiert und simultan auf alle möglichen Handelsplätze werfen und aufsplitten, um spezielle Preisfindungen erfolgreich auszunutzen, sodass Dysfunktionalitäten generell nicht auszuschließen sind. Dabei verschärft sich das Risiko einer Ansteckung des gesamten Verteilungssystems des Hochfrequenz-Handels, wenn die digitalen Netzwerke sehr stark durch die Funktionsweisen der Arbitrage zusammengeschlossen sind, sodass die Angabe eines »falschen« Preises an einem singulären Markt eine Welle von falschen Auspreisungen nach sich ziehen kann. Die Steigerung der Interkonnektivität in den standardisierten HFH-Systemen entspricht einer Ausweitung der Volatilität, was der abstrakten Forderung nach einem effizienten Markt, die darin gipfelt, dass jede Wertpapieranlage denselben Preis an allen Handelsplätzen erzielt, eigentlich widerspricht. Paradoxerweise basiert die Arbitrage gerade auf der Ineffizienz der Märkte, die durch den Einsatz von spezifischen Modellen und Instrumenten, die der strategischen Orientierung der Akteure an den Märkten dienen, reduziert werden soll. Demnach dürften effiziente Märkte die Arbitrage eigentlich gar nicht zulassen. (Vgl. Esposito 2010: 167f.)
Auf einem abstrakt-funktionalen Level operieren die HFH-Systeme, indem sie die Wahrscheinlichkeiten partikularer Transaktionen bewirtschaften und dabei den Nachteil der geringen Profite einer individuellen Transaktion durch die hohe Anzahl von gewinnbringenden Transaktionen zu kompensieren versuchen. Dabei generiert der typische HFH-Trader seine Profite hauptsächlich durch zwei Strategien: (1) Bewirtschaftung der Differenz zwischen Bid/Ask Preisen, (2) wahrscheinlichkeitsbasierte Analyse und in der Folge die Exploitation der Preisbewegungen von verschiedenen Finanzanlagen. (Vgl. Srnicek//Williams) An den Finanzmärkten lässt sich sowohl ein passives als auch ein aktives Trading feststellen, wobei Ersteres die Abgabe einer Order in das System involviert, ohne dass man weiß, ob eine andere Partei überhaupt gewillt ist die andere Seite des Deals zu besetzen, und dafür stellt das HFH-System Programme zur Verfügung, die man Autoquoters nennt, um eben exakt jene Entscheidungsprozesse zu generieren. Auf der anderen Seite besteht aktives Trading darin, die gegnerische Seite von Orders zu besetzen, die in den Orderbooks schon gelistet sind, indem man eine Software benutzt, die electronic eyes heißt. (Durbin 2010: 28-29) Wenn die Profite aus der Differenz von Bid/Ask Preisen resultieren, dann besteht das immanente Risiko genau darin, dass, bevor der Trader überhaupt in der Lage ist einen sog. Roundtrip-Trade (Kaufen und Verkaufen, oder umgekehrt) zu beenden, die Marktpreise sich schon gegen ihn entwickelt haben können und damit für ihn notwendigerweise ein Verlust anfällt. Hiermit zeigt sich erneut an, dass im HFH die Bewirtschaftung der Geschwindigkeit essentiell bleibt, einerseits um die dominanten Market Maker zu schlagen, andererseits um jede Transaktion im Kampf gegen die Konkurrenten so schnell wie möglich erfolgreich abzuschließen. In den HFH-Systemen spielt also neben der Bewirtschaftung der Risiken und Wahrscheinlichkeiten die Geschwindigkeitsproblematik eine enorme Rolle, wobei Finanzunternehmen permanent sich selbst beschleunigende HFH-Systeme einsetzen, um die Risiken/Wahrscheinlichkeiten durch eine nahezu instantane Arbitrage zu eliminieren.
Wenn HFH-Systeme mit ihren komplexen Funktionen akzelerativ interagieren, dann produzieren sie in temporalen Abständen immer wieder auch emergente Phänomene wie Flash Crashs oder ultraschnelle Black Swans (Taleb 2010), letztere verstanden als hochgradig dsyfunktionale Kontingenzen, und dies ganz im Gegensatz zu Prozessen einer strukturierten Randomness, wie sie etwa die Funktionsweise der Spielkasinos auszeichnet. Dabei können die finanziellen Friktionen so stark anschwellen, dass Mikro-Frakturen in einer enormen Anzahl von minimalen Flash-Crashs proliferieren, bis sie die gesamte finanzielle Ökologie anstecken. Darüberhinaus sind in den finanziellen Systemen die algorithmisch basierten Trading-Plattformen gerade aufgrund ihrer verkapselten Logiken, die sie kodieren, intrinsisch offen für missbräuchliche Praktiken – die Plattformen repräsentieren teilweise hochgradig opake und nicht zu 100% von humanen Aktanten kontrollierbare Interfaces. So lassen sich an den Finanzmärkten periodische 1000 Millisekunden-Zirkulationen feststellen, wobei enorme Fluten von Transaktionen entstehen, die einerseits aus den Interaktionen der HFH-Agenten hervorgehen, andererseits aus den emergenten Rhythmen einer weitgehend automatisierten finanziellen Ökologie, wobei die algorithmischen Maschinen die jeweiligen Preisbewegungen in der letzten Instanz determinieren, wenn sie denn selbstreferentielle Strategien in Gang setzen, die wiederum bei den humanen Aktanten ein gewisses Herdenverhalten evozieren können. Die Implementierung lernender Algorithmen in die HFH-Systeme führt zu immer höheren Computerleistungen, zur flexiblen Kodierung der Effizienz und zu einem tieferen Expertenwissen, wobei innerhalb dieses dreigliedrigen Verbundes eine steigende Diversivität und Sicherheit von Tradingstrategien in der Zukunft erzielt werden soll, aber zugleich der Unfall weiterhin insistiert, gerade insofern bestimmte Ereignisse statistisch voraussehbar erscheinen. (Vgl. Wilkins/Dragon 2013) Insofern ist der Unfall weniger die Folge einer Störung, sondern vielmehr ein Ausdruck der Tatsache, dass die Systeme zu perfekt arbeiten. Zu den Tradingstrategien zählt heute das Sammeln von »slow quotes«, was impliziert, dass ein Hochfrequenz-Trader seine Entscheidungen schneller fällt als ein Market Maker seine Quotierungen an die jeweiligen Kursänderungen überhaupt anpassen kann. »Quote stuffing« beinhaltet, dass eine enorme Anzahl von Orders an die Börse gesendet und im nächsten Augenblick schon wieder gelöscht wird, um die Marktpreise kurzfristig in die jeweils beabsichtigte Richtung zu treiben, um dann im nächsten Moment von der Gegenbewegung zu profitieren. Diese Verfahren basieren u. a. auf den Analysen des Unternehmens Nanex, einem Experten zur Erforschung von sog. Handelsanomalien und Anbieter von Software für die Echtzeitanalyse von Aktien-Quoten. Ein ekstatischer Handels-Verkehr kann vom einem einzigen Fehler im Algorithmus ausgelöst werden, sodass die HFH-Systeme ständig spezifischen Stresstests und Qualitätsuntersuchungen unterzogen werden müssen, periodischen Updates und dem bekannten bugfixing. Im Jahr 2003 wurde bspw. ein Unternehmen in sechzehn Sekunden insolvent, als ein »falscher« Algorithmus in Gang gesetzt wurde. (Srnicek//Williams 2013) Der Einsatz eines bestimmten Algorithmus führte auch schon dazu, dass eine immense Zahl an Orders zwar ins System gestellt aber nicht ausgeführt wurde. Laut Nanex hatte dieser Algorithmus allein vier Prozent aller im zentralen Quotierungssystem der US-Börsen (das die an den verschiedenen Handelsplätzen bestehenden Orders addiert) verfügbaren Orders aufgegeben, wovon circa fünfhundert Titel betroffen waren und zehn Prozent der für Quotierungen insgesamt verfügbaren Bandbreite benutzt wurde, woraus man schließen kann, dass der Algorithmus versucht hatte, die Reaktionszeiten von Konkurrenten durch die eigene Beanspruchung enormer Bandbreiten zu verlängern. Mit der Orderflut wurde also für andere Teilnehmer die Bandbreite des elektronischen Handelssystems reduziert, um auf diese Weise die Preisfindungen zu beeinflussen. Manche HFH-Trader programmieren Algorithmen, die eine vierstellige Zahl von Wertpapierhandelsaufträgen pro Sekunde für eine einzelne Aktie generieren und an die Börse senden, wobei die Aufträge zunächst nur sichtbar werden, wenn sie ganz oben im Orderbuch der Börse auftauchen, d.h., zum höchsten Geld- oder zum tiefsten Briefkurs führen. Der Hintergrund befindet sich im Bereich eines unsichtbaren Rauschens. (Bei der sog. Latenzarbitrage geht es um die Bewirtschaftung von Millisekunden, in denen HFH-Trader das Handelssystem absichtlich voll auslasten, sodass der größere Anteil der Händler, die auf sog. CQS-Daten angewiesen sind, über längere Phasen gar nicht wissen, wohin der Markt tendiert.)
Es regiert heute an den Finanzmärkten tatsächlich der Non-Sense eines neo-kybernetischen Mechanismus im Zuge der Hegemonie einer reinen Maschine-Maschine-Interferenz und dies erzeugt innerhalb der dynamischen Abstraktion des finanziellen Kapitals einen Nomos, den z.B. Nick Land als ein Feld von asignifikanten Zahlen vorstellt, die in einem non-repräsentionalen Raum miteinander interagieren. (Vgl. Land 2010) Die Beschleunigung der numerischen Technizität benötigt die HFH-Systeme als Vektoren der Ausstülpung, das heißt, die Produktion für Profit instruiert eine rein technologisch fundierte Produktion für die Produktion qua eines inhumanen Registers (ebd.: 260), wobei dessen metabolischen Prozesse vor allem als und unter der Dominanz der Zirkulation des finanziellen Kapitals unaufhörlich weiter beschleunigen, damit infinitesimale Preisdifferenzen und instantane Arbitrage-Möglichkeiten bewirtschaftet werden können solange es eben geht, während die nomadisierende Liquidität in den globalen Netzwerken beständig ansteigt. Während humane Agenten längst zu langsam agieren, ja zu fleischig sind, um temporale und perzeptuelle Barrieren zu überwinden, generieren die HFH-Systeme feine Nano-Strukturen an den finanziellen Märkten, die längst auch zu kompliziert und zu komplex verflochten sind, um sie qua humaner Aktanten noch exakt beobachten zu können. Offensichtlich ist es gerade auch die virale Automatisierung des Finanziellen durch algorithmische Maschinen, die gegenwärtig eine Vielzahl von Formen der Kapitalisierung infiltriert. Allerdings gilt es den Unterschied zwischen dem bloßen Prozessieren von Daten und der semantischen Bearbeitung von Informationen zu berücksichtigen, oder um es anders zu sagen, die HFH-Systeme encodieren Ketten von finanziellen Transaktionen, die von den Experten des finanziellen Systems zwar in die Wege geleitet werden, aber in den Systemen selbst auf einem autoreferentiellen Daten-Level operieren - das heißt, die Algorithmen der HFH-Systeme operieren als reine Daten-Kalkulatoren, um die Diagramme einer verborgenen Konnektivität auszuwerfen, welche die Netzwerke finanzieller Transaktionensketten selbst erzeugen. Auf der Basis des kognitiven Mappings von Experten bestechen die HFH-Systeme durch ihr Potenzial Unmengen von Trades jenseits der menschlichen Perzeptionsschwellen in Intervallen von Millisekunden zu exekutieren, um damit die Preissignale, die man in den Orderbooks aufgezeichnet hat, zu unterlaufen und die Preisfindungsprozesse andauernd zu transformieren, bevor menschliche Aktanten dies überhaupt beobachten können. Und dies wird gerade in Krisenzeiten, in denen wir es mit einer hohen Volatilität und einer geringen Liquidität zu tun haben, ganz entscheidend.
Angesichts eines möglichen, langfristigen Falls der Profitrate offenbart sich die Verzweiflung der Unternehmen, die sich darin ausdrückt, ihren Profitanteil am sinkenden globalen Wachstum nicht einmal stabilisieren geschweige denn steigern zu können, gerade bezüglich des ubiquitären Modus elaborierter digitaler Bewertungen und Messungen, bei denen es um Nanosekunden hinsichtlich der Gestaltung des Handels geht. Wenn man davon ausgeht, dass diese dromologische Beschleunigung durch keinerlei Gesetze wieder rückgängig zu machen ist (es gibt nur die physikalische Grenze), wobei der wettbewerbliche Vorteil für das einzelne Unternehmen qua Bewirtschaftung der Geschwindigkeit langsam verdampft, dann stellt sich endgültig die Frage nach dem Nihilismus in der kapitalistischen Ökonomie, insofern die dromologische Beschleunigung einen Horizont ohne jede Lokalisierung anvisiert, indem sie nichts anderes als die Hyper-Intensivierung der Kapitalisierung ausführt. Wenn die Lichtgeschwindigkeit nicht überwunden werden kann und die verschiedenen gegeneinander konkurrienden Unternehmen tendenziell alle mit derselben Geschwindigkeit operieren, also der dromologische Wettbewerb zwischen den Finanzunternehmen irgendwann seine immanente Grenze nicht mehr zu übersteigen vermag, dann wachsen für die Unternehmen die monetären Kosten, um eine noch so marginale Erhöhung der Profitrate zu erzielen, immens an. Eine systemimmanente Durchtriebenheit, dieser Problematik zumindest phasenweise zu entkommen, besteht zum Beispiel darin, ultraschnell Orders an den Märkten zu platzieren, um die Preise und die Größe bestimmter anderer Einsätze sichtbar zu machen, noch bevor diese in den sog. Exchange Order Books überhaupt gelistet sind. Manche Algorithmen werden designt, um verräterische Signaturen von anderen Algorithmen freizulegen, um selbst wiederum wettbwerbliche Vorteile zu erzielen; bestimmte Algorithmen entwickeln sich kontinuierlich weiter, indem sie die Ökologie von humanen und nichthumanen Tradern ins Auge fassen, um die entsprechenden Relationen zu bearbeiten. (Vgl. Wilkins/Dragon 2013) Desweiteren simuliert man aufgrund der Auswertung von Daten aus der Vergangenheit Wetterkonstellationen, um bspw. die Ernten von Weizen, Sojabohnen und Mais zu prognostizieren und damit wiederum die Preisfluktuationen, die eventuell mit der Relation Wetter-Ernte zusammenhängen, vorherzusagen zu können. Gleichzeitig werden die HFH-Systeme mit algorithmisierten sensorischen Systemen verlinkt, die in anderen Bereichen der Ökonomie Anwendung finden (Konsumtenanalysen, Datenerhebungen sämtlicher Art, sematisches Web). In all diesen Prozessen vervielfältigen sich die Algorithmen auf unüberschaubare Weise, obgleich menschliche Aktanten sie doch programmieren. Es stellt sich dann zwangsläufig die Frage nach dem Finetuning der Algorithmen, aber was wenn das Finetuning wiederum auf automatisierten Prozessen in Computersystemen beruht? Algorithmen können also durchaus über die Intentionen ihrer Programmierer hinweg ein Eigenleben entwickeln, man denke etwa an das Programm Eureqa, eine Technologie, die intrinsische mathematische Relationen, welche in komplexen Datensets versteckt sind, freilegt und erklärt.
Wenn die Komputation auf Diskretheit (Bit, rekursives algorithmisches Processing, quantifizierte Messung) beruht, dann bleibt der Aspekt des Kontinuierlichen (i. e.Realität) der digitalen Berechnung doch weitgehend fremd. Algorithmen enkodieren eine endliche und iterative Konzeption der Zeit, indem sie diskrete Zahlen benutzen, wobei sie nicht in der Lage sind, etwa geodätische Räumlichkeiten oder non-triviale Kontinuitäten abzubilden. (Srnicek//Williams) Dieses Problem liegt u. a. schon in Freges and Hilberts Projekt einer Axiomatisierung der Geometrie durch die Arithmetik begründet. Somit vermag die Operationalisierung via Komputation nur ein unzureichendes Modell für komplexe soziale, rationale, biologische, chemische und quantenmechanische Systeme abzuliefern. Wenn das reduktive Projekt von Newton und Laplace im Herzen der digitalen Berechnung insistiert, dann muss die Mathematik als eine nicht-royalistische Wissenschaft, wie sie etwa Deleuze/Guattari eingefordert haben, einfach unberücksichtigt bleiben. Weil keine Generativität im algorithmisches Denken herrscht, und wenn, dann nur ordnungsgemäß der Formeln und Modelle der royalistischen Mathematik, bleibt das algorithmische maschinelle Trading an die vorgeschriebenen Regeln gebunden und kann somit keine universelle synthetische Beschleunigung herstellen, wie dies etwa der iranische Philosoph Reza Negastrani oder die englischen Theoretiker Srnicek//Willimas propagieren. (Vgl. Srnicek//Williams) Schließlich war es Turing selbst, der seine ursprüngliche Konzeption des Computers mit einer non-linearen, kontinuierlichen Variante kontrastierte. Man sollte die Berechnungen der in der Ökonomie angewandten Modelle also viel näher an die kontinuierliche, non-iterative Natur des Materiellen/Physikalischen heranführen, an die zeitgenössische Post-Quantenphysik und die komplexen Wissenschaften. Allerdings befeuern schon heute bestimmte Strategeme der Camouflage, der Mimesis und der Täuschung non-adaptive Mutationen im finanziellen Handel - man denke an die nicht-gleichgewichtige Dynamik des »Red Queen Effects« sowie an bestimmte Modellierungen in der evolutionären Spieltheorie via Krypsis (Tarnverhalten). (Vgl. Wilkons/Dragon) Möglicherweise haben wir es aber hier doch nur mit den pathologischen Tendenzen eines hyper-technologischen Kapitalismus zu tun, mit einer thanatopischen Mimikry, die im Zuge der kontinuierlichen Kalibrierung und Redistribution der Finanzinstrumente, der Energie und Information in tödliche Prozesse der Kannibalisierung und der Selbstzerstörung des Kapitals mündet.
Es gäbe vielleicht zwei mögliche globale Szenarios für eine zukünftige Entwicklung der HFH-Systeme zu prognostizieren. Allerdings könnte man, wie Arthur Kroker das tut, auch davon ausgehen, dass die emblematischen Zeichen der neuen Technopoiesis, die uns in ihren Klauen halten, weniger die immer schon imäginären Bilder einer Apokalyse als einen langsamen Selbstmord der posthumanen Species anzeigen. Im ersteren Szenario werden die HFH-Systeme im Zuge einer Serie von katastrophischen finanziellen Apokalypsen weltweit geächtet, weil die unvorhersehbaren und emergenten Effekte des automatisierten Tradings der finanziellen Kriegsmaschinen in Kombination mit der konstitutiven Unverantwortlichkeit der institutionellen Investoren zu einer virtuellen Ausrottung der Technologien und Kapitalsysteme führen könnten, ausgelöst etwa durch eine desaströse Sequenz von automatisierten Trades. Beim zweiten Szenario ersetzen semantisch effektive HFH-Systeme in einem schleichenden Modus die menschlichen Komponente fast vollständig, das Kapital befreit sich schließlich von sämtlichen humanen Widerständen, um noch abstraktere Prozessstrategien zu generieren, inklusive der posthumanen Intelligenzen von selbstreferentiellen finanziellen Instrumenten, die zum Schluß selbst noch solare Systeme zerlegen, um eine maximale »computational power« zu erzielen - vollkommen egal ob am Ende alles in einen absolut deteritorialisierten Strom des Geldkapitals hineingezogen wird, der zu einer Vernichtung kosmischen Ausmaßes führt. (Die Erwähnung einer solaren Ökonomie, der Ökonomie der Sonne als ein Labyrinth des Lebens zieht sich vor allem durch die Schriften von Georges Bataille und Nick Land.) Die menschliche Intelligenz kann mit ihren beschränkten zerebralen Potenzen solch eine Xenoökonomie nicht mehr erfassen, wenn man bedenkt, dass heute selbst schon die neoliberalen finanziellen Systeme phasenweise in eine a-humane Panik geraten, in eine ultra-abstrakte Akkumulation um der Akkumulation willen, um vielleicht in eine rasende Deterritorialisierung des Kapitals überzugehen und darin einem schrecklichen Thanatotopismus zu frönen. Es würde sich beim zweiten Szenario um eine reine dromologische Beschleunigung handeln, eine linear anwachsende Beschleunigung, wie sie annäherungsweise von Paul Virilio und Nick Land beschrieben wurde. Solange diese dromologische Drift nach wie vor dynamische Effekte hinsichtlich einer erfolgreichen Kapitalisierung zeitigt, stellt das gegenwärtige hegemoniale finanzielle Regime die Regeln des Spiels, die es operieren und beherrschen, niemals selbst in Frage, obgleich die Propagierung des »Immer schneller« letzten Endes ins Leere führt, wenn man sie mit den widerspenstigen Spuren, die die beschleunigenden Prozesse selbst hinterlassen, konfrontiert.
Ob es darüber hinaus so etwas wie eine universelle Beschleunigung in einer postkapitalistischen Gesellschaft geben könnte, die sich etwa durch vielfältige und listige Experimente auszeichnet, welche auf Dauer gestellt immer wieder durch Kontingenz zerklüftet werden, das bleibt doch äußerst fraglich, obgleich die infinitesimale Annäherung der HFH-Systeme an die Lichtgeschwindigkeit den Übergang zu einem intelligenteren Paradigma des Experimentellen im sozialen Feld geradezu erfordert. An dieser Stelle gilt es dann auf ein drittes Szenario einzugehen. Ein drittes Szenario, bei dem die finanziellen Automaten von den Dispositiven und Regeln der Kapitalisierung befreit werden, wie dies z.B. im akzelerationischen Manifest von Srnicek//Williams angedacht ist, sodass die Umgestaltung bzw. Umfunktionierung der kapitalistischen Technologien mit ihren Infrastrukturen zu einem Post-Kapitalismus führt (Avanessian 2014: 30), der sich im Rahmen einer universellen planetaren Strategie beispielsweise der Métis bedient, um schließlich so etwas wie einen nomadischen Kommunismus zu erreichen, der das Strategem der Kontingenz jenseits des erstickenden politökonomischen Raums des Kapitals in den Mittelpunkt stellt – dieses Szenario bleibt jedoch mehr als vage. So will man die blinde Akzeleration, die vermittels der gegenwärtigen digitalen Technologien stattfindet, durch eine intensive Akzeleration ersetzen, durch raffinierte Maschinen, die auf einem kontinuierlich neo-rechnenden Format basieren, und diese Maschinen werden eben von einer komplexen Métis begleitet, i. e. eine verschlagene und zugleich wohltemperierte Aktion, die die dynamischen Tendenzen des Materials, mit dem man gerade arbeitet, verstärkt und damit zugleich eine Komplizenschaft mit dem Material, mit dem Kontingenten und dem Unvorhersehbaren propagiert. Aber wenn humane Agenten im hypertechnologischen Kapitalismus und seiner beschleunigten Zukunft mehr und mehr obsolet werden, wer bleibt dann überhaupt noch übrig, um die Maschinen zu reparieren oder umzufunktionieren, wenn sie tatsächlich kollabieren? Und besteht überhaupt noch ein Bedürfnis für das Humane, wenn die Maschinen längst jede soziale Nische des evolutionären Territoriums einer glänzenden Zukunft besetzt haben? Man versucht dieses problem mit einer durchdachten Intervention in die Politiken der Abstraktion zu lösen, die den Kapitalismus politisch und epistemisch herausfordert, obgleich nicht entschieden ist, wie sich eine revolutionäre Praxis mit der theoretischen Erklärung verbinden lässt, ja es werden kaum Aussagen darüber gemacht, wie die kognitiven Funktionen die sozialen Praktiken beeinflussen können.
Wenn noch die intensivste, die letzte graduelle Beschleunigung vom Rauschen bedroht wird, dann kann die Grenze, die Signal und Rauschen voneinander trennt, nur ausgehend von der Kontingenz gedacht werden, allerdings nicht von einer unendlichen Kontingenz, wie dies etwa Massimo de Carolis annimmt (vgl. Hörl 297), sondern eher von einer indefiniten Kontingenz, die ein unbestimmtes Feld und das Mannigfaltige von zeitlichen Funktionen eröffnet. Man hat es dann weder mit einem unendlichen noch mit einem endlichen Feld zu tun, vielmehr muss sich jede diskursive Praktik im Zuge einer Non-Politik als experimentelles Strategem in indefiniten Feldern anzeigen (Bahr 1983: 295ff.), und zwar als eine permanente Virtualisierungpraktik, als ein Register der In-Extension, markiert durch eine indefinite Komprehension. In diesem Feld der unvorhergesehenen Begegnungen kann es ständig auch zu überraschenden Verflechtungen des Neuronal-Politischen mit den liquiden Informationsströmen kommen, zu Verquickungen oder Assoziationen zwischen bislang nicht-assoziierten Kräften, und dies nicht allein im Zuge einer Métis, einer listigen und zugleich zeit-punktgenauen Aktion, die von der Dynamis ihres Materials weiß, mit dem sie um-geht, oder im Zuge des Ergreifens eines sich aktualisierenden kontingenten Ereignisses, das in rhythmische Sequenzen von kontingenten Plots (nicht Plänen) implementiert ist, und in der Aktion der Gegenverwirklichung bedarf. (Gegenverwirklichung als Präzisierung jenes Teils des Ereignisses, das über die gewöhnlichen Verwirklichungen hinausschießt, was durch eine Vervielfachung von praktizierten Orientierungen geschieht, die sich der bloßen Umsetzung oder Vergegenständlichung von Plänen widersetzen, welche die Techniken auf ein Programmraster, dessen Kontingenz begrenzt ist, reduzieren wollen.) Wenn die maschinellen Transmissionen selbst in einem Feld der Begegnungen und Nicht-Begegnungen, der Subfrontation oder pragmatischen Differenzen angesiedelt sind, dann gilt es noch über die Métis hinaus das experimentum machinarum der Strategeme zu bedenken, inklusive einer Logik der Unterbrechungen, die zugleich um die Präzision des Undeutlichen bemüht ist und sich damit gerade dem Ideal des ungestörten Funktionierens verweigert, um schließlich die diskursive Praxis auf komplexe Ensembles von Wirkungen zu lenken, womit sich Maschinen nicht mehr als programmierbare Modelle der Präzision, sondern zumindest als Strategeme verschiedener Präzisionsgrade anzeigen. (Ebd.: 305f.) Der multiple Verwendungsraum der Maschinen, wie ihn Hans-Dieter Bahr vorschlägt, ist Simondons Raum der offenen technischen Objekte ähnlich, insofern die Struktur der Maschinen keineswegs allein über die zu Anfang des Essays angesprochenen kybernetischen Systeme von Input- und Outputverhältnissen und deren Steuerung definiert wird. Wenn die Maschinen prinzipiell eine Vielzahl unberechenbarer Effekte aufweisen, dann können sie nicht bloß als Mittel gebraucht oder wie in der Kybernetik nur bedient werden, noch lassen sich die Maschinensysteme allein über die Relationen der Inputs und Outputs und ihrer rekursiven Lenkungen bestimmen. Es geht hier schon gar nicht um das Nichtfunktionieren der gegenwärtigen informationellen Maschinen, um die Crashs oder Black Swans, die es mit kybernetischen Rückkopplungsschleifen zu reduzieren gilt, sondern um die Anerkennung und Ausnutzung der unberechenbaren Effekte des Maschinellen in der Zeit, die den humanen Aktanten selbst entstellen, wenn er mit seiner asynchronen Präsenz im Modus einer reinen Rhythmisierung in die technischen Systeme hinein geht, um sie vielleicht zu verstimmen oder mit ihnen im Experiment zu musizieren. Von vornherein inhärieren die maschinellen Systeme unberechenbare Effekte. So führte bspw. die Entwicklung handlicher Motoren im zwanzigsten Jahrhundert zur Verhandwerklichung des Massenverkehrs qua Automobil (Bahr 1983: 313), was aber eine Reihe von unerwarteten Effekten nach sich zog, die sich in einer Vielzahl von komplexen maschinellen Systemen, ja bis hin zu sozialen Megamaschinen kondensierten, angefangen von solchen der Verkehrsplanung und -systeme, des Militärs und Fragen der nationalen und internationalen Sicherheit usw., und diese Aufspreizung und Verflechtung pflanzte sich in gewisser Weise bis in das Zeitalter der Computerisierung fort und erreicht damit seinen vorläufigen Höhepunkt. Die Erfindung des Autos führte also zu Straßennetzen, während das Auto selbst ein Resultat der Fertigung in großen Fabriken ist, wie eben auch der Rechtsprechung, welche die Trennung der Fabriken von den Wohngebieten anordnet. Die Autobahnen nahmen in der Tat die heterotopischen kybernetischen Systeme vorweg, was noch nachklingt, wenn man heute von »Datenautobahnen« spricht – und nicht zuletzt lassen die Autobahnen die Gesteuerten zielgerecht qua Straßen, Autoströme, Verkehrszeichen und Navigationsysteme zu ihren Ankunftsorten gleiten; Autobahnen kennen als Effekte ihrer kalkulierten Regelhaftigkeit nur die beiden Gegenpole: die Null-Überraschung und die Verkehrssünde.
Um in einem breiteren Kontext die aktuelle Situation der globalen Finance zu analysieren, gilt es zunächst einige der neoliberalen Dogmen zu zerstören, wie etwa den Glauben an die Effizienz des wettbewerblichen Marktmechanismus, der notorisch zu Gleichgewichtszuständen führen soll, oder das Vertrauen in die Kapazitäten der finanziellen Systeme zur Selbstregulation, oder die Doktrin einer nachhaltigen Entwicklung, die den vierten Hauptsatz der Thermodynamik ignoriert. Wenn die globale Finance angeblich zur vollkommenen Effizienz und gar zur Gerechtigkeit drängt, so kann sie diese Situation doch nicht erreichen, da sie sich unaufhörlich vom Rauschen des Technischen, Ökonomischen und Sozialen ernährt, das durch sämtliche Informationsasymmetrien und strukturale Ungleichheiten insistiert, und diese »Disparitäten« werden heute von den neoliberalen Finanzregimen auf aggressivste Weise aufrechterhalten, um den Surplus fröhlich bis zum nächsten Crash zu extrahieren, der zudem noch die intensive Bewirtschaftung ökologischer Nischen inkludiert. Die Forderung nach Transparenz an den Märkten geht überhaupt nicht weit genug, im Gegenteil, sie fordert letztendlich nur den maximal beschleunigten Finanz-Verkehr bei maximaler Kontrolle ein. Wir sollten uns durch ein bisschen Reduktion des Rauschens auf keinen Fall irritieren lassen. Die Friktion muss umgekehrt und gegen das System gerichtet werden, anstatt in die Dissipation des Marginalen abgeschoben zu werden. Man muss in Zukunft die Exterorität radikal denken, indem eine non-dialektische Negativität in die Systeme selbst eingespielt wird.
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Mode of Excess. Bataille, criminality and the war on terror
Stefano Harney and Randy Martin (2007)
I. Capital's Excesses
Bataille's vision bathes us all in the lap of luxury. So much of the political is cast in terms of lack-an insufficiency of activism, organization, theory, or resources to mobilize, in the face of an abundance of ossifying power. Excess refreshes the screen, it releases people from the enclosures of scarcity and the insuperable inevitability of aggression that springs from want. The compulsion to dominate is denormalized and exposed for its own peculiar excessiveness The dull efficiency of utilitarian accounting-where every drop is used best when used up and growth marches inexorably forward-loses its reason in desire's hall of mirrors. Understandably, Bataille's work is taken up as a cry for amplitude in a wilderness of self-limiting apocalypse. Entangling his thought in the present requires more than the lavishing of praise. He achieves his general economy by energic extension and squander that yields irrecuperable consumption. But his analysis proceeds by differentiating the ways in which societies attain their forms of surplus. These various means constitute nothing short of a mode of excess-a concept that can help extricate ourselves from Bataille's moment into that of contemporary affairs. If Bataille renders an ethnological or synchronic differentiation in his accounts of the Aztecs, Potlatch, Islam, Lamaism, bourgeois capitalism and Soviet socialism, we might look to his work of the middle of the last century to delineate the contours of excess in our own times.
Let us consider three elements of what might constitute Bataille's own mode of excess, writing as he is, when consumer capitalism and Soviet socialism retain their status as historical projects, and war adheres snugly to a Keynesian metaphysic. Bataille, of course is writing under the sign of what came to be called Fordism, a regulatory apparatus that mass produced consumption as a disciplinary realm parallel to but outside that of production. While the externality was mutual, it was also directional-domesticity was the sphere were cars and people started out new and became old, where time was free, leisure expressed substantive rationality, and used luxuries could be put out in the garbage. Despite, or perhaps more precisely because of the way in which the Keynesian welfare state was involved in the economy, subventions for public assistance and military contracting stood as anti-productive. In the dream realm of popular culture and consumer markets, of manufactured desires, the state needed to be absent to locate excess in a space that would be free of coercion and domination-hence the formal distinction from work and government. The state operates for Bataille in a universe of general interest that can never use up the erotic extensive energies of the accursed share. "The State (at least the modern, fully developed State) cannot give full reign to a movement of destructive consumption without which an indefinite accumulation of resources situates us in the universe in exactly the same way as cancer is inscribed in the body, as a negation. " (Bataille 1993: 160)
War is the consummate category of expenditure that can be stolen back by state and particularizing economic exchange, especially as it seeks an equilibrium between destruction and profit in what is intended as a virtuous cycle of demand absorbing supply that Franklin Delano Roosevelt dubbed, "Dr. Win The War." Like the partition between production and consumption, this political economy of war assumes that death and profitability belong to separate accounts, and that civic devastation will be restored by a reincorporating policy framework like the Marshall Plan. As Bataille observes: "Of course, what we spend in one category is in principle lost for the others. There are many possibilities of slippage: alcohol, war and holidays involve us in eroticism, but this means simply that the possible expenditures in one category are ultimately reduced by those we make in the others, so that only the profits found in war truly alter this principle; even so, in most cases these profits correspond to the losses of the vanquished.... We need to make a principle of the fact that sooner or later the sum of excess energy that is managed for us by a labor so great that it limits the share available for erotic purposes will be spent in a catastrophic war."(Bataille 1993: 188) Under these circumstances, the political choice becomes clear, expenditure can be wasted in war or applied to increase the standard of living.
