Notes about capital and power
Common academic surrender phrase: There's no beyond of capital, therefore no way to resist it. What this means: given capital, there's no position from which one could assign values without reference to the value standard of capital, to its institution of exchange value. In other words, there's no site of agency (the power to assign values) "beyond" the already-established value system of capital, the infinite horizon to which all further valuations must refer. If agency is always configured in relation to capital, though, given the institution of capital, then there can be no agency "within" capital, either; in fact, it's only from "within" capital that one reaches the conclusion that no agency is possible "beyond" capital, not because capital rules out any thought of a "beyond," but because the rule of capital is that no one shall make valuations without reference (reverence) to capital - so that it's agency rather than the "beyond" that capital makes unthinkable.
posted by danny marcus at 3:00 AM
14 Comments:
I'm glad to see this post I can now speak of "We historians," Kushakov. With the exception of the word "globalization" and maybe "resistance," no other word comes up more in academic-historical speech than "agency." It's unclear what position, exactly, you're taking in this post, but I would certainly disagree with the logic you lay out here. I myself tend to think that everything that needs to theoretically be said about "agency" was said by Marx long ago, but it's obviously a subject still hotly debated. Walter Johnson's essay "Beyond Agency" (easily accessible with a Google search) is the best attempt I've seen. Given that it incorporates the two key words of your post, I think you'll be pleased.
There's an interesting piece on The Frankfurt School by Seyla Benhabib in the Verso "Mapping Ideology" book that addresses this problem from the Standpoint of the thinkers trying to think of a way to think (my phrasing).
Robot, I'm eager to read the Johnson essay you've pointed me towards. This is my position: that the efforts of dissenters to occupy positions of "critical" agency, to act without reference to the value system enforced under capitalism, is misguided, at least if we consider the logic of capital as I've tried to outline it. These dissenters understand capital to enforce a rule of inside/outside, with all positions of agency laid out within capital, so that any opposition to the rule of capital must be located outside its rule, whether in the future, in foreign lands or in alternative value systems (religion, art, etc). But this inside/outside distinction is not, I think, the real law of capital, which I understand to dissolve (or at least obscure) all positions of agency, inside as well as outside. This is what I think we mean when we say, naively, that there is no "beyond" of capital: that we have no agency within capital - no agency, that is, with regard to the already-established value system that we ourselves uphold when we understand and act as if all things in the world may be assessed according to their value for exchange. No king or master is making us refer things to a value for exchange; in this sense, the "agent" in capital is its law, which is a ridiculous thought, insofar as it is always only we who enforce this law. If my logic is faulty, please correct me - and I will continue to think further.
If your logic is flawed, somebody should call Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri and tell them they got something wrong.
Just kidding. But I feel like there are a lot of similarities between what you're saying and their position in Empire. Am I right? Have you been doing some rereading/reminiscing?
This is an interesting topic, and I hope I can provide some worthwhile thoughts. (I haven't read the Johnson article yet, however.)
It seems to me that there may be some ambivalence involved here with the term "agency." Kushakov, you define agency in the original post as "the power to assign values." This itself contains an ambiguity: is the "power" in question one of "capability" -- that is, there's no site wherein we have the capability to assign values, however speculatively; or, is this "power" one of "efficacy," i.e. we cannot effectively create values that are *enforceable.* This would be the potential/actual dichotomy, and it seems to me that we are perfectly capable, in the former sense, of formulating values outside of capitalistic exchange value. Obviously (at least to me), market thinking does not extend "all the way down" with the result that every form of valuing is an exchange valuation. Friendships, close associations, ways of acting and enjoying oneself, etc. can be perfectly free from brute exchange thinking, the infamous "cash nexus."
Suppose we accept that we can formulate, however speculatively, ideas outside of or even contrary to capitalistic values. Again, I think this has been done, even with respect to the very things we might consider most important in this conversation, i.e. political and social institutions. While much anti-capitalist thought has remained vague (and there's nothing inherently wrong with this; more later), plenty of plans have been drawn up for conceiving of a future society. Alec Nove, "The Economics of Feasible Socialism" is such a case, as are many instances, well attested in the economic and political literature, of trying to design institutions for "market socialism" and other non-profit-driven schemes.
