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Eagleton’s latest: a few notes on _Reason, Faith and Revolution_

“Religious suffering is at the same time an expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions.” Karl Marx Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right

Terry Eagleton’s book may qualify as “late style.” It is, at least, elegiac. The stylistic inflection, however, does not limit itself to style, but, as it were, inflects the logic itself in that it, too, becomes a logic of elegy. In other words, if one can only give an elegy to that which is dead and almost forgotten, Terry Eagleton seems determined to kill and forget religion and the left. Rather, if he does not go so far as to kill them, he at leasts civilizes them to the extent that they would pose no real threat to anyone.

There is an important connection between Eagleton’s politics and religion; insofar as he sees them as logically connected. For Eagleton, the essence of Christian religious practice is to work towards justice, or, “All authentic theology is liberation theology” (32). One might think that Eagleton would have trouble squaring this claim with the theoretical legacy of theology and the practical history of religious practice–the gaping differences between the aspects of the gospels and of St. Paul that Eagleton prefers and the claims of history. Eagleton, dodging this tricky discrepency, states that, “Apart from the signal instance of Stalinism it is hard to think of a historical movement that has more squalidly betrayed its own revolutionary origins” (55). Here one must remember Žižek’s claim in his recent work In Defence of Lost Causes that Marx (and, by extension, Lenin and the Revolution) is “entirely responsible, but retroactively” (Žižek’s italics, pg. 180). Furthermore, one can only wonder whether the legacy of a recently deceased person–who had some fifty volumes of writings–is easier to corrupt than a myth. It is, however, beside the point to question Eagleton’s familiarity with theology and the Bible–he himself admits that he is not very knowledgeable. What is problematic, therefore, is not his lack of knowledge but thae object in which he puts his political and religious faith.

Most anyone can, with little hesitation, undestand the importance of doing everything possible to irritate Chris Hitchens and Richard Dawkins. The two have them have almost irreparably corrupted discourse on politics and religion. The new atheists in whole have masterfully combined that sense of neo-liberal hawkishness that doesn’t pretend to be religious with a success little seen in America. (While most American right-wingers cloak–with little success–their racism and violence in religion and nationalism; the new atheists come off as quite a bit more honest.) These polemics are the most successful parts of the book. It is in the positive vision of Religion and the Left that Eagleton is troubling. Eagleton apparently cannot imagine a left-wing critique beyond that which is designed to ensure liberal democracy, nor a religious life which takes its own metaphysical claims seriously. Religion becomes merely the ground of moral action and the  guarantor of moral standards; here he references secondary works on Aquinas. It is accurate to read Aquinas as placing God as the Ens Realisimus; however, it is disingenious to state that Auinas didn’t have absurd metaphysical attachements–his angelological theories, for instance. Eagleton has, one assumes, lost faith in his Traditional Marxism (to adopt Postone’s leaden parlance), “…[Christianity] also thinks it wildy implausible…to think…that there are not flaws and contradictions built into the structure of the human species itself…” (48). Apparently, Christianity is the cure for these fatal flaws that one is, as a member of the human species, born with–perhaps these fatal flaws and contradictions are passed, along with initial sin, in the male’s sperm! Eagleton does not, of course, propose a mechanism to explain these flaws and these contradictions (one can easily admit that would be a difficiult task to do convincingly, though easily and frequently done in a totally inconvincing manner). Instead–in the most symptomatic passage of the book–he describes what could result should all take the moral claims of Christianity seriously; if so,

Justice would be brought to bear in the conflict between Palestine and Israel. Humanity would regard itself as excercising stewardship rather dominion over Nature. War would give way to peace. Forgiveness would mean among other things forgiving the crippling debts which burden poor nations, Mutual responsibility would oust selfich individualism. It is for just that, for all this to happen, believers would have to take their own values seriously. And there seems to be fat chance of that. (150)

Among the numerous problems found here, two stand out most prominently: a “radicalism” that would easily fit in a speech by Gordon Brown; and an aquiescence that even these tasks are impossible.

The New Zizek

I love the fact that every time I hear the words, “the NEW Zizek,” they refer to a different book. One could be referring to a book that he published a year ago, yet he has published four more since. That is the situation with In Defense of Lost Causes which was described to me as the new Zizek a couple of days ago. (If you are curious, he has published, since then, Violence, The Monstrosity of Christ, and First as Tragedy and Again as Farce.)