Finally, there is Bataille's enthusiasm for the Soviet socialism of his day. Here too, socialism is framed as an externality to capitalism, rather than being the latter's immanent condition. The Soviets form a geography of excess-that portion of global productive capacity that capitalist markets and development promises could not absorb. This perspective recasts Cold War bellicosity. The arms race certainly strains the Soviet social economy, as it supports a Western military-industrial complex. But the exclusion of more than half the world's peoples and territories by the partition of the three worlds was a condition for the concentration of consumption and masked the limits to its possible dispersion, as nearly two decades of post-Soviet opportunity now make plain. Still it was possible for Bataille to imagine the extension of a socialist geography as encroaching upon the ultimate utopian externality-the future. "Present day humanity has the communist horizon before it." (Bataille 1993: 261) Indeed the Cold War could be understood as a race toward disparate futures, each with their own utopian aspect, providing that the future remained on the horizon just outside of reach. Bataille has the benefit of imagining the chronotope of his own general economy as marked by clearly discernable divisions-between here and there, and between what is and what will come. He put such Cartesian formulations to tremendous effect, but we must consider what the general economy would consist of if history had not robbed us of that more clearly decidable grid of space and time.
Still hot in pursuit of Bataille's horizon, we can now imagine capital's own tracks taking us toward a different mode of excess. These markings may map something apart from the post-fordist proliferation of the flexible which may have been more about clarifying what the initial formulation of a consumer society meant, than of what it would become. No doubt, stable and expanding careers of wage labor are now somewhat quaint, and mass consumption has been niched and customized in every conceivable direction. But what happens when production and consumption move in together, when one resides within the body of the other? Surely this is the generative condition of what is termed immaterial labor. It is also indicated where the investment logic of risk assumes the mantle of governmentality. Neoliberalism asked citizens to manage their own public good, insinuating a market trope where the state was meant to maintain its watchful eye.
The domestic sphere is not simply an invitation to engage in home work (this it always was) but now also to serve as a platform for participation in myriad financial schemes, whether they be portfolios for retirement, education, or continued consumption itself. This implication of investment protocols in the labor of reproduction can be called financialization (Martin 2002). An ugly term perhaps but one that registers the invasion of capital for others into the realm of the self. Finance now occupies the spectre of excess in economic circulation. More than just acts of enclosure, financialization erupts where the socialization of capital meets the socialization of labor-amplifying mutual indebtedness, aggregating social wealth with extreme magnitude to the point where it moves from necessity to discretion. Finance signals a breach of referent that suggests huge sums can be applied anywhere for any purpose. The force of excess makes immediate the prospect that wealth might be applied otherwise. As much money moves in financial markets in a month as fills the accounts of industrial production in a year. The trade in derviatives alone-parsings of financial risk that disassemble and delocalize value so that it can be leveraged elsewhere-is tied to contracts valued at nearly $400 trillion. (Lipuma and Lee 2004: Bank of International Settlements, 2006) (Derivatives are identified by the value or notional price of the commodities that they are tied to, rather than to the amount of money they yield, which is but a fraction of that price. So, if one is paying $1,000 for the option to purchase $1,000,000 worth of Euros at a certain date, the contract is entered as $1,000,000 not $1,000). More than a vault of a determine form of capital, finance augurs an infectious logic that reorients the machinations of business as well a daily life. Banks no longer stand as intermediaries to circulation (disintermediation). Market share and stock price drive business planning (shareholder value). The speculative and the practical hedging of risk share instruments of operation (rentier capitalism). Even the state is internally riven between its neoliberal fantasy of leaving people alone to their fates, and the neoconservative obligations to intervene in private life to affect a kind of evangelical transformation or liberation. The neoconservative state intervenes to carve excess out of the social body by means of tax cuts, which are not simply redistributive to those most able to luxuriate, but to demonstrate the moral force behind setting capital free.
But this freedom makes of those left behind, those populations incapable of managing themselves and termed "at risk," an accursed share in their own right. If financialization gives us production for and as consumption, ceaseless circulation nestled in what Marx called a "hidden abode," the implosion of the boundaries for enclosure liberate a whole matrix of capital from population. Bataille would see capital fleeing its social entailments of labor (whether wages or cities) to some secure outside-consumption, the state, or negatively in socialist topographies. The imbrication of production and consumption, the state's jettisoning of a general national interest, and a relinquishing of the socialist world has yielded a dizzying indifference. Rather than promising infinite absorption of population in accumulation, what was advertised under the watchwords of progress and development, liberation takes place in the here and now-a progressive and regressive freedom that turns against the history of difference (as all of the entanglements of social reproduction are brought together as interdependent demands for recognition, justice, resources and dispensation over what is done to make and live with social wealth).
If the Cold War contested the future, its apparent heir, the war on terror battles over the present. This is more than the hyper-vigilance of a politics of fear. The terrorist is the quintessential figure of bad risk however effectively it may be deployed. We cannot await it. The only safety lies in bringing its moment into our midst, that is, by pre-emptive strike. Terror's temporality is anti-utopian, it implies the immanence of the future in the present. The risk economy, the investment action upon a possible future difference in the present, shares the same sensibility. Foreign and domestic applications of risk management forge a nefarious connection in George W. Bush's 2002 National Security Document. In this proud proclamation of imperial doctrine, pre-emption is bequeathed to one nation and friends (whether old or newly acquired) affirm their allegiance by replicating U.S. anti-inflationary monetary policy. Low and behold this same language turns up in Iraq 's strategy for national development. Inflation, when it is not an assault on labor (as low unemployment or high wages) anthropomorphizes the world of goods (supply being chased by demand and puffing itself up accordingly).
Just as industrialization forced association upon self-sufficient labor, and consumerism wove a common web of dreams in the marketplace, financialization imposes a generalized condition of mutual indebtedness. Personal finance, like free wage labor, amounts to an enormous aggregation of the capacity to produce financial value while assuming the risks of failure to realize value. Like production and consumption, financialization is also a form of dispossession of one array of life-making circumstances that forces an elaboration of what people must subsequently do and be together. The future itself becomes a factor of production as each possible outcome is shifted into an actionable present. The derivative represents the moment when a small intervention, an arbitrager's momentary opportunity, seizes upon a highly dispersed volatility and leverages it to extensive effect. Unlike the entrepreneur, born of initiative, the arbitrager exists only through the action of others, deriving themselves as a cluster of volatilities. The derivative is the extensive energy within the body of finance. It is also incorporated into the grand strategy for engaging and negating unsupportable risk and excess. Terror wars are in this respect derivative wars. They "deter forward" using small deployments of risk capable special forces to leverage imperial intervention. They succeed in their initial displacements (of toppling regimes) but produce the very thing they claim to fight but that are in actuality their condition of further circulation, namely terror. Terror is an inassimilable excess that occasions intervention without end. Unlike earlier imperialisms that sought to extract, civilize and develop, this logic of occupation quickly becomes indifferent to its prize and impatient with itself.
It would be tempting to see in the gap between a general interest in combating terror everywhere, and a particular occupation of two energy states an affirmation of Bataille's equilibration of devastation and profit. Afghanistan 's geo-strategic potential for transshipment of oil and gas, Iraq 's prized proven oil reserves, Halliburton's corrupt profiteering would seem to affirm the straightforward arithmetic captured by the slogan, "blood for oil." Control of energy consumption would prove the ultimate colonization of Bataille's accursed share. As compelling as the slogan has been to lay bare the motives of imperial excess, Bataille's thought would also have us refuse the enclosure of our own surplus capacity in so certain a lock down of interest-borne scarcity. There can be no denying oil's requirement to the present economic convention. But the necessity of oil politics as they are presented must be contested if the present mode of excess is to be seen as other than laying us all to waste as an inexorable drive to war to control supply in the face of imminent scarcity.
Specifically, blood for oil is a pipeline that has smuggled in a Malthusian logic of genocidal scarcity. The argument goes like this. The days of expanding oil supply are behind us. The rate at which new wells are drilled has been eclipsed by the rate at which new demand has expanded, in consequence, a bell-shaped forecast named for the geo-physicist who made it, "Hubbert's Peak," pinpoints the date of diminishing returns. Population growth assures that there will not be enough oil to go around. Security for the imperium dictate that it grabs hold of whatever remains. Oil and war are fraternal twins. Yet Hubbert's peak, so pointed in sounding the alarm, is also vulnerable on its own economic foundations. As oil prices rise, abandoned fields again become profitable, along with the rationale for further investment to extract oil from otherwise unappealing shale. The conflation of access to oil with control of its sources certainly lines up with imperial history. But that history discloses how the very regimes installed to control oil territories repress domestic populations and wind up destabilizing access, a lesson reflected in the fully financialized oil futures markets by meeting volatility with arbitrage. (i)
While financial protocols have been installed as governing ideas, the occupation of Iraq looks like anything but a design for control. Instead, oil exports have held steady, and risk has been distributed throughout a population that has been cleaved from its national form and from its own productive capacities. Iraq 's Public Distribution System, the last remnant of Baathist socialism is to be displaced by small cash handouts to fuel the now rampant speculative economy.(ii) But to render socialism scarce is to commit an error of measurement and concept. The extensive energy of consumption privileged the erotic as the alter to commodification, and maintained socialism as that portion of the world devoted to a social economy that capital could not absorb. The erotic which animated consumer desire has now been displaced by risk, which inhabits the intensities of circulation. Populations at risk may be treated instrumentally but they are also freed from instrumentality-they exist, not to accomplish further accumulation, but as human assemblages in their own right.
The war on terror claims that population makes no difference and touts its capacity to intervene anywhere at anytime. Its excess belies another. The notion that intervention can be anywhere raises the prospect that it could be for anything. The empire of indifference passes intervention from necessity to the realm of discretion, acting upon difference becomes a luxury within reach. Added to this is the discretionary force of something like the derivatives market, a hitherto unfathomable wealth sundered from use that exists only to further itself. The recourse to war that cannot discern between foreign and domestic, that attacks terror, but also crime, drugs, culture, and the like, sketches in negative relief the magnitude of the difference that state and capital now resist. Never mind that they had a hand in proliferating it all. The abundance of difference in our midst, along with excess wealth advertised for all-purposes, presents the immanence of the social as a self-expanding luxury for all. The war on terror is not the only project legible in the transfer of Bataille's mode of excess into the present. Terror gives urgency to the proliferation of financial risk but it also deflects attention from that excess which the state has increasing trouble concealing--its own criminality. If capital morphs under the present mode of excess, so too does its strange bed-fellow, the state-form.
II. State Economy
Whatever the cornucopia offered by finance, something prevents access to the immanent luxury of the social, something 'destines life's exuberance to revolt,' to rebel against new forms of 'military exploitation, religious mystification, and capitalist misappropriation,' to seek out a more luxuriate mode of excess, a mode of discretion and difference lived by all. (Bataille 1993: 77) A mean and indifferent mode of excess burns off all this self-activity, if not all this revolt, and leaves behind an effect, a state effect. Bataille asks us in his studies to seek out the effects of the accursed share, the state effects that come to trace the state-form. We mean by the state-form something more than the state as it is used as a category by political scientists. We mean something Bataille provokes us to consider. We mean that which becomes visible in the struggle over excess as an economy of excess, that which stands in for the mode of excess itself. So to ask what state-form corresponds to this mean and indifferent mode of excess is to take these state effects as clues, effects produced by a public capacity itself forged in the struggle today to produce capital's division of risk and at risk populations. To produce both the embracing of risk and the sorting of at risk populations that animate both financialization and the war on terror a certain kind of struggle, a certain kind of privatization must be at work. And this work of privatization can be read in the work left to the state-form.
The contemporary state-form operates to criminal effect. Its crime is not simply violation of law it is charged to enshrine, or to legitimate private property as public theft. At its most comprehensive and constitutive, criminality issues from the state-form positioning against society as such--an anti-social opposition to the expansive sociality that is irrecuperable to narrow protocols of accumulation. This effect hints at what is new about the contemporary mode of excess. From the state we hear scarcely a word about the social. Rather, it positions itself on the meridian that delimits public and private. The effect of publicity in the state-form today is a contradictory one, one that hates the public, fears the social, courts the criminal, and cannot help itself. Let us use the terms publicity and privatization here to mean something terminologically specific, and historically specific to capitalism. Privatization here assumes that the sociality called forth by capital must be reduced and converted into private property if it is to be a recognizable form for capital of what Jean-Paul Sartre called the practico-inert. Privatization is also the struggle that produces publicity, what Jacques Ranciere calls the 'distribution of the public and the private' (Ranciere 2006, 55) and therefore what can count as common. Privatization here comes first, not after some vulnerable public sector. Publicity is the subsequent state economy dedicated to privatizing excess sociality. By naming itself as public, publicity continues the work of privatization that brought publicity into being, and ensures that collective action taken up in the name of publicity not only fetishes the public (Bratsis 2005), but leaves the real struggle of privatization as it is understood here, untouched.
Understanding the state-form historically as the evidence of economy brought to bear on excess leaves room for what goes unmarked by conventional notions of public and private, even when those notions are employed in a Marxist framework as founding terms, and instead allows us see the excess of sociality as founding both public and private. Or as Jacques Derrida puts it: 'At its height of hyperbole, the absolute opening, the uneconomic expenditure, is always reembraced by an economy and is overcome by economy.' (Derrida 1980: 75) The economy of public and private (here an at risk effect and a risk effect), signs of the mode of excess, emerge from the struggle against excessive sociality, and under capitalism, this privatization aims most vitally at the means of production.
The publicity produced in the period when the tendency to industrial capitalism predominated seems capacious today. The struggle over property and machinery, scientific patents and natural resources, produced a publicity that opened onto the commonality of social reproduction. The welfare state and wars against fascism, civil rights and anti-colonialism, all operated in the space produced by what was relinquished in the struggle in fields, factories, and offices. Of course publicity produces its own unruliness, much as the struggle of privatization itself. Exactly because publicity must be reproduced by a labour both internal and external to it, publicity sometimes does not know its own limits. In civil rights, in the popular front, and most seriously in anti-colonialism, the space of publicity was ab-used as Gayatri Spivak would say, and there was an attempt to move past the confrontation with the private to the struggle of privatization itself. (Spivak 2006) There was a feel for excess, and a prophecy of a new mode. But all the while finance and science was preparing an interdependency, a general intellect, that would shatter this publicity by altering the means of production and with it the stakes of the struggle for privatization.
This new interdependency and its privatization is oddly foreshadowed by Bataille in his chapter on the Soviet Union where a new mode of excess takes shape in the drive for productivity and the building up of the means of production. 'In the end, all of one's waking hours are dedicated to the fever of work,' he writes. (Bataille 1993: 160) Here publicity takes the form of the means of production itself, produced by a privatization of all other aspects of life. Only productivity becomes a matter of commonality. All else, distinguished as social reproduction, is vulnerable to the violence of privacy. Of course this not the privacy of the conventional private, but of a privatization drive to destroy excess sociality and produce a state economy, a proper publicity of total work.
One feels that this feverish work is with us today, but without even the vague hope of the publicity of the Soviet Union . What is being privatized to permit such a fever to take hold, and what kind of publicity stokes this fire, and as ever, is threatened by the flames? The risk and at risk populations that reach publicity as private and public matters and are its objects of attention suggest a new tendency in privatization. This tendency turns on social reproduction but again not directly through what is conventionally understood by privatization, but at its roots, at its moment of production in the struggle over a new means of production. Conventional privatization is only a symptom of this struggle at the root, and one of an already advanced disease.
It is only a symptom because today the struggle over privatization occurs at the level of life itself, and especially at the level of the cognitive and affective capacities of the body. The General Intellect that Marx identified with science, and undoubtedly with machinery, is recast by autonomist thinkers as a mass intellectuality residing in brains and bodies of labour. A history of production across these bodies takes on all the difference of these bodies and becomes legible only in this context. The biopolitics identified in contemporary scholarship is often understood as the site of politics but might also be marked as the residue of politics, as what is left to publicity after a new means of production is privatized, taking off the table the politics of privatization and leaving only the politics of public and private as it is currently constituted, as biopolitics. So today it might be necessary as Patricia Clough recently put it in articulating the technoscience that underlies a subindividual ontology, to move 'beyond biopolitics.' (iii)
For instance, in the work of Lauren Berlant there is an anticipation of this privatization of the reproductive realm. She notes the way that in the Reagan era what was the private sphere comes forward into the public sphere, but as a matter of immorality. (Berlant 1997) This was an early symptom of the consequences of privatizing social reproductive capacities, putting them to work, and leaving only the anti-reproductive moment to the public, a moment that begins in immorality and will end in just a few years in wholesale criminality. When social reproduction itself, when sociality itself, becomes the target of privatization, when not machinery but brains and souls are to be rendered into dead labour, into private property, biopolitics may be one word for what is left to publicity. But even this term might be too generous, too sociable. Because when the social itself is privatized, only the anti-social, only the criminal remains for publicity. A state economy emerges that is not just concerned with the anti-social, but takes the anti-social as its modus operandi, takes indifference to qualities of society as its public face. In short, the couple risk/at risk in the public sphere of a criminal state-form. It must be quickly added that this criminal state-form is not criminal in the liberal sense of deviating from a societal norm, nor criminal in the traditional Marxist sense of supporting the theft of wealth through labour- time. It is a state against society. The war on terror mixes risk-embracing populations like soldiers and at risk populations like Arab civilians and seeks out a criminal path, and an anti-social outcome. But who can blame it for being in a true sense, and not in the sense used by economists, path dependent?
All visible sociality is fast being criminalized, marked as having been unsuccessfully privatized. Such sociality becomes a threat to productivity, to the basis of the state-form, to its criminality and thus the criminality of the state stands against sociality at every turn. Productivity is the metric by which privatization appears as self-rationalizing. But at the same time, this stance marks criminality as the last site of the un-privatized social. The fever of work is interrupted, risk is suspended, at the moment the criminal becomes its opposite, not anti-sociality but sociality. And of course this moment comes all the time as capital's dream of living only on dead souls is interrupted by the waking hunger for social genius, for mass intellectuality, for living labour. Suddenly the siege must be lifted, prisoners released, raids called off, risky deals bailed out, at risk populations made into relative surplus ones.
The question of who is attributed with the capacity to self-manage and who is deemed unmanageable brings us to governance. The ubiquitous term of comparison making formal equality of things more universal than ever, governance can be applied to hospitals, universities, countries, and corporations. But more importantly in can be applied to populations. Populations that embrace risk, that manifest the privatization of the General Intellect, embrace governance as the governmentality of indifference. Governance oversees the hedging of interest against interest. But more than that governance tests for a population's ability to produce interests, to risk those interests in the name of speculative accumulation. Governance is here a form of bioprospecting in the veins of mass intellectuality for collective cognitive capacities that can be applied to accumulation strategies. And governance is the mouth of the criminal state-form, calling out to the social, in order to privatize or criminalize it. Those who call back and identify their interests are the lucky ones, these newly identified interests and their bearers are made productive, made to take risks, and led into the fever of work. Those who do not answer, or cannot be heard, are said to be those without interests, the at-risk, the criminal.
With interests rising out of populations and returning to private hands for example in corporate multiculturalism or fair trade or green consumption, the state is left only with those at risk, those feared to be without interest. And of course the figure today who is most without interest is a certain criminal character, the terrorist. And as Angela Y. Davis notes 'racism played a critical role in the ideological production of the communist, the criminal, and the terrorist.' (Davis 2005: 121-2) The roving racism of the at risk category is the business that is left to the state, but this is also the business that is left of the state. And this is why governance must also fail, why it must remain contradictory in the corporation, the nation, the NGO. If it were to work it would suggest a totality of structured in difference, to use an older phrase, that would be deadly to the anti-social character of the contemporary state-form. If governance were to do more than merely strip mine the general intellect and leave it scarred, it would become sociable, and would quickly become the enemy of the state. This is the condition of the war on terror, a flailing limb of the criminal state which constantly flings itself toward the very criminality, the very condition of being without interest, that it sees in the object of its violence. It works against proper environments of risk, against the extraction of new interests, and instead piles up at risk populations and smashes constitutions and remakes them in a Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde act that belies its criminal inheritance in the face of the privatization of all that is healthy for the reproduction of society.
The state attacks itself here too. Clearly this is part of a wretched history that Marx identifies as Bonapartism in his account of the crisis of class representation in the 18 th Brumaire. Within a century the notorious burning of the Reichstag will signal the mass mobilization of the state against itself that brings us fascism. Now the state is engaged in mass shedding, war is demobilizing even as its profiteering is part of the executive's curriculum vitae (including the notable intimacies with Enron and Halliburton). The self-destructiveness of today's politics is brought on by the incessant relinquishing of excess sociality, including that initiated by the state, to privatization. And what cannot be returned to the private must be criminalized and this is why in the end George W. Bush must criminalize himself. No matter how much he seeks out laws, in the end he is driven to move beyond them, to turn against himself as an instance of society. His wars, his camps, his dismissals of those charged with upholding the law, belie the impatience behind their own pleas for permanence. Unable to uphold the legality of his policy, he incriminates himself and uses this sentence to stay the course of execution. Bush delegates decision to maintain authority over those who would judge.
But it is worse, because as much as the state is at risk in this publicity, poison to itself no matter how many wars it launches or jails it builds, it has not even the possibility of criminality. It is criminal, but it will never revolt. It can be anti-social, but it cannot abide any un-privatized sociality in its midst, no welfare state, no war on poverty. And yet this mode of excess is premised on un-privatized sociality, which is to say not on the criminal, the anti-social, but on criminality, the possibility that a population is not anti-social, not consumed by the fever of work, not smothered in risk. This criminality is itself the possibility of a structure of feeling beneath this fever, within this embrace, of a luxuriant excess privatized to make this work and speculation possible, but always escaping it. The fate of those at risk, those immersed in criminality, the fugitive social-private, is to live, but the fate of the contemporary state-form, the criminal state, the anti-social public, is to die.
It is the state today that is left to die. There is no difference between its typical operation and its normalizing exception. Only such indifference has been left to it. Nicos Poulantzas wrote in his late work that 'the state itself bathes in the struggles that constantly submerge it.'(Poulantzas 1980: 151) When those struggles have at their heart the excess produced by the social capacities carried in the brains and souls of living labour, privatization leaves nothing to the imagination. To look for some suspension of law when the ability to legislate is itself given over to capital in the form of governance, is to miss the residual character of the contemporary state-form. And yet Poulantzas also noted more than once 'the class enemy was always present within the state.' (Poulantzas 1980: 151) That the contemporary state-form is the effect of living labour coming into contact with the anti-social edifice of its deeds, the ruins of every social project, suggests that criminality remains present in the criminal state. This criminality at the heart of the state economy destines revolt from the depths of the mode of excess.
Conclusion
If Bataille imagined spatially distinct general economies each with their attendant mode of excess, we now face a multiplicity of excessive prospects and pathways. So many futures nestle in our presence. A fugitive from its lost world utopia has been jettisoned by capital and gained a place in our midst. So too, dystopias no longer need be fabulized but have become the stuff of policy patterns. The state-form indicts itself, commits itself to end government as we know it or assassinate its own inefficiency that goes by the name of regulation. It admits to its own criminality but takes no responsibility. These dispassionate crimes cannot be concealed by the war on terror. The terrorist stands as bad risk well taken. Criminality presents a bad state poorly executed. The terror war produces what it seeks to curtail, both its own conditions of permanence but also an abundance of terror whose risks exceed all available hedge strategies. Bataille looked at a capitalist world whose excess was neatly partitioned between fordist consumption, Keynesian war, and nationally encapsulated socialism. None of these projects are available to us now. Consumption as an inducement to further production has been eclipsed by swarms of credit and debt. The pump that war might prime has been reduced to a miniature of its former self as the military budget has retracted from 40% of U.S. G.D.P. at the end of the second world war to 4% with the Iraq war (and a proportionate reduction in the size of the military from over 18 million to around two million personnel). (truthandpolitics.org, 2003) The Cold War's demise also ended national containment, and while social economies have not disappeared, their measurement has proven elusive.
If we were to rename Bataille's trinity of excess in contemporary terms, we would look to immaterial labor and mass intellectuality in place of the idiocy of consumerist shopping, risk governmentality in place of Keynesian pump priming, and population-for-itself where socialism once snuggled safely in one country. As Bataille noted, the state is still cancerous to these formations, but their production of difference exceeds what capital can absorb or the state can combat. The asymmetries of the world that the present imperium takes as its worthy opponent cannot be crushed without assuring the proliferation of their own conditions of possibility. Wars produce volatility not victory. Dissolution of publics will not engender national purpose. The desire that gave rise to vengeful liberatory intervention collapses before an unsustainable demand. The state loses interest in its own messianic zeal, offers no ideas, hews to information when it can generate no intelligence. Its legacy is to render the bestial necessity of history into discretionary expenditure. There is nothing that compels one war to be fought over another or one kind of expenditure to be made where another could readily be imagined. The excessive amassing of wealth is to all lights sustainable, but its means of expenditure may not be. These alter modes of excess take on force when the state abandons its own protocols of legitimacy. If the fordist trinity promised inclusion--development for all who have the patience to wait their disciplined formations of labor, now labor is freed from such encumbrances. Labor can pass into its own productivity, garnish its own wages, feed its own difference. This is the political ascendancy of population as such. The abandonment of population to its own devices leaves an opening to the collective genius of mass intellectuality to evoke itself as a knowledge form on behalf of an expansive principle of what population in itself and for itself could be. This wealth is already with us. We can look forward to much more of it.
References
Bank of International Settlements, "OTC Derivatives Market Activity in the First Half of 2006," http://www.bis.org/press/p061117.htm Accessed, April, 2007.
Georges Bataille (1993) The Accursed Share Vols. II & III, New York : Zone Books.
Lauren Berlant (1997) The Queen of America Goes to Washington City : Essays on Sex and Citizenship, Durham : Duke University Press.
Peter Bratsis (2006) Everyday Life and the State, Boulder : Paradigm Publishers.
Sally Clubley (1998) Trading in Oil Futures and Options Boca Raton , FL : CRC Press.
Angela Y,. Davis (2005) Abolition Democracy, New York : Seven Stories Press.
Kenneth S. Deffeyes (2005) Beyond Oil: The View From Hubbert's Peak New York : Hill & Wang.
Jacques Derrida (1980) Writing and Difference, Chicago : University of Chicago Press.
Iraq 's National Development Strategy, 2005-2007
Edward Lipuma and Benjamin Lee (2004) Financial Derivatives and the Globalization of Risk Durham : Duke University Press.
Randy Martin (2002) Financialization of Daily Life Philadelphia : Temple University Press.
Nicos Poulantzas (1980) State, Power, Socialism , London : Verso.
Jacques Ranciere (2006) Hatred of Democracy, London : Verso.
Toby Shelley (2005) Oil: Politics, Poverty and the Planet London : Zed, 2005.
Gayatri Spivak (2006) Other Asias , Oxford : Blackwell.
Truthandpolitics.org, "Relative Size of US Military Spending, 1940-2003" http://www.truthandpolitics.org/military-relative-size.php .
NOTES
i For Hubbert's argument see, Kenneth S. Deffeyes, Beyond Oil: The View From Hubbert's Peak ( New York : Hill & Wang, 2005), with a link between scarce oil and population control on page 117. The antinomy of access and control is argued by Toby Shelley, Oil: Politics, Poverty and the Planet ( London : Zed, 2005). A primer in oil economics, a fully financialized industry, can be found in Sally Clubley's Trading in Oil Futures and Options (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 1998).
ii See Iraq 's National Development Strategy, 2005-2007
iii Patricia Clough, organizer, Beyond Biopolitics: State Racism and the Politics of Life and Death, The Center for the Study of Women and Society/CUNY, March 16-17, 2006 , New York City .
here also
Non-constitutive Rhetoric: Or the Banality of Control
My purpose today is to update the rhetorical studies theory of subjectivity. I argue that ‘affect theory’ should replace the older psychoanalytic model of interpellation. To concretize my argument, I analyze banal rhetoric; namely, the cybernetic subjectivity produced by “stock listings, currencies, corporate accounting, national budgets, computer languages, mathematics, scientific functions, [and] equations” (Lazzarato, Signs and Machines, 80).
Before I dive in, let provide you with a short preview of my argument. I begin by considering an essential axiom of critical rhetoric theory: “rhetoric produces subjectivity.” The prevailing theory is that subjectivity is an ideological effect of an implied audience (Charland, “Québécois”; Delgado, “Chicano Movement”). The most popular explanatory mechanism is interpellation, which draws on Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory of symbolic mediation (Althusser, “ISA,” 162). I argue that this model is no longer appropriate, for as Eugene Holland argues, “what Althusser actually describes is not the ideological constitution of the Subject, but only of the citizen” (“Schizoanalytic Critique”). The consequence of my argument is that rhetoricians explaining subjectivity through interpellation limited their focus to the State and relations of obedience/disobedience.
Second, I explain how banal rhetoric reveals modes of subjectivity beyond the citizen-subject. My claim is that rhetorical power now “speaks, communicates, and acts ‘assisted’ by all kinds of mechanical, thermodynamic, cybernetic, and computer machines” (Lazzarato, Signs and Machines, 29). I analyze “the language of infrastructures” to show how rhetoric solicits subjectivity without constituting a people or even addressing a subject (Pasolini, Heretical Empiricism, 63; Lazzarato, Signs and Machines, 61). As such, I do not celebrate affects as a challenge to abusive power; rather, I follow in the footsteps of Frédéric Lordon, who argues in Willing Slaves of Capital that joyous affects are the very means of our contemporary exploitation.
Lastly, I suggest two consequences from studying banal rhetoric: one, artifact selection need not be tied to rhetoric that hails “the people,” invokes an identity, or provides a symbolic program of action (McGee, “The People”; Charland, “Peuple Québécois”; Delgado, “Chicano Movement”); and two, the political search for rhetorical resistance need not emerge from distinct counter-publics or out-law discourses (Warner, Publics and Counter-Publics; Sloop and Ono, “Out-Law Discourse”).
Briefly restating my roadmap: I begin by discussing interpellation, continue with a discussion of affect, and end with the consequence an affect theory of subjectivity for future scholarship.
Part I: Subjectivity
As with the critical turn in the humanities and interpretive sciences, rhetorical studies has theorized the production of subjectivity for many decades. Perhaps the most canonical reference is Maurice Charland’s importation of French Marxist Louis Althusser’s theory of interpellation in his 1987 essay on the Peuple Québécois. Interpellation fulfills the overall materialist goal of critical rhetoric by breaking ideology out of the realm of mere ideas “to rematerialize ideology” as an agent of social reproduction (Macherey, “Figures of Interpellation,” 9). While most of us know how Althusser characterized ideology as an agent in the scene of interpellation, it is helpful to review both of the rituals of recognition in his original text: the most repeated scene involves a policeman who spots someone on the street and shouts “Hey, you there!,” to which the subject turns around believing that it is them being hailed (174-175); a warner scene unfolds a few pages earlier in which a friend knocking at the door prompts us to ask “Who’s there,” and they respond “It’s me,” to which we open the door for them (172-173). Together, the two scenes outline the rhythm of interpellation as the ritual of a call-and-response in which ideology is materialized as address.
The concept of ideology grows from Marx’s desire to show how the economic basis for capitalism is hidden from the consciousness of its agents of production. Yet the agents in the scenes of interpellation are not workers who fail to realize that ‘profit is unpaid work.’ So then what is going on ‘behind their backs’? For Althusser, that the process of recognition is really a process of mis-recognition. To subjects themselves, their subjectivity appears tautologically transparent, “I am what I am,” whereas Althusser shows how subjectivity is produced by a voice of authority that calls a subject into being (Althuser, For Marx, 233; Butler, Psychic Life of Power, 110). Charland astutely observes that the voice of authority is rhetorical and is found in constitutional documents that declare the existence of a people, though he generalizes the term to “the very act of addressing” (140). Fitting this into concepts familiar to rhetorical theory, we can thus say subjectivity is an ideological effect of any implied audience (Black, “Second Persona”).
There are limitations to Althusser’s model because of his theory of power, which is tied to the State and subsequent relations of obedience/disobedience. Interpellation is part of Althusser’s longer argument about the ideological power of states (ISAs), so it is no surprise that he depicts a policeman hailing a subject as a representative of the law. We might ask the questions: is the production of subjectivity limited to interactions with the state? What about other types of power, namely capitalism? Althusser never provides a model the generation of subjectivity in other circumstance, so I am persuaded by Eugene Holland, who notes that the repertoire for an Althusserian subject is limited to that of a citizen’s consent or refusal (“Schizoanalytic Critique”). The limitations of interpellation fare no better if we draw deeper on Althusser’s source material: Lacan’s work on the Oedipal “name of the father,” which is the linguistic-performative force of the symbolic that drives us to desire through prohibition (Écrits [2006], “The Signification of the Phallus,” 577-83). According to the Lacanian model, the desiring subject does more than just comply with the voice of authority, they publicly perform how they relate to “perceived-accepted-suffered cultural objects” for their own enjoyment (Althusser, “Marxism and Humanism,” For Marx, 233). Yet even when responding to “a system of representations” and the “structures that they impose of the vast majority of [us],” the ideological subject still conforms to a binary for/against, perhaps with the qualified position of in-between, as seen in Stuart Hall’s resistant reading, Pêcheux’s dis-identification, and Fiske’s active audiences (233; “Encoding/Decoding”; Language, Semantics, and Ideology; Television Culture).