(Interestingly, Marx and Engels kept their plans for a socialist society vague, unlike some of their more "utopian" counterparts. The latter were targets for abuse in the Communist Manifesto. Marx and Engels simply wished to present a "scientific" demonstration of the unfeasibility and inherent chaos of capitalism, which they thought would come to an end relatively soon. You can see some of Marx's specific thoughts about socialist society in the Critique of the Gotha Program, which is overall just really fascinating: for example, Marx there upbraids equality as a "bourgeois value" that applies a standard that is characteristically abstract and insufficient, since it applies an equal standard to unequal individuals. In other words, Marx was not, strictly speaking, an egalitarian! To get back to the main point of this digression, Marx and Engels didn't really think through post-capitalist institutions, because they focused on revolutionary practice. This was perhaps...detrimental to the socialist movements of the 20th century.)
Anyway, the practice bit turns out to be quite important. Tons of theories of post-capitalist societies are floating around out there, and if I'm right, we are all perfectly capable of reflecting on them, agreeing, denouncing, formulating, creating, etc--that is, "agency" in the sense of assigning values. The real question, then, comes down to the applicability and realization of the ideas. Here is where people run into trouble, but not because capital deprives them of agency. (And I hesitate to treat "capital" itself as an agent, since really it is just the system that is instantiated constantly as a result of market transactions (plain to see), political decisions (less clear), and enforcements of raw power (typically the least reported on), i.e. the usual combinations of everyday life, violence, and ideology.)
The real problems include (1) making people aware of alternatives, (2) avoiding the sanctions of dominant powers, and (3) overcoming collective action problems. This last one is difficult precisely because of (1) and (2). Even if you make it known to people that they could be better off under a different system, risks like acting against accepted social norms and incurring the costs of government repression will tend to make it less likely that a group, much less a majority, made up of people opposed to capitalism will emerge. This is because although united they could no doubt achieve their goal, divided they have to consider the individual costs to themselves. This is usually enough to keep people from forming effective coalitions, at least as long as they are not provided with strong additional incentives. Historically, in the U.S. at least, these have never managed to outrace the incentives of the status quo, so there you go.
Anyway, this is the sort of stuff one starts to spout when one takes political science classes. Maybe I have misread you entirely, but I hope there is some useful stuff here. In any case a synthesis of thoughts could be useful. But really, my big point is, we are certainly free (individually) to assign values "outside of capital."
The Walter Johnson essay doesn't address capitalism explicitly, but rather seek to go "beyond" a discussion of agency with regard to his particular object of study, slaves. Given that slaves were commodities bought and sold on the market, something Johnson writes about extensively elsewhere, it remains implicit. It's still worth a read, though.
Scantron's done a nice job of laying out some basic evidence of why we still have agency in capitalism. Both because I agree with him, and also because I 'd prefer to not have a knife pulled on me, we'll leave it at that.
In general, I have a hard time thinking in such extremes when it comes to these things. Our agency is stunted by a number of things: language, socioeconomic background, capitalism, physical and mental ability, etc., each doing so in ways that merit our attention. The same can be said for identity. Nationalism, imperialism, and capitalism no doubt wreak a great deal of havoc on the past and on subjects. And yet, out of this rubble new identities are created.
As I initially said, I find Marx making a lot of sense on these issues. Dialectics still break bricks, and men still make history out of circumstances already existing.
BTW the Gotha program bit on equality is interesting. The bottom line seems to be pretty simple though, no? What he's not in favor of is "equal rights" or what we would call equality of opportunity. Rather, it's equality of outcomes, with the qualification that these outcomes will require minor adjusting due to one's needs, not one's abilities or life-status.
How about when he talks about certain jobs as being "unhealthy for the female body or are objectionable morally"? Talk about bourgeois!
Scantron I want to just pick out one little bit of your point there that I think is interesting. The 'problem schema' you set up for socialist action is I think a fascinating example of the sort of interior/exterior problems that occur here. The reasons you cite that might both encourage people towards collective action and the dissuading factors both fall within the normal field of rational-choice behavior. On the one hand the argument is made in the accepted language of decisions, but on the other hand the language is the ultimate constraint to that activity (I venture to say at risk of error that this is a prime example of the "distribution of the sensible" at work). I wonder, even if the risks were diminished or were 'outpaced' by the incentives, could there really be a rational transformation into socialism? Perhaps a more egalitarian mechanism for our current system, but there is no way to cleave oneself from the hold of instrumental reason and administration in this way. Here's what's going on in criticisms of "really existing socialism", both traditional lame bourgeois ones and radical critiques from the likes of the frankfurt school, et al.