I, however, truly do have the newest of the new Zizek’s: Mythology, Madness and Laughter: Subjectivity in German Idealism (Continuum, 2009) coauthored with Markus Gabriel (Der Mensch im Mythos and others), a rising star in the German-reading world, who is just making his Anglo debut.

I actually finished the book three days after this blog post went up, but I have been too busy reading (inordinate amounts of Heidegger) and writing (horrible amounts on Heidegger) to review the book. Of course, now it isn’t as new–Zizek’s next book Living in the End Times can already be pre-ordered on Amazon.com.

Mythology, Madness and Laughter (MML) should be divided into two sections: Markus Gabriel’s manifesto which is the first half, and Zizek’s two essays–on Hegel and Fichte–which fill the second half.

Of these two halves, Gabriel’s is–perhaps–more interesting. Gabriel’s essay is effectively a plea to reappropriate the concept of myth today. This argument is bolstered by a reading of German Idealism which stresses mythological understandings of the world. In other words, all monisms must fail, because there is always that irreconcilable gap of which every lacanian/hegelian/heideggerian/adornian knows (while each calls it something different) this is Gabriel’s point: mythos names the gap and lends a structure.

The important thing one must remember is that this structure can’t be rigid. As Hegel might put it: the gap closes in death when Erfahrung (experience) ceases.

Zizek’s essay on Fichte is interesting, but I only say this out of self-interest. Basically he reads Fichte as a Lacanian, something I have argued for elsewhere on this site.

Overall a good book. Markus Gabriel looks like an interesting thinker and I am excited to see what else lies in store for us.

A few thoughts on UC activism

The situation is different at each school, clearly. Davis, unlike Berkeley and Santa Cruz, has no conception of itself as an activist campus. There is some self-selection here. Not to say that no politically aware students go to Davis, there are a number of us. However, politically aware students tend towards Santa Cruz and Berkeley.

The fee hikes have radicalized every campus. Los Angeles for obvious reasons, that is where the regents were. Berkeley, too. The rally at Berkeley was too sparse for that campus, but many might have gone to LA already. Santa Cruz, famous for its many anarchists, has had anarchists take over buildings. More power to all these mobilizations.

At Davis we have had two sit-ins. The first was on Thursday in Mrak Hall (our Administrative Building), and the second at Dutton Hall (Financial Aid offices). There was an encouraging, spontaneous tone to Mrak–which ended with a shocking 52 arrests (including me). Dutton Hall, on the other hand, was disappointing, at least it was before I left.

We are at a stage where we can get a couple hundred apolitical students to mobilize in the rain for sit-ins at a moments notice, yet there is almost no one that we can count on to show up a week from today for any event.

Hardt and Negri are wrong, we all realize that. At the same time, digital communications made spontaneity a requirement rather than an option. No one wants to plan; few even view the strikes as a more than social event. It is good that there is music and dancing at our sit-ins, as most of the protestors seem perfectly willing to dance elsewhere.

We also have little when it comes to long term goals. I, of course, would love to have the charges against me dropped. But that is like drinking from the floor after knocking a glass filled with water off the counter–it replaces a problem without solving the real issue.

We need people–more people, dependable people–to mobilize against the real problems in the UC and State (and Nation and Transnational and Systemic) economy, but we lack those people. If we want democratic goals we need people to dialogue about them. But we need goals to inspire people to dialogue.

Why art lacks value

Value–congealed human labour–mediates Capitalist society. Value is the logic which controls the totality of production and consumption. An item which has a use-value but does not valorize capital–does not require labour or produce surplus-value–is not a commodity. Items such as this can have a price, but they do not have value. These items presuppose the capitalist form of exchange, but do not participate in it. Two sorts of things have price but not value, “Things which in and for themselves are not commodities, things such as conscience, honour, etc…” and that which “conceal[s] a real value-relation…for instance the price of uncultivated land” (Capital 197). In the Grundrisse Marx makes only a few, brief, points about art. First, art is is the expression of a particular society–and is dependent on the social form of that society. In this he mentions of Greek art that,

It is well known that Greek mythology is not only the arsenal of Greek art but also its foundation….Greek art presupposes Greek mythology, i.e. nature and the social forms already reworked in an unconsciously artistic way by the popular imagination. (Grundrisse 110)

Greek art still has sway because of a nostalgia for the “historic childhood of humanity” (ibid. 111). Later Marx writes that, “Actors are productive workers, not in so far as they produce a play, but in so far as they increase their employer’s wealth” (ibid. 328-9).