While beyond the scope of this paper, an interesting middle-ground could be struck with the Lacanian generation of subjectivity by way of suture. Suture is most popular in film studies and makes its argument through the Marxian turn to form over content. The term originated from Jacques-Alain Miller, inheritor to the Lacanian estate, who first presented in the term in 1966, and it was quickly put to use in film studies (“Suture”; Oudart, “Dossier Suture”). The theory begins with the supposition that there are gaps in a narrative that must be filled by the viewer in order to stabilize the sense of the narrative. The process of establishing sense does not occur by hailing the audience, but through the structural necessity of an audience ‘suturing’ the symbolic gaps inadequately bridged by signifiers that stand in for the absent subject. As defined by Jacques-Alain Miller: “Suture names the relation of the subject to the chain of its discourse” (93). A further elaboration of the concept: moments of suture are “quilting points” [point de capiton] that knits together signifier and signified (“by which the signifier stops the otherwise indefinite sliding of signification”), whose relation is arbitrary and prone to slippage – a basic Saussurean point (Lacan, “Subversion of the Subject,” 681). The effect of a quilting point is meaning. Like many Lacanian terms, he gives an everyday name to a topological concept: quilting point is taken from upholstery, as in attachment of deep buttons on a Chesterfield sofa (in fact, Bruce Fink translates point de capiton as “button tie” in “Subversion” on page 681). A popular example for demonstrating suture/quilting points is the analysis of Spielberg’s Jaws, in which analysts show that a monster is never just a monster, but also that any single reading of the monster in insufficient (rumors have it that Fidel Castro interpreted the film to be about Cuba-as-Amity fighting bloodthirsty American imperialism) (Jameson, Signatures of the Visible, 316-17n12). Instead, the variety of possible readings of Jaws, in their multiplicity, “suggests that the vocation of the symbol – the killer shark – lies less in a single message or meaning than its capacity to absorb and organize all these quite distinct anxieties together” (35). This follows from the basic psychoanalytic assumption that audiences must find quilting points in every film to establish the relevance that makes viewing enjoyable. The consequence of Jameson’s argument is that films need not be ideologically manipulate because audiences always ideologically bridge the gap between narrative and social relevance (39). Interestingly, rhetoric really never took it up suture/quilting points outside of a few articles (with a Comm & Mass Media Complete search, 4 hits: 2 cinema, 1 triple C on “Media-Suturing Working Class Subjectivities,” and a 2002 RSQ article by Greg Dickinson on Starbucks).
Affect theory can be taken as a direct response to Althusserian interpellation. In his landmark piece on affect, Deleuze scholar Brian Massumi promises that, “affect holds a key to rethinking postmodern power after ideology” (Parables, 42). But even before that, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari declared that “there is no ideology and never has been” (A Thousand Plateaus, 4). This was the jumping off point for Lawrence Grossberg in his 1992 book We Gotta Get Out of This Place, in which he suggests as alternative to the Birmingham School’s Althusserian theory of social formations with the much-more Deleuzian “affective alliance,” which bears strong resemblance to what we now call ‘assemblage theory’ (80; 397). Grossberg’s notion of affect was a particularly well-timed intervention. As audience became popular in star/celebrity studies in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, the prevailing textual method was a semiotic analysis of the shared meaning invested in an American icon. One example is Jackie Stacey’s Star Gazing: Hollywood Cinema and Female Spectatorship (1994) in which she examines how women transformed themselves by imitating the hair, fashion, and style of their preferred stars. Grossberg’s shift to affect cut the cord from resemblance and meaning, enabling the construction of “mattering maps” that looked beyond the identification of “ideological or psychoanalytic interpellations” to “different sites of investment” (84). The point was to demote meaning and return ambivalence, such as explaining how pleasure can be disempowering or why a politically radical guitarist’s audience might be mostly Reagan voters (85; 169).
Part II. Banal Rhetoric
Affective attempts to declare an end to ideology has not been lost on rhetorical theorists. Christian Lundberg folds affect back into the Lacanian paradigm through the category of enjoyment (“Passion of the Christ”). Others have followed suit (Jenkins, “Another Punctum;” Biesecker, “Whither Ideology?”).
In a recent interview published in the media studies journal Fibreculture, theorist Alexander Galloway offers a contrasting image of affect, noting that:
Affect is a curious topic, partly because the critical commentary seems to contradict itself. On the one hand, Fredric Jameson chronicled what he called the ‘waning of affect’ under postmodernity (Jameson, 1991: 10–11). For him deep psychological structures have given way to more surface phenomena like irony and cynicism. Yet at the same time affect seems to be on the rise today. Deleuze and Guattari famously charted the liberation of affect. Social media proliferate with people’s feelings and desires. Books and conferences are devoted to the subject. So who is right? Can both of these claims be true? Is affect on the wane, or is it on the rise?
Upon further examination the apparent contradiction dissolves. When Jameson says affect he really means emotion or feeling. He means the purely sincere affect of the romantic, Enlightenment ego. When Deleuzians say affect they mean affect proper, that is, affect as the postmodern replacement for modern sentiment. Modern subjects have sentiments, while postmodern subjects have affects. Thus Jameson’s ‘waning of…’ and the Deleuzian ‘turn to…’ are precisely the same historical phenomenon. Modern sentiment succeeded too well, you might say – so much so that, even after disappearing, it has re-emerged everywhere, only now in simulated form (17).
Galloway’s comments are part of a dialogue with fellow interviewee Patricia Clough about how affect has been rendered calculable through the measurement of digital bodies as/of data (15). My interest is how this turn to the ‘shallowness’ of affect illuminates the role of cybernetic governance, and what such a situation demands of us as rhetorical theorists.
I am interested in how banal rhetoric combines waning sentimentality but increased circulation. Boring documents are fairly emotionless but dripping with affect. This is because even as power incites, induces, and seduces, it need not be exciting. The distinction between excitement and power is further supported by the Deleuzian theorization of the difference between affect and emotion (Massumi, Parables, 26-28; 35-37; 61-65). To confuse emotion with power would be to forget about all of the mundane exercises of force, such as the tedium of bureaucracy, the dullness of logistics, the dreariness of cube culture, the monotony of workflow, or the drudgery of daily work at a terminal. Yet those modifiers – drudgery, monotony, dreariness, dullness, and tedium – do not represent a zero degree of intensity. These are the affects of the overwhelmed. Like ‘less lethal’ police technology, which increases its effectiveness by causing pain more efficiently, neoliberal control meticulously pushes bodies to the limit of their capacities (Foucault, Security, Territory, Population). In their banality, the resulting affects are not drained of power but charged with it through liberal microphysics.
My larger point is greater than a critique of the psychoanalytic equivocation of affect and excitement. My purpose is to theorize the importance of affect for that rhetoric which remains indifferent to its audience. Naming an example of this rhetoric, famed Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini talked about the “language of infrastructures” not meant for specific individuals (Pasolini, Heretical Empiricism, 63; Lazzarato, Signs and Machines, 61). Note that the language of infrastructures is not the rhetoric of government paperwork, as bureaucracy hails its own audience through fill-in-the-blank boxes and mandatory signatures. Instead, there is banal rhetoric that lacks of an audience, for there are languages not meant for any subject whatever – “stock listings, currencies, corporate accounting, national budgets, computer languages, mathematics, scientific functions, [and] equations” that exist independently of our subjective experience of them (Lazzarato, Signs, 80). Consider an example given by Pasolini:
The productivity of investments in the highway plan thus depends on the coordination in a programming of the infrastructures of transportation that tends to resolve disequilibriums, eliminate obstructions, reduce the waste of competition among the different means of transportation, and in a word, give life to an integrated system on a national scale (14).
Remarkably, this speech was not an address to technicians but a televised groundbreaking of the Autostrada meant for the Italian public. It might be tempting to say that Moro is formally addressing ‘The People of Italy.’ Yet if we were to follow Michael McGee “in search of ‘The People’” of Moro’s address, we would find none (“In Search”). Moro provides no representations of human subjects, only “disequilibriums,” “obstructions,” and “waste.” And while similar to McGee’s analysis, whereby “the people” become political subjects through a “collectivization process” (243), Moro does speak of collectives, yet he is not talking about a collection of individuals but the metal and concrete that make up the Autostrada’s roads.
Moro could easily be criticized for his rationalization of language, which is the anti-bureaucratic objection posed by Pasolini, the Frankfurt School, and Weber before them. But such criticisms of instrumentalization are only romantic laments against postmodernism promoting the return to the sentimentality.
For me, I would rather account for Moro’s speech as a form of non-constitutive rhetoric in which he employs a rhetoric that produces subjectivity through an affective solicitation that does not constitute a people (Holland, “Revisited, Part Two”). My claim is that the type of subjectivity that Moro’s rhetoric produces is what Deleuze and Guattari call “machinic enslavement” (A Thousand Plateaus, 456) For them, there are two intersecting forms of subjectivity: social subjection and machinic enslavement (456-457). Subjection is when we act as the users of a machine, whereas enslavement is when we are the cogs in it (Lazzarato, “The Machine”). Subjection “operates at the molar level of the individual (its social dimension, the roles, functions, representations and affections),” while enslavement “operates at the molecular …[or pre-individual or infrasocial] level (affects, sensations, desires, those relationships not yet individuated or assigned to a subject)” (“The Machine”). To make things concrete, Deleuze and Guattari use sociologist Lewis Mumford’s example of the “megamachine” made by the Egyptians to build the pyramids, which they say has been resurrected through “cybernetic and informational machines” to reconstruct a generalized regime of enslavement whose principal framework was first the business or factory but is now the whole biopolitical infrastructure of our urban, informatized, networked, digitized existence (A Thousand Plateaus, 456-459).
A more contemporary example of the banal rhetoric soliciting machinic enslavement comes from the trading room. Consider the semiotics of finance – financial signs refer to objects, and the resulting sign flows circulate the world in real-time as human subjectivity establish functional links to set share prices or sell off stocks (Lazzarato, Signs and Machines, 96). The trader’s screen creates their subjectivity by speaking to them through diagrams, curves, and data that makes flows of information “visible, comparable, and manipulable,” but only in their limited affective capacity to “suggest, enable, solicit, instigate, encourage, and prevent certain actions, thoughts, affects” (97). So even if the intersecting curves of a worldwide computer network communicates to a trader, there is no singular voice of authority to hail them as a subject; rather, there are a multiplicity of signs with affects “installed ‘before’ the circumscription of identities, and manifested by transferences unlocatable with regard to their origin as well as their destination” (Guattari, “Ritornellos,” 158; translation modified). Therefore, although we can say that the trader operates in the limited capacity as the user of a software system, their social subjection is overshadowed by the “mathematical systems, data banks, interconnected computer networks, telephone networks” that solicit the trader’s subjectivity as a cog in the machine (99).
To summarize: contemporary power tends to produce subjectivity through affect more than authority (we could say this is an evolutionary step for the power that Foucault said ‘produces more than it represses’). Affects are crucial to the resulting machinic enslavement, which is the effect of the ‘languages of infrastructures’ central to a cybernetic capitalism that increasingly treats its subjects as mere cogs in the machine.
III. Consequences
Perhaps we are already past interpellation in critical rhetoric, which is to say: scholars have stopped looking for optimism in constitutive rhetoric that hails “the people,” invokes an identity, or provides a symbolic program of action (McGee, “The People”; Charland, “Peuple Québécois”; Delgado, “Chicano Movement”). Affect theory now has us connecting the everyday activities of people producing value without being pinned to fixed identities, or bounded sites of action (Chaput, “Rhetorical Circulation”). My concern is that we need to maintain a deep ambivalence about the potential of affects. In one of the most memorable passages of Anti-Oedipus, Deleuze and Guattari argue that the political question cannot be ‘how do we free up desire?’ – or in our case: incite more positive affects – because in our society, free people willingly give up their freedom (29). As such, scholars of rhetoric should select artifacts that demonstrate the microphysical complicity of affects in our subjugation, such as Sara Ahmed’s study of compulsory happiness as a form of gender exploitation, but we should also find artifacts that demonstrate how affects are remobilized for our freedom, as in Ahmed’s feminist killjoy, who spreads negative affects to break the unspoken agreement to offer only constructive, sex-positive solutions (Ahmed, Promise of Happiness).
Yet even Ahmed’s is perhaps too focused on social subjection and its binary logic of consent/refusal. Rhetorical scholars following in her footsteps would likely search out distinct counter-publics or out-law discourses (Warner, Publics and Counter-Publics; Sloop and Ono, “Out-Law Discourse”). Both fail to engage ‘the languages of infrastructures,’ which speaks in terms of “samples, data, markets, or ‘banks’” that circulate at levels “much more and much less than the person, the individual, and intersubjectivity” (Deleuze, “Postscript,” 180; Lazzarato, Signs and Machines, 30). The response requires a thoroughly materialist analysis whereby the social subject is no long the default center of political action. Late in his life, Deleuze denounced the younger generations “strange craving to ‘be motivated’” as part of a new system of domination (“Postscript,” 181). His proposed solution was to escape to vacuoles of non-communication in order to engage in piracy or introduce viruses (“Control and Becoming,” 175; “Postscript,” 180). Perhaps this is only true for me because of my revolutionary communist convictions, but I firmly believe in the future of critical rhetorical scholarship on subjectivity, both new and old, that combines direct action and obfuscation to meet at the intersection of logistics and exodus.
Works Cited
Ahmed, Sara (2010) The Promise of Happiness (Durham, NC: Duke University Press).
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Black, Edwin (1970) “The Second Persona,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 56:2, 109-119.
Butler, Judith (1997) The Psychic Life of Power (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press)
Charland, Maurice (1987) “Constitutive Rhetoric: The case of the peuple québécois,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 72:2, 133-150.
Chaput, Catherine (2010) “Rhetorical Circulation in Late Capitalism: Neoliberalism and the Overdetermination of Affective Energy,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 43:1, 1-25.
Deleuze, Gilles (1983) Foucault, trans. Séan Hand (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press).
Deleuze, Gilles (1990) “Control and Becoming,” interview with Antonio Negri, Negotiations, trans. Martin Joughin (New York: Columbia University Press), 169-176.
Deleuze, Gilles (1990) “Postscript on Control Societies,” Negotiations, trans. Martin Joughin (New York: Columbia University Press), 177-182.
Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari (1977) Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R Lane (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press).
Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari (1987) A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press).
Delgado, Fernando Pedro (1995) “Chicano Movement Rhetoric: An Ideographic Interpretation,” Communication Quarterly 43:4, 446-455.
Fiske, John (1987) Television Culture (London: Routledge).
Foucault, Michel (2007) Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1977– 1978, trans. Graham Burchell and ed. Michel Senellart (New York: Palgrave Macmillan).
Galloway, Alexander R and Patricia Ticineto Clough (2015) “On Governance, Blackboxing, Measure, Body, Affect and Appes,” interviewed by Svitlana Matviyenko, Fibreculture 25, 11-28.
Grossberg, Lawrence (1992) We Gotta Get Outta This Place: Popular Conservatism and Postmodern Culture (London and New York: Routledge).
Guattari, Félix (1996) “Ritornellos and Existential Affects,” trans. Juliana S Chiesari and Georges Van Den Abbeele, The Guattari Reader, ed. Gary Genosko (Cambridge: Blackwell).
Hall, Stuart (1991) “Encoding/Decoding,” Culture, Media, Language: Working Papers in Cultural Studies, 1972-79 (London: Hutchinson), 128-38.
Holland, Eugene (2015), “The Schizoanalytic Critique of Althusser on Ideology,” Nomad Scholarship, https://nomadscholarship.wordpress.com/2015/02/28/the-schizoanalytic-critique-of-althusser-on-ideology/.
Holland, Eugene (2015), “Nomad Citizenship revisited, Part Two of Three,” Nomad Scholarship, https://nomadscholarship.wordpress.com/2015/04/06/nomad-citizenship-revisited-part-two-of-three/.
Jameson, Fredric (1992), Signatures of the Visible (Durham, NC: Duke University Press).
Jenkins, Eric (2013) “Another Punctum: Animation, Affect, and Ideology,” Critical Inquiry 39:3, 575-591.
Lacan, Jacques (2006) “The Signification of the Phallus,” Écrits: The First Complete Edition in English, trans. Bruce Fink (New York, London: WW Norton & Company), 575-582.
Lacan, Jacques (2006) “The Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire in the Freudian Unconscious,” Écrits: The First Complete Edition in English, trans. Bruce Fink (New York, London: WW Norton & Company), 671-702.
Lazzarato, Maurizio (2006) “The Machine,” trans. Mary O’Neill, European Institute for Progressive Cultural Policies, http://eipcp.net/transversal/1106/lazzarato/en.
Lazzarato, Maurizio (2014) Signs and Machines: Capitalism and the Production of Subjectivity, trans by Joshua David Jordan (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e)).
Lordon, Frédéric (2014) Willing Slaves of Capital: Spinoza & Marx on Desire, trans. Gabriel Ash (London: Verso).
Lundberg, Christian (2009) “Enjoying God’s Death: The Passion of the Christ and the Practices of the Evangelical Public,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 95:4, 387-411.
McGee, Michael C (1975) “In Search of ‘The People’: A Rhetorical Alternative,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 61:3, 235-249.
Macherey, Pierre (2012) “Figures of Interpellation in Althusser and Fanon,” Radical Philosophy 173, 9-20.
Massumi, Brian (2002) Parables of the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation (Durham, NC: Duke University Press).
Miller, Jacques-Alain (1977) “Suture (Elements of the Logic of the Signifier),” Screen 18:4, 24-34.
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Pasolini, Pier Paolo (1988) Heretical Empiricism (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press).
Pêcheux, Michel (1982) Language, Semantics, and Ideology, trans. Harbans Nagpal (New York: St. Martin’s Press).
Ruddick, Susan (2010) “The Politics of Affect: Spinoza in the Work of Negri and Deleuze,” Theory, Culture, & Society 27, 21-45.
Sloop, John M and Kent A Ono (1997) “Out-law Discourse: The Critical Politics of Material Judgement,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 30:1, 50-69.
Stacey, Jackie (1994) Star Gazing: Hollywood Cinema and Female Spectatorship (London and New York: Routledge).
Tokumitsu, Miya (2015) Do What You Love: And Other Lies About Success and Happiness (New York: Regan Arts).
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taken from here
Saal 6 – 5
» ... eine unglaubliche Erfindung, die wohlgemerkt seit mehr als zwanzig Jahren in meiner Pipeline lag, und mit der meine Mitarbeiter und ich, Dr. Rütli, vielleicht philosophische Letztprobleme wenn nicht zu lösen, so doch neu anzustoßen imstande sind. Angenommen, wir wissen nicht, wie das An-sich-Sein dieser einzigartigen chemischen Verbindung strukturiert ist, und wir beharren gleichzeitig darauf zu sagen, dass das Sein ist – das, meine Herren, ist logisch einfach unhaltbar; die Vorstellung, die wir vom Sein haben, hat letztendlich nichts weiter als unsere mentalen Zustände zum Inhalt, und nun zitiere ich ausnahmsweise einen Soziologen, denn sieht man von diesen Vorstellungen ab, dann bleibt ja nichts, und deshalb sagen wir entweder nur etwas über diese aus, wenn wir von jenem substanziellen und angeblich unerkennbaren X sprechen, oder wir müssen zugestehen, dass man nichts aussagt, wenn man etwas anderes sagt. Doch wenn jenes Read more ...
“Fuck off, Google!” Interview with Nick Dyer-Witheford
The interview was conducted in Kyiv, Ukraine following a lecture by Nick Dyer-Witheford at the National Technical University of Ukraine “Kyiv Polytechnic Institute” (NTUU KPI). We would like to thank those who brought this lecture and text to life, namely Yurii Dergunov, Volodymyr Ishchenko, Serhiy Odarych, Alona Liasheva and clearly Nick Dyer-Witheford.
On Marxism and cybernetics
Starting from the era when a strong Marxist sociology developed, including structural functionalism, communicative approaches, the Frankfurt school, etc. In your opinion, to what extent does it make sense to use Marx’s dialectical approach for analyzing phenomena of robotization, mass communication, information revolution, developments that Marx and his followers could not even imagine, especially taking into account the mechanisms of governing, control, and violence concentrated in the hands of the ruling class? Is this approach universal, could be it based on the universal solidarity of all people, regardless of their class?
Yes, I think so. That’s why I work within the Marxian tradition. I think the Marxism we have today is not the same Marxism as we had at the moment that Marx completed capital. Because it is not only the continuing revolutionary tradition, but it is a continuing learning tradition. So the validity of Marxism continues if only we have the persistence of capitalism as the dominant mode of production. Obviously there are aspects, which go beyond what Marx could observe in his time. But many of the aspects of his analysis of the logic of the system persist, so contemporary Marxism has to be a mix of things that stay constant and things that change. Some of the things that change I believe may have to change quite radically. The Marxism we have today is, for example, a Marxism that had a serious encounter with feminism, with environmentalism, because probably in these two areas, on issues of gender and on the issue of relations with nature, Marx was mostly a man of his age, 19th century. But revision can be a profound process. I believe there is still an enormous amount to be learned from it in regards to the basic logic of capitalism.
You just mentioned that there are things that stay the same and there are things that change in the theory itself. But what has changed in the society since the time Marx was writing his works? And how do we need to analyse them now?
Some issues that have changed are the intensification of the tendencies that were already recognised by Marx. For example, the growth of computerisation and networks can be explained by extrapolating elements of Marxist theories of capitalist machinery and the growth in the organic composition of capital. Similarly, one can look at things that seem quite new like financialisation, but one can find in Volume 3 of Capital or elsewhere in Marxist works suddenly the general elements for an analysis of that.
Is there a need to correct Marx’s Labour Theory of Value? Which exactly political economy categories could be used to explain accumulation of surplus value in software production and Internet-resources?
In some of his work and most famously in the fragment on machines Marx did hypothesize a situation in which the very operations of the Labour Theory of Value would work towards that theory’s supersession. That’s where we are, that’s what we need to understand. How the Labour Theory of Value is to be superseded on the basis of the Labour Theory of Value. In other words through the drive of capital constantly gives us its labor costs by increasing its organic composition. So in a sense we are in a twilight zone, where the Labour Theory of Value is not completely true, nor completely false.
On the subject of ‘surplus-population,’ Niklas Luhmann in “The Society of Society” directly says that contemporary communication networks, the extreme acceleration of the production of the means of production, the automation of production, and the general influence of capital on the minimisation of costs, which is reflected in neoliberal ideology, transform large numbers of the traditional proletariat – involved in the emergence of these technologies – useless. Is there something that could be offered by democratic forces to these Malthusian outcomes?
I do not think it is a Malthusian conclusion, it is Marxian conclusion. Marx’s point was not about a surplus population created simply by natural processes. He was talking about populations that are surplus in terms of capital’s requirements for wage labor. That is a very different thing. I think, all the progressive socio-economic possibilities that we have been discussing would be very far from having surplus populations. If we had massive programmes of ecological restoration on a planetary basis or if we had global health projects, there would be no reason why anyone should be part of the surplus population. If you look at the Marxian definition of proletariat, he in fact emphasises that the proletarian is just as likely to be unemployed as employed. In the young Marx he talks about what he calls the proletarian risk of descending from the full void of unemployment. In other words, to be exploited to the empty void of unemployment, when you are not even necessarily worth enough for the system to be exploited. That’s an aspect of Marxian theory of dynamics, which during the Fordist years, in the North West it was a period of relatively high employment, was very much neglected. But certainly with the 2008 crash there has been excellent theoretical work reviving that question, particularly, the British marxist collective “Endnotes”. In a way my work is an attempt to do the information and technological side of the “Endnotes” analysis.
On the impact of technologies on contemporary society
Often analyses of information society are reduced to the emergence of new professional groups in the most developed countries. What position do workers, including those in the Third World who are involved in information and material production, have in the class structure of the digital era? What role do they play?
A major one. If you follow the supply chains of cybernetic capital. The top, let’s call it that way, are not always, but often quartered in the North America or Western Europe. That’s where you find the high-level professionals. As you descend down the supply change you find these various strata of proletarianisation running the factory work in Southern China or other export zones, which is indispensable to manufacture all the hardware, on which everything runs, and then down into the sort of obscenities of extractive industries and toxic e-waste, creating global sacrifice zones. And even if we start to move back up the supply chain again, there are all these layers of various types of service workers or so called white-collar workers, who are implicated in these highly routinised types of work like call-centers, which can be involved in selling everything including selling cybernetic services. Providing the service of the service calls for Apple or Microsoft. And actually trying to follow those various working class strata who are, as you say, who have basically disappeared and are invisibilized by this discourse about digital professionalisation. That’s why I decided to write my book “Cyber-Proletariat”. I did a lot of work on the video-game industry and as you start to dig down through that, you discover all these places. I think it is part of the message I am trying to bring. Despite all this discussion, either in terms of bourgeois discourses of professionalisation, or in terms of left discourses about material labor, there are huge numbers involved in both the most routinised and the most brutal forms of proletarian work.
We could say that now there are two models in the development of the Internet. The first one, the mainstream one, is globalisation, it is mostly lead by the services like Google, Youtube, etc. But if we take a look at countries like China or Iran, they are closing up their Internet space. Do you think there is a danger of fragmenting the Internet following the examples of China, Iran, and Russia?
Yes, I think there is. I think that the dangers of national restrictions on the Internet space sit in a dialectical relation to the other side of the universality of the Internet, which is American imperialism. The openness of the Internet is some sort of technological equivalent of free trade doctrine. And because this is not an egalitarian universalism that has been imposed from a position of power it is not unsurprising that it elicits reactionary and authoritarian repressive forms of national control. But I think it is really important to see that the one conditions the other. One can throw up their hands at the regressive nature of Iranian or Chinese Internet policies, but this ignores the fact that the Google version of the world is meant to assist American command and penetration of the world’s economies. I would argue that those, the universalist and nationalist model, are two hearts of an equation that ultimately has no satisfactory answer. Furthermore, these national policies intensify the class struggle in those countries. For example, in China, which has quite highly authoritarian censorship policies, in fact the Chinese government is finding it extremely difficult to deal with this very well informed young migrant work force, which is really taking over the factories fighting in some ways the truly classic proletarian struggle via mobile phones. This is another way of saying that it is important to see these processes not only in terms of different logics of global and regional capital, but also to see them in perspective of contradictory logics of capital and what I call the global proletariat at different levels of struggle. So maybe China in a certain sense has a much more conversant Internet culture in some way at this point, because of the the high levels of class constitution, which is taking place. Whereas in North America, yes, the Internet is much more free, but there is not much of class struggle going on.
On emancipatory initiatives
How do you evaluate attempts towards the collective use of cybernetic technologies in the 20th century, namely the project of Victor Glushkov in the USSR and Stafford Beer in the Chile of Allende’s time?
I think they are incredibly important. I wrote a paper named “Red plenty platforms” a couple of years ago, which is about the possibilities of a contemporary version of that vision of progressive cybernetics. In fact it takes its title from a historical novel written by a British author Francis Spufford, which came out in 2011 called “Red Plenty”, which is a brilliant fictionalised account of the struggles over Soviet cybernetics policies in the 1960s and 70s. The thing which was interesting about Spufford’s novel, where he was very sympathetic to the work of various Ukrainian and Russian cyberneticians and taking into account the eventual failure and repression from the Soviet Union’s bureaucracy, is that in England and North America it was read in three entirely different ways. Two types of interpretation praised the novel. The first one, the economist would say: this is a fantastic novel, this is a story of a failure of communist cybernetics, it shows there is no way apart from what we experience now. The other reading would say – this novel shows that there was another way and if Stafford Beer and soviet cyberneticians had been successful in their attempt and created a digital real-time planning system, there would be a communism that looks very different, and is inspirational for the present in the context of this massive crisis. So I took that novel and did my best to extend the progressive logic of it. I brought up the issue not only of how automation could make possible the freeing of labor time, but also about the flows of Big Data and what we call liquid democracy, forms of participatory planning. So I went down this path and I explored this scenario and I could not fully agree. Because I think there is an obvious danger in looking at the potentiality and believing there is a teleological automatic process which will lead to its fulfillment. And I think that’s really risky. There was some work done by accelerationists. I appreciate this work, because they work on developing these potentials, but up to date, I think, they are really weak on the issue of how we get from here to there and on the question of the nature of the struggles which will be necessary. So I do not support the idea of accelerationism that we need just to speed up. I am not a luddite, but I am not an accelerationist either. There is a need for some disruption in social relations to production, another construction of the relation of ownership in order to release the forces of production in a new direction.
The traditional proletariat as you mentioned in your lecture had a common space for interaction, for solidarity. They had a factory. Nowadays there is no common space for them anymore. They work in different places, have different lifestyle, vote for different parties. Is there any possible solidarity between the different parts of these very much fragmented parts of the Cyber-Proletariat? Where will the solidarity be built?
Yes, that’s the problem. You are correct in noting that there is a huge, and maybe unsurpassable barrier on the way to class organisation. At the same time there is another significant trend, that could be called a proletarianisation of sectors of all professions and also the digital professions. For some decades, but particularly sharply in 2008 we have seen situations in which people whose career ladder aspirations and education were structured in expectation of high-status, high-reward jobs coming out of technological trajectories, suddenly finding themselves in situations of unemployment, highly precarious work to hustle from one contract to another, at the same time carrying loads of debt. And we are talking not just about people who have been catapulted in this world of temporary and insecure quasi-professional work. There are those who have been ejected from it completely. I got a letter from a doctoral student from my program who had a doctorate in life and information science, a desperate letter asking for help to find a job. He was working to support his family as an agricultural labourer, in Canada. There are people who have completely plunged out of the framework of their expectations and I am sure you also know them, as much as I do. So that’s why I think the discourse around precarious work has been so important. Because it does actually start to provide the language that can connect some of these otherwise extraordinarily disparate situations like those of a fast-food worker, a tester at a video-game company, or a contract-based marker at a university. It is not a magic bullet and it would be obscene of me to diminish problems, but I do think that this is one line which is extremely important to follow: the question of temporary, insecure, and partial wage-work.
Do we have the right to call the enormous army of programmers “the new dangerous class”?
No, not entirely. There is a division in the class of programmers. There are obviously the sections particularly at the upper strata, that are very well paid, top technology designers, who tend to be highly identified with capital and if we are looking at Silicon Valley companies like Google, Facebook, they are really at the frontier of attempting to make high technology capital hegemonic under the label of things like the sharing economy. They are a dangerous class, in a sense that their aspiration is an entirely new intensity of marketisation and commodification of the planet and daily life. But among them there are whole legions of people whose work is unpaid, poorly paid, precarious and they indeed are among the groups which have potential to be the highly dangerous class, in the sense of the word, highly dangerous to capital, because they have know-how and they are prepared to use it. So, yes, sure, a dangerous class, but dangerous to whom?
What are the alternatives to the oppressive regime we have and the dystopia the developing technologies can bring?
We can say that the alternative to the dystopia of high-technology capitalism has to be some reinvented form of communism, which may impose a high-tech communism, but may be a communism which in certain ways frees people from the same technological dependencies. But my answer is ‘Fuck off Google!’
Often the new technologies are associated with anti-capitalist potential (free copying of information, 3D-printers, etc). Does it make sense? How far can such grassroot technological erosion of capitalism go without conscious revolutionary action?
Not very far.
taken from LEFTEAST
Violence comes home: an interview with Arun Kundnani
After the Paris attacks, what are the logical and tragic consequences of war with no geographical limits? Arun Kundnani has studied terrorism and counter-radicalisation programmes in the United Kingdom and the United States, and is the author of The Muslims are coming!, published by Verso. In this interview, he unveils and critiques the ramifications of the ‘war on terror’, from the conservative and liberal rhetoric of the intellectuals and commentators who have emerged, to the theories of ‘radicalisation’ which have fuelled counter-terrorism programmes in the west. Only an anti-racist, anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist politics can provide a genuine alternative to jihadism, Kundnani argues.
Is everywhere a war zone now? How does this connect to the rhetoric of the ‘war on terror’?
The promise of the ‘war on terror’ was that we would kill them ‘over there’ so they would not kill us ‘over here.’ Hence mass violence in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine, Yemen, and Somalia – in the name of peace in the west. The “Authorization to Use Military Force” that the US Congress passed in the days after 9/11 already defined the whole world as a battlefield in the ‘war on terror’. President Obama continues to rely on the authorization to give his drone-killing programme a veneer of legality. This is the old colonial formula of liberal values at home sustained by a hidden illiberalism in the periphery – where routine extra-judicial killing is normalised.
We all know the ‘war on terrorism’ kills more civilians than terrorism does; but we tolerate this because it is ‘their’ civilians being killed in places we imagine to be far away. Yet colonial history teaches us that violence always ‘comes home’ in some form: whether as refugees seeking sanctuary, whether as the re-importing of authoritarian practices first practised in colonial settings, or indeed as terrorism. The same patterns repeat today in new forms.
Colonial history teaches us that violence always ‘comes home’.
For Muslim citizens in western states, these dynamics bring an enormous burden: they are reduced to the false choice of moderate or extremist, good Muslim or bad Muslim. The question that hovers over their very being is whether they will detach themselves from their connections to zones of violence abroad or channel that violence within the west. But this question is not posed directly; it is always displaced onto the plane of culture: do you accept western values?
This framework imposes itself relentlessly on Muslim public expression, rendering suspicious anyone who refuses to engage in rituals of loyalty to western culture. Meanwhile, ISIS casts these Muslims as living in the “grey zone” between western imperialism and the claim of a revived caliphate.
What results is a mutual reinforcing of the militarized identity narrative on both sides: the jihadists point to numerous speeches by western leaders to support their claim of a war on Islam; and western leaders legitimise war with talk of a ‘generational struggle’ between western values and Islamic extremism. What is striking today is the tired rhetoric of military aggression – Hollande’s “pitiless war” – once again recycled, despite the obvious failures of the past 14 years.
Where did the ISIS attackers in Paris come from? Can theories of radicalisation explain what drove them?
Theories of radicalisation developed by think-tanks, intelligence agencies, and academic departments linked to the national security apparatus have tended to make a number of false assumptions in their attempts to understand jihadist violence. First, they assume a deep difference between ‘Islamic’ and other forms of political violence; the history of political violence in the twentieth century – particularly in colonial contexts – is therefore forgotten and its lessons ignored. Second, they assume some form of Islamic religious ideology is the key factor in turning someone into a terrorist; some analysts grant the relevance of what they call ‘perceived grievances’ or emotional crises as enabling factors but ideology is still taken to be the primary cause.