I'm glad these thoughts have been of interest. I'm also particularly thankful for your comments, which have already been helpful for my own further thinking.
To put a concern to rest: I do believe we have agency still. Insofar as we are able to think in sophisticated ways about agency, action, the political, etc, we might even be said to have agency in abundance, more than can be said for most people in most places. The arrangement of our nation under capitalism has probably been very beneficial for us in this respect, at least if I'm right about what capital is useful for: getting rid of masters and obscuring agents. By capital, though, we could very well insert the term "language" or "constitutional law," for each of these systems of value makes itself the arbiter of relations between people in the world, just as the exchange principle is referred to in order to determine the value of possessions, worldy or otherwise.
Scantron, the problems you list for politics - "(1) making people aware of alternatives, (2) avoiding the sanctions of dominant powers, and (3) overcoming collective action problems" - are certainly of importance, but I'm inclined to think that this question of alternatives is always going to be one of half-measures, compromises with capital that always leave us in some way accepting the sanctions of "dominant powers." You might very well argue, and justifiably so, that any leftist politics with any chance of success requires us to accept such half-measures. I want to suggest, though, that the all-encompassing, non-compromising, infinitely extensive logic of the institution of capital serves a function: to allow for large, dispersed populations to be brought under the rule of a single system for arbitrating value (or, with the law, justice). Because there is no one who could not, theoretically, participate in the capitalist exchange system, efforts to replace capital with "some other system" have tended to accept this political unit of "all" as the polity that must be championed, educated and mobilized "against" capital. Capital wants us to think this way - it wants to be regarded as the ultimate agent; it wants us to fetishize its own foundational logic, to strive for new and better systems of infinite value-assignation, because in this way we guarantee that its unspoken aim (dominion over "all") remains in force.
Am I too worried about capital? I hope this sort of thinking can be useful for dissidents. We have an overabundance of agency, even political agency: we can hold office, arbitrate matters of justice, direct scientific inquiry - all these powers are given to us; our political life continues to center around questions of how to extend these opportunities to those whose conditions of living still deny them. It is less clear to me, though, that we have agency to act as if there were no rule of capital, no rule of law. This is an impasse for me; I am happy to want different things than what capital wants (dominion over "all"), but to combat this foundational aim seems far more difficult. My present thoughts on this are muddled, so I'll just say that I think any effort on our part to propose or enact different forms of political agency ought to question the foundational aims of the systems we criticize. But no, I haven't been back at Hardt and Negri. Just lots of Nietzsche, and then the endless effort to "catch up" on most of western thought (Marx included). An uphill battle.
dog, this is so obvious!
To Kushakov and the Sheriff--
Sorry about the lateness of this reply. I will try to tackle the sorts of questions you seem to be asking, because I think you are saying similar things.
Sheriff, you suggest that the "normal field of rational choice behavior," or in your next sentence "the accepted language of decisions," might be the "ultimate constraint to that activity." In other words, if I'm reading you correctly, the language of rational choice decion-making does not allow for "radical breaks," or at least something other than a "rational transition" to socialism, about which you are sceptical. I'd like to know what exactly the logic is here. Why should rational choice theory be inherently conservative (where "conservative" means something loose, like "protecting the status quo")? Many radicals seem to take this view, arguing instead that rational choice, and the methodological individualism that goes along with it, cannot account for "class consciousness," "imminent critique" and this sort of thing. Why is this so? True, rational choice analysis, as much of it stands now, has many limitations. It assumes that individuals understand all the options open to them, and that they rationally (i.e. in a basic, problem-solving way) choose the course most appealing to them. This, of course, takes no account of things like "ideology" or "power," which any social analysis must, I think. However, I think there is still hope that we can learn to incorporate such factors into a rational choice analysis. These would limit the implied "knowledge" of the actor in serious ways, but not insurmountable ways. The real problem, I think, is a theory of "interests," which remains very subjective to this day. On the one hand it seems obvious that "you could have it so much better," while on the other it is hard to say what costs would come with such a change, or if attempts to make things better would make things much worse (this is the position both of those who say that tampering with the free market will only hurt workers, and those who claim that people are inherently worse in a system other than capitalism *no matter what,* for a whole litany of reasons).