These quotes reflect the two-fold aspect of any Marxian aesthetics that deserves the name. The artwork must be understood as an expression of the social relations of its epoch, it might be the bearer of surplus-value (and thus a commodity).

In its commodity form art would have to valorize capital. Labour would have to be advanced which could create value. Certain forms of commodity production are amenable to capitalism while others are not. The production of novels, for instance, requires an author to be hired to do the labour and constant capital invested in printing presses and distribution. This form of industry seems to fit into the traditional Marxist form. Theater, too, seems to be easily revolutionized into the capitalist form. Actors can be forced to do multiple plays each day, this lengthening of hours increases the ration of surplus to necessary labour. Painting and sculpture are more difficult. As long as a single painter creates paintings and sells them this is not “capitalist” proper. This process has been revolutionized, though, as now many individual artists produce work on the behalf of their dealer, who will supply them with materials for the production of artworks and receives a percentage of the sale price. “Non-capitalist” artistic production–which produces use-values that are not commodities in that they are not the bearer of surplus-value–still relies on the capitalist form of society.

Capital, however, is a total system. As such social forms are historically determinate. The determinate form of society finds its expression in the work of art. Greek art, Marx writes, requires Greek society. Marx brings up Greek art so later in the Grundrisse to compare it to modernity “It [the childish world of antiquity] is satisfied from a limited standpoint; while the modern gives no satisfaction; or, where it appears satisfied with itself, it is vulgar” (ibid. 488). Marx makes clear the reason for this lack of satisfaction the modern world is “where production appears as the aim of mankind and wealth as the aim of production. In fact…what is wealth other than the universality of human needs….This complete working out of the human content appears as a complete emptying-out, this universal objectification as total alienation…” (ibid. 488). In this passage Marx argues that there is something about Greek society which is closed–this creates its feeling of “satisfaction”–that modern, capitalist, society lacks. Rather, capitalist society has something which Greek society lacks.

Value requires valorization to an endless degree. The valorization of capital creates an endless gyre that can never be stabilized in an equilibrium. As valorization is necessarily an unfinishable project, there is no possible finality within capitalism–but for there is for the end of capitalism itself.

A short note on Commodity Fetishism

What is the fetishism of the commodity? Marx discusses it as a social hieroglyphic which requires interpretation to understand. Of course any understanding of the fetishism of the commodity has to begin with an understanding of the commodity itself. So to begin again, what is the commodity. Most simplistically the commodity, under capitalism, is that which undergoes the exchange process. Either one of two forms C-M-C or M-C-M. In the first form of exchange a commodity owner sells her commodity in order to receive money which is used to purchase a commodity in order to consume that commodity. This process is discrete; it begins with production and ends in consumption. M-C-M, though it appears to be a simple modification or extension of C-M-C, is, in fact, radically different. The M-C-M’ process begins with capital and ends with valorized capital. Rather than discretely ending with valorized capital this process is inherently unending. Every valorized capital must again be submitted to the process of exchange in order to further valorize capital. M-C-M is the positing of capital for its valorization. In reality M-C-M becomes simply M-M (Capital 248), or the exchange of money for money.

When trying to understand the commodity it is not entirely correct simply to state that the “C” stands for commodity and thus a commodity is that which is produced, sold, purchased and then consumed. This answer is not accurate because Money itself is a commodity, or objectified value! Marx writes that, “Gold confronts the other commodities as money only because it previously confronted them as a commodity” (Capital 162). Money is an odd commodity in that it is an universally equivalent form of value (Capital 163). So if money is a commodity, and a measure of value then perhaps the commodity is the value. This too is partially wrong, for value is nothing other than the embodiment of average socially necessary labour. Value, too, is a measure. So what is the commodity? Of course the answer is all of the above. The commodity can take on many forms, a film, a painting, money, a razor or bread. The commodity is a use-value, but under capitalism the commodity is revolutionized in that it becomes a use-value which embodies abstract value. In the Grundrisse, Marx writes that the commodity “appears as a unity of two aspects” (881). These aspects are use-value and exchange-value. Use-value, however, is common to all societies, “This is its material side, which the most disparate epochs of human production may have in common, and whose examination therefore lies beyond political economy” (Grundrisse, 881). Wheat, Marx points out, would not lose its use-value if it was cultivated by slaves, free labourers, or fell from the sky. Under Capitalism use-values become the mere bearers of exchange-value (Capital 126).

Exchange-value seems like something purely contingent initially. For instance, X wheat can be exchanged for A rice, B cups and C shirts. This makes it seem that X wheat has three exchange-values. In reality, A rice, B cups and C shirts actually each represent the exchange value of X wheat. These various representations are just the form of appearance of value. Since commodities are “…crystals of [human labor]…they are values” (Capital 128). In other words value is human labour time, and exchange-value is its form of appearance.

Value is a social mediation constituted and reproduced by objectifying labour into the commodity form. Natural things which have use-value but lack the valorization of labour cannot be commodities. Air is not a commodity, but bottled oxygen sold at oxygen bars is. The air has been turned into a commodity, and valorized, by the labour required to bottle and sell it at a price far in excess of its value.

The commodity, Marx writes, seems like a simple thing, but it actually abounds in mysteries. The fetishism of the commodity is not a sort of sexual or social fascination with the commodity form. The car of a celebrity is no more fetishised in Marx’s sense than any other car. In fact,

The mysterious character of the commodity form consists therefore simply in the fact that the commodity reflects the social characteristics of men’s own labour as objective characteristics of the products of labour themselves, as the socio-natural properties of these things. (Capital 164-5)

In other words, the fetishism of the commodity causes the historically determined social relations of capital–i.e. relations mediated by the logic of value creation–to appear trans-historical, or objective.

In capitalist society value creation becomes the universal logic. This logic causes the homogenization of all forms of labour. Capitalism, therefore, causes commodities to be the expression of value rather than use-value. Postone points out that value is a historically specific form of wealth–specific to capitalist society (Postone 2008, 124). In that use-values become the expression of homogenized labour rather than particular forms of productive activity–activity which produces particular use-values–the commodity becomes a mask for the social relations which mediate it.

A use-value is not a “bundle of social relations” (i.e. socially mediated), but a commodity is entirely determined by social mediations. The commodity is a “social hieroglyphic” in that it appears as something simple, but this form of appearance is actually an encryption of social relations particular to capitalist society (Capital 167).

This encryption can be deciphered, for Marx himself deciphered it. The act of decipherment does not abolish the commodity, however; just as the chemical analysis of air does not change its chemical formulation. Previous economists had been unable to decipher the commodity form for several reasons. In footnote #33 Capital 173 Marx writes that Ricardo was unable to decipher the commodity form because he failed to distinguish the use-value of a commodity from the exchange-value. In essence, Ricardo conflated the dual nature of the commodity into a single, concrete (trans-historical) thing. He continues on the page writing, “[Smith and Ricardo] treat the form of value as…something external to the nature of the commodity itself” (Capital 174). This false understanding of value as extrinsic to the commodity bars the possibility of understanding value as a “self-mediating form of wealth” (Postone 2008, 133) constituted by socially necessary human labour time. Aristotle–the first economist–couldn’t understand that labour created wealth (value) because he lived in an economy structured around slave-labour, and so one in which there was no variable capital to be valorized. Slave-labour creates use-value but not value. Aristotle could not understand the capitalist form of value because he did not live in a capitalist society–a society mediated by value–Smith and Ricardo failed in that they conflated the dual nature of the commodity so that they viewed value as something which existed outside of use-value.

Marx discovered where these economists were wrong, and he corrects them. The Commodity Fetishism of Capital is, however, extremely difficult to understand. This difficulty exists for two reasons. First, this section describes an extremely difficult concept. Thus, while the vocabulary used is largely straightforward, the analysis targets a necessarily repressed form of capitalist consciousness. Secondly, Marx wrote Capital as, in the words of Moishe Postone, an “immanent critique.” Capital is not a critical political economy, but a critique of political economy–it seeks to change the object of its critique. This critical tactic reflects Marx’s modification of the Hegelian self-unfolding Geist–which reveals its internal dialectic in the real historicity of creative labour–into one in which creative activity creates the historical forms of society. Creative activity modifies that which it addresses–and in a radicalization of the Master-Slave dialectic–creates a space for a critique with emancipatory potential.

Benjamin avec Fried: Toward a Marxian aesthetic?

One of the most difficult aspects of any thorough understanding has been an understanding of Marx’s aesthetics, or rather a Marxian aesthetics. Marx never wrote an extensive analysis of aesthetics, nor even extended looks at particular artworks. This is not because Marx was uninterested in art, or didn’t study it. Marx, it is said, read through all of Aeschylus and Shakespeare once a year–in the original language. He was also a big fan of Balzac and many contemporary writers. However, the totality of Marx’s engagements with aesthetic philosophy can be summed up in the–Hegelian–idea that real art is no longer produced; that art expresses the social relations of its epoch; and, most complexly, the question over whether art is a commodity. The result of the scarcity of direct engagements with art has been an incredibly diversity of “Marxian” aesthetics. As a note, I have to make clear that the word “art” has two meanings in this paragraph. When Marx writes in the Grundrisse, “[Antiquity] is satisfied from a limited standpoint; while the modern gives no satisfaction; or, where it appears satisfied with itself, it is vulgar” (ibid. 488), he means that modernity cannot make art with a transcendent character in the way that antiquity could. This statement should be read as consonant with Lukács’s discussion of the epic in Theory of the Novel. Throughout this paper I use the word art in a disgustingly commonsensical way–art object are those things which people generally agree are art objects. This lack of theoretical specificity must be adopted for pragmatic purposes in that a discussion of Benjamin, Fried and Marx would be impossible without a degree of linguistic laxity.

A traditional lodestone in the debate over Marxian aesthetics has been Walter Benjamin’s essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of its Technical Reproducibility.” Summarily, this essay looks at the collapse of the aura which surrounded the work of art when it was in an original, ritual context. Benjamin does not make value judgments about this process, but instead points out that the very nature of film and photography make it absurd to talk about the “original.” Starting with a print of a photograph one can take up an infinite regress from one’s own print to the first print to the negative, then the image in the viewfinder and finally that which the viewfinder sees. While things outside the viewfinder are original, they are not a photograph. Neither is the image seen in the viewfinder, nor the negative, photographs. The first print is the first print, yet it is indistinguishable from any other print. In fact every print is essentially the same. While Benjamin’s Marxism is incredibly individual, it is clear that he–at least–felt it to be authentic (Benjamin, 102-3).

Another analysis can be conducted of the “industrialization” of the production of art among individuals such as Andy Warhol and Damien Hirst. These artists all have used large production teams to mass produce art to their specifications. This industrialization of artistic production occurs even to the level of the division of labour. This analysis is the most purely “Marxist” one, for only in the industrialized method of artistic production can art works be claimed as empirically analogous to commodities–although the price of artworks far exceeds their value (in the strict Marxian sense).

These two theories are in no way contradictory. Also, one shouldn’t take this industrialization of the artistic production–in so far as it entails the division of labour–as specific to capitalism. In pre-capitalist societies “art” was produced in studios headed by a master who would receive credit for the final product. Of course it is inappropriate to conflate Medieval “art”–a modern conception–with what was at that time considered a craft which produced specific ritual objects. But it is equally mistaken to conflate the structural conditions of production in a pre-capitalist period with the structures present under capitalism–a historical form which in which social relations are mediated by value. This is tied to the difference between the guild system and the organic form of capital. Marx writes that guilds “may have contributed to creating the material conditions for the existence of manufacture by separating, isolating and perfecting the handicrafts, [but they] excluded the…[capitalist] division of labour characteristic of manufacture” (Capital I 480). In capitalism, production exists for the sake of producing surplus-value. Marx summarizes the change as one from the production of necessary value, with surplus value as an excess; to one in which one’s ability to produce necessary value is contingent on one’s ability to create surplus value (Grundrisse 533).

In the Medieval studio craftsmen created icons for religious adoration. Retroactively these objects have been attributed to specific “masters” who were really just the head of the workshop. Attributions are sometimes suspect, though, for objects were almost always produced anonymously. Contemporary use of this mode of production, by individuals like Warhol and Hirst, flips the equation. Artist’s studios legitimately become factories for the production of surplus-value. The production of Art parallels the production of “designer” clothing. The famous name–frequently of a designer whose started hand sewing costumes or bespoke clothing–is attached to a commodity whose production is outsourced. In that Hirst clearly extracts surplus-value from his workers, this process is similar to the book industry. The production of a “Hirst” is quite different from the production of a Courbet, which does not fall under the Marxist category of a commodity. A painting by Courbet does not consist of abstract human labour which creates value. Instead, art that does not valorize capital should fall under Marx’s category of objects–like courage–which lack value (in so far as they are not products of abstract human labour) but have a price (Marx 1996, 197). However the price of a “Hirst” is extremely disproportionate to its value; buying a “Hirst” is analogous to purchasing flavoured oxygen at an “Oxygen Bar.” There is, in reality, no commodity fetishism of a Courbet–as it is not a commodity; there is by necessity, however, a fetishism of an “Hirst.”