Empirical evidence does not support either of these assumptions – witness the European ISIS volunteers who arrive in Syria with copies of Islam for Dummies or the alleged leader of the Paris attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who was reported to have drunk whisky and smoked cannabis.
Yet radicalisation theories have been officially accepted and popularised. This is because they provide a rationale for surveillance (it is easier for law enforcement and intelligence agencies to find ideologues than terrorists). And they conveniently disavow the cycle of violence we have entered.
What radicalisation theories ignore is that violence in the ‘war on terror’ is relational: the individuals who become ISIS volunteers are willing to use violence; so too are our own governments. We like to think our violence is rational, reactive and normal, whereas theirs is fanatical, aggressive and exceptional. But we also bomb journalists, children and hospitals. A full analysis of radicalisation needs to account for us radicalising too, as we have become more willing to use violence in a wider range of contexts – from torture to drone strikes to proxy wars.
What draws recruits to ISIS is not so much religious ideology as an image of war between the west and Islam. This is a narrative of two fixed identities engaged in a global battle: truth and justice on one side; lies, depravity and corruption on the other.
These recruits are not corrupted by ideology but by the end of ideology: they have grown up in the era of Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history”, of no alternatives to capitalist globalisation. They have known no critique, only conspiracy theory, and are drawn to apocalyptic rather than popular struggle. Nevertheless, for all its lack of actual political content, the narrative of global war against the west feels to its adherents like an answer to the violence of racism, poverty and empire.
What does the western intellectual reaction to Paris look like?
I argued in my book The Muslims are Coming! that, among the policymakers, scholars and ideologists of the ‘war on terror’, there are two broad approaches to making sense of ‘Islamic extremism’: there are conservatives who regard Islam as an inherently violent culture defined essentially by its founding texts, and liberals who think the enemy is a totalitarian perversion of Islam that emerged in the twentieth century.
On a deeper level, both of these ways of thinking operate together with an implicit solidarity, producing a flexible and adaptive discourse of a ‘Muslim problem’.
The intellectual reaction to the Paris attacks has continued these patterns. The dominant feature is a narcissism that describes ISIS as simply the polar opposite of whatever we value in ourselves. For liberals, ISIS is intolerance, racism and oppression of women. For conservatives, ISIS is the ideal enemy: fanatical, non-western and barbaric. In this mode, ISIS is merely the absolute ‘other’ that enables the construction of a positive image of ourselves.
The viral video of the comedian John Oliver denouncing ISIS after the Paris attacks is illustrative here. The jihadists stand no chance, he says, in a battle of cultures with France. “Bring your bankrupt ideology. They’ll bring Jean-Paul Sartre, Edith Piaf, fine wine, Camus, Camembert.” But Sartre himself understood how thinking in terms of fixed binaries of cultural identity masks the hidden causal chains tying barbarism to civilisation. “There is nothing more consistent than a racist humanism,” he wrote, “since the European has only been able to become a man through creating slaves and monsters.”
This means that the most appropriate response to ISIS is to see it as a symptom of the ‘normal’ functioning of the modern, global system, rather than as an external element corrupting the system from outside or from the pre-modern past. Its use of social media, its rejection of the national borders of the twentieth century and its linkages to the petroleum economy all demonstrate that ISIS is a child of globalisation.
ISIS is certainly a monster but a monster of our own making. It was born in the chaos and carnage that followed the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Its sectarian ideology and funding has come from the Saudi and Gulf ruling elites, the west’s closest regional allies after Israel. Russia and Iran have also played their role, propping up the Bashar al-Assad regime – responsible for far more civilian deaths than ISIS – and prolonging the war in Syria that enables ISIS to thrive. Meanwhile, the groups that have been most effective in fighting ISIS – the Kurdish militia – are designated as terrorists by western governments because they are considered threats to our ally Turkey.
What should an appropriate European response look like?
Of course, ISIS’s ideology and governing practices should be exposed and denounced at every opportunity – for their oppression of women, enslaving of minorities, hatred of freedom and so on. But to do so from the stance of a global conflict between liberal values and Islamic extremism only leads to the dead-end of a militarised identity politics.
We should not allow ourselves to be intimidated into ceasing our criticisms of the obvious double standards and contradictions of the ‘war on terror’. But these points are not enough. The left should be much bolder in asserting that only an anti-racist, anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist politics can provide a genuine alternative to jihadism; that more radicalisation, in the genuine sense of the word, is the solution, not the problem; that terrorism thrives in environments where mass movements advancing visions of social progress have been defeated.
Walter Benjamin stated that behind every fascism is a failed revolution. The same is true of terrorism: ISIS exists because the Arab revolutions of 2011 failed.
We must therefore defend the spaces of radical politics, for the right to dream of another world. Counter-terrorism strategies, and particularly counter-radicalisation policies like Britain’s Prevent programme, erode such spaces. We must also, of course, end the airstrikes, which only deepen the cycle of violence and reinforce ISIS’s narrative of a war of the west against Islam; and end our support for the regimes that have enabled ISIS’s rise, especially the Saudi elite, the most reactionary influence in the region.
Finally, the refugees must be defended, not only because they are victims, but because they carry with them a knowledge of our past failures. We must allow them to teach us about ourselves.
taken from openDemocracy
Zur Darstellung von Marx’ Krisentheorie im 3. Band des Kapital
Einleitung
Wirtschaftskrisen des Kapitalismus bilden eine direkt erfaßbare Wirklichkeit, mit typischen Eigenschaften. Diese Tatsache erklärt, warum Marx und Engels wiederholt Wirtschaftskrisen ansprachen, viele Jahre bevor Marx sein theoretisches System der Kritik der politischen Φkonomie entwickelte. Bis zu der Herausgabe vom Band 1 des Kapital, 1867, hatte Marx Wirtschaftskrisen eher in einem beschreibendem als in einer theoretischen Weise angesprochen. Außerdem findet man in Marx’ anderen ökonomischen Werke der Periode 1857-67 (die meistens nach seinem Tod veröffentlicht wurden), nur Fragmente einer Krisentheorie, die im Rahmen anderer theoretischen Argumentationen entwickelt werden (Heinrich 1995). Eine Marxsche Krisentheorie kann folglich nur auf der Basis einer systematischen theoretischen Analyse "entdeckt " und aufgebaut werden. Das ist einer der Gründe, warum der Marxsche theoretische Rahmen, zu unterschiedlichen (d.h. theoretisch inkompatiblen) Krisentheorien zu führen scheint, - die anderen Gründe dafür entstehen aus den unterschiedlichen politischen Strategien der Linken, den unterschiedlichen Formen der Kapitalismuskritik, usw. (Milios 1995).
In diesem Papier habe ich versucht Band 3 von Kapital kritisch zu lesen, um dort eine Krisentheorie von Marx zu rekonstruieren. Meiner Meinung nach, bildet das Konzept der Kapitalüberproduktion den Schlüsselbegriff der Analysen von Marx zu den kapitalistischen Krisen, und dieses Konzept wird im Band 3 von Kapital systematischer, als in irgendeinem seiner anderen Werken entwickelt und verwendet.
Marx beschäftigt sich mit den Krisen des Kapitalismus im dritten Kapitel von Band 3 (MEGAII, 4.2, Drittes Kapitel - oder Teil 3, Kapiteln 13-16, in der vom Engels herausgegebenen Version), das den allgemeinen Titel "Gesetz des tendentiellen Falls der allgemeinen Profitrate im Fortschritt der capitalistischen Production" trägt. Eine besondere Beachtung findet das Thema im Teil des 3. Bandes, dem Engels den Titel "Überfluß an Kapital bei Überfluß an Bevölkerung" gab (MEGAII, 4,2, S. 324-333, MEW 25, S. 261-270).
Marx beschreibt Wirtschaftskrisen als "Überproduktionskrisen" die immer einen Fall der Profitrate zur Folge haben, und erklärt: "Ueberproduction von Capital (= Plethora von Capital), nicht von einzelnen Waaren, (obgleich Ueberproduction von Capital stets Ueberproduction von Waaren einschließt) heißt doch weiter nichts als Ueberaccumulation von Capital" (MEGA II, 4.2, p. 325). Diese Überproduktion ist aber nie absolut – sie bezieht sich nicht auf die sozialen Bedürfnisse – sondern relativ, d.h. sie bezieht sich immer auf die Verbrauchskapazität (von Mitteln des privaten Konsums und von Produktionsmitteln) einer spezifischen kapitalistischen Gesellschaft.
Ausserdem schreibt Marx, daß Krisen die Reproduktion der Kapitalrelation per ce blocken: "Aber es werden zu viel Arbeitsmittel und Lebensmittel periodisch producirt um sie als Exploitationsmittel der Arbeiter zu einer gewissen Rate des Profits functioniren zu lassen" (MEGA II, 4.2, p. 332).
Jedoch bilden die Krisen nur temporäre Entstabilisierungen des kapitalistischen Reproduktionprozesses, die gleichzeitig einen Prozeß im Gange setzten, der zum Wiederherstellen aller Voraussetzungen einer "gesunden" erweiterten Reproduktion des Kapitals und einer "normalen" Höhe der Profitrate führt; "Crisen sind immer nur momentane Lösungen der vorhandenen Widerspürche und gewaltsame Eruptionen, um das gestörte Gleichgewicht wieder herzustellen" (MEGA II, 4.2, p. 323).
2. Intern-notwendige und externe Bestimmungen
Um die Analysen von Marx über Krisen und Kapitalüberproduktion zu verstehen, ist man m.E. gezwungen, mit der Logik des Kapital zu konfrontieren; d.h.mit der internen Kohärenz und den Organisationsrichtlinien der logischen Argumentation von Marx.
Die Marxsche Untersuchung der kapitalistischen sozioökonomischen Verhältnisse basiert sich auf der Unterscheidung zwischen "internen" und "externen" Bestimmungen (dieser Verhältnisse). Man kann als interne Bestimmungen des (jeden) kapitalistischen Produktionsprozesses diejedigen Relationen verstehen, die notwendig sind, die also unverändert bleiben und ständig anwesend sind, unabhängig von allen Änderungen in der historischen Entwicklung. Diese Relationen sind anwesend, obwohl sie unter der Oberfläche der Änderungen der ökonomischen, politischen oder ideologischen Konjunktur versteckt bleiben. Interne Bestimmungen der kapitalistischen Produktionsverhältnisse konstituieren, was Marx als die kapitalistische Produktionweise definierte.
Im Gegenteil, stellen die externen Bestimmungen der kapitalistischen sozioökonomischen Verhältnisse die Vielzahl der Effekte und der Erreignisse dar, die nicht von den unveränderten strukturellen Merkmale des gegebenen Gesellschaftstypus (Produktionsweise), sondern von den veränderlichen Kräfteverhältnissen im Klassenkampf zwischen den entgegesetzten Klassen, innerhalb eines und des gleichen Typus der Klassengesellschaft entstehen. So bildet z.B. die kapitalistische Exploitation und die Mehrwertaneignung eine interne Bestimmung der kapitalistischen sozialen Verhältnisse in jeder kapitalistischen Gesellschaft. Die Tatsache, daß es sich um eine kapitalistische Gesellschaft handelt, erklärt aber nicht warum der Arbeitstag 12, 10 oder 7 Stunden dauert, die Wohlfahrtsdienstleistungen mehr oder weniger ausgedehnt sind, oder die Gewerkschaften der Arbeiter stärker oder schwächer sind. Diese letzten Relationen gehören zu der Vielzahl der externen Bestimmungen (extern zu den strukturellen Beziehungen, die zur kapitalistischen Produktionweise gehören), die unterschiedliche Formen in den unterschiedlichen Ländern —oder in den unterschiedlichen historischen Phasen einer kapitalistischen Gesellschaftsformation— nehmen können (Dumenil 1978, Althusser/Balibar 1972).
Was in der Ausarbeitung von Marx am wichtigsten ist, ist seine Analyse der Weise, wie diese zwei Formen von Relationen mit einander artikulieren. Er machte offenbar, daß die externen Bestimmungen keine Verletzung der ökonomischen Gesetze, die aus den internen Bestimmungen entstehen, darstellen, noch sind sie einschränkend oder fungierend im Widerspruch zu diesen Gesetzen. Im Gegenteil, werden die externen Bestimmungen nur durch die notwendigen internen Relationen manifestiert. Um das charakteristischste Beispiel vom Band 1 des Kapital zu nennen, ist die Bildung des Wertes der Arbeitskraft nicht das Resultat von zwei unabhängigen Faktoren, die separat von einander fungieren, nämlich, einerseits, die sozial-notwendige Arbeitszeit für die Produktion der notwendigen Lebensmittel der Arbeiter und, andererseits, die historisch-konkrete politische bzw. gewerkschaftliche Stärke der Arbeiterklasse. Diese zwei Faktoren produzieren nicht irgendwelche unterschiedliche Resultate, die dann zusammenkekoppelt oder gegenseitig widerrufen werden können. Die Verhältnisse, die zum Gesetz extern sind (die konkreten Resultate des Klassenkampfes) fungieren durch die notwendigen internen Relationen. Das Verstärken der Arbeitsklasse im politischen und ökonomischen Klassenkampf verursacht so, ceteris paribus, eine Zunahme der sozial-notwendigen Arbeitszeit und folglich eine Zunahme des Wertes der Arbeitskraft.
Die Darstellung des Konzeptes der Überproduktion (Überakkumulation) muß folglich die Unterscheidung zwischen intern-notwendigen Bestimmungen des Produktionsprozesses einerseits und externen Bestimmungen andererseits berücksichtigen.
3. Das Konzept der absoluten Überproduktion und die Profitrate
Ich glaube, daß der entscheidende Punkt der Analyse von Marx über die Kapitalüberproduktion die Definition der "absoluten Überproduktion" ist. Sie kann als eine Art einleitende Definition angesehen werden, die dann zur Definition der "relativen Überproduktion" führt.1 Die absolute Überproduktion beschreibt eine Grenzsituation, die Marx erlaubt, eine klare und verständliche Definition zu formulieren. (An diesem Punkt, nimmt Marx eine Methode an, die in den Naturwissenschaften wohlbekannt ist, z.B. die "Grenzdefinition" der "idealen Gase"). Die Definition von Marx lautet so:
"Es wäre eine absolute Ueberproduction von Capital vorhanden, sobald das zusätzliche Capital für den Zweck der capitalistischen Production = 0. Der Zweck der capitalistischen Production ist aber Verwerthung des Kapitals, d.h. Production von Mehrwert, von Profit, Aneignung von Surplusarbeit. Sobald also das gewachsne Capital in einem Verhältniß gewachsen wäre, zur Arbeiterbevölkerung, daß weder die absolute Arbeitszeit, die diese Bevölkerung liefert, ausgedehnt, noch die relative Surpluszeit erweitert werden könnte (das letzte wäre ohnehin nicht thubar, in einem Fall, wo die Nachfrage nach Arbeit so groß, also Tendenz zum Steigen der Löhne), also das gewachsne Capital nur ebenso viel oder selbst weniger Mehrwerth – wir sprechen hier von der absoluten Masse, nicht von der Rate des Profits — producirte, als das Capital vor seinem Wachstum, so fände eine absolute Ueberproduction von Capital statt. D.h. das ursprüngliche C + ÄC producirte nur P (wenn dies die Summe des von C producirten Profits) oder gar P - x. In beidn Fällen fände auch ein starker und plötzlicher Fall der allgemeinen Profitrate statt, dießmal wegen eines change in der Zusammensetzung des Capitals, der nicht der Entwicklung der Productivkraft geschuldet, sondern einem Steigen im Geldwerth des variablen Capitals und ihrer entsprechenden Abnahme im Verhältnis der Surplusarbeit zu der im variablen Capital vergegenständlichten Arbeit" (MEGA II, 4.2, 325-326).
Es soll beachtet werden, daß in der oben zitierten Definition der absoluten Überproduktion von Kapital, der Fall der Profitrate nicht als ein Resultat der Entwicklung der Produktivkraft der Arbeit betrachtet wird, die zu einer Zunahme der organischen Zusammensetzung des Kapitals führen könnte, die schneller als die Zunahme der Exploitationsrate ist.
In der Definition der absoluten Überproduktion betrachtet Marx den Fall der Profitrate als Resultat von anderen Faktoren, die verschieden sind von denjenigen die im Gesetz des tendentiellen Falles erwφhnt werden. Der Faktor der den Fall der Profitrate in bezug auf die absolute Überproduktion bestimmt ist "die Abnahme im Anteil der Überschußarbeit zur notwendigen Arbeit", "der Surplusarbeit im Verhältnis zu der im Kapital vergegenständlichen Arbeit" (d.h. die Abnahme der Mehrwertrate).
Aus Gründen, die aus der Geschichte der Arbeiter- und kommunistischen Bewegung entstehen, ist diese Marxsche Argumentation nicht ernsthaft von Marxisten betrachtet worden, die neigen zu denken, daß fast jeder Fall in die Profitrate das Resultat einer Zunahme der (organischen) Wertzusammensetzung des Kapitals ist. Ausserdem, betrachten viele Marxisten jede Zunahme der (organischen) Wertzusammensetzung des Kapitals als ein Resultat der Zunahme der Arbeitsproduktivität wegen des technischen Fortschritts (Gesetz des tendential Falles). Jedoch werden wir später sehen, daß Marx den (organischen) Wertzusammensetzung des Kapitals, von anderen Faktoren auch abzuhängen betrachtet ("Oekonomie in Anwendung des constanten Capitals", "Preiίschwankungen des Rohmaterials", MEGA II, 4.2, S. 110-178).
Es ist auf jeden Fall offensichtlich, daß die Profitrate von zwei "Variablen" abhängt: von der Mehrwertrate einerseits und von der Wertusammensetzung des Kapitals andererseits. Trotzdem, es sollte an diesem Punkt beachtet werden, daß die oben zitierte Definition von Marx nur den Einfluß der Mehrwertratenänderung betrachtet.
Jedoch, liegt in dieser "einseitigen" Analyse keine Auslassung oder ein theoretischer Fehler. Sie drückt die Anwendung einer analytischen Methode aus, die von den Naturwissenschaften verwendet wird und Marx wohl bekannt war. Diese Methode untersucht die Änderung einer spezifischen Quantität unter dem Einfluß der Änderung einer anderen Quantität, unter der Voraussetzung, daß alle weiteren Faktoren konstant bleiben. Die Definition der Kapitalüberproduktion erlaubt Marx, den Einfluß der Änderungen der Mehrwertrate auf die Profitrate zu studieren, während alle weiteren Faktoren, einschließlich der (organischen) Wertzusammensetzung des Kapitals, als konstant betrachtet werden.
Die Frage, die sich jetzt stellt, ist die folgende: wie untersucht Marx den kombinierten Effekt von der Mehrwertrate und der Wertzusammensetzung des Kapitals auf der Profitrate? Wenn man die Profitrate als die abhängige Variable (R) betrachtet, dann sind die Exploitationsrate (m/v) und die (organische) Wertzusammensetzung des Kapitals (C/v) die unabhängigen Variablen, entsprechend der folgenden Beziehung:
m m/v
R = --------- = ------------ (1)
C + v (C/v)+1
wo m für Mehrwert, v für das variable Teil des Kapitals (Wert der Arbeitskraft) und C für konstantes Kapital steht (Wert der Produktionsmittel); m/v ist dann die Exploitationsrate (Mehrwertrate).
Wie erwähnt, studiert Marx den Einfluß von (m/v) auf R, indem er (C/v) als eine konstante Quantität betrachtet (MEGAII 4,2, pp. 324-340 oder in Kapitel 15 vom MEW 25), als er den Begriff der absoluten Überakkumulation definiert. Wenn er im Gegenteil die "Natur des Gesetzes" des tendentiellen Falls der Profitate studiert, (MEGAII 4,2, pp. 285-301 oder Kapitel 13 von MEW 25), betrachtet er zuerst (m/v) als eine konstante Quantität.
Jedoch in diesem letzten Fall (die "Natur des Gesetzes"), betrachtet er nur Änderungen der C/v wegen des technologischen Fortschritts. Seine Analyse scheint also einseitig zu sein. Einseitig zu sein scheint aber auch seine vorige Annahme, daß eine zunehmende Arbeitsnachfrage ("Sobald also das gewachsne Capital in einem Verhältniß gewachsen wäre, zur Arbeiterbevölkerung, daß..." op. cit.) zu einer fallenden Rate des Mehrwerts, und daher auch zu einem Fall der Profitrate und zur (absoluten) Kapitalüberakkumulation führt: Seine Argumentation hinsichtlich der Änderungen der Mehrwertrate, ist, daß sie durch den Mangel an zusätzlichen Arbeitern (sehr niedrige Arbeitslosigkeitsrate) und durch die folgende Zunahme der realen Löhne verursacht wird. Jedoch hängt die Mehrwertrate auch von anderen Faktoren ab, deren Untersuchung Marx als nicht notwendig betrachtet. Die absolute Arbeitszeit einerseits hängt nicht ausschließlich von der Arbeiteranzahl, sondern auch von der Länge des Arbeitstages ab. Andererseits hängt die relative Arbeitszeit (d.h. die Exploitationsrate) nicht nur von den Löhnen, sondern auch von der Zunahme der Arbeitsproduktivität ab. Diese "Auslassungen" von Karl Marx hinsichtlich der Definition der Kapitalüberakkumulation können wie folgt erklärt werden:
* Die Länge des Arbeitstages ist keine notwendige sondern eine lediglich "äußere" Beziehung hinsichtlich der untersuchten "internen" ökonomischen Bestimmungen.
* Die Arbeitsproduktivität wird als ein unveränderlicher Faktor, genau wie die Wertzusammensetzung des Kapitals, angenommen.
Folglich handelt es sich nicht um Auslassungen von Marx, sondern um Folgen seiner wissenschaftlichen Methode der Abstraktion. Das ökonomische Gesetz spiegelt nicht die konkreten Kapitalverhältnisse in einer gegebenen Gesellschaft wider. Es rekonstruiert gedanklich ihren "Kern", oder die Elemente ihrer spezifischen Struktur, nachdem man zwei Kategorien von Bestimmungen ausgeklammert hat:
A) Die vielfältigen externen Bestimmungen, die in der einen oder in der anderen Form auftreten, in Abhängigkeit von der jeweilige ökonomischen, sozialen und politischen Konjunktur in einer gegebenen Gesellschaft, die sogar auch möglicherweise nicht existierenen können.
B) Alle Bestimmungen, die vorübergehend als konstant gelten, damit die
Effekte jeder "unabhängigen Variable" auf der "abhängigen Variable" separat untersucht werden können. Hier gehören zum Beispiel die Annahmen einer konstanten Arbeitsproduktivität oder einer konstanten Wertzusammensetzung des Kapitals. Das heißt, daß, wenn die Abnahme der Exploitationsrate durch eine höhere Abnahme am Wertzusammensetzung des Kapitals kompensiert wird, die Profitrate steigt, anstelle zu fallen.
4. Faktoren die die Wertzusammensetzung des Kapitals beeinflussen
Verfolgen wir weiter die Anwendung der Methode von Karl Marx. Jetzt werden wir die Mehrwertrate (m/v) als eine konstante Quantität betrachten und den Einfluß der Wertzusammensetzung des Kapital (C/v) auf die Profitrate (R) studieren. Man könnte argumentieren, daß Marx dieses Problem gelöst hat, als er sich mit dem berühmten Gesetz des tendentiellen Falls der Profitrate sich beschäftigt hatte. Dort behauptete er, daß eine Zunahme an der Produktivkraft von Arbeit, wegen technischer Innovation, (unter bestimmten Voraussetzungen: daß die Technische Zusammensetzung des Kapitals schneller als die Arbeitsproduktivitδt wδchse) die Ursache einer Zunahme der organischen Zusammensetzung des Kapitals und einer darauf folgenden Abnahme der Profitrate sei.
Jedoch hängt die Wertzusammensetzung des Kapitals auch von einer Reihe anderen Faktoren, die Marx hier (im Dritten Kapitel) als konstante Größen betrachtet. Wir richten daher unsere Aufmerksamkeit auf das Erste Kapitel von Band 3 des Kapital (Teil 1, - Kapitel 1-7). Lassen wir die folgende Beziehung uns führen:
C C Y C (m+v) C m
= --*---= --- * -------- = -- * (---- + 1), (2)
v Y v Y v Y v
und daher:
m/v
R = ------------------------ (3)
C/Y[(m/v)+1]+1
wo Y das Nettoprodukt ist, d.h. die Summe des Mehrwertes und des Wertes der Arbeitskraft (variables Kapital).
Die Beziehung (2) zeigt, daß die Faktoren, die die Wertzusammensetzung des Kapitals (C/v) beeinflussen, zu zwei Kategorien geteilt werden können; einerseits Faktoren die die Mehrwertrate (m/v) beeinflussen, und andererseits die Faktoren, die die Quantität (C/Y) beeinflussen.2
Diese letzte Quantität drückt den Wert des konstanten Kapitals aus, das für die Produktion von einer Produkteinheit notwendig ist. Die Zunahme oder die Abnahme dieser Quantität veranschaulicht, folglich, die Fähigkeit der Kapitalisten, konstantes Kapital zu ersparen (oder es in vorteilhaften Preisen zu kaufen). Marx selbst widmete ein bedeutendes Teil seiner Analyse diesem Thema ("Oekonomie in Anwendung des constanten Capitals", aber auch "Preißschwankungen des Rohmaterials", "Freisetzung und Bindung, Wertsteigerung und Entwertung von Capital", MEGA II, 4.2, S. 110-207).
In diesem Teil vom Band 3 finden wir die Aufzählung aller Faktoren, die mit der Fähigkeit der Kapitalisten, konstantes Kapital zu sparen in Verbindung stehen. Auch hier folgt Karl Marx der Abstraktionsmethode, die wir oben beschrieben haben. Er betrachtet, daß die Mehrwertrate "gegeben" (d.h. konstant) ist [: "Bei dieser Untersuchung (...) gehn wir davon aus, daί Mehrwerth und Rate des Mehrwerths gegeben ist" (MEGA, II 4.2, 1110-11)], und erklärt, daß "diese Voraussetzung nφthig [ist], um den Fall in seiner Reinheit zu untersuchen" (MEGA, II 4.2, 164).
Er beschreibt dann die Faktoren, die eine Φkonomie in der Anwendung des konstanten Kapitals ermφglichen. Diese Faktoren, die die Wertzusammensetzung des Kapitals beeinflussen, können in den folgenden vier Kategorien sortiert werden:
A) Zur ersten Kategorie gehφren jene Faktoren, die mit der Zeit und der Intensität der Produktionsmittelanwendung, bei einem gegebenen Niveau der Produktionstechnologie und des technischen Zusammensetzungs des Kapitals zusammenhängen:
– Verlängerung des Arbeitstages: "Der Umfang des Theils des constanten Capitals, der aus fixem Capital besteht, bleibt derselbe, z.B. Fabrikgebäude, Maschinerie u.s.w., ob 16 oder 12 Stunden damit gearbeitet wird. Die Verlängerung des Arbeitstags erheischt keine neue Auslage in diesem, dem kostbarsten Theil des constanten Kapitals" (MEGA II, 4.2., S. 111).
– Ökonomie an den Arbeitsbedingungen auf Kosten der Arbeiter: "Ihrer widersprechenden und gegensätzlichen Natur nach geht die capitalistische Productionsweise dazu fort, die Verschwendung mit dem Leben, der Gesundheit des Arbeiters, die Depression seiner Existenzbedingungen selbst zur Oekonomie in der Anwendung des constante Capitals zu zählen und so als Mittel zur Erhöhung der Profitrate" (MEGA II, 4.2., S. 120).
B) Zur zweiten Kategorie gehören jene Faktoren, die mit den Fähigkeiten und der Konzentration des Kollektivarbeiters oder mit der Möglichkeit der Erhöhung von Arbeitsproduktivität ohne irgendeine Änderung in der technischen Zusammensetzung des Kapitals - oder im technologischen Status des Produktionsprozesses - zusammenhängen:
- Sozial kombinierte Arbeit (Konzentration und Mitarbeit der Arbeiter, Sozialzeichen der Arbeit: "Durch die Concentration der Arbeiter und ihre Cooperation auf grosser Stufenleiter wird einerseits constantes Capital gespart. Dieselben Baulichkeiten, Heitzung, Beleuchtung u.s.w. kosten weniger verhältniâmassig, wenn auf grosser als wenn auf kleiner Productionsstufe angewandt. Ebenso wächst die Kost eines Theils der Maschinerie etc, z. B. Dampfkessel steigt nicht im Verhältniß ihrer Pferdekraft. Obgleich ihr absoluter Werth steigt, fällt ihr relativer, im Verhaltniß zu der Stufenleiter der Production und der Grösse des variablen Capitals, das in Bewegung gesetzt oder der Masse der Arbeitskraft, die exploitirt wird. Die Oekonomie, die ein Capital in seinem eignen Productionszweig, z. B. der Spinnerei anwendet, beruht direkt auf Oekonomie der Arbeit, d. h. möglichst wenig bezahlte Arbeit seiner eignen Arbeiter; die eben erwähnte Oekonomie beruht dagegen darauf, diese möglichst größte Aneignung fremder unbezahlter Arbeit in der möglichst ökonomischen Weise, d. h. auf der gegebnen Stufenleiter mit den möglichst geringen Kosten zu bewerkstelligen" (MEGA II, 4.2, S. 116-117).
– Ökonomie durch die Erfahrung des Gesamtarbeiters: "Endlich aber entdeckt und zeigt erst die Erfahrung des combinirten Arbeiters, wo und wie zu ökonomisiren, wie die bereits gemachten Entdeckungen praktisch am einfachsten auszuführen, welche praktische Frictionen bei Ausführung der Theorie – ihrer Anwendung auf den Productionsproceß – zu überwinden u.s.w." (MEGA II, 4.2, S. 116-117).
– Ökonomie resultierend aus der Erziehung des Gesamtarbeiters and seine Unterwerfung zum Fabrikdespotismus: "Daß nichts umkommt; that there is no waste und die Productionsmittel nur in der durch die Production selbst erheischten Weise are consumed etc, hängt theils von der Dressur und Bildung der Arbeiter ab, theils von der Disciplin, die der Capitalist über die combinirten Arbeiter ausübt" (MEGA II, 4.2, S. 117-118).
C) Zur dritten Kategorie gehφren jene Faktoren, die mit einer Zunahme der Arbeitsproduktivität wegen technischer Innovation verknüpft werden und die auch die technische Zusammensetzung des Kapitals sich erhöhen:
– Konzentration der Produktionsmittel and ihre massenhafte Anwendung, (MEGA II, 4.2, p. 112-116); Ökonomie durch Verbesserung der Qualität der Produktionsmittel, Φkonomie durch "Ersparung von waste" (MEGA II, 4.2, p. 146-150),
–Verwohlfeilerung der Produktionsmittel als Resultat des technischen Fortschritts im Sektor I (Produktion von Produktionsmitteln),: "Es ist die Entwicklung der Productivkraft der Arbeit in einem Foreign Department, in dem Department, das ihm Productionsmittel liefert, welches hier die Profitrate des Capitals erhöht (weil es den Werth des von ihm angewandten constanten Capitals, relativ, wenn auch nicht absolut, fällt? (senkt.)" (MEGA II, 4.2, p. 116).
Es ist wichtig zu beachten, daß Marx die Möglichkeit eines technischen Fortschritts berücksichtigt, die Effekte auf die Wertzusammensetzung des Kapitals und auf die Profitrate hat, die gegenseitig sind im Vergleich zu denen, die er in seinem berühmten "Gesetz des tendential Falles" darstellt. Er schrieb:
"Abstrakt betrachtet, kann bei dem Fall des Preisses der einzelnen Waare in Folge der vermehrten Productivkraft der Arbeit und daher der gleichzeitigen Vermehrung der Anzahl dieser lower priced commodities die Profitrate dieselbe bleiben, z. B. wenn die Vermehrung der Productivkraft der Arbeit gleichmässig und gleichzeitig auf alle Bestandtheile der Waaren wirkte, so daß der Gesammtpreiß der Waare in demselben Verhältniß fiele, wie sich die Productivität der Arbeit vermehrte, andrerseits das Verhältniß der verschiednen Preißbestandtheile der Waare dasselbe (constant) bliebe, fallen, wie in dem bisher Untersuchten, steigen, wenn mit der Erhöhung der Rate des Mehrwerths eine bedeutende Depreciation der constanten Capitaltheile verbunden wäre" (MEGA II, 4.2, p. 319).3
Eine Zunahme der Arbeitsproduktivität wegen technologischer Innovation kann folglich Φkonomie in der Anwendung des konstanten Kapitals fördern.
D) Zur vierten Kategorie gehören alle Faktoren die die Preise der Bestandteile des konstanten Kapitals herabsetzen (MEGA- II, 4,2, S. 164-207).
"Bei sonst gleichbleibenden Umständen fällt und steigt die Profitrate daher im umgekehrten Verhältniß wie der Preiß des Rohmaterials (...) Man begreift daher die grosse Wichtigkeit für die Fabrikanten von Aufhebung oder Ermässigung von Zöllen auf Rohstoffe" (MEGA II, 4.2, p. 166).
Marx korreliert direkt diese Preisschwankungen mit dem Ausbruch von Wirtschaftskrisen: "Heftige Preißschwankungen im Rohstoff bringen daher Unterbrechungen u.s.w. grosse Collisionen und Catastrophen im Reproductionsprozeß hervor" (MEGA II, 4.2, p. 188).
Marx faßt seine Analyse wie folgt zusammen: "Es ist aber im Allgemeinen hier – wie bei dem frühern case – zu bemerken, daß wenn die Variationen hervorgehend, sei es aus Oekonomie in Anwendung des constanten Capitals, sei es aus Preißschwankungen des Rohmaterials, stattfinden, ohne irgend wie das Salair zu afficiren (also die Rate und Masse des Mehrwerths), sie dennoch die Profitrate afficiren, one way or the other" (MEGA II, 4.2, p. 164-65).
Es ergibt sich von der obigen Darstellung, daß Marx die Wertzusammensetzung des Kapitals (und infolgedessen die Profitrate und die Krisen), als abhängig von einer breiten Vielzahl von Faktoren betrachtet. Es ist folglich unzulänglich, die Entwicklung der organischen Zusammensetzung des Kapitals bloß als ein Resultat des Prozesses zu begreifen, den Marx als "das Gesetz des tendentiellen Falles der Profitrate" beschrieben hat. Vielmehr, sind Krisen nicht das Ergebnis einer einzelnen, ständig wirkenden Ursache, wie etwa das "Gesetz des tendential Falles" oder die Unterkonsumption der Arbeiter, wie manche Marxisten denken (s. Milios 1994).
Im Gegenteil kann eine Krise als konjunkturelle Überakkumulation beschrieben werden – als konjunkturelle Produktion von Waren (Produktionsmittel und Konsumptionsmittel) in solchen Quantitäten und Preisen, daß der Akkumulationsprozeß vorübergehend gehindert wird. Welche Faktoren den Ausbruch jeder spezifischen Krise bestimmen, kann nur auf der Basis einer konkreten Analyse festgestellt werden, die alle äußeren Bestimmungen der Kapitalbeziehung einbezieht. Aus diesen Grund hat Marx betont, daß "um zu verstehn, was diese Ueberproduction ist (die nδhere Untersuchung darüber gehφrt in die Betrachtung der erscheinenden Bewegung des Capitals, wo Zinscapital etc Credit etc weiter entwickelt) hat man sie nur absolut zu setzen" (MEGA II, 4.2, p 325, s. auch Heinrich 1995).
5. Erweiterte Reproduktion des Kapitals und ihre Überdeterminierung durch den Klassenkampf
Die Faktoren, die die Mehrwetrate aber auch die Wertzusammensetzung des Kapitals, und infolgedessen die Profitrate beeinflussen, gehören meistens zu den externen Bestimmungen des kapitalistischen Produktionsprozesses (Länge des Arbeitstages, Konzentration, Ausbildung und Erfahrung des Kollektivarbeiters, die Art des technischen Fortschritts die durch die Kapitalkonkurrenz4 oder durch den Klassenkämpfen5 bestimmt wird, usw.). Dasselbe gilt für die Faktoren, welche die Exploitationrate beeinflussen.
Um eine Konjunktur der Krise zu studieren, muss man alle Faktoren, welche die Profitrate beeinflussen, in Betracht ziehen. Die Krisen sind Produkt einer Schmelzung aller Formen der Widersprüche, die einen Fall der Profitrate oder sogar eine Verhinerung des kapitalistischen Reproduktionprozeßes verursachen. Sie erscheinen also als Resultat der Gesamtheit der Widersprüche der kapitalistischen erweiterten Reproduktion, an einer gegebenen Konjunktur des Klassenkampfes. Es ist diese Mehrzahl der Widersprüche, welche die Kapitalbeziehung überdeterminieren, die uns, meiner Meinung nach erlaubt, vom Klassenkampf als die "abwesende Ursache" der Krise zu sprechen; eine "Ursache", die nicht "lokalisiert" und "beseitigt"werden kann. Das ist der Grund warum Marx schreibt: "Die Ueberproduktion von Capital meint nie etwas anders als Ueberproduktion von Produktionsmitteln die (...) zur Ausbeutung der Arbeit zu einem gegebenen Exploitationsgrad angewandt werden können" (MEGA II, 4.2., S. 330).
Die Fähigkeit der Kapitalisten, konstantes Kapital zu sparen ist nicht nur ein "technischer Aspekt" des Produktionsprozesses; sie ist ein Resultat der sozialen Kräfteverhlätnisse, die ihrerseits ein Resultat des Klassenkampfes sind. Die zunehmende Φkonomie in der Anwendung des konstanten Kapitals setzt voraus eine zunehmende Beherrschung der Kapitalistenklasse über dem Produktionsprozeß selbst. Sie hängt von den Fähigkeiten und von der Haltung des Kollektivarbeiters ab. Wie Marx schrieb:
"Von aller Oekonomie dieser Art gilt zum Theil, was von der andern Art bemerkt worden ist, daß sie nur anzuwenden vom combinirten Arbeiter, oft zu ihrer Anwendung Arbeiten auf noch grösserer Stufenleiter, also noch grössere Combination von Arbeitern unmittelbar im Productionsproceß erheischt (...) Jene Entwicklung der Productivkraft kann in letzter Instanz immer reducirt werden auf den gesellschaftlichen Charakter der Arbeit, die angewandt wird; auf die Theilung der Arbeit innerhalb der Gesellschaft; auf die Entwicklung der geistigen Arbeit. (Naturwissenschaft etc)" (MEGA, II, 4.2, p. 115 & 116).
Wenn das Sicherstellen des "normalen" Niveaus der Kapitalrentabilität in letzter Instanz immer auf das Fortschreiten der kapitalistischen Ausbeutung und Disziplin reduziert werden kann, dann ist es verständlich, warum der kapitalistische Ausweg aus Wirtschaftskrisen immer mit der Führungrung eines Klassenkrieges gegen die Arbeiterklasse verbunden wird, (gegen ihre kollektive Organisationsformen, und gegen ihre Sozialrechte). Die Analyse von Marx macht den objektiven Hintergrund der politischen Strategien des Bourgeoisie sichtbar.
Anmerkungen
1) "Die wirkliche Ueberproduction von Capital nun ist nie identisch mit der hier betrachteten, sondern ist gegen sie betrachtet nur eine relative" (MEGA, II, 4.2, p. 329).
2) Eine Änderung des Faktors C/Y kann das Resultat entweder einer Änderung von (Y/N) oder von (C/N) sein, da: C/Y = (C/N)(N/Y), wo N die Anzahl der Arbeiter, (Y/N) "Arbeitsproduktivität" (wenn die Länge des Arbeitsjahrs konstant bleibt), und (C/N) die s.g. "Kapitalintensität" ist.
3) Engels fügte dazu: "Aber in Wirklichkeit wird die Profitrate, wie bereits gesehen, auf die Dauer fallen". (MEW 25, S. 240). Zum Thema der Engelschen Edition vom Band 3 des Kapital s. Jungnickel 1991, Heinrich 1995, Heinrich 1996-97.
4) Marx betrachet die Form des technischen Fortschritts, die zum Fall der Profitrate führt, als das Resultat einer Kapitalkonkurrenz, die die systematische Bildung von technologischen (künstlichen) Monopolen erlaubt: "Kein Kapitalist wendet eine neue Productionsweise, sie mag noch so viel produktiver sein (...) freiwillig an, sobald sie die Profitrate vermindert. Aber jede solche neue Productionsweise verwohlfeilert die Waare. Er verkauft sie daher ursprünglich über ihrem Productionspreiß, vieleicht über ihrem Wert. Er steckt die Differenz ein (...) Seine Productionsprocedur steht über dem Durchschnitt der gesellschaftlichen. Die Concurrenz verallgemeinert sie und unterwirft sie dem allgemeinen Gesetz. Dann tritt das Sinken der Profitrate ein" (MEGA, II, 4.2, S. 337-38. S. auch Stamatis 1977).
5) "Man könnte eine ganze Geschichte der Erfindungen seit 1830 schreiben, die bloß als Kriegsmittel des Kapitals wider Arbeiterermeuten ins Leben traten"(MEGA, II, 5, S. 357).
LITERATUR
L. Althusser & E. Balibar (1972): Das Kapital lesen, Reinbeck bei Hamburg.
G. Dumenil (1978): Le concept de loi economique dans le Capital, Paris.
M. Heinrich (1995): "Gibt es eine Marxsche Krisentheorie? Die Entwicklung der
Semantik der ‘Krise’ in Marx’ Entwωrfen einer Kritik der politischen Ökonomie", Beitrδge zur Marx-Engels-Forschung Neue Folge 1995, pp. 130-150.
M. Heinrich (1996-97): "Engels’ Edition of the Third Volume of Capital and
Marx’s Original Manuscript", Science and Society, Vol. 60, No 4, pp. 452-66.
J. Jungnickel (1991): "Bemerkungen zu den von Engels vorgennomenen
Veränderungen am Marxschen Manuskript zum dritten Band des
‘Kapitals’", Beitrδge zur Marx-Engels-Forschung Neue Folge 1991, p. 130-38
Marx/Engels Gesamtausgabe, Zweite Abteilung, Band 4, Text-Teil 2 (MEGA, II,
4.2), Karl Marx, Ökonomische Manuskripte 1863-1867, Berlin 1992.
Marx/Engels Gesamtausgabe, Zweite Abteilung, Band 5, (MEGA, II, 5), Karl
Marx, Das Kapital, Erster Band 1867, Berlin 1983.
Marx-Engels-Werke (MEW), Band 25, Das Kapital Dritter Band, Berlin 1973.
J. Milios (1994): "Marx's Theory and the Historic Marxist Controversy (1900-
1937) on Economic Crisis", Science and Society, Vol. 58, No 2, pp. 175-94.
J. Milios (1995): "Marxist Theory and Marxism as a Mass Ideology: The Effects
of the Collapse of ‘Really Existing Socialism’ on West European Marxism", Rethinking Marxism, Vol. 8, No 4, pp. 61-74.
G. Stamatis (1977): Die ‘spezifisch kapitalistischen’ Produktionsmethoden
und der tendenzielle Fall der Profitrate bei Karl Marx, Berlin.
Aus: Beiträge zur Marx-Engels-Forschung. Neue Folge, 1998,pp-47-60.
On The Radical Left and National Liberation
The usual accusation made against Israel or Zionism is that this state was founded where other people were already living. But the founding acts of all hitherto existing polities were never acts of justice, but rather always acts of violence. Even the storybook peace of idyllic tribes and peoples cultivating the land of the fathers in concord and harmony with their neighbors is usually a peace resting upon an original act of land seizure and displacement. The right of nations, peoples and tribes to distinguish between themselves and foreigners and to regard these foreigners as intruders and chase them away when they wish to take up residence – a right as inseparable from the concept of the nation as it is logically imperative – this right is merely the original violent act of land seizure and expulsion made legal and continuous.
No people ever had its place on earth adjudicated by an extraterrestrial authority according to the stipulations of legal tenure. Rather, at some point in history every people took its place by force; not just for practical reasons – there is no righteous extraterrestrial authority granting such claims – but also because in an emphatic sense there can be no exclusive right of Germans, the French, or Israelis to possess any patch of land and because it is an injustice when people can‘t live on some patch of land merely because they are Turks, Vietnamese, Jews, or Palestinians. The right of national autonomy and state sovereignty is merely another name for the injustice of harassing, deporting, and expelling people on the grounds that they possess the wrong passport or birth certificate. And this injustice is not a corruption of the idea of the nation-state but rather its essence – admittedly rendered milder on occasion by the tolerance of reasonable people.
The legal claims of human beings, peoples, or nations to a piece of land is just another name for the right to expel others from the same piece of land. In every festive proclamation of a people’s right to exist lurks the threat of revoking another people’s right to exist. But in truth, human beings no more possess a right to exist than they do a right to inhabit the place they happen to be at the moment, or a right to breathe. This is quite simply the case because neither mere existence, nor the concomitant act of inhabiting a piece of land, nor breathing are things that fall under the purview of the law. No human being has the right to live in a particular place, since the act of inhabiting a particular place is not an act of injustice, and therefore does not require a legal justification. All Turks should be able to remain in Germany not because they‘ve earned a right to be present through hard work, but rather because they‘re already there. The act of expelling the Palestinians from Israel was an injustice not because they possessed a right to Palestine, but because they were already there.
In the past, the radical left would relinquish the act of playing chess with the territorial claims of population groups to those in power, since it was not the existence of these populations that was subject to debate, but rather the relations of production, the relations of power, the government. For that reason, a war between two population groups, both of which have the goal of expelling each other from a piece of land, would have merely confirmed this and rendered the radical left helpless from a practical viewpoint. A war such as that going on for years between Israel in the role of the displaced displacer and the Palestinians as the displaced would have confirmed the understanding of the radical left that there is no national solution to social problems, or at least none other than endless bloodshed. This war would have rendered the radical left helpless because it offers no possibility of taking sides, since:
1.Both parties want the same thing: the exclusive claim of ownership to the same piece of land; their own flag, their own army, their own state.
2.The development of Israel shows once again that every nation-state, even when created by humanitarians with the sincerest of motives and the best intentions, tends to become a ravenous monstrosity.
3.The terrible past and present of Israel must be understood as a prognosis and a warning against any future Palestinian state, since such a state would only distinguish itself from Israel by the fact that its residents would be called Palestinians instead of Israelis. In Lebanon, Israeli troops were celebrated as liberators and the Palestinians were despised; not because Palestinians conducted themselves in Lebanon like friendly, discreet, and modest guests when they had a majority and the PLO had power; not because Palestinians are unsympathetic people, but because humans, when they assume the role of a people, never treat minorities gingerly and with tenderness.
4.The national liberation struggle of the PLO is not a struggle for the abolition of all relations of exploitation and oppression. Rather, it is a struggle to obtain the preconditions under which all conditions of exploitation and oppression can be replicated.
5.Because radical leftists do not recognize any advantage or fine distinction that supposedly exists when people are not massacred by foreign troops, such as in Lebanon, but rather by troops of their own country, such as in Hama, or at least the troops of related peoples, such as in the war between Iran and Iraq. It is not only the case that the radical left cannot ally itself with those who oppress national minorities; it is also prohibited from forming alliances with oppressors of the great majority of the population, as is the case with all present-day Arab governments.
If, nonetheless, militant leftists today do not see a reason for helplessness or even resignation in the idiotic conflict between two ethnic nationalisms, but rather a welcome opportunity for getting involved, blindly and fanatically taking sides and jumping into the “national liberation struggle” with all force of the imagination, then that has nothing to do with radical leftism, but rather with the evil, secretive desires that slumber in the hearts of German people. The Palestinians will not benefit and Israel will not be harmed. Rather, the victims will be foreigners within Germany, when the Germans cease to wage the struggle of national liberation vicariously for others and start to do so on their own behalf, and when the alliance between militants and the mob obtains a realistic political base.
Translated by Anthony Fano Fernandez
From: Wolfgang Pohrt, Linksradikalismus und nationaler Befreiungskampf (1982) , collected in the book Kreisverkehr, Wendepunkt. Über die Wechseljahre der Nation und die Linke im Widerstreit der Gefühle.
german version here
The Class Structure of Machinery: Notes on the Value Form
The historical development of the means of labour (Arbeitsmittel) as the transformation through labour of nature-given forms into the socially purposive forms of the labour process is simultaneously the ‘naturalization’ of the social forms of instruments of use (Gebrauchsmittel). As a material thing, the means of labour not only mediate between nature and subject of labour, but also serve as the mediation, the ‘means’, among those who carry out labour. The fact that the tool can only serve the function of mediating the living relationship among workers if this living relationship is simultaneously severed is the reason why – in the form of private property – it can also ‘mediate’ a social relationship between workers and non-workers, or between different types of labour. If the means of labour, as means of production, come to mediate between the ruling and the subordinate class, they must acquire a dual social character in the course of their historical development: the means of labour are a means by which the ruling class can directly satisfy its wants, but they are also the ‘purposive basis’ for perpetuating the one-sided relation between worker and non-worker. As a means, therefore, the tool not only stands between nature, history and society, but also between different classes in society: it is not merely the means, but in fact the purposive basis for one-sidedly uniting the subject of labour with the subject of appropriation. Hence, the genesis of the means of production, as this objective basis, is in fact the process of mediation of two asymmetrical social subjects.
Bourgeois science perceives the fact that the ensemble of means of labour results from the objectification of these dialectical forms of the living relationships of labour merely as archaeology; this follows from its method of reasoning backwards from the result, the product, to the living social formation. For example, it concludes from certain snares and fishing hooks – in contrast to hunting projectiles such as spears – that a particular tribe was on the verge of stable settlement; specific types of stone-drills, require complex and painstaking manufacture, indicate more enduring forms of the division of labour. The once-existing living form of particular social relations and structures now resides in the tangible and symptomatic form of the ensemble of nature-given materials changed by the action of social labour. That archaeology does not turn its criteria around and apply them to its own material basis but confines itself to pre-/non-bourgeois social orders is part of its brief: there shall be no archaeology of the systems of bourgeois means of production.
The developmental form of present-day means of production are more and more mediated through scientific labour. We can specify this relationship a little more precisely by noting the following: although it is well known that manual labour creates the means to transform nature-given forms into socially purposive forms, curiously little consideration is given to the fact that scientific labour differs from the former only in terms of the form of the means which it creates for the production of its knowledges. Even the critiques of the pure deductive sciences are in general less concerned to criticize the possibility of such scientific purity than to question its actual tenability in practice. Historically, the beginning of the deductive sciences coincided with the empirical production of tools, models, drawings and symbols as the means for the supposedly pure, i.e. uncontradictory, expansion of knowledges; these means include (as collective memory), along with language, writing and mechanical printing, and numerical and data processing.
Although experimental scientific equipment was a precondition for the technologization of production, it was – as Sohn-Rethel correctly points out – not the latter’s active source. Neither the spinning-jenny and mechanical loom, nor the steam-engine arose in direct connection with either the discoveries or technical apparatus of theoretical physics. On the other hand, the pre-scientific structure of machinery – as it existed prior to the development of chemical techniques and industrial application of electricity – represented a form of development which exhibited more than the ‘personal unity of intellectual and manual labour’ that Sohn-Rethel claims for handicraft implements. As means of labour, simple mechanisms already possessed a structure which machinery, as the purposive basis of the capitalist labour process, simply made more apparent: namely the two poles of ‘drive’ (power) and ‘tool’ (mechanical construction), which are in turn directly mediated through the transmitting mechanism. Language has kept alive in its concepts what now only appears in material form: for expenditure of labour power as the moving force, read drive; for skill and dexterity as the purposive essence of the social transformation of nature wrought by mental and practical activity, read tool. And the transmitting mechanism could well be interpreted as the naturalized form of intercourse among the workers themselves; or, in historical terms, the ossified form of intercourse could be interpreted as the mediation between the plebeian and peasant-handicraft form of labour, in which – in addition to the prevailing class antagonisms – there also lurked an incipient antithesis between the intellect and the increasing abstractness of the nascent proletariat’s labour power. In this instance, the tool would correspond to the intellect, and the mere driving force to the proletariat, as labour power deprived of its skill, although the mediation of the two moments, inasmuch as it still lay with the handicraft workers themselves, was direct.
What this allusion is meant to indicate is that the instruments and the very basis of the scientific production of knowledge only became a condition for the development of the mechanism (via the stages of machinery and mechanization up to automation) because the social organization of living labour conditions had already assumed a ‘rational’, i.e. mathematical form which could therefore become the foundation for a systematic scientification (Verwissenschaftlichung) of the production process.
This mediation between scientific and proletarian labour, anticipated in handicrafts, and later to assume its own independent and objective form in machinery, in turn points to a third factor underlying these two forms of activity, which despite a historically uneven mode of appearance constitutes from the outset the possible common factor: the immanent value-form of the means of production, as ‘abstract natural form’, or as abstract social purposiveness in the ossified form of nature-given material. The following descriptions are initially intended to sketch the development of the mechanical and technological ‘means of labour’ in terms of their surface appearance; this is a prerequisite for the deeper question of the development of inner form as (class-determined) structure and external form as (instrumental) shape, and of their unity as function.
Surface Appearance
The social nature of the relations of production, which, historically, only appeared in the first instance in the form of generalized exchangeability, becomes essential or real only in the living act of cooperation, where individual concrete labour is actually reduced to abstract average labour. “The law of valorization”, writes Marx, “comes fully into its own for the individual producer only when he produces as a capitalist and employs a number of workers simultaneously , i.e. when from the outset he sets in motion labour of a socially average character [our emphasis – H-D.B.].”
Cooperation, which according to Marx remains the basis of industrial production, consists initially of a purely quantitative aggregation of handicraft units in which the direct means of labour remain the property of the worker. The initial form of constant capital for increasing surplus labour appears as the method of attaining a merely external generalization within the existing division of labour in the workshop; however, this nevertheless takes on a qualitative dimension – such as increased scale of workshops, stores and internal means of communication. These means, or, better stated, these bases, as they exist in their actual shapes, must be seen as the material results of specific living relations of labour; they are in fact the basis for the possibility of handicraft workers being able to work together in larger groups. Elements of feudal landowner and guild-master fuse – most noticeable in the mining and mills – into a type absolute bourgeois patriarchy over the journeymen.
In cooperation, the mechanical activity of the hand in working up and structuring materials increases merely quantitatively. In contrast, manufacture breaks down aggregate labour into detailed operations, which brings about a qualitative transformation in the relation of the worker to the object of labour: means of labour develop which increasingly reduce skill, i.e. manual dexterity and intellectual know-how, to the level of an abstract expenditure of force. This separation of the intellect of labour from the expenditure of labour power then becomes a necessary condition for the rise of the scientific-technological intelligentsia.
The external form of a merely quantitative increase in the number of workers finds its corresponding inner form in the deskilling of labour power as the precondition for collectively raising the abstract expenditure of force to a higher power. The ‘body’ of the collective worker precedes the appearance of machines for supplying motive power. The dissolution of the inner union of the labouring subjects and their skill alters the relation between the object of labour, which is to take on a new form, and the final result of the change wrought in the material, the product: the object is no longer a product in direct reference to the individual subject of labour, but only in relation to the individual capital. Even in quantitative cooperation, many objects of labour were simultaneously worked up alongside each other until the completion of an object of use in the hands of the master craftsman; but in manufacture, the object of labour passes through a series of stages (preparing, altering, shaping the material), which itself presupposes that the raw material can be dismembered and reconstituted, the final stage being a new assembly of the materials. However, the transmission of these partial operations (excluding chemical or electrical labour processes) remains external and indifferent to the product being created; in other words, the product does not take on their form. Transmission consists of a non-mechanical form of transport for raw materials within the workshop, together with the communication of directions and instructions. In this context, speech is not so much aimed at passing on understanding, as ‘semiskilled’ in fact means converting understanding into manual dexterity; rather, as long as the labour process is running smoothly, speech serves simply as a set of directions for ensuring that specific partial operations on the object of labour are always carried out in the same way, i.e. uniformly. (Natural science later defined its own labour process in accordance with this model, i.e. as operational and experimental: the experiment should always yield the same result, under identical conditions, in order to produce a ‘valid’ conclusion or result on the object of research. Terminology itself here reveals the close affinity between natural-scientific labour and the increasingly abstract natural form as value-form.) Uniform motion, which already appeared in the demands made on time-measuring instruments or on static and dynamic mechanics (exemplified in construction work, or in the machinery of agrarian mills), is an expression of the fact that a nature-given material marked out as ‘analytic’ by the type of social labour, i.e. a material divided and dismembered by the division of labour, assumes a ‘real’ value-form contradicting not only its nature-given form but also its useful form. The reason is that the asserted (but never realized) formal equality of movements in the labour which produces commodities can be seen as the same type of equivalency of form that in the value-relation appears as the equivalent form of value. This question is discussed more fully in the second section.
The qualitatively new form of societation which comes into being with manufacture creates the living cooperative collective worker as an organically structured whole (an analytical synthesis) in which what had been a merely quantitative aggregation becomes a qualitative social unity. However, the form of societation tends simultaneously to bring about the negation of the direct collective worker in the workshop, primarily through the specialization of activities and the splitting-up of complex handicraft implements. The machine-tool is then the first transcendence of this acute specialization, namely by combining within itself a series of separate individual tools such that they no longer require the mediation of human labour. ‘Combination’ here means that collective labour, the living cooperation of a number of specialized workers, disappears as such, to be stored as the ‘natural form’ of a higher mechanical power. The objectification of specific social relations of labour corresponds to the de-objectification of living collaborative labour; this is expressed in the antithesis between the isolated specialized worker and the technological collective worker.
With the objectification of subjective labour conditions – which, as the machine-tool, forms the purposive basis for the industrial labour process – the worker is initially reduced to the function of pure motive force. The inversion of the relation between worker and tool (through which the body’s simple physical power was transformed into the stationary mechanism driving the machine tool that actually shapes the material) leaves living labour with the cooperative organization of pieces of work. In this role, abstract labour power functions as the ‘motor’ force, as the living transmission, in addition to its function as a stationary motive force. In this usage, ‘living’ means that the object, the purposive condition, the means and the subject’s purposes still constituted a simple, unspecialized unity in relation to the labour process, from which it still appeared possible to determine and realize the very aim of labour by way of anticipation. Under the conditions of the class-based separation of labour power from the means of production, ‘objectification’ means that although there is a work-shop unity of purposive conditions (object and means of labour) and means to ends (the labour power to be valorized), the process is ‘rational’ (rational) only in the sense of ‘mathematical’ (rationell). In fact, there is a general social antagonism between the determination of the ends to which the labour is being put and the initial unity mentioned above, an antagonism which reacts back upon the form of development of the conditions of production. ‘Living’ cannot mean a secret desire to return to handicraft activities, since handicraft labour only permitted the vague utopia that it could give rise to a social subject as subject in conjunction with artistic labour.
The translation of the transmission and motive force of human beings in collaboration into ‘natural’ forms is the condition for the possibility of machinery; the rise of machinery was itself only possible because decisions as to the goal of labour (the production of the bourgeois class by capitalist means) remained totally external to the labour process itself as a mere functional condition, that is, as a ‘sublated’ (aufgehoben) means for the ‘simple’ satisfaction of needs: one social class had to be completely divorced from the final determination of ends before the social forms of labour could become more ‘rational’, i.e. ‘subjectless’, and consequently assume a purposive natural form as machinery. In this form, the direct social rationale of the labour process ceased to have a subject, and became irrational (although this lack of a subject is the necessary condition for the liberation of social reason from its blind natural shape). Machinery is precisely the clear proof (once the genesis of its dual social form has been incorporated into the critique) that in the labour process bourgeois society exists without a real subject and consequently confronts nature as itself a simple ‘force of nature’. This explains why the working class first had to become politically conscious, and therefore an ideal (ideell) subject, before the possibility of actualizing the social subject within the labour process could appear. At the same time, this ‘ideality’ of the proletariat’s existence as a subject – incorrectly posited as real by Lukács in History and Class Consciousness – also constitutes from the outset a permanent tendency towards the de-revolutionizing of the working class, since its interest in production is not produced through the latter, but is obliged to become a political idea before it can produce its own material basis spontaneously. ‘Revisionism’ is therefore a significantly more serious problem than as registered in the various versions of the conspiracy theory.
On the other hand, the labour process based on machinery (where the worker retreats from activities which directly give form and shape to the material) itself assumes a more ‘ideal’ character: it, as it where, offers itself to the prospect of ‘politicization’ from within. Expressed in technological terms, living labour activity becomes confined to assembly, which is usually located at the end of a series of machine-worked partial operations. The worker is therefore confronted by the material in a socially nature-given form, whilst the directly nature-given form turns into an aesthetic object, becomes ‘scenery’. The object – as a prospective commodity – is no longer wrested from the nature-given material, or at least so it appears to the individual consciousness; rather, elements of raw material that have already been pre-formed and pre-structured by a mystical subject and the which thus appear as objectively social are constructed, assembled, fitted, inspected and regulated. The transformation of work activity into the activity of assembly, transport and coordination was the condition for the invasion of the engineer into industrial labour. Prior to this, the engineers had proven themselves historically in the sphere of military science and practice, the field in which the bourgeois society had anticipated the generalization of production through the ‘rationalized’ organization of destruction, and in particular, the unilateral appropriation of social wealth; as an economic subject collecting taxes militarily, the bourgeois state formation displays this ‘one-sided’ form of rationality. In contrast to the undifferentiated homogeneity of direct handicraft work on materials, the mechanical technology of construction allowed the pre-planning of coordination, transport and assembly operations. Consequently, using machinery as its purposive basis, the production process as a whole inevitably had to change the character of work activity (which had previously had a directly determined relation to nature) before the splitting of the production process into its ideal and real components could take place: i.e. operational and technological planning on the one hand, and individual realization through physical labour on the other. This change was achieved through practical analysis and simplification (deskilling). At the same time, planning became the inner-plant price-form-in-process, i.e. the ideal form of the measure of value, while its objectification in proletarian labour constituted the genesis of constant capital as machinery. Machinery is not therefore an application of theoretical mechanics to production; rather, it was the development of quantitative relations out of living cooperation which became the a-priori of machinery. Hence, it is the form of constant capital which constitutes the real mediation of natural science, its operational rationality and the degree of societation of labour in the production process; the technical face of the mediation (the organic composition of capital) consists in the technologization of production.
However, this process of mediation only becomes apparent when this relation of science and industrial labour begins to turn into its opposite, i.e. in the chemicalization of production, where the process changes from working up already existing materials to the creation of qualitatively new ones. At this point, the production of scientific knowledge and its instruments in laboratories and planning departments begins to function as the active moment in the generalization of production, a process in which ‘scientification’ is at the same time a kind of ideal societation; that is, the ‘scientification’ of production becomes a fundamental moment in the power of the actual form of societation, whose other moment consists of the external forms of realizing surplus value.
Machinery sets free an intellect formerly bound to the feudal-handicraft labour process, an intellect which carries the possibility of forming a political collective worker out of the divided partial workers. In contrast to the work ethic of the guild, the political cooperation of wage-workers comes into external opposition to production as such, since the social ends of production confront the proletariat as an external force, i.e. as the ruling class. The levelling down of the specialized workers by means of production technology creates the condition for turning the wage-struggle into the potential political socialization of a working class in the process of organizing itself. On the other hand, the contradiction between the specialized worker and the technological intellect responsible for the direction, construction and transmission of the isolated detail operations, prevents the working class from recognizing its own social character in this intellect, which in fact represents its own intellect, even if in the form of an unconsciously collective product alienated from the working class and acquiring independent shape in the form of planners, technicians and engineers. The proletariat therefore stands in outward opposition to its own intellect, which the capitalist process of production has created in formal independence. In part, it was this hostility which weakened and nullified the resistance of the working class to fascism. In addition, the absence of a practical-theoretical critique of the productive intellect blinkers the working class, binding it as a variable moment to the aggregate social capital; in this respect, the working class is merely an antagonistic, but nonetheless fixed component of bourgeois society. Its blindness towards its own, but alienated, intellect means that it contributes to the maintenance of the false totality of this society. And a ‘liberation’ which takes place behind the backs of the producers posits freedom as mere ideal.
The uniformity of the partial operations, as the commodity-form-in-process within the workshop, also became the condition for flow production; this initially took the material shape of industrial standards for individual pieces of work. Subsequently, in many cases, the individual factory no longer needed to produce commodities as ‘use values’ for subjects; the individual parts of the product cease to possess any direct social use value, and are ‘utilizable’ only for the possible (but no longer necessary) assembly of individual objects into use values. This assembly is itself mediated through the capitalist market, and can therefore be thwarted by crisis: should difficulties arise in realizing the surplus value produced, these partial use values collapse into objects having no meaning. Such a contradiction encourages the formation of cartels: the standardized component part is the appropriated and objectified form of the universal exchangeability of use values – not as price, but rather as the natural form of commodity capital. Bourgeois consciousness only comes face to face with this process in the repair trade, namely as the interchangeability of components which are useless in themselves but nevertheless still commodities.
With the standardization of component parts, even assembly loses the character of being a constructive activity. Complex forms of assembly-line, with intervening semi-automatic machine tools, ‘construct’ the object, mediating the individual operations of the production process. The need to set norms for the performance of the work-force itself dismembers the human body into abstract functions: the bodily organs – defined by the logic of modern medicine – themselves take on the abstract form of nature, the fully adequate substrate of the value form. Only now does the bodily organism actually become ‘pure’ value form in itself. The training of the organs for certain extremely specific functions renders the body as a whole clumsy: it loses its integral function as the creator of use value. In addition, an ever-increasing period of formal training and retraining becomes necessary, even for unskilled workers. The one-sided expenditure of force and skill by individual limbs and sense-organs destroys the functional unity of the individual’s body: individuals cease to be an instrument of use to themselves even in work activity. At the same time, capital seeks to profit from this loss of bodily unity through ‘leisure activities’, medicine and sport.
With the objectification of assembly work, packing, delivery, storage and transport into machine-based mechanisms, the machinery described by Marx is reduced to a mere moment of technology, in which the industrial production-process itself assumes circulative forms, just as the circulation of commodity capital is industrialized. Industrial and commercial capital fuse via the functional role played by financial capital. Nevertheless, the stage of mechanical technology remains overwhelmingly characterized by factory labour; the regional concentration of the means of production is still the basis of spontaneous forms of mass struggle, in which the trade-union types of organization and political groupings can, at this relatively low level of development, still overlap to a great extent. However, mass communications based on technology take on increasing significance as means for artificially resolving the ‘ideality’ of the collective worker. This also marks the beginnings of bureaucratization: necessarily, but nonetheless incorrectly, the organized workers build up the cadre as a distinct form for their own implicitly revolutionary intellect, a form which often begins to blindly follow its particular inner contradiction of wishing to conserve the revolutionary movement without knowing how to constantly revolutionalize this work of conservation.
With the industrial application of electricity, traditional machinery begins to dissolve, or, rather, to encroach on the familial and even joint-stock spheres of capitalist private property. The state, as an abstract but underlying unity, gains in significance as a particular form of the aggregate national capital. The distribution of energy, that is, of the ‘objective motor forces’, undertaken by the state, takes on the role of providing the mutually exclusive individual capitals with their fundamental connection – a process which had already started with the nationalization of the communication, transport and education systems. With the transfer of power-generation away from most factories, machinery becomes ‘supra-plant’: machines which supply motive power grow into the independent power station. The previous network of canals, roads and railways is expanded and extended through more ‘ideal’ means of communication, such as pipelines, cables and radio waves. In supra-plant terms, the individual factory is assigned to the function formerly carried out by the machine tool: in contrast to the steam engine, the motor is an almost transmissionless moment in the drive of the machine tool. At the same time, the direction of the linguistic means of labour or of measurement and guidance systems in telecommunications also begins to turn into a technological form of the internal and external mediation of production, confronting the proletariat with its own intellect of earlier collaborative labour in a total estranged form, and hindering spontaneous and mass forms of communication. A critique of trade unions and parties has yet to make this development really clear – a task of increasing importance since the first signs of the dissolution of the massified worker into work groups, gangs and teams can quite spontaneously lead to a renewed guild or professional type of organization rather than a class organization. Ritual allegiance to increasingly inadequate mass organizations of the working class leads on the one hand to merely ‘representing the interests’ of the commodity labour-power, and on the other to the further provincialization of the proletariat. This process is further encouraged by capitalist urban construction: with the rapid industrial urbanization of the countryside, the real social growth of towns, as it began at the end of the Nineteenth Century, can itself stagnate as a mere ‘sprawl’.
The development of high and low voltage engineering meant that principles of production (extension of surplus labour time through reduction of necessary) could also seize hold of the sphere of the reproduction of labour power. The technologization of domestic labour not only released the labour power of the woman, but above all allowed the indirect extension of the working day, as the long time workers spend travelling is unpaid. In general, the wage of the worker no longer cover the reproduction costs of domestic labour power; should a member of the family become unfit for work, state welfare has to intervene. Unbelievable physical misery is caused by the fact that capital has clearly destroyed the communication among members of a traditional small group (even if, as the family, this was a simple outgrowth of nature), and yet has artificially and formally kept this group together through the activities of state capital and the capital of the construction sector. The reverse side of the technological objectification of social powers is that living relationships, including even affective and sexual relationships, can only be conveyed and interpreted in mechanical terms.
High and low voltage technology offers the clearest proof of the problem which arises when production is generalized solely through these processes of objectification. Workers’ councils in those places where workers also possess political power as a class can be both a first step in the reunification of consumption and production (work, need and interest consciously constituting society), as well as a form in which contradictions within the social division of labour beyond the individual factory level can spontaneously solidify into competition within the working class. This in turn necessarily produces a bureaucratic centralization which dictates an external cohesion to such self-managed units.
A counter-tendency to the process of division and sub-division in the sphere of mechanical technology can be found in the machine-tool and vehicle-building industries, although its principal field of operation is those branches which undertake the chemical processing of raw material, or where chemical techniques are introduced into other branches of production. Whereas the activity of forming and structuring materials first acquired objective structure via mechanization (in its broadest sense), only in a few rare instances could changes in the inner forms of raw materials be obtained through the mechanical expenditure of human force. As a consequence, those processes which change and transform materials underwent a much lower degree of decomposition into individual part-operations than those which shaped matter, and the tendency to relegate the mechanical aspect itself to a subordinate, intermediate moment of production arose here much earlier. Moreover, it developed less out of the nature of the tool than out of the necessity of isolating people from certain phases of chemical transformation. For this reason, the monopolization of capital found a favourable ‘natural form’ here, since in terms of the outlay on constant capital there was a high raw material intensity of production, i.e., a rapid turnover of circulating capital relative to the small amount of value transferred from the fixed capital. Since in many instances it was the scientific analysis of the inner characteristics of natural substances which first made new materials possible, the laboratory soon became an integral part of the chemical industry: scientification not only of the means of labour but of the object of labour itself was – to an even greater extent than in the electrical industry – an absolute priority. Many processes could only be carried out automatically. In the chemical industry, particular moments of mechanical technology became the characteristic basis. The ‘drive mechanism’ was necessary, partly for processing the material, but also as an inner moment in the actual process of chemical bonding; in contrast, transmission mechanisms and tool elements fused into one, as in the elements for lift, drive and bonding, and in parts such as pipes and storage systems through which materials flow. The characteristic abolition of the differences between object and means of labour is already evident in the internal parts of the steam engine (for the flow of steam and gases), as indeed it is in all forms of equipment in which physical, chemical and biological processes are combined. The synthesis of object and means of labour finally reveals that the means of production are no longer a means for the workers, that they are no longer their ‘instruments’, but simply the autonomous purposive basis for specific forms of labour, in which the form of activity producing use values begins to diverge from the form creating value. The autonomization of the process of valorization, such that it produces its own structures of labour (which can only yield use value through the mediation of the market), expresses itself ‘ideally’ in the tendency towards the fusion of a nation’s capitals into a quasi-state organization for administering the totality of social life. In this sense, the fascist ‘folk community’ (Volksgemeinschaft) was not only an ideology, but also a real integration of large sections of society into the slave-like organization of the conditions for valorization – an integration that in part was accomplished in total disregard of actual class divisions.
The characteristic feature of techno-chemical production methods is not so much machinery itself, but the thoroughgoing union of machine and apparatus; the assembly process takes a back seat to the activity measuring and regulating the continuous flow of a production linked by pipes, fed by storage reservoirs and united through the reactions which subject the material to chemical change alongside the mechanical forms which transport the commodity-object as it comes into being. In contrast to the historical forms of changing raw materials (e.g. smelting), in chemical production the various forms of motion and their transformations, together with the means, skill and object of labour, are fused in a manner which can no longer be seen as the result of spontaneous logic of cooperative work relationships (as is still the case with labour based on machinery): in this instance, the material form taken on by the intellect in the framework of production is no longer the alienated intellect of the proletariat – its ability to work and organize – but rather the outcome of deliberate scientification. The scientific intellect does not therefore have a merely alienated proletarian origin (such that it could be reclaimed) but is indifferent to working class consciousness from the outset. In contrast to the alienated proletarian intellect of engineers and mechanics, the intellect of the laboratory scientist is haute-bourgeois in origin, even if this difference itself tends to break down through the growing industrialization of scientific and technological work; in other words, the scientific division of labour is leading to a dequalification of scientific work. Once numerical and data processing has passed through a corresponding development, giving rise to a fixed structure of partial operations in scientific activity, the qualifications of the scientist will almost totally lose their current form of the scientist’s own quasi-handicraft private property. Research and discovery will be impossible without real control over private property in the ‘means of thought’. The proletarianization of the scientific intelligentsia will then only be delayed through wage differentials and privileges.
The step from mechanization, via regulation, to automation could, for precisely this reason, contain the possibility of bringing the proletarian and scientific intellects together – not by the student or academic intelligentsia taking on an apparent proletarian character, but through a genuine critique of the politico-economic structures of scientific and technological forms of understanding. This involves not merely a critique of the ruling class, but also, in fact primarily, a critique of ‘objective technical dictates’, the universal social pressure for efficient performance exerted by capital in the frozen form of the perpetuation of its class-determined division of labour. The contradiction to the rapid change in the capitalist division of labour which simultaneously retains class-specific occupations (i.e. technical change in the division of labour but social fixing of the asymmetrical distribution of the types of labour) appears in technical terms as the separation between the material and organizational aspect of production, and in social terms as the irrational drive for constant retraining – needed to maintain strict separation of the training of the mind from the occupational application of previously acquired, but now redundant skills. Class structures should therefore be sought not only in the form of the ruling agents of the bourgeoisie, but also in the technically veiled forms of labour and their corresponding training in an abstract, subjectless logic of production. This logic is the source of that attitude which rejects domination in subjective terms, but at the same time accepts it in the form of expertise and objective necessity, e.g. in technological and terminological constraints, in the abstract drive for productivity and in bureaucratic and administrative exigencies, but chiefly in the destruction of people’s ability to communicate and address each other in libidinous and emotive ways. These objective class pressures secure the persistence of traditional forms of bourgeois life and are able, in turn, to outlive the actual capitalist mode of production without undermining the basic structure of bourgeois society, i.e. the value form. In order to be able to assess this society’s essential nature, it is necessary to turn from the phenomenal aspect of means, objects and conditions of the production processes to the fundamental structure re-produced therein: namely, the dual social form of the commodity-objects, a form which reveals their class character.
Form as Identification
It is difficult to evaluate the developmental forms of machinery since these forms produce their own fetishism. For example, on the surface no real distinction can be made between suitability (Zweckgemässheit) (which can be possessed by the characteristics of natural materials, although the actual use (Zweck) is a matter of complete indifference to them, only impinging upon them negatively, or, in Hegelian terms, as ‘absolute susceptibility’) and purposiveness (Zweckmässigkeit). The notion of ‘suitability’ is meant to express the indirect relation of a thing to the purposes of society; ‘purposive’, by contrast, denotes a direct relation. Whereas nature remains an external moment to the aim for which it is appropriated, technology is always ‘internal’ to the aim, i.e. functionally appropriate: as a means, technology is accommodated and tailored to the ends. The purposive object may have ‘natural material’ as an underlying substrate; however, this figures in forms that must in general be regarded as ‘technology’, that is, as a ‘purely’ social creation. If the ‘material’ or ‘matter’ expresses the form of nature in itself, then the ‘content’ expresses the form produced, characterized by and characterizing the material.
Machinery is nature in suitable form, i.e. the natural materials offer their forms, as it were, so that ‘nature-given form’ can become form for something else, namely, social requirements: sheer nature-given form dissolves and becomes the ground for social form. On the other hand, ‘machinery’ is purposiveness, created and produced by human beings, and to this extent its form is a purely social product since it cannot be found in nature. And yet, this form must simultaneously be available in nature since the social form of purposiveness must be expressed in a suitable natural material; otherwise, it would remain sheer want, unfulfilled human need. To this extent, an electrically driven lathe for cutting threads is a ‘nature-given form’ based on natural characteristics. However, this unity is not maintained: the cutter becomes worn during use, i.e. the nature-given form forcibly asserts itself against its purposive social form as soon as the machine, as purposive basis, itself ‘produces’ use-values. The cutter also becomes obsolescent, i.e. its social form can, under certain quite specific social relations of production, assert itself forcibly against the former unity of suitable and purposive form. In this case, the inner structure, as objective social form, shatters the external unity, which we shall term the technologically superseded shape of an indirect use-value. The machine, which in itself is contradictory, can only possess the unity of dual social form and nature-given form through its functioning and in the historical form of its development; and yet, the by-product of the latter is precisely the break-up of this unity.
The shortcoming of these observations is that a number of factors had to be introduced and posited externally; Marx himself bemoaned the lack of a rigorous history of technology, which – in contrast to the abstract materialism of the natural sciences – would have presented the genesis of the active relation between human beings and nature. Such a history is still lacking, which explains why the real historical movement and the generation of relations of form cannot simultaneously provide us with the coining of their concepts. Marx was most sensitive to this gap on the question of the genesis of constant capital, where he was repeatedly obliged to assume certain forms of the instruments of use in the production process. Up to now, machinery as result, as purposive instrument of use for the production of objects of use, has always been abstractly counterposed (in critiques of technology) to machinery as constant capital for the simple utilization of labour power and the extension of surplus labour time. This has been so despite the fact that the two aspects develop in a real unity that arises and passes.
To forestall and conceptual confusion, we should note that as a ‘means’ (Mittel), namely means of labour, machinery is simply “a means for producing-surplus value”; machinery is not a ‘means’ in the sense of a use value for the creation of use values, since the ‘mean term’ or ‘mediation’ (Vermittlung) is precisely the labouring subject (which alone can organize and set ‘means’ in motion to attain ends) and not the machinery itself; the latter simply provides the purposive basis for this mediation. What exists as ‘means’ for capital is simply the purposive basic condition for extending the working day, and for the social labour process machinery is in turn a ‘means’ for creating use values. Yet, it is only for the subject who determines end-purposes that machinery is truly a means, namely, for the unilateral appropriation of objects of use; meanwhile, to the workers, machinery is simply the abstract basis for the realization of alien ends, in order to maintain their own existence.
Hence, machinery is not only characterized by the dual character of nature-given and social form; its social form too has a dual character, which we term ‘class structure’. As a social form, it first has the shape of a suitable means for appropriating surplus labour; to this extent, machinery is only machinery when in uninterrupted motion. On the other hand, it has the abstract shape, which only asserts itself indirectly through an inversion of the means-end relationship, of a purposive condition for producing use values whenever called upon to do so by social requirements. In this form, which asserts itself more deviously, machinery would be machinery only when not directly in motion, but merely available for use at any time. That distinguishing these two social forms of machinery is not mere hair-splitting is ‘proven’ in any crisis of overproduction, where each form works forcibly against the other.
The historical development of machinery has not only taken place within the contradiction between natural and social form; in addition, class society produces a dual, contradictory social form of machinery as value and as instrument of use. Under the conditions of commodity production, the inner structure of machinery as nature-given form develops simultaneously as both a form of use value and a form of value. The value-form must therefore be ‘visible’ as one of its moments. Thus, machinery ‘at rest’ does not express its character of availability on demand (as in the case of an empty road), but will always be the result either of its natural and historical wear, or the recoil effect of a crisis of overproduction. It is therefore precisely that side of machinery’s social form that makes it a means for satisfying social needs which, under the conditions of the capitalist world market, serves to reflect possible economic crises.
One of the effects of the atrophy of Marx’s critique of political economy into ‘Marxist Economics’ has been that insufficient attention is paid to the social form of use value qua means of labour. Not only – in Sohn-Rethel’s appropriate formulation – has Marxism remained idealist vis-à-vis the natural sciences, but more so, and with more serious consequences, as regards the conceptual treatment of technology. This applies in particular to the means of production, which the political economist always views in the same light as that in which they were planned and designed by the engineer, i.e. purely instrumentally. However, a ‘pure’ instrument, i.e. an instrument unrelated to any specific purposes, would merely be an aesthetic object and not an instrument at all: it would be nothing more than abstract functioning, and this is precisely the value-form-in-process, frozen into a nature-given form. As far as the engineer is concerned, machinery, as a blue-print, wears out neither naturally nor socially; it appears neither as a means of production of surplus value, nor as a the possible basis of a crisis of overproduction. The engineer considers only the most abstract form of its purposiveness: it must ‘work’. But at the same time, the engineer is oblivious to the fact that this very conception corresponds exactly to the value-form of the intended machinery.
As we have already mentioned, there is no direct cause-effect relation between machinery as nature-given form, as instrument of use, and in the form of constant capital, since the change in form is effected by different subjects. The question is: what mediates these different, mutually contradictory forms, and where is the ground within which we can locate their determining characteristics? As Marx only gave a brief examination of this possibility of an inner connection of different characteristic forms, we intend to follow up and emphasize this connection. In A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, where this question is more prominent, Marx writes: “use value as an aspect of the commodity coincides with the physical palpable existence of the commodity.” However, they can only ‘coincide’ in the result because they have first to be differentiated and then reunited in the process of labour. But even as a finished object, available for sale or exchange, the commodity requires a specific form of mediation between its use value (as the simple unity of nature-given form and purposive form) and its possible exchange value; Marx succinctly designated this form of mediation as the ‘sensuous measures’ of the commodity objects.
Measures (Masse) are quantitative relations (such as numbered items, spatial extension and weight) as social qualities of objects; viewed historically, they are for the most part elements of previously valid specific measures of value, ‘particular equivalent forms’ which were unable, for a variety of reasons, to evolve further into the general form of value. For example, scales in conjunction with the standardized poundal (Kilopond) as possible equivalent represent, as it were, an uncompleted development towards the money form (not all objects, as possible commodities, could be weighed). Nevertheless, the iron weight retained its social ‘standardization’ (its particular equivalent form) as a unit of measure, enabling relative value-magnitude to appear in a completely abstract form – namely, as the expression of a quantum of labour time – in the first place. Measures constitute the quantitatively distinguishable qualities of commodity objects as sheer amounts: number, length, area, space and weight. For the most part, these commodity measures are only ‘relations’ in themselves: the determinations of measurement rarely confront the commodities in reality. The sale of commodities means that they already ideally possess their particular measure as amounts, since price is the form of their equalization with those measures. The appearance of the magnitude of value as relative, quantitatively determined value-form expresses the fact that the magnitude of value appears in the particular relations of the commodities’ measures: five bushels of wheat are worth two yards of cloth, i.e. a specified amount of specific volume units of wheat are made equal to a specified amount of specific area units of cloth. The commodity form thus accomplishes the paradox of equalizing relations of measurement which are utterly different socially: volume = area. Furthermore, it is only in such relations of measurement that the magnitude of value appears at all; they are its specific form.
Although the poundal itself only allows an abstract type of value-equality, tied to the nature-given form of the object (e.g. corn and wine, but not cattle and wheat, where the measure of weight is impracticable as a basis for equalization), the development of the value-form itself creates social forms of things that make possible the development of the price form of commodities. The value of a commodity always appears in the heterogeneous relation of two unit measures of specified amount; the equalization of different amounts therefore creates the form of the common element underlying this relation, a time-measured magnitude representing a quantum of labour. The form in question is the value-form. This also applies once commodities cease being exchanged and are bought and sold; one unit of measurement is hidden in the price form (the former measures in weight of gold as the ‘standard of price’), the other unit of measurement is hidden in the expression of the amount of the commodity which has received its price. This relation is expressed, somewhat unclearly, in Marx’s notion of the ‘natural form’ which becomes the value-form of precisely that commodity whose natural form it is not. If ‘natural form’ is understood as the social unity of nature-given form and useful form, the concept is spot-on; however, if it is understood solely in terms of the nature-given aspect of the object of use (or commodity-object), the expression is incorrect, since the value-form is reflected in the unity (expressed as amount and measure) of nature-given form and useful form. Only thus is it possible to appreciate the way in which the fetishism of the commodity is brought to completion: there is nothing mysterious in the fact that people ‘reify’, or objectify their living relations in the process of ‘socializing’ properties of nature. I shall therefore retain the distinction of nature-given form (Naturform) and useful form (Gebrauchsform), and employ the notion of ‘natural form’ (Naturalform) to express their negative unity. This is because the determinate amounts of commodities (i.e. amounts which could only be ‘determined’ by recourse to units of measurement in the first place) are relational forms that are as ‘purely’ social as is the form of the magnitude of value in its visible shape as the money form of commodities.
Initially, commodities are produced not as definite measures (which, like volume for example, usually originated in the sphere of consumption, the practical circumstances of the use of various objects), but rather as indeterminate amounts (Menger). It is only the determination of value which requires already existing characteristics to become the quality of specific quantitative forms, i.e. to become measures. Weights, spatial areas, and numbers, which through unit measures become a definite measure-magnitude, first arise, as intelligible forms of commodity objects, in the value-relation itself; prior to this, even in production, the ‘sensuous’ measures are merely indeterminate amounts of products, i.e. simple magnitudes. Clearly, the nature-given forms remain the abstract, but not completely indeterminate phenomenal substrate of the commodity measures.
Commodities are produced in definite amounts, in the form of a quantitative determinacy which makes it possible to exchange and buy commodities as ‘measured’ amounts. In the conscious production of values characteristic of capitalism, these intelligible forms of the commodity (‘intelligible’ because these forms, like the price form, only exist through the ‘understanding’ of symbols, not through the sensuous perception of qualities) become forms of the commodity-object ‘within’ production. The operational planning of production expresses this through the fact that it no longer produces amounts in general, but, based on experience in the market, has to produce more or less precisely specified amounts; and since the division of labour means that the output of the factory no longer constitutes a complete use value but rather a fragment of a use value requiring the mediation of the market, these elements must assume measures which guarantee that they can be repeatedly assembled into a complete use value. The basis of these measures of the product lies in the ‘sensuous’ measures of the commodity. Hence, the determination of the amounts of commodities no longer takes place during exchange or sale, but is produced along with the commodity from the outset. These determinations enter into the plant-level development of new forms of use value: in the course of bourgeois society’s development, use-values (produced as commodities) assume different forms, namely, inner value-forms. The object of use no longer corresponds merely to an appropriate relation between nature-given form and form for social need, i.e. purposive form; in addition, the object of use must, as a commodity, take on a second social form to render the object ‘purposive’ for exchange, for circulation as commodity capital and for the value relation in general. The foundations of this commodity-purposiveness were the ‘sensuous’ measures, commodities as qualitative amounts. These measures are now basic to all technical and scientific research activities and theoretical constructions; certain areas – in particular, electrical and chemical technology – required the invention of new units of measurement, most of which referred back, in an analogous and comparative way, to older geometrical and mechanical measures.
The unification of such measures plays an important role in the further development of capitalist relations of production, as can be seen in Britain’s current conversion of metric standards. These units of measurement are also the condition for the possibility of unitary industrial standards, which can be regarded as units of measurement attached to technically specific nature-given forms of commodities as inner value forms. Historically, this commodity-purposiveness became the basis for ‘rationalization’, not only in the creation of industrial standards but also in work-organization. The concept of rationalization reveals what lies at the core of bourgeois value-rationality: namely, as the logical, seemingly uncontradictory thought-form of valorization’s pure functioning. Presumably, it was this characteristic form of technological rationality, sinking down from the value relation to the actual production of commodities, that first struck Sohn-Rethel, but which he could only interpret as a ‘reflection’ of the commodity form in consciousness.
To summarize: the nature-given material of the commodity object must assume a purposive form not only for use but also for exchange. In turn, this latter form functions blindly as the condition for the possibility of more ‘rational’ forms, i.e. plays a part within production by co-determining the further development of adequate use-value forms for the products. The ‘uniform motion’ of machinery itself accommodated the creation of an ‘inner value-form’ of the commodity objects (as mutually equal), just as machine motion itself expresses the ‘inner value-form’ of the means of production as process. The equivalency of the various commodities’ amounts become their actual equality. The fact that these distinctions of form are no mere hair-splitting is shown in all those conflicts which arise between product planners and technicians on the one hand, and the factory’s purchase and sales department on the other.
In my opinion, the dual social form necessarily assumed by the commodity provides us with a genetic explanation of abstract-categorial thought-forms that has more of a foundation in reality than Sohn-Rethel’s arguments can have. The latter are ambiguous: on the one hand, thought-forms ‘arise’ from acts of exchange, a point which merely leaves us with an unanswered riddle; on the other hand, he interpolates an unspecified act of reflection between thought-form and commodity-form. Yet, the reflection of one form in another medium presupposes that very understanding which compares the real and reflected forms with one another in order to arrive at a judgement as to their formal identity. Certain forms of the social intellect are just as much products as determining moments of the universalization of value; they cannot be conceived either as merely ‘presupposed’ (as in Schelling) or as simply ‘derived’ (as in empiricism, to which Sohn-Rethel in the final analysis belongs). The amount of the commodity an only express itself as quantitatively determined value-relation if these determinate amounts assume a peculiar additional nature-given form (either a very abstract form, like weight or extension, or a readily intelligible form, like number) and thereby become determinable relations of measurement, which are in turn the pre-conditions of the appearance of value; by becoming measures the amount of the commodity is abstract vis-à-vis the direct form of use value, but conditions the specific historical ‘identification’ of the directly natural use-form of commodities and their value-form. Without the activity of the understanding, the ideal form of the measure of value qua price-form could neither develop nor persist. A specific aspect of the understanding turns into a moment of the value-form and becomes one – but only one – of the constitutive pre-conditions of money, and hence of capital. Otherwise, one could never speak of the commodity’s value-objectivity as ‘sensuously supra-sensuous’ (sinnlich übersinnlich).
For the remainder, we shall further narrow down the problem to the commodity objects in their capacity as material elements in the immediate production-process. Here, Marx specifies the results of the genetic form mentioned above: he formulates the dual social form in terms of the unity of means of production and ‘means of valorization’ i.e. constant capital encompassed within the concept of the means of production. We have already stated that this dual social form – structure and shape in the process of their mutual exclusion and identification as function – was the precondition for developing ‘means of labour’ which are no longer means for the worker but means for valorization, i.e. merely the purposive condition for the utilization of a social unit of labour power, or of labour power qua social. Machinery now possesses use-value form only in relation to society in the abstract (as capital); concretely, in relation to the individual worker, it only has the one-sidedly abstract social form of being ‘value’ in itself. It has the form of simple ‘value’, value for the production of things which somehow have utility. In the consciousness of the workers, ‘value’ becomes established as a scarcely differentiated contradictory unity of use value and abstract value. To say the machine has ‘value’ means that it has a significance, a validity, as a relation of labour and as a ‘ware’ (Gut). Although still unclear, proletarian consciousness reveals an understanding of the fundamental distinction between the two social forms of machinery – witness the history of machine-wrecking. However, it is for the political understanding of the proletariat to posit the specific means of each, so as, on the one hand, to be able to theoretically ‘reconstruct’ machinery in its role of a ‘useful object’ for the production of useful objects, and, on the other hand, to thereby be able to grasp machinery as capitalist private property for the extraction of surplus-values. Since machinery, and, even more so, apparatuses and technologies as nature-given forms, have in various occupations forfeited their elementary sensuousness, i.e. their character as means of labour, their meaning cannot be grasped through perception but only through an abstract political understanding qua critique of those relations.
The socially determined dual form existing as machinery or as means of production in general causes certain structures of the class-based division of labour to become frozen, whereas others are revolutionized; in general, it mediates the unequal types of social labour and maintains them in such a way that ‘plant rationality’, the mathematical division of labour within the factory, constitutes the irrationality of the individual’s labour. It is sheer chance whether an individual labours with no opportunity for communication, or whether there may still be a limited possibility for developing an interest in changes in working conditions and work tasks. In general, ‘interest’ as such is banished to the pure sphere of reproduction. The logic of the technological development of labour is employed against the direct needs of the proletariat as working individuals; this can be seen from any empirical study – for example, how automation is introduced in precisely those areas of production which are in fact the least stupefying. Only as a whole, in abstract totality, does reason blindly assert itself in the “increase of the constant constituent of capital at the expense of its variable constituent”, i.e. in the one-sided, subjectless alteration in the technical composition of capital. Only the ‘subjectification’ of the material foundations of social production would mean the creation of a social subject. The second, abstractly social aspect of form as the means of production’s inner value-form is the active aspect; the aspect of the means of production as directly useful can only assert itself in opposition to the latter.
The dual social form of the object in production is hence the ‘ground’ of this society in two ways. First, machinery is the basis of the dominance of one class over another: it establishes the proletariat as such; second, it is the basis of the societation of labour processes precisely by virtue of the development of an ‘inner value-form’ of the means of production. This is the locus of the rationality of the social structure of production, through which direct forms of use value are destroyed and the mediation are destroyed and the mediation is no longer effected through the spontaneous agency of the individual, but through society in general. Hence, machinery and technology establish the developing existence of society as subject, in the sense of the requisite level of the productive forces. However, in contrast to Marx’s own period, this dual basis no longer asserts itself through a spontaneous mediation of classes; rather, this process of mediation is itself a product of the scientific and technical intellect. The “scientifically arranged process of production” must be investigated in terms of this ‘arrangement’. It is no use merely presupposing this intellect as mysteriously antecedent to capital and then confirming that the result of scientific and technological research are appropriated and used by capital; this does not explain the specific form of development of that intellect.
As Grossmann’s critique of Borkenau indicates, at the surface level it is not so much that the deductive form of thought sets its stamp on mechanics (the basic form of machinery), as the other way round: mechanisms and mechanical-dynamic structures set their stamp on the specifically deductive form of thought by supplying the understanding, in sensuous terms, with the abstract, naturo-analytic form as its material, as the content of formal thought. The ‘whole’ is given a priori, albeit in a social form which simultaneously provides the ‘knowledge’ that the whole is analytic (in the sense that the apparatus, say a mechanism or gear-system, is previously assembled from parts). Theoretical deduction presupposes practical mechanical synthesis; fundamental principles are given , not merely as ‘intuition’ but as conclusive ‘evidence’. At the same time, in the functioning of the mechanical works, the system should be constructed ‘free of contradictions’. On the other hand, should the functioning cease, then deduction directly becomes theoretical analysis (theoretische Analytik), i.e. if repair work is initiated, or further development is undertaken on forms of use which have ceased, or appear to have ceased, to be purposive.
The empirical-analytic form of thought (conceived in philosophy, for example, as the prior intelligibility of perception and intuition) presupposes deduction as a ‘functioning whole’, just as deduction presupposes practical-active analysis, i.e. division of labour. However, it is not until they become an element in the capitalist production of commodities that logical necessity and certainty, as requisites of the functioning of mechanics, are stripped of their character of mere need, mere want. Although the system of gears and mechanisms may previously have been more or less purposive to labour, in capitalist production their functioning becomes an absolute necessity, and repair or crisis is inevitably the contradiction (as shortcoming and loss) of profit. Consequently, the dual social form of the mechanical means of production is first expressed in the category of ‘regularity’, but in advance commodity production as ‘causality’, i.e. the necessary, coercive relation of cause and effect. Traditional logic anticipated techno-logic, just as commercial capital anticipated industrial capital.
The technical relations which are developed (not merely reflected) in the social understanding – materially, as the functional nexus in machinery and technology of use-form and value-form – finally achieves its subjective form (for the mediation of capital and labour) in the shape of the technical intelligentsia. On the other hand, this autonomy is in turn the presupposition for the dual social form to set its stamp on the nature-given form of ‘brain’. As a moment of use value, the intellect is tied to matter; as deductive, discursive logic, its material production of knowledge achieves an abstract independence (expressed in institutional terms as training at the levels of primary, technical and higher education). At the same time, this is the presupposition for industrialization of the social dissemination of the knowledge required for production and for the production of knowledge itself; i.e. it is the presupposition for the separation of the means of thought (laboratories, libraries, data processing machines, etc.) and thought-power (Denkkraft) itself. This is the signal for the real societation of the understanding , which, under the conditions of bourgeois society, can only be achieved via the detour of te dequalification of individual thinking, i.e. via the manufactured stultification and artificial stupefaction of those layers of the intelligentsia which used to be creators and carriers of culture. Doubts that human development will survive this passage through the ‘de-utopianization’ of life (as a precondition for its brutalization generally) are too widespread to be written off just as an ideology of bourgeois downfall based on cultural pessimism. This is why it is all the more important to recognize the class dictates (which becomes interest-free and sublimated in the technological division of labour) for the structure that they really are, namely, ‘the inner value-form of things’.
However, in contrast to ideology, the fetish character of the ‘inner value-form’ of the means of production is necessary for the continuing development – analogous to the way in which the results of the mathematical operation have to disappear into the formula before the latter can provide the basis for more complex relations to be calculated. And precisely because the genesis of the technological development must disappear in the result, proletarian consciousness hardens into a false, ahistorical immediacy. The illusion develops that the individual tool, machine, apparatus, in fact the entire technology of the production process, is always a means, always an instrument, which in itself anyone can appropriate and use. The weapon or tool appears to have the same form – in terms of structure and shape – in the hands of the oppressed as it does in the hands of the oppressor, although the goals may have changed drastically. The functioning, mediating instrument seems completely indifferent to its two extremes – bourgeois private property and proletarian labour – although in the final analysis it is this mediation alone that can link the two classes, since in the long run sheer political-military force is not an adequate basis for maintaining social cohesion in a system of production. This is the source of the increasingly revolutionary role of the scientific-technical intelligentsia as the subjective side of this fateful mediation of classes; this intelligentsia both co-founds the link between classes, as well as having its own existence within this mediation.
The reason why the surface appearance of the means of production is dominated by the semblance of indifference is to be found in the fact that in industrial production the living dialectic of the material interaction with nature is no longer experienced, if for no other reason than that, as far as the workers are concerned, the means used to work upon nature-given material are simply the conditions for their abstract activity. The construction of particular ploughs and looms revealed both the social existence of the peasant and handicraft workers of a particular historical epoch as class-specific occupations, as well as the basis and degree of societation of this agrarian and handicraft form of production. The class, as an occupational estate, existed simultaneously in the natural form of its means of labour. It was only with the separation of the worker from the means of production, and the mediation of this development of the (constantly evolving) means of production of the worker via the activity of the intellect, that the means of labour assumed a historical form which no longer corresponded to the individual’s activity. The paradox is that although machinery and technology where created as the purposive basis of bourgeois class rule, they appear as their opposite in the social mediation of individual capitals through the market: that is, they appear as a neutral, indifferent basis for the societation of the production process through the division of labour. They appear specifically ‘class neutral’, particularly in comparison to objects from the sphere of consumption, where cars, home furnishing, fancy packaging and buildings still directly exhibit both forms of their social nature, namely, utility and domination. By contrast, the highest stage of the developmental forms of the means of production, as ‘rationality of the inner value-form’, produces the opposite appearance: the melancholic sameness of proletarian working conditions vaunts itself as the ‘transcendence of class society’, for the simple reason that capital, as ‘inner social value-form of the means of production’, presents itself abstractly as the latter’s societal nature and universal validity: in fact, as society-in-itself, taking on material shape as the universally valid coercion characterizing labour conditions.
This novel semblance may be the reason why there has been no machine-wrecking in the 20th century, even though the same class relations of production are manifested, albeit in a subjectless form, in this system of machinery and technology. Machine-wrecking has today turned into its opposite: ‘machinolatry’. The critique of the genesis of these socially dual, class-specific characteristic forms now has the task of calling the mechanisms of this fetishism by their real name.
Translated by Pete Burgess. From Outlines of a critique of technology ed. by Phil Slater, 1980.
taken from here
Das Gesetz vom tendenziellen Fall der allgemeinen Profitrate im Kapital Bd.3
Nach Auffassung von Georgios Stamatis nimmt Marx bei der Darstellung des Gesetzes vom tendenziellen Fall der allgemeinen Profitrate eine Gleichsetzung von Wert und Preis u. a. deswegen vor, um die Wirkung der sog. Wicksell-Effekte (u. a die Beobachtung der Relation von Profit- und Zinsrate) auf den Verlauf der allgemeinen Profitrate unberücksichtigt zu lassen.1 Weiter setzt Marx voraus, dass Parameter wie Produktivität, technische Zusammensetzung des Kapitals, Rohstoffverbrauch und Produktionsmittelbestand im Verlauf der Binnengeschichte des Kapitalismus eine beständige Tendenz zum Wachstum aufweisen, u. U. auch der Reallohnsatz. Und Marx nimmt weiter an, dass die prozentuale Steigerung der Produktivität auf der Ebene der Gesamtkomplexion des Kapitals geringer ausfällt als die prozentuale Steigerung der technischen und organischen Zusammensetzung des Kapitals. Dabei zwingt der kapitalistische Wettbewerb die Unternehmen ständig zur Beschleunigung der Prozesse der Forschung, der technologischen Innovation und führt damit zur Einführung neuer (industrieller) Produktionsmethoden. Und schließlich interessiert sich das Einzelkapital weniger für die absolute Profitmasse, die nach einer gegebenen Produktionsperiode realisiert wird, sondern stärker für die Geldsumme, die es in Bezug auf seine ursprünglichen Investitionen erhält, ergo für die Profitrate (und die Profitrate in ihrem Verhältnis zur Zinsrate). Und das Resultat besteht in einer sich immer weiter verstärkenden technologisch fundierten Kapitalisierung der Produktion, was Marx in der Steigerung der organischen Zusammensetzung des Kapitals (Wertrelation von konstantem (c) zu variablem Kapital (v) inklusive der preislichen Indexierung des Wertwechsels von konstantem und variablem Kapital von gleicher Qualität) ausgedrückt sieht.
Die Relation zwischen Mehrwert (m) und konstantem Kapital (c) + variablem Kapital (v) impliziert die Profitrate p = m / c + v. Erweitert man die Marx'sche Formel für die Profitrate um 1/v, so gelangt man zu folgender Formel:
p= m/v
------
c/v +1
Demzufolge wird die Profitrate als eine Relation zwischen absoluten Größen in eine Relation von Relationen transformiert, wobei diese Relation der Relation auf die allgemeine durchschnittliche Profitrate bezogen bleibt. (Vgl. Heinrich 2006: 330) Marx identifiziert die beiden wesentlichen Bestimmungsfaktoren der Profitrate in der Mehrwertrate (m/v) und der Wertzusammensetzung des Kapitals (c/v). (MEW 25: 221ff.) Die Profitrate impliziert die Relation einer Stromgröße – des Profits in einer Rechnungsperiode – zu einer Bestandsgröße, dem vorgeschossenen konstanten und variablen Kapital. Während im Fall des Kredits die Rendite ex ante in einem Vertrag festgelegt wird, nämlich als Zins, so kann die empirische Bestimmung der Profitrate und ihrer allgemeinen Bewegungstendenz nur das Ergebnis einer komplizierten statistischen ex post Berechnung sein, wobei die Transformation von Datensätzen, die der VGR (volkswirrtschaftliche Gesamtrechnung) entnommen sind, auf Marx'sche Größen eine exakte Bestimmung dessen erfordert, was sich ausgehend von den empirischen Datenserien überhaupt als Größen zur Berechnung der Profitrate annehmen lässt. Es muss erstens der sog. Überschuss eingegrenzt und erfasst werden, der in die Profitrate oberhalb des Bruchstrichs eingeht, d. h., der Gewinn vor oder nach Abzug der Abschreibungen und Steuern und unter Berücksichtigung abgeleiteter Einkommen und der Arbeitseinkommen von Selbständigen. Und zum zweiten wäre zu klären, welches Kapital man als vorgeschossenes Kapital bestimmt, ob das Nettoanlagevermögen oder das Bruttoanlagevermögen anzusetzen ist. Nicht zuletzt erfordert die Berechnung der Profitrate eine Berücksichtigung der Preisveränderungen bei der Bestimmung des Kapitalstocks, der meistens aus Investitionen zu ganz verschiedenen Zeiten entstanden ist. Und weiterhin gilt es zwischen der Profitrate als einer relativen Zahl und der Profitmasse, einer absoluten Größe, zu unterscheiden.
Marx’ Gesetz des tendenziellen Falls der allgemeinen Profitrate will besagen, dass den kapitalistischen Produktionsmethoden unter ganz spezifischen Bedingungen, die für ihn solche der klassischen industriellen kapitalistischen Produktion waren, eine langfristige Tendenz zur Steigerung der organischen Zusammensetzung des Kapitals korrespondiert, die prozentual höher als der Anstieg der Mehrwertrate ausfällt, womit die allgemeine Profitrate, wenn wir sie als Verhältnis von Mehrwertrate und organischer Zusammensetzung des Kapitals anschreiben, langfristig fallen muss. (Vgl. Stamatis 1977: 115ff.) Der notwendige und hinreichende Fall der allgemeinen Profitrate ist vor allem Folge einer übermäßig steigenden Kapitalintensität bzw. Produktivität, die mit einer steigenden Sparquote der Kapitalisten (steigendes Verhältnis der Produktionsmittel am Mehrwert) einhergeht, über die die steigende Produktionsmittelintensität realisiert wird. Wir haben es aber in bestimmten historischen Phasen gleichzeitig mit sog. Gegentendenzen zu tun, die ein prozentual höheres Wachstum der Mehrwertrate als das der organischen Zusammensetzung des Kapitals herbeiführen können: 1) extreme Erhöhung der Mehrwertrate; 2) Senkung des Arbeitslohns und das Faktum der Überbevölkerung; 3) Expansion des Kapitals ins Ausland; 4) Aktienkapital etc. (MEW 25: 242ff.) Es kann schließlich auch zu einer starken Verbilligung der Elemente Maschinerie und Technologie kommen, was zu einem Fall der organischen Zusammensetzung des Kapitals führt, womit die Profitrate wiederum ansteigen kann.
Modifikationen der stofflichen Eigenschaften von Produktionsprozessen versucht Marx mit der Relation technische Zusammensetzung des Kapitals zu erfassen, dem Verhältnis zwischen Produktionsmitteln/Rohstoffen und lohnabhängigen Arbeitskräften, wobei man diese Relation gewissermaßen als technologisches Set-Up der Produktionsprozesse in physischen Einheiten zu verstehen hat. Weil wir es zugleich mit Verwertungsprozessen zu tun haben, gibt es immer schon ein spezifisches Verhältnis zwischen dem konstanten Kapital (Produktionsmittel) und dem variablen Kapital (Löhne), das Marx bezüglich der Darstellung des Gesetzes vom Fall der allgemeinen Profitrate vor allem in Werten anschreibt. (Vgl. Stamatis 1977: 189f.) Die technische Zusammensetzung des Kapitals ausgedrückt in Werten bezeichnet Marx als Wertzusammensetzung bzw. organische Zusammensetzung des Kapitals (c/v). Während die Wertzusammensetzung des Kapitals auch die indirekten Wirkungen und Variationen der sie bestimmenden Parameter berücksichtigt, bezieht sich die organische Zusammensetzung des Kapitals rein auf die direkten Veränderungen von (c) und (v). Für Marx' Darstellung der langfristigen Entwicklungstendenzen der kapitalistischen Produktionsweise ist die Annahme einer steigenden technischen und in einem geringeren Maße der organischen bzw. Wertzusammensetzung des Kapitals (dies aufgrund der Produktivitätssteigerung, die fallende Preise für das konstante Kapital nach sich zieht) von großer Bedeutung, wobei dies Marx mit dem durch die Konkurrenz vermittelten Zwang zur Erhöhung der Binnenproduktivität für Einzelkapitale begründet. (Ebd.: 221f.) Dabei unterscheidet Marx zwei Arten der Konkurrenz, und zwar a) die intrasektorale Konkurrenz, die die Einzelkapitale innerhalb einer Branche erfasst, und (b) die intersektorale Konkurrenz zwischen Einzelkapitalen der unterschiedlichen Branchen. Die Einsparung von Arbeitskräften durch den verstärkten Einsatz von Maschinerie (in Form der unmittelbaren Freisetzung von Arbeitskräften oder in Form eines größeren Produktionsausstoßes bei gleichbleibendem Arbeitseinsatz) führt also im Kapitalismus tendenziell zu einer Steigerung des konstanten Kapitals im Verhältnis zum variablen Kapital, d. h., zu einer steigenden organischen Zusammensetzung des Kapitals. Und Marx nimmt weiter an, dass der vermehrte Einsatz von Maschinerie, Technologie und Apparaturen – als Resultat der Verwissenschaftlichung der Produktion – die signifikante Struktur der Steigerung der Produktivität im Kapitalismus darstellt und damit zugleich die maßgebliche Methode zur Senkung der Produktionskosten ist. (Ebd.: 236f.)
Allerdings wird effizientere Maschinerie und Technologie unter den von Marx definitorisch vorgenommenen Voraussetzungen, die die logischen Rahmenbedingungen für das Gesetz des Falls der allgemeinen Profitrate darstellen, zum Zweck der Kostensenkung von einem Einzelkapital erst dann eingesetzt, wenn damit für eine kommende Produktionsperiode die Mehrausgaben an konstantem Kapital (das in Maschinen und Rohstoffe investierte Geldkapital) geringer ausfallen als die Einsparungen von variablem Kapital, i. e. das in die Entlohnung der Arbeitskräfte investierte Geldkapital. Die technologische Innovation wird dann angewandt, wenn zumindest für das Einzelkapital ∆ c1 < ∆v1 gilt, womit sich der bisherige Kostpreis der Waren vermindert. (Vgl. Heinrich 2003: 338) Dies führt zunächst zur Realisierung von Extraprofiten für das technologisch dominante Unternehmen, solange bis das Produktionsniveau sich in einer Branche wieder verallgemeinert hat. Das dominante Unternehmen kann zudem durch die Erhöhung des stofflichen Outputs weitere Extraprofite realisieren. Dabei sollte man zwei Tendenzen berücksichtigen: Einerseits führen die neuen Produktionsmethoden, die eine Erhöhung der Produktivität mit sich bringen, über die Einsparung von Arbeitskräften hinaus zu einer Verbilligung der Lebensmittel, die zur Reproduktion der Arbeitskraft notwendig sind (es verbilligen sich aber im Laufe der kapitalistischen Entwicklung sämtliche Waren, seien es Rohstoffe, Maschinen und Lebensmittel, weil bei gegebener Arbeitszeit mehr oder qualitativ hochwertigere Produkte hergestellt werden), was in einer steigenden Wertzusammensetzung des Kapitals resultiert. Zugleich können die neuen Technologien und Produktionsmethoden auch zu einer Verbilligung der Elemente des konstanten Kapitals führen, was sich dann in einer sinkenden Wertzusammensetzung des Kapitals ausdrückt, wobei allerdings die Verbilligung der Elemente des konstanten Kapitals auf der Ebene des Gesamtkapitals nur dann zu sinkender Wertzusammensetzung führt, wenn die Steigerung der Produktivität in der Produktion von Produktionsmitteln (Abteilung I) auf Dauer höher ist als diejenige in der Produktion von Konsumgütern (Abteilung II). Um nun die Tendenz einer langfristig steigenden Wertzusammensetzung des Kapitals und damit den Fall der Profitrate zu begründen, müsste gezeigt werden, dass die mit der Steigerung der Produktivität einhergehende Verbilligung der Elemente des konstanten Kapitals die anderen Aspekte, die im sog. Gegentrend zu steigender Wertzusammensetzung des Kapitals führen – technische bzw. unmittelbare Erhöhung des konstanten Kapitals relativ zum variablen Kapital, Senkung des Werts der Arbeitskraft – nicht kompensieren kann. (Stamatis 1977: 221f.) Es gilt daher zu berücksichtigen, wie sich die Relation zwischen konstantem Kapital und variablem Kapital verhält, ob z. B. das variable Kapital stärker sinkt als das konstante Kapital steigt, sodass invers der Mehrwert stärker steigt als das konstante Kapital, nämlich in dem Maß wie das variable Kapital sinkt, womit wir es in der Tat mit einer steigenden Profitrate zu tun hätten. Es kann aber auch das konstante Kapital stärker steigen als das variable Kapital sinkt, und dennoch vermag man eine allgemein steigende Profitrate (und Profitmasse) festzustellen, nämlich in einer Periode, in der zumindest die technologisch dominanten Unternehmen Extraprofite erzielen, wenn nämlich deren Gesamtkosten von (c) plus (v) pro Produkteinheit geringer sind als die Durchschnittskosten in der Branche und deren Produkte zum alten noch gültigen gesellschaftlichen Preis verkauft werden oder zumindest an der Grenze zum alten Preis. Preissenkungen (über dem individuellen, aber unter dem gesellschaftlichen »Wert«) sind u. U. notwendig, um die größeren stofflichen Produktmengen auch zu realisieren. Das Einzelkapital hat sowohl den relativen Mehrwert bzw. die Gesamtkosten pro Produkteinheit als auch die Erhöhung sowie Realisierung ihrer Stückzahl in ihren Rechnungen, Planungen und Kalkulationen zu berücksichtigen. Zudem kann das technologisch dominante Kapital auch über die Entlassung von Arbeitskräften Vorteile erzielen, ohne dass die Mehrwertrate erhöht wird. Es kann sogar die Profitmasse sinken, was durch den Extraprofit wiederum kompensiert wird. Wir haben es hier mit individuellen Strategien zur Senkung der Produktionskosten pro Produkteinheit zu tun, wobei aber hinsichtlich der Entwicklung der allgemeinen Profitrate und ihres tendenziellen Falls auf die Verallgemeinerung der neuen Produktionsmethoden abzustellen ist, insofern sie das allgemeine Wertniveau gesenkt haben, wobei mit dem Wegfall des Extraprofits u. U. sich tatsächlich ein Fall der allgemeinen Profitrate einstellt, weil nun die Steigerung des konstanten Kapitals bzw. der Kapitalintensität auf der Gesamtebene des Kapitals seine volle Wirkung zeigt, und zwar abhängig davon, ob die neuen Technologien die Verwertungsbedingungen einer gesamten Branche verbessern oder eben nicht.
Dabei stellt sich Marx den Prozess, der tendenziell zum Fall der allgemeinen Profitrate führt, folgendermaßen vor: Wenn man unterstellt, dass bei gegebener Produktion der Umfang der Waren, die zur Reproduktion der Arbeitskraft notwendig sind, gleich bleibt, wie auch die Länge des Arbeitstages und die Intensität der Arbeit und zudem das von der Arbeitskraft pro Arbeitstag geschaffene Wertprodukt konstant bleibt, dann folgt daraus, dass mit steigender Produktivität wegen der Verbilligung der Waren die Mehrwertrate m/v steigt, jedoch bedeutet diese Steigerung weiterhin, dass die einzelne Arbeitskraft in derselben gegebenen Zeitspanne eine größere Menge von Produktionsmitteln (Rohstoffe und Maschinerie) einsetzt wie in früheren Produktionsperioden. Die Einsparung von Arbeitskräften durch den Einsatz von Maschinerie führt demnach unmittelbar zu einem Anwachsen des konstanten Kapitals im Verhältnis zum variablen Kapital, d. h., zu einer steigenden technischen und in einem geringerem Maße (aufgrund der Verbilligung der Maschinerie) zu einer steigenden Wertzusammensetzung des Kapitals. Marx unterstellt, dass der größeren Menge an Produktionsmitteln je Arbeitskraft auch ein größerer Wert dieser Produktionsmittel entspricht, was, wie wir gesehen haben, problematisch ist, da sich durch die Steigerung der Produktivität alle Waren verbilligen – schließlich auch die Produktionsmittel. (Ebd.: 249f.) Es kann zwar sein, dass in einer bestimmten Branche eine geringfügige Erhöhung der Produktivität einen hohen Aufwand an zusätzlichem konstantem Kapital erfordert, wie dies in den traditionellen kapitalistischen Industrien wie z. B. der Stahlindustrie oder der chemischen Industrie früher der Fall war, andererseits lässt sich in manchen Branchen, wie z. B. heute in der Computerindustrie, wo die neuen Computer kaum teurer sind als die alten Modelle, eine hohe Steigerung der Produktivität mit relativ wenig zusätzlichem konstantem Kapital erreichen, ja es kann sogar der Fall sein, dass ein Industrieroboter weniger Wert darstellt als die alten mechanischen Apparaturen und damit selbst bei konstantem Mehrwert pro eingesetztem konstantem und variablem Kapital ein höherer Gewinn/Profit erzielt wird. Trenkle/Lohoff argumentieren an dieser Stelle, dass es zwar für das Einzelkapital profitabel sein könne, Arbeitskräfte durch Industrieroboter zu ersetzen (anstatt zwei Arbeiter an alten mechanischen Apparaturen stünde dann nur noch ein Arbeiter an einem Industrieroboter), andererseits führe gerade das auf der Ebene des Gesamtkapitals zu einem »Abschmelzen der Wertmasse«. (Vgl. Lohoff/Trenkle 2012: 105f.) Wir haben dazu oben schon Stellung genommen.
Fassen wir die grundlegenden Bestimmungen der kapitalistischen Form der Produktivitätssteigerung, die den tendenziellen Fall der allgemeinen Profitrate implizieren, mit Stamatis noch einmal zusammen: Jede Steigerung der Produktivität führt zu einer prozentualen Erhöhung der technischen Zusammensetzung und damit auch der Wertzusammensetzung des Kapitals, wobei man gleichzeitig im Lohngütersektor eine Senkung des Werts der Reproduktionsmittel, plus, wenn die Wachstumsrate der Produktivität höher als die des Reallohns ist, eine Abnahme des Werts der Arbeitskraft feststellen kann. Allerdings reicht die daraus resultierende Erhöhung der relativen Mehrwertrate längst nicht aus, um die Erhöhung der Wertzusammensetzung des Kapitals zu kompensieren, so dass letzten Endes die allgemeine Profitrate fallen muss. Nun gibt es aber durchaus »neue« kapitalistische Produktionsmethoden (die Stamatis ausführlich erörtert, siehe dazu Stamatis 1977: 305ff.), auf die Marx selbst in den Grundrissen im Zusammenhang mit der Darstellung der Problematik um die Grundrente kurz hinweist; Methoden, die aufgrund spezifischen Produktivitätssteigerungen die relative Mehrwertrate erhöhen, wobei gleichzeitig die Wertzusammensetzung des Kapitals gleich bleibt oder gar fällt (u. a. aufgrund der Verbilligung der Maschinerie, was heute in den digitalisierten Industrien ja tatsächlich durchaus der Fall sein kann): Per definitionem steigt damit die allgemeine Profitrate an. Selbst bei steigender technischer Zusammensetzung des Kapitals und in geringerem Maße der Wertzusammensetzung kann also die Profitrate steigen, wenn die Produktivität prozentual stärker als die Wertzusammensetzung des Kapitals wächst – und das scheint entscheidend, damit es überhaupt zur Einführung dieser neuen kapitalistischen Produktionsmethoden kommt. Insofern die kybernetischen Systeme die Maschinen schneller laufen lassen und zugleich ihren technischen Verschleiß reduzieren, ist der Wert von solchen Innovationen von vornherein als niedriger zu bewerten als der, den sie ersetzen (Verbilligung des konstanten Kapitals). Und es gilt zu berücksichtigen, dass die Maschinerie als Hardware heute der effizienten Steuerung durch die Software unterliegt, die den Takt der Uhrzeit übersetzt und iterieren lässt. Und in diesen Prozessen werden sogar spezifische Reserven der Produktion an- und aufgegriffen, die als Teile gemeinschaftlicher Arbeit und Kooperation (Affekte, Kognition, Sprache etc.) bzw. als Gratisleistung für das Kapitals zu gelten haben. Für Marx waren es dagegen die klassischen Produktionsmethoden des Industriekapitals sowie die damit verbundene spezifische Form der Produktivitätssteigerung (vor allem in den thermodynamischen und chemischen Industrien), die zur Erhöhung der technischen Zusammensetzung und in geringerem Maße zur Wertzusammensetzung des Kapitals und gleichzeitig zu einem allerdings geringeren Anstieg der Mehrwertrate als demjenigen der Wertzusammensetzung des Kapitals führten. Und somit entscheidet letztendlich das Verhältnis zwischen der relativen Zunahme der Mehrwertrate und der relativen Zunahme der Wertzusammensetzung des Kapitals, ob die Profitrate im Rahmen der allgemeinen Bedingungen, Parameter und Variablen, die Marx mit der Konstruktion des Gesetzes des tendenziellen Falls der allgemeinen Profitrate vorgegeben hat, steigt oder fällt. (Vgl. Heinrich 2013) Im Falle einer fallenden Profitrate muss dann aber sui generis gelten, dass die Mehrwertrate prozentual langsamer ansteigt als die Wertzusammensetzung des Kapitals. Es müsste deshalb gezeigt werden, dass die Wertzusammensetzung des Kapitals schneller steigt als die Mehrwertrate, oder, was auf dasselbe hinausläuft, dass das Gesamtkapital schneller wächst als die absolute Mehrwertmasse. (Vgl. Stamatis 1977: 249f.) Die Elastizität der Mehrwertrate in Bezug auf die Wertzusammensetzung des Kapitals, die angibt, um wie viel % die Mehrwertrate steigt, wenn die Wertzusammensetzung um ein % zunimmt, muss eine bestimmte Größe annehmen, damit die Profitrate schließlich fällt, und dies ist exakt dann der Fall, wenn die prozentuale Zunahme der Mehrwertrate im Vergleich zur prozentualen Zunahme der Wertzusammensetzung niedriger ist als das Verhältnis des konstanten zum gesamten Kapital. (Ebd.: 143ff.) Marx glaubt nun zu wissen, dass tendenziell, d. h., über einen längeren historischen Zeitraum hinweg, die Mehrwertrate langsamer wächst als die Wertzusammensetzung des Kapitals, die Elastizität der Mehrwertrate also kleiner als ihr kritischer Wert ist. (Ebd.: 282f.) Man sieht hier, wenn man denn die formalen und mathematisch fundierten Begründungsversuche von Stamatis berücksichtigt, dass es hinsichtlich der Affirmation des Gesetzes des tendenziellen Falls der allgemeinen Profitrate längst nicht ausreicht zu konstatieren, dass das konstante Kapital im Verhältnis zum variablen Kapital steigt, sondern das konstante Kapital muss immer in einer bestimmten Dimension steigen (und zwar um so mehr, je größer die Produktivitätssteigerung ist). Und man sieht schließlich, dass man zwar die Bewegungsrichtung der einzelnen Größen angeben kann, die letztendlich die Profitrate bestimmen, aber es steht immer auch die relative Bewegungsgeschwindigkeit der Variablen zur Debatte. Und man könnte im Rahmen der mathematisch formulierten Bedingungen des Gesetzes sogar berechnen, um wie viel % das konstante Kapital steigen müsste, damit die Profitrate fällt; ob das konstante Kapital aber in den singulären historischen Verläufen der differenziellen Gesamtkapitalakkumulation um so und so viele %punkte wirklich steigt, ist anhand von empirischen Untersuchungen, die zudem noch auf statistischen Daten, Konstruktionen und Methoden beruhen, die auf den Begriffen der Volkswirtschaftslehre basieren, nicht so ohne Weiteres zu eruieren. (Vgl. Heinrich 2013a) Und es lässt sich nun resümieren, dass sich bei Marx zwar unter formallogischen Gesichtspunkten durchaus so etwas wie eine Konsistenz des Gesetzes vom tendenziellen Fall der allgemeinen Profitrate feststellen lässt, wie dies bspw. Stamatis mit mathematischer Präzisionsarbeit auch vorgeführt hat, was aber noch lange nichts über eine etwaige historische Gültigkeit des Gesetzes aussagt. Unter ganz bestimmten Bedingungen, die gegeben sein müssen, führt nach Marx die Produktivkraftsteigerung zu einer tendenziell fallenden Profitrate, was dann aber wiederum durch empirische Untersuchungen und Analysen bestätigt werden sollte, wobei auch die Hypothesen und Gründe für die empirische festgestellte Entwicklung zu benennen wären. Die rein funktionalistische Betrachtungsweise des Gesetzes, welche die Beschreibung und Hypothesen der Bedingungen fundiert, unter denen ein spezifischer funktionaler Zusammenhang zwischen Mehrwertrate und Wertzusammensetzung des Kapitals existiert, sollte deshalb immer um die Begründung der Bedingungen der empirischen Entwicklung der Profitraten durch die Binnengeschichte des Kapitals hindurch erweitert werden. Das Gesetz selbst behandelt weniger die Variation der Niveaus der Wirkungen und Gegenwirkungen auf die Profitrate, sondern die Hervorbringung der Wirkungen und Gegenwirkungen unter ganz bestimmten Bedingungen, die Marx von den Grenzen, in denen Variationen möglich sind, her aufzeigt, und diese Grenzen werden von der kapitalistischen Struktur als Gesamtkomplexion determiniert.
Die Sache wird noch komplizierter und komplexer, wenn man, wie dies Ernest Mandel in den 1970er Jahren in seinen Analysen zum Spätkapitalismus getan hat, die Profitrate als einen synthetischen Indikator begreift, bei dem neben den wichtigen Parametern Wertzusammensetzung des Kapitals und Mehrwertrate zusätzlich noch das Verhältnis zwischen fixem und zirkulierendem Kapital, die Umschlagszeit des Kapitals, die Akkumulationsrate sowie die Austauschrelationen der Produktionsmittel- und Konsumgüterabteilung als variable Faktoren zur Bestimmung der Profitrate mit in die Analyse einbezogen werden. (Vgl. Mandel 1972: 104ff.) Dabei bleibt sowohl die Entwicklung der Mehrwertrate als auch die der Kapitaleffizienz von der relativen Entwicklung der Löhne abhängig. Nicht nur als Maß der Rentabilität des Kapitals, sondern geradezu als einen synthetischen Indikator sollte man Mandel zufolge die Bewegung der Profitrate auch empirisch, in ihrer historischen Zyklizität untersuchen, um bspw. Überakkumulationstendenzen in der Binnengeschichte des Kapitals etwa aufgrund sinkender Kapitalrentabilität nachweisen zu können. Nach Mandel konnte Marx bei seiner Beschreibung des Gesetzes noch von einer reinen Bewegung des Ausgleichs der Durchschnittsprofitraten zwischen den Branchen (intersektoriell) und im nationalen Maßstab ausgehen, sowie von einer einheitlichen nationalen Gestaltung der Löhne in den einzelnen Branchen, was schließlich für die Bestimmung des Indikators Mehrwertrate ganz entscheidend war. Mit der Internationalisierung und Globalisierung der Kapitalakkumulation hätten sich jedoch, so Mandel, die Regulationsmöglichkeiten innerhalb der Nationalstaaten reduziert, womit sich die Parameter der Profitproduktion heute zunehmend entlang der globalisierten Konkurrenz der Kapitale und der Dynamik der Kapitalisierung/Finanzialisierung bewegen würden. (Ebd.: 42ff.) Es wären damit sowohl die Verschiedenheit der Kapitalumschlagzeiten der international agierenden Konzerne als auch die netzwerkförmigen Strukturen der Kapitale untereinander und nicht zuletzt die innerbetrieblichen Wertströme und die stofflichen Bedingungen dieser Konzerne selbst neu zu untersuchen.
Betrachten wir in diesem Zusammenhang ein letztes Problem, das durch den Versuch der Widerlegung des Marx'schen Gesetzes durch den japanischen Ökonomen Okishio an Schärfe gewonnen hat. (Vgl. Stamatis 1977: 160ff.) Hinsichtlich der Problematik der Verzeitlichung der Akkumulation können wir davon ausgehen, dass bei der Realisierung neuer Investitionen mit Produktionsmitteln und Löhnen produziert wird, die noch zu »alten« Preisen gekauft wurden, was zunächst impliziert, dass eine Veränderung der technischen Zusammensetzung nur zeitversetzt sich in einer höheren oder niedrigeren organischen Zusammensetzung des Kapitals niederschlägt, die wiederum die Entstehung neuer Preise für Produktionsoutputs (aufgrund höherer Produktivität) beeinflusst. Die Produktion von Gütern drängt deren Aktualisierung als Waren in der Zirkulation auf, ohne dass die verkauften Quantitäten im voraus gesetzt werden können, während umgekehrt die Zirkulation (qua ökonomischem Mathem) diese Waren in Abhängigkeit vom Volumen der Produkte aktualisieren muss. Gleichzeitig ist zu berücksichtigen, dass auch technologische Veränderungen in anderen Produktionsstätten und Produktionszweigen wirksam werden. Will das Einzelkapital nun sofort zu neuen Preisen wechseln, so würde dies dem Prozess der Aktualisierung des Werts vorgreifen, insofern die Produktion auf der Basis eines Sets von »alten« Preisen sowie die Generierung eines neuen Sets von Preisen zu beachten ist, mit denen die Unternehmen in der Zirkulation konfrontiert werden. Betrachten wir einen einzigen Wirtschaftssektor mit unterschiedlichen Produktivitätsniveaus: Zu einem gegebenen Zeitpunkt haben innovative Firmen in leistungsfähigere Maschinen als andere Unternehmen investiert, um zumindest temporär einen Extraprofit zu erzielen. Diese Unternehmen stehen sofort vor folgenden Problemen: Im Zuge der Etablierung dieser neuer Technologien lassen sich durch die sukzessive Entwertung der Waren ihre vorherigen Investitionen weniger rentabel verwerten. Zwar vermag der neu erzielte Extraprofit dieses Problem z. T. aufzuheben, allerdings verschärfen Investitionen in fixes Kapital, sprich Kapital, das über mehrere Produktionsperiode in der Produktionssphäre verweilt und seinen Wert nur in Intervallen an das Produkt weitergibt, dieses Problem. Dieser Stock an fixem Kapital wurde meistens zu fixierten Warenpreisen angeschafft, während sich dessen »Wert« über mehrere Produktionsperioden hinweg zu aktualisieren bzw. im Durchlauf mit u. U. neuen Warenpreisen zu realisieren hat, sodass die operativen Parameter der Kapitalverwertung auf den verschiedenen Zeitskalen, um eine aussagekräftige Relation bezüglich der Preisgrößen zu erhalten, die der empirischen Bestimmung der Profitrate (Strom- und Bestandsgrößen) dienen, auf ein gemeinsames Zeitintervall hin reduziert werden müssten. Wenn also ein Unternehmen eine neue Technologie für eine kommende Produktionsperiode einsetzt, wird Marx zufolge der Wert der eingesetzten Arbeit verringert. Wenn man aber der Interpretation von Okishio folgt, dann führt dieser Prozess aufgrund der mit der erhöhten Produktivität verbundenen Verbilligung der Maschinerie sowie u. U. der Verbilligung der Werts der Arbeitskraft zumindest für das technologisch dominante Einzelkapital zu keinem Druck auf die Profitrate, sondern vielmehr zu deren Anstieg. (Ebd.) Dies stellt sich wiederum für den amerikanischen Ökonomen Kliman vollkommen anders dar, denn seiner Ansicht ist es unmöglich, die Kosten für eine zukünftige Produktionsperiode, in der neue Technologien zum Einsatz kommen, zu reduzieren, da man ja die Maschinerie noch zu den »alten« Preisen bezahlt hat. Und insofern können neue Preise nur das Resultat einer zukünftigen Produktionsperiode sein, weil man sich die kapitalistischen Produktionsprozesse nicht in erster Linie hinsichtlich ihrer Simultaneität, sondern vor allem als sukzessiv aufeinanderfolgende Phasen vorstellen muss. Für Kliman liegt bei Marx der Schwerpunkt der Beschreibung der Preise und Profitraten eindeutig auf dem temporalen Aspekt, wobei die Preise der Inputs der Produktion je schon von den Outputpreisen differieren. Man könne nun mit der Mathematik alles Mögliche machen, folgert Kliman mit einem Seitenhieb auf die sog. Simultaneisten, aber wenn die angenommenen Voraussetzungen schon unrealistisch seien, gelänge man eben auch zu vollkommen unrealistischen Schlussfolgerungen. (Vgl. Kliman 2006) Allerdings führt, und dies darf man getrost gegen Kliman einwenden, der technologische Wandel (den Kliman ja auch annimmt) nicht zwangsläufig zu einem Fall der Profitrate, denn hinsichtlich der neuen Produktionsperioden schrumpfen, selbst wenn man fixierte Inputpreise voraussetzt, stets auch die Quantitäten der Inputs, die notwendig sind, um einen gleichbleibenden Output zu erzeugen – und dies wegen des immanenten Anstiegs der Produktivität kontinuierlich. Zudem wäre an dieser Stelle gerade auch die Frage aufzuwerfen, zu welchem Zinssatz ein Unternehmen sich Fremdkapital leihen kann, und dieser wäre wiederum in ein Verhältnis zu den Standards der Profitraten zu setzen, was die Verwertungsbedingungen eines Einzelkapitals natürlich drastisch verändertn kann. Und schließlich würden dessen Verwertungsbedingungen, insofern seine Outputs in diejenigen anderer Kapitale eingehen, den Gesamtverwertungsprozess der pluralen Kapitale im Rahmen der differenziellen Akkumulation wesentlich tangieren. Und nicht zuletzt hängt das quantitative Ergebnis der Berechnungen jeweils von der Wahl eines bestimmten Zeitintervalls ab (wegen des permanenten Kapitalumschlags kann man mit Hilfe von empirischen Methoden nur äußerst mühsam brauchbare Ergebnisse erzielen, berücksichtigt man etwa nicht vollständig abgeschriebene Investitionen: man sollte deshalb mit einem prospektiven Ansatz arbeiten), wobei sich als brauchbares Zeitintervall zumindest unter der Perspektive des Einzelkapital die Zusammenfassung solcher Intervalle anbietet, deren Anfang und Ende mit möglichst vielen Umschlagsperioden von anderen Kapitalen zusammenfallen. Dabei bleibt die Existenz solcher zeitlichen Intervalle nicht nur für die theoretische Analyse relevant, sondern stellt sich über den Zwang der Unternehmen zur Aufstellung von Monats- und Jahresrechnungen über den Takt der vernetzten Produktion sowie über deren Synchronisationseffekte in der Tendenz auch praktisch her. Allerdings lassen sich die operativen Parameter auf den verschiedenen Zeitskalen letzten Endes schwerlich auf ein einziges Zeitintervall zusammenfassen oder reduzieren, um annäherungsweise eine aussagekräftige Relation bezüglich jener Größen, die der empirischen Berechnung der Profitrate (Strom- und Bestandsgrößen) dienen, vornehmen zu können.
Gegen die These, dass eine Verbilligung des konstanten Kapitals zur Senkung der allgemeinen Profitrate führen könne, wird von einer Reihe von marxistischen Autoren folgende Argumentation vorgebracht: Zunächst hängt der Anstieg des stofflichen Umfangs von konstantem Kapital rein logisch mit der Verbilligung des konstanten Kapitals zusammen. Ein Grund besteht in der Einsparung von Arbeitskräften in Abteilung I, der Abteilung der Produktion, die konstantes Kapital herstellt, d. h., der entsprechende Anteil dieser Arbeitskräfte sinkt mit der Entwicklung der Produktivität kontinuierlich. Ähnlich wie bei der relativen Mehrwertproduktion wächst dabei die Ersparnis von variablem Kapital nicht proportional zur Produktivität, sondern lediglich um den Schritt für Schritt immer weiter sinkenden Anteil an lebendiger Arbeit, der sich in Abteilung I einsparen lässt. Ein Sinken der Anzahl der benötigten Arbeitskräfte in Abteilung I führt natürlich auch zu einem Rückgang der Produktion in der Konsumtionsmittel produzierenden Abteilung II. Während zugleich die Gegentendenzen zum Fall der Profitrate immer weiter abgeschwächt werden, bleibt die Erhöhung der Wertzusammensetzung (c/v), die zum Fall der Profitrate führt, von der absoluten Verringerung der Arbeitskräfte in Abteilung I unangetastet, insofern es sich bei der Wertzusammensetzung nicht um eine absolute Größe, sondern um eine Relation handelt, die gerade durch das tendenzielle Schrumpfen des variablen Kapitals zugunsten des konstanten Kapitalanteils ansteigt. Die Verbilligung von (c) kann also letztendlich das Sinken von (v) nicht überkompensieren, zumindest ist dies so in Bezug auf die Profitmasse zu sehen, womit schließlich auch der tendenzielle Fall der allgemeinen Profitrate durch die Tendenz zur Verbilligung des konstanten Kapitals nicht aufgehalten werden kann. Voraussetzung dieser Argumentation bleibt natürlich, dass man die Profitrate als ein Relation absoluter Größen (Profitmasse in Relation zur Summe vorgeschossenen Kapitals) und nicht als Relation von Relationen anschreibt, was gewiss einer Hypostatisierung gleichkommt, mit der man die Differenzialität der Akkumulation und die entsprechenden differenziellen Profit- und Zinsraten überhaupt nicht in den Blick bekommt. Zusätzlich werden bei dieser Argumentation die von Stamatis ins Spiel gebrachten neuen Produktionsmethoden nicht berücksichtigt, bei denen es mit jeder Produktivitätssteigerung gerade nicht zu einer noch höheren Steigerung der technischen Zusammensetzung des Kapitals kommt, die mit einem Ansteigen der Sparquote der Kapitalisten einhergeht (Zunahme der Produktionsmittel am Mehrwert), im Gegenteil die Wachstumsrate der Produktivität wird jetzt tatsächlich stärker als die prozentuale Erhöhung der technischen Kapitalzusammensetzung ansteigen, wobei die Zusammensetzung der eingesetzten Arbeit konstant bleibt oder fällt. Es ist nun möglich, dass selbst bei konstanter oder fallender Wertzusammensetzung des Kapitals die Produktivität steigt, und dies nicht in erster Linie als Produktivität der Arbeit, sondern dies ist eher dem Grad der Effizienz in der Anwendung des konstanten Kapitals geschuldet, die man als Kapitalproduktivität bezeichnet. Wir kommen auf diese Problematik zu Beginn des letzten Abschnitts in diesem Buch noch einmal genauer zurück.
Im Kontext permanenter technologischer Umbrüche wäre nun zu fragen, wie und in welchen zeitlichen Horizonten eine durchschnittliche und allgemeine Profitrate nach einer durch technologischen Fortschritt hervorgerufenen »Störung« qua Einzelkapitale überhaupt statt haben kann. Und dies bedeutet wiederum, dass man die Dynamik kapitalistischer Produktion auf der Ebene der Gesamtkomplexion als nicht-lineares Nicht-Gleichgewichts-Problem zu erfassen hat, womit die Aussagekraft von ceteris paribus Ansätzen, wie sie Marx mit dem Gesetz des tendenziellen Falls der allgemeinen Profitrate tatsächlich vornimmt, recht zweifelhaft wird. Im Gegenteil, es ist davon auszugehen, dass man wesentlich differenziertere Ansätze und Methoden der mathematisch orientierten Ökonomietheorien zu berücksichtigen hat, die ihre Problematiken etwa analog dem Ehrenfest-Theorem in der Physik bestimmen, das besagt, dass nur unter ganz spezifischen Bedingungen die klassischen Bewegungsgleichungen der Mechanik, die stets Gleichgewicht inkludieren, für Mittelwerte in der Quantenmechanik gelten. Daran könnte man nun anschließen und schließlich behaupten, dass auch im Falle der Ökonomie ungleichgewichtige Systeme nicht unbedingt zu wachsender Unordnung und fehlender Stabilität führen müssen, selbst wenn sie auf lange Dauer Entropie produzieren, die man aber u. U. in stark gegliederte und stratifizierte lokale Umwelten und Milieus verlegen kann, um sie derart zu kontrollieren und zu steuern. Wenn man Entropie als eine thermodynamische Quantität begreift, dann sind Schemata und Inhalt nicht entkoppelt zu behandeln, womit jetzt ein System erst ein System ist, weil es arbeitet und nicht weil es etwas erobert. Entropie als ein Maß für Unordnung besitzt seine maximale Unordnung im Zustand thermodynamischen Gleichgewichts, und zwar als ein Stadium der puren Potenzialität ohne Regelmäßigkeit, und dies bedeutet schließlich den Tod des Systems. Es wäre dann als ein statisches System anzusehen, das keinerlei Energie von der einen Form in eine andere mehr übersetzt. Wenn wir uns nun einem nicht-thermodynamischen Denken der Entropie zuwenden, dann haben wir es immer auch mit monströsen Quantitäten (Negentropie) zu tun, die diskret und unendlich zugleich sind. Das ökonomische Mathem und darüber hinaus die Algebra von Konzepten verweist auf diese Art der Quantifizierung, und dies sollte man mit Deleuze durchaus als ein wichtige Möglichkeit des Denkens verstehen. Seit der Entstehung der symbolischen Algebra im 19. Jahrhundert haben wir es mit Zahlenkörpern zu tun, die eine Fall-zu-Fall-Rationalität beinhalten; wir gehen von lokalen oder disparaten Universen aus, in denen Differenzen als unterschiedlich different insistieren. Mehr noch, es wäre zu fragen, ob letzten Endes nicht sämtliche ökonomischen Prozesse inhärent instabil sind und sobald sie in der Tendenz einem (ideellen oder hypothetischen) Gleichgewicht zustreben sich schon wieder diskret verschieben, womit auch die historisch-singuläre, die außerordentliche und zähe Überlebenskraft der kapitalistischen Ökonomie davon abhängig ist, dass sozusagen schon der nächste Stein in den Teich geworfen wird (Extraprofit qua Innovation), noch bevor sich die Wellen der diversen Profitratenverläufe inklusive der Durchschnittsbildungen durch alle Sektoren der Produktion hindurch prozessiert haben. Damit wäre die strukturelle Dynamik der kapitalistischen Produktion mit ihrer engen Verzahnung von technologischer, symbolischer und diskursiver Veränderung tatsächlich als die von nicht-linearen, dynamischen, heterogenen Systemen zu beschreiben, die vor allem Zukunft bearbeiten, indem sie sie beleihen oder vorwegnehmen. Allergings handelt sich nicht um vollkommen indeterministische Systeme, weil diese Systeme zumindest auf der mikroskopischen Ebene der Organisationen hochgradig organisiert sind und auf der makroökonomischer Ebene Durchschnittsbildungen von Profitraten durchlaufen, die jedoch von krisenhaften Akkumulationsbrüchen überhaupt nicht zu trennen sind. Wir nehmen hier von von vornherein die Möglichkeit einer determinierten Chaos an. (Vgl. Deleuze 1992a: 96f.) Egal ob diese Art Chaos des Kapitalismus als permanent »reaktualisierendes Netzwerk« oder als »reine Kontingenz« (Ayache) sich präzisieren lässt, feststeht jedenfalls, das wir es mit nicht-linearen Strukturierungen und Restrukturierungen des Kapitals (als Gesamtkomplexion) zu tun haben, die sich real in unendlich vielen Frequenzen der Überlagerung von Produktionen und Zirkulationen vollziehen, wobei kohärente Bahnungen erstellt und wieder aufgelöst werden, um neue Bahnungen hinzuzufügen, ganz im Sinne von Deleuzes maschinellen Prozessen, der konnektiven und disjunktiven Synthesen, denen schließlich eine ganz spezifische Todesimmanenz zu eigen ist.
Und es lässt sich an dieser Stelle wieder an das Präfix »nicht« der Nicht-Ökonomie anschließen, insofern dieses keine Negation, sondern eher eine Alienation ausdrückt – das »nicht« wäre mit Laruelle im Zuge seiner Hinwendung zu einer nicht-euklidischen Geometrie zu verstehen. (Vgl. Laruelle 2003) Infolgedessen betreibt Laruelle die Generalisierung der Philosophie in der gleichen Weise wie die nicht-euklidische Geometrie das euklidische Modell generalisiert hat. Indem Laruelle von einer möglichen pluralen Daseinsweise der Philosophie als solcher ausgeht, depotenzialisiert er die Philosophie und behandelt sie wie ein weiteres pures Material. Ganz analog dazu wären die traditionellen Axiome der Wirtschaftswissenschaften und z. T. auch der marxistischen Ökonomiekritik zu hinterfragen, damit man zumindest hinsichtlich des Marxismus nicht nur zur »kritischen« Beschreibung der Realität des Kapitalismus gelangt, sondern endlich auch zu neuen theoretischen Entwürfen der Organisation einer postkapitalistischen Ökonomie. Erfolgt die Veränderung der Axiome von der euklidischen zur nicht-euklidischen Geometrie einerseits immanent, so wird andererseits hier doch etwas entscheidend verschoben, insofern die nicht-euklidische Geometrie das klassische Axiom der Geometrie (Parallelen können sich ad infinitum nicht treffen) ablehnt. Analog sind mit neu zu konstruierenden Problemstellungen, Begriffen und Axiomen im Rahmen einer Nicht-Ökonomie die Axiome des ökonomischen Gleichgewichtsdenkens außer Kraft zu setzen. Und natürlich setzt man neu erfundene Hypothesen als wahr voraus, obwohl sie zunächst den Status des »Als-ob« oder des minimum-transzendentalen Materials besitzen, denn ihre Richtigkeit hängt neben ihrem empirischen Gehalt, den sie auch zu beweisen haben, schließlich von der immanenten Stärke und Durchschlagskraft der neuen Begriffe, Konstellationen und Theoreme selbst ab, die man ausgehend von Problematiken und Hypothesen zu entwickeln und eben nicht zu deduzieren hat. So schreibt Laruelle: »As a result, it is philosophy and its logical organon that lose their prerogatives by being turned into a simply real-transcendental organon. Thus, it is necessary to take the expression ›non-philosophy‹ quite literally, so to speak. It is not just a metaphorical reference to ›non-Euclidean‹.« (Laruelle 2013b) Erst in einem solchen Kontext ließe sich dann auch die Frage nach der Gültigkeit des Gesetzes der tendenziell fallenden Profitrate überhaupt neu und adäquat stellen.
- Wicksell unterscheidet in seiner Theorie zwischen dem Marktzins und dem natürlichen Zins. Letzterer definiert den Ertragssatz auf das Realkapital, während Wicksell unter dem Marktzins den aktuellen Zins auf dem Kapitalmarkt versteht. Nun beschreibt der Wicksell-Effekt Folgendes: Wird durch eine entsprechende Geldpolitik der Zentralbank (z. B. die Erhöhung der Geldmenge M3) das Kreditvolumen gesteigert und in Folge dessen der Marktzins gesenkt, so erhöht sich die Nachfrage nach Kredit, womit die Investitionstätigkeit der Unternehmen ansteigt und der natürliche Zins vorerst noch gleich bleibt, aber sich langsam doch nach oben entwickelt, denn die Investoren werden aus den gegebenen Investitionsalternativen stets diejenigen auswählen, die den höchsten Ertrag erbringen. Mit der wachsenden Investitionstätigkeit werden allerdings auch zunehmend Investitionen getätigt, die einen vergleichsweise geringen Ertragssatz aufweisen, womit es in der Tendenz wieder zu einem Absinken des natürlichen Zinses kommt. Die Investoren investieren schließlich nur solange, bis der natürliche Zins wieder das Niveau des Marktzinses erreicht hat (= Wicksell-Effekt). Und sobald der Marktzins den natürlichen Zins übersteigt, verlieren die Investitionen für die Investoren ihren Reiz.
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– (2013a): Begründungsprobleme. Zur Debatte über das »Gesetz vom tendenziellen Fall der Profitrate«. Probleme des Beweisens und Widerlegens. In: http://www.oekonomiekritik.de/313Tend%20Fall.pdf
– (2013b): Wie das Marxsche »Kapital« lesen? Lesenanleitung und Kommentar zum Anfang des »Kapital« Teil 2. Stuttgart.
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Crisis and austerity. Is there a chance for the welfare state? (1)
1. Facets of Euro-Crisis, Austerity Policies and Global Imbalances
After the outbreak of the 2008 global economic crisis, the European project has entered its second, less optimistic phase. Cross-country differentials in growth and inflation, persistent current account (or financial account) imbalances, real effective rate appreciation (mostly for countries with current account deficits), a sharp rise in the sovereign debt overhang of several European countries, culminating in a European debt crisis and the setting up of a leveraged and highly integrated banking system were the most striking developments. Political authorities in the European Union (EU) and the Euro-area (EA) put forward austerity policies to tame the crisis processes in the EA and the EU.
Austerity is considered to be a vehicle suitable to promote competitiveness through “internal devaluation” of wages, which shall reflect in reduction of prices of tradable goods, and thus in a positive current account balance and a process of export oriented growth. According to the European Economic Forecast, of Winter 2015, 2 the current account balance of both the EU and the EA has been improved for all countries during recent years and it is expected to reach 3.0% of the GDP of the EA in 2016, with Germany keeping the lead with a current account surplus of 8% of the GDP.
This apparently positive outcome coincides, though, with a negative performance as regards other crucial indexes of economic and social development:
Unemployment has risen since the 2008 financial meltdown in the EU and the EA more than in other regions of the developed capitalist world, still remaining above 11% (as compared to 5.0% in the USA and 3.3% in Japan), despite some mild improvement since 2013.
GDP growth rates remain below 0.5% (as compared to 3.5% in the USA and 1.3% in Japan).
The inflation rate (Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices) reached negative values this year, trapping investment and growth.
Last but not least, the sovereign debt overhang in the EA cannot be contained by the methods implicit in the austerity strategy, i.e. increasing primary surpluses and privatizations. The debt ratio of the EA increases in recent years, and this is especially the case for the higher indebted EA countries like Greece, Italy, Portugal, Cyprus, Belgium, Spain and France.3
Austerity has been criticized as an irrational policy, which further deteriorates the economic crisis by creating a vicious cycle of falling effective demand, recession and over-indebtedness. Moreover, European austerity policies have been accused of dragging the global economy into recession and a liquidity trap, 4 by exacerbating global imbalances.
Given that since the 2008 financial meltdown, the U.S. current account deficit was reduced by more than 50%, Japan’s current account surplus almost disappeared, while China’s current account surplus was considerably reduced, 5 austerity led European current account surpluses are seen as the main mechanism creating global imbalances.
As a cure to the vicious cycle of austerity-recession-indebtedness-global imbalances, many prominent economists propose a shift in European economic policies, through abandoning austerity, increasing public spending and curtailing German and European current account deficits. A raise in wages in Germany (and Europe) should be the starting point of this policy shift. As former Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (Fed), Ben Bernanke, put it:
“German workers deserve a substantial raise, and the cooperation of the government, employers, and unions could give them one. Higher German wages would both speed the adjustment of relative production costs and increase domestic income and consumption. Both would tend to reduce the trade surplus”.6
However, these criticisms can hardly explain why austerity and fiscal consolidation, this allegedly ‘irrational’ or ‘wrong’ policy, persists despite its ‘failures’. In the next section of this paper, I will try to formulate a first answer to this discrepancy.
2. The causal interdependence between economic crisis and austerity
Austerity is neither a “false” nor a “correct” policy.7 In reality it is a policy promoting the (economic, social, political) interests of certain social groups, as opposed to others, especially after he outbreak of the global financial crisis.
Economic crises express themselves not only in a lack of effective demand, but above all in a reduction of profitability of the entrepreneur (capitalist) class. Austerity constitutes a strategy for raising again capital’s profit rate.
Austerity constitutes the cornerstone of neoliberal policies. On the surface, it works as a strategy of reducing entrepreneurial cost. Austerity reduces labour costs of the private sector, increases profit per (labour) unit cost and thereon boosts the profit rate.8 It is complemented by “economy in the use of material capital” (alas, another demand curtailing strategy!) and by institutional changes that on the one hand enhance capital mobility and competition and on the other strengthen the power of managers in the enterprise and share- and bondholders in society. As regards fiscal consolidation, austerity gives priority to budget cuts over public revenue, reducing taxes on capital and high incomes, and downsizing the welfare state.
However, what is cost for the capitalist class is the living standard of the working majority of society. This applies also to the welfare state, whose services can be perceived as a form of “social wage”.
It is clear therefore that austerity is primarily a class policy: It constantly promotes the interests of capital against those of the workers, professionals, pensioners, unemployed and economically vulnerable groups. On the long run it aims at creating a model of labour with fewer rights and less social protection, with low and flexible wages and the absence of any substantial bargaining power for wage earners.
Austerity does lead, of course, to recession; however, recession puts pressure to every individual entrepreneur, both capitalists or middle bourgeoisie, to reduce all forms of costs, i.e. to try to consolidate her/his profit margins through wage cuts, intensification of the labour process, infringement of labour regulations and workers’ rights, massive redundancies, etc. From the perspective of big capitals’ interests, recession gives thus birth to a “process of creative destruction”: Redistribution of income and power to the benefit of capital, concentration of wealth in fewer hands (as small and medium enterprises, especially in retail trade, are being “cleared up” by big enterprises and shopping malls).
This strategy has its own rationality which is not completely obvious at a first glance. It perceives the crisis as an opportunity for a historic shift in the correlations of forces to the benefit of the capitalist power, subjecting European societies to the conditions of the unfettered functioning of financial markets, attempting to place all consequences of the systemic capitalist crisis on the shoulders of the working people.
From the above analysis becomes clear that stopping austerity, raising wages, developing the welfare state etc. cannot be a simple issue of “the cooperation of the government, employers and the unions” (as Bernanke suggests), but an outcome of a radical shift in the social and political relation of forces, i.e. an outcome of labour struggle.
3. Current Account Balance plus Capital Balance:
Reflective vs. Structural causality
The agenda of recession-led reforms across Europe is based on a (necessarily) wrong theoretical explanation of European crisis. It focuses on the Current Account Balance and regards the Capital Account Balance as a mere reflection of the Current Account.
The post-crisis official narrative gradually targeted the economies in deficit as solely responsible for the imbalances because of private sector dis-saving, public sector dis-saving, or both. This is a moralistic kind of reasoning, suggesting that these economies are “profligate”, “reckless”, and “incontinent” living “beyond their means”. This argument is the result of a particular reading of the causality determining the current account balance, while practically ignoring the role of the capital balance. Let us say it favours a reflective causality.
Negative current account is seen as the result of aggregate consumption (living standards) that exceeds the productive capacities of the economy. In this line of thought, a current account deficit can hold because over-borrowing from abroad either boosts domestic demand at levels that overtake productive capacity or, alternatively, masks the structural gaps in competiveness and productivity. “Cheap” finance or risk mispricing is the necessary closure of the argument.
Therefore the suggested cure for the rebalancing of negative current account positions is domestic deflationary policies in the deficit countries (asymmetric responses in the context of the EA). This in turn implies the curbing of wages and public spending (public benefits) and the privatization of public goods. Imbalances are “bad” on the part of deficit countries and therefore attacking interests of labour must be the proper economic response. The resulting policy mix should reflect the neo-liberal agenda. Recession is seen as the proper way to bring profligate countries back to the path of economic virtue. We clearly deal here with a recession-led political agenda. The logic is summarized by Figure 1.
Figure 1. The “mainstream” approach to European Crisis
It is a political project that gradually reshapes EA economic and social institutions to the benefit of capital: it totally reorganizes the conditions of reproduction of labour power. In doing so it creates different monetary tiers within the EA. It thereby undermines what it claims to be its basic target: the unity and singularity of the common currency.
The above post-crisis official argument fails to capture the dynamics of contemporary global economy. This is because it treats the financial (capital) side of the balance of payments as a passive reflection of either the current account balance or of the autonomous investment decisions of private and public agents. This is a line of reasoning that neglects the real workings of modern finance, e.g. the high portfolio capital import in fast growing EA countries (Ireland, Greece, Spain etc.) before 2008, due to (the expectation of) high rates of return in exactly those countries.
However, first, the financial account has its own autonomy and does not simply fill the gaps of the current account trends. Second, the financial account imbalances create their own dynamics both in surplus and deficit countries.
Besides, it takes two to tango: for reckless borrowing, a reckless lending is required; therefore, reckless finance. However, finance cannot be reckless for such a long period (covering the first phase of Euro). Finance may aggravate existing contradictions making contemporary economies vulnerable. But finance is also a particular technology of power that provides a setting for the organization of capitalism.
Capital imports in the “Euro-periphery” to a large extent referred to autonomous capital investment (portfolio investment, mainly).Investment capitals in the more developed countries of the “European-core” sought higher profitability in the financial system of the countries of the “European periphery”, which before 2008 was growing with considerably higher rates. In this way they reinforced the already significant rates of growth of the GDP in the latter.9 The flow of capitals to the “European periphery” on the one hand offset the cost of participation in the single market while at the same time restrained the improvement of competitiveness (as higher inflation boosted the price of domestically produced commodities). This, in general terms, was the situation that emerged as social formations that coexisted under the same monetary policy (i.e. essentially the same nominal interest rates) were on different real growth trajectories.
In the case of the EA, the market-based rebalancing after 2008 took the form of a typical balance of payments crisis (because of a sudden stop in financing). Thus, the financial side of the story should not be underestimated, especially in an historical era of significant cross-border financial flows. It also gives another dimension to the discussion: Current account imbalances set a vulnerable symbiosis between economies in surplus and deficit. It is a problem whose roots and consequences concern the pattern of economic symbiosis in the EA, along with the institutions that hold this symbiosis together.10
Causality in this context is a structural one: it is defined by the dynamics of economic development. This means that there are no straightforward causality relations between the two factors of the balance of payments, the current account balance and the financial (capital) balance.
4. The dangerous trade off:
More discipline in exchange for more instability
A single currency area is not identical with a zone of fixed exchange rates. One usual mistake in the relevant discussions is the following: Many scholars seem to think that EA states just peg their national currencies to the euro as if the latter was a mere foreign currency. This assumption usually leads to the most grotesque explanations. Nevertheless, the euro is the national currency of each and every member state of the EA. But it is more than that: It is a national currency of a peculiar kind. It is a currency without traditional central banking. And this is a major change.
In the usual nation state setting, a single national fiscal authority stands behind a single national central bank. As we know, this is not the case with the EA: there is no solid and uniform fiscal authority behind the European Central Bank (ECB). Member states issue debt in a currency that they do not control in terms of central banking.11 In this context, governments will not always have the necessary liquidity to pay off bondholders. Financial stability can be thus safeguarded only through fiscal discipline, i.e. through preserving the neoliberal policy agenda.
This should not be taken as a real sacrifice on the part of sovereign states, i.e. the ruling economic elites. On the contrary, it is considered as a welcome condition for the organization of neoliberal strategies, because the disintegration of the welfare aspect of the state can be presented by the political elites as the only route to financial stability. Nevertheless, this institutional arrangement comes with a serious cost. The economies of the EA have voluntarily subjected themselves to elevated default risk:
When a EA government with a large amount of sovereign debt faces a change in the “mood” of the markets – that is, a re-pricing of risks associated with its assets and liabilities, possibly expressed as a sudden freezing of the inflow of capital (a liquidity crisis, let’s say) – it will experience an explosion of debt servicing costs and the derailment of its budget balance. This is bad news for debt sustainability (and financial stability). The government must immediately tighten fiscal policy in the midst of a recession (an economic recession is likely to be the result of such risk revaluation since the terms of state borrowing reflect the terms of private borrowing), communicating to the markets its ability and willingness to continue servicing its foreign debt. The government has to convince the markets that it can secure a social consensus to the neoliberal corset; or, in other words, policy makers must ensure that they can impose fiscal prudence in the way markets dictate it, according to the mainstream line of reasoning (securing the interests of capital). Such policies, in the midst of a recession, are not unlikely to lead to a severe crisis.
By adopting the euro as their new common currency, participating countries (i.e. their ruling classes) have made a “dangerous” choice. They have voluntarily curtailed their capacity to deploy meaningful welfare policies, subjecting themselves at the same time to a high degree of sovereign default risk. This has turned out to be a risky trade-off. A moderate exodus from the sovereign debt market (i.e. a moderate risk re-pricing) now distorts the liquidity conditions in the economy and leaves the state with only one path: fiscal tightening, high interest rates, recession, debt un-sustainability, crisis, and default. Economies that face liquidity problems in their sovereign debt markets may not go all the way down this path (given the policy responses at a European level) but, in any case, recessionary policies are the only route suggested by the existing shape of the EA. If sovereign states are massively caught by the unfortunate spin of this vortex, crisis is just the other way to implement the neoliberal strategies, more unorthodoxly and violently this time. European states (in other words European ruling elites) have voluntarily placed themselves in a predicament where markets can actually force them into default but this is an issue within the European policy setting.
Concluding this part of my analysis, I may say that the struggle of labour for higher wages and the rebuild of the welfare state must be supplemented by a (political) struggle to change the workings of European institutions and especially the role of the ECB.
5. The ECB as Vehicle of a Progressive Alternative
As mentioned above, austerity policies are not only unable but they actually do not mainly aim at resolving recession, high unemployment or the sovereign debt overhang in the EA. Austerity strategies use debt as means to reinforce neo-liberal reforms throughout Europe.
Technically, there are three alternative ways to deal with the problem of debt: (i) persistent primary surpluses, which cannot be achieved in an environment of falling incomes, recession and contracting demand caused by austerity programs; (ii) nominal growth rates well higher than implicit interest rates, which again cannot be the case in the present environment; (iii) unconventional policies and debt restructuring. Growth prospects are weak and fragile, in particular under the current predicament in the EA. Hence, a serious solution to the debt problem should necessarily come from debt restructuring and unconventional policies.
The case of Greece is a very good example to illustrate why a trivial debt hair-cut may be an inappropriate solution for debt sustainability, especially when it takes place in a deflationary environment and does not protect pension funds and individual depositors. Furthermore, as bank balance sheets contain a significant portion of existing public debts, traditional debt write-offs will leave the economies with vulnerable financial sectors. In the worst scenario, debt write-offs will trigger a new financial crisis. Governments will need to seek resources for bank recapitalization. This would easily cancel any relief offered by the write-offs, paving the way for funkkkk1damentalist neo-liberal policies that would seek outside “help” and “supervision”, that is, would condition this outside “help” to a new austerity agenda.
A progressive European political agenda should pursue the strategy of sovereign debt restructuring in the context of a comprehensive political shift, which can create room for alternative anti-austerity policies at the European level. This political strategy should focus on the status of the ECB. There are two basic reasons for proceeding in this manner. First, the ECB is the only institution that can easily implement interventions on a massive scale in the sovereign debt market. Second, the ECB substantively faces no solvency constraint and cannot go bankrupt; it enjoys unique credibility, which hinges partially upon its ability for self-recapitalization (i.e. writing checks to itself). However, a radical change in the policy orientation of the ECB has to take place. For this to happen, a new relation of political forces in Europe is necessary.
In the wake of the crisis, monetary policies in most of the advanced capitalist economies are widely seen as “unconventional.” The ECB, like other central banks in the wake of the crisis, has been engaged in “unconventional” monetary policies, adopting the much wider range of instruments made feasible by its balance sheet. Nevertheless, unconventional monetary policies can be effective only when executed by conventional central banks. This describes the trap that the ECB has fallen into. The ECB is called on to take unconventional action while lacking the institutional standard tools of conventional central banking.
The ECB has expanded its balance sheet by taking on long-term refinancing operations. Practically, these are liquidity injections into the financial sector equivalent to the quantitative easing pursued by the Fed and the Bank of England.
This type of liquidity injection to the financial sector has been primarily absorbed by the banking systems. However, liquidity seeks for safe havens, eventually flowing to the core economies as is obvious from the deposit drains and the cumulative TARGET2 imbalances. Large portions of this liquidity thus return as overnight deposits to the ECB. Bank loans are contracting in the economies under recession while domestic banking sectors are increasing their exposure to sovereign debt that cannot be purchased by the ECB. It is quite obvious that the bond purchase program of the ECB and the liquidity provision (co-opting banks into securing funds for fiscal distressed governments) is not enough to deal with the problem. The different financial tiers that emerge within the EA undermine the results of the ECB monetary interventions.
ECB monetary policy is thus not expansionary enough, not unconventional enough and is implemented in a heterogeneous context that undermines its effectiveness, having significant effects on demand, growth, and employment. This framework is only suitable for the continuation of austerity policies that reorganize European societies according to the neo-liberal agenda and the interests of capital.
While the aim of this paper is not to go through the details of an alternative progressive plan as regards the ECB, the basic principles of a past co-authored analysis on dealing with the EA debt overhang can be outlined here:12
Our proposal can be summarized by the phrase: suspend the debt burden for five years, overthrow austerity forever. At a technical level, it can take many alternative versions but it is based on the economic firepower of the ECB to curtail the workings of financial markets, thus securing a vital fiscal space for the development of alternative welfare policies.
The ECB undertakes the long-term management of a significant part of the EA sovereign debt, without direct fiscal transfers and without any actual upfront haircut.
The ECB acquires and capitalizes in the form of zero-coupon bonds (i) debt maturing in the years 2016–2020 and (ii) all interest payments of the same period. In other words, the debt burden will be suspended for five years. This amounts about to 55% of the outstanding Spanish debt. To be taken as the rule for all EA countries. Each EA country agrees to buy back from the ECB the zero-coupon bonds when their values will have been reduced to 20% of GDP, jointly accepting a (nominal) discounting rate οf 1%. (In case of a restructuring of the Greek sovereign debt, the issuing of an ESM-backed Greek Government Bond will be necessary).
This model of an unconventional monetary intervention would give progressive governments in the EA the necessary basis for developing social and welfare policies to the benefit of the working classes. It would reverse present-day policy priorities and replace the neoliberal agenda with a program of social and economic reconstruction, with the elites paying for the crisis. The perspective taken here favours social justice and coherence, having as its priority the social needs and the interests of the working majority.
Our proposal hangs austerity forever at an overall cost which is much lower than the private sector quantitative easing already undertaken by the ECB. It thus offers a powerful economic argument to progressive political forces: We will not sacrifice the welfare state to debt. The European social model must be re-founded!
Table 1: Debt to GDP ratio for EU and EA countries (2003-2014).
1 Paper presented at the 8th Annual Conference of the Cluster of Excellence “The Formation of Normative Orders ”, Goethe Universität, Frankfurt am Main, Nov. 19-20, 2015.
2 http://ec.europa.eu/danmark/documents/alle_emner/finanser/wf15ee1_en.pdf
3 Eurostat Statistics Explained. Structure of Government Debt, http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Structure_of_government_debt&stable=0&redirect=no See also Table 1, below.
4 “Right now, German 5-year bonds offer a yield of zero – an implicit firm forecast that Europe will be in a liquidity trap for the foreseeable future […] investors see so little in the way of profitable investment opportunities that they’re willing to pay the German government to protect their wealth, and they expect something like 0.3 percent inflation over the next five years, which is catastrophically below target”, Paul Κrugman: “Europe’s Trap”, The New York Times, January 5, 2015.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/05/europes-trap/?_r=0
5 Ricardo J. Caballero, Emmanuel Farhi and Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas: “Global Imbalances and Currency Wars at the ZLB”, Draft Paper, October 22, 2015. http://economics.mit.edu/files/10839
6 Ben Bernanke, “Germany’s trade surplus is a problem”, April 3, 2015, Brookings Institution, http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/ben-bernanke/posts/2015/04/03-germany-trade-surplus-problem
Many economists share exactly the same view. E.g.: “The eurozone needs to address its internal and external imbalances more seriously. This can’t be achieved by fiscal consolidation, structural reforms and devaluations. It has to involve not only fiscal expansion in countries that can afford it most, but also a sustained rise in wages across the euro area to boost domestic demand”, Shahin Vallée: “How the Eurozone Exports Deflation. Fiscal devaluation without wage growth will trigger bad side effects both at home and abroad”, The Wall Street Journal, November 5, 2015.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-the-eurozone-exports-deflation-1446757311
7 For a critique of these approaches see D. P. Sotiropoulos, J. Milios, S. Lapatsioras, “Addressing the Rationality of ‘Irrational’ European Responses to the Crisis. A Political Economy of the Euro Area and the Need for a Progressive Alternative”, in A. Bitzenis, N. Karagiannis, J. Marangos (eds.) Europe in Crisis, Palgrave/McMillan 2015: 67-76.
8 It sounds, therefore, absurd to the capitalist class, to urge it to give away money to their workers and employees, so that they may then buy more of their products.
9 During the period 1995–2000 Greece experienced a real increase of GDP amounting to 61.0 per cent, Spain 56.0 per cent and Ireland 124.1 per cent, quite contrary to what happened to the more developed European economies. The GDP growth over the same time period was 19.5 per cent for Germany, 17.8 per cent for Italy and 30.8 per cent for France.
10 For a more elaborated discussion of the same argument see D. P. Sotiropoulos, J. Milios, and S. Lapatsioras (2013), A Political Economy of Contemporary Capitalism and Its Crisis: Demystifying Finance, London and New York: Routledge.
11 Under the Emergency Liquidity Assistance (ELA) – integral part of the European System of Central Banks – national central banks can in exceptional circumstances provide liquidity (against collateral) to distressed credit institutions under terms which are not publicly disclosed. During the recent crisis this liquidity channel was put in motion with the cases of Greece and Ireland as the most indicative examples.
12 D. P. Sotiropoulos, J. Milios, and S. Lapatsioras (2014), “An Outline of a Progressive Resolution to the Euro-area Sovereign Debt Overhang: How a Five-year Suspension of the Debt Burden Could Overthrow Austerity”, Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, Working Paper No 819. http://users.ntua.gr/jmilios/wp_819.pdf
taken from here