Kushakov, I think you are right to say that capitalism operates under the aegis of being a "universal" system. The mistake is to assume that this exhausts all the possible forms of a universal system. And furthermore, capitalism is not the first system to present itself, ideologically, as a universal one. Surely feudalism also presented itself this way. (Just because we recognize that serfs were treated as less than full citizens or whatever doesn't mean that feudal lords didn't think, when they stopped to do so seriously, that the system was beneficial for everyone.)
I think both of you are driving at a similar notion, i.e. that whatever comes after capitalism must represent a "total break" with its predecessor's various systems of thought. Maybe I'm reading you wrong here. However, I've always thought that this was wrong and overly romantic. Epochs and changes are real, but thought is never completely overcome and surpassed in this fashion (despite the notion of "epistemes," etc). If there is ever going to be a global system in which everyone, more or less, is really able to exercise their unique and human powers, it's going to have to include plenty of "liberal" ideas in order to be tolerable. The change to such a society (which, not being a Marxist, I do not think is inevitable) will probably not be purely "rational," but then again, it probably won't have anything to do with you and me either (at least, as we stand now as of the writing of this blog post). The important thing not to count out is its possibility.
Scantron, my point was to suggest that the task of proposing/establishing "a global system in which everyone, more or less, is really able to exercise their unique and human powers" is actually fully in keeping with the logic of capital. I'm not a proponent of "radical breaks," if by that you mean epochal turnovers or systemic overhaul - but I certainly think that opponents of capital need to find ways to avoid falling into its ways of thinking. I think any party promoting universal human self-realization, or universal human anything, is well within the trap of capitalist thinking, which posits such self-realization, "freedom," or "agency" as always outside the boundaries of its rule. This includes certain Marxisms (or whatever puts its stock in counter-systems, long marches, slow subversions, micro-politics, witherings-away, etc) as well as systems based on rational choice, if I'm right that its appeal is due to the universal ability of humans to make "rational" decisions given correct (or complete?) information.
Kushakov, the point, though, still stands: Why should we think that "universal" thinking is always "well within the trap of capitalist thinking"? The problem with caputalism, if there is one, is not its scope but its content, and the discrepancies between the two: while claiming to be the greatest possible achievement of human freedom, it covers up its own inadequacies. If we can plausibly point out what those inadequacies are, why can't we address them, and moreover in a way that is in keeping with capitalism's universalistic ambitions? Universal cancer and universal health obviously share an aspect: they're universal. But because one is bad, it doesn't follow that the other is bad as well. Where is the logic? If you're going to say that something is "fully in keeping with the logic of capital," you can't just claim that as an argumentative finality. You have to say what particular aspect of the logic of capital makes such thinking bad. Show me that capitalism has exhausted all the possible ways of thinking about universal freedom, and I'll grant your point. And given that the world is even more universal than it was at the time of Marx's writing in the 19th century, doesn't my point about universality hold even more? Since everything (loosely) affects everything else, can we but think in terms of universals?
Maybe the problem isn't it's content, but it's contentedness. I leave you with that little word play.
I think though, with regard to the universal, we must make an important distinction with the 'total'. I think that capital's ability to be totalizing often blurs with notions of the universal, but ultimately the totalization or 'absolute territorialization' if you prefer of capital bases itself on particularisms. There is also, I think, the issue of 'universal' versus abstract. Capitalism's universalism is the process of abstraction (of labor, of humanity, of value) into a total system.
In consideration of these distinctions, I think there can be room to think the universal, but it falls on the critic to a) ensure the exclusion of exclusions from any notion of the universal and b) always think the universal within the context of a situation. The former I think is the more difficult, vague proposition of the two.
Scantron, you haven't convinced me with regard to rational choice's usefulness or potential in radical critique, but I will think about it more. However, what if the price of 'freedom/equality/liberty' (allow me to be fast and loose with the terms) would in fact result in making us worse off materially, economically, etc. If universal health care, let's say, results in a net depreciation in health, how do we still pursue it as rationally choosing beings? Assuming that there are arguments for it which find groundings if not from principle than elsewhere?
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