In order to understand the real difference between a Courbet and an “Hirst,” it is helpful to read Fried’s “Art and Objecthood” as a continuation of Benjamin’s project in his essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of its Technical Reproducibility.” Fried basically develops a concept of presentness that he finds in High Modernist artwork which is replaced by theatricality in the work of Minimalists like Robert Morris and Donald Judd. In reference to his mentor Clement Greenberg, Fried discusses High Modernist paintings as pure surfaces which are enmeshed in their own internal projects, and these projects are worked through with shape. In Minimalist work, “shape is the object” (Fried, 151; italics in original). The Minimalist work can be contrasted to the work of High Modernism which “has come to find it imperative that it defeat or suspend its own objecthood, and that the crucial factor in this undertaking is shape, but shape that must belong to painting” (ibid., 151; italics in original). The shape of the work–as well as more theoretically difficult concepts like colour (which he does not discuss in this essay)–give the art object a sort of syntax for creating meaning. The High Modernist painting–a Pollock, for instance–does not appear as an object which has shape, but as a presence which consists of shapes. The objecthood of art becomes most apparent when the art work confronts a viewer, Minimalist art is “interesting” whereas Modernist art “breeds conviction” (ibid., 165). Minimalism needs the viewer. Fried writes that this is the theatrical nature of Minimalist art. The easiest explanation is Fried’s reference to two works of sculpture, one Minimalist and another High Modernist. Robert Morris’s Untitled (Ring with Light) is a sort of Minimalist work par excellence it is a total object with almost no distinguishing features. Yet it is somehow anthropomorphic: the work of art emits light from its inside. In this sense, the work of art has an interior life. Caro’s Midday can also seem simple–being constructed of everyday sort of materials. Close observation reveals that the relation between the individual elements which constitute the work create a syntax of meaning. Ultimately the Minimalist work is a unified object (with a secret internal life), whereas the work of High Modernism carries on an artistic project on its exterior and strives to abolish its objecthood. The Objecthood of the Minimalist work makes it almost a subject–many Minimalist sculptures are built on a human scale. The real point of Fried’s essay is that the Objecthood of the Minimalist acts as a vampire on the humanity of the viewer. The Minimalist work arouses “interest” from the viewer in order to become human-like itself. High Modernist work–conversly–brings about conviction in the viewer and reaffirms the viewers subjectivity through engagement with the syntax of the work.

Somewhat similar ideas are also discussed in Benjamin’s essay, but instead in terms of the aura. Benjamin mentions art that is literally unseen, in reference to Madonna sculptures which must be covered with a cloth almost the entire year. This art is literally complete without the viewer. In some ways this is similar to Fried’s analysis of High Modernist painting; they are different in that the High Modernist work engages the viewer in a phenomenological dialectic while the Madonna exists for a purely transcendental purpose. The clearer connection between these two essays lies in the reading of them in there proper chronology. In other words, Fried discusses fine art in a world without aura.

Both aura and presentness create a firm separation between subject and object. Presentness is similar to aura in that presentness is a sort of auratic non-aura–it fulfills certain auratic roles without actually being an aura (unlike auratic art, the High Modernist work does not (necessarily) presuppose its own originality nor ritual purpose). The question remains as to the nature of the collapse of aura and, later, presentness. Here, too, these categories cast an odd light on each other. Aura comes to its last gasp in the photograph and film: when it no longer is rational to speak of an original. Presentness collapses later when the work of art itself takes on a theatrical role which requires a viewer for its consummation. In one of Benjamin’s beautiful explications of film he writes that the camera comes to take the place of the audience in film (Benjamin, 260). Rather, that in film the camera is to the actors as in a play the audience is to the actors. Thus the actor no longer performs for the audience but instead for the camera. The audience must identify itself with the camera in order to understand film. Presentness collapses when the art identifies with the actor–thus theatricality–however this is only possible because, once again, the viewer identifies with the camera. The viewer changes from the flaneur, dandy, or aesthete into the passive observer, one who accepts the aesthetