Thoughts on production, alienation, and ideology
Source: Jacobin (https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/11/introducing-the-abcs-of-capitalism)
So, one day, I set out to buy Jacobin’s little book, The ABCs of Socialism. Somewhere along the way, I screwed up and ordered The ABCs of Capitalism instead. That’s OK. No harm done. I read The ABCs of Capitalism, and here are my thoughts on it.
Lots of people now think about class in terms of identity. But this is a peculiarly modern idea. We find it in terms like ‘Nascar Dads’. And we find it in weird, quasi-ideological attachments to Carhartt products. We might call the politics of class-as-identity ‘class-identitarianism.’ It’s an ugly term, but let’s not shy away from ugly. At least not yet.
I’m working on answering two questions in this post. First, is class an identity? And, if it is, does class-identitarianism offer an explanatory framework that helps us make sense of the world and/or formulate a better political path?
Source: Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Foucalt.png)
Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault sat down for a debate in the early 1970s. You can watch the whole thing here. The transcript, along with some related essays from both Chomsky and Foucault, is available to buy as a book. It’s known as the Chomsky-Foucault debate.
I wasn’t new to either Chomsky or Foucault when I watched and read the Chomsky-Foucault debate. And the short debate format has its clear limits. But I did come away with a few impressions and lessons learned.
I’ll lay those out.
I’ll begin from this insight: certain kinds of personal relationships seem to ‘fit’ better with certain economic forms. That’s one (possible) implication of the ‘base and superstructure’ thesis, after all. But that’s just a starting point.
I think of this in roughly the same way Marx did, so long as we interpret Marx in a way that avoids any kind of hardcore historical determinism or teleology. The relationship between economic relations and personal relations isn’t one way and deterministic. The notion of a causal feedback loop is better, though that, too, has its shortcomings.
Rather, it’s a dialectical relation. As David Harvey points out in his Companion to Marx’s Capital, we’re talking here about a highly fluid and transformative relation. One that’s always in motion. The base and superstructure co-evolve, as it were. The base perhaps sets a basic tone, or a set of limitations, and/or an ‘easier’ path. But it’s much more open-ended than any deterministic relation or feedback loop allows.
And so, let’s start with some basic questions. What kinds of relationships best fit our current situation in the United States, which we might describe as ‘neoliberal capitalism’ or ‘financialized capitalism’? How do those relationships differ from those that fit the Keynesian consensus? Or the even earlier stages of industrial capitalism?
I’m writing here about polyamory in light of this background.
So you’ve bought Volume 1 of Marx’s Capital, or you’re thinking about buying it?
Good for you! It’s a fantastic book, and you should read it! Capital is worthwhile for its historical significance alone, both to politics in the last 150 years and to philosophical and intellectual developments. But it’s also a highly relevant book to our current times. Particularly in an era of neoliberal or financialized capitalism, where many of the conditions Marx wrote about resurface.
Personally, I would’ve liked a bit more guidance when I started reading. I fumbled around quite a bit, and it took me awhile to understand what Marx was doing in the text.
What I lacked, may you have!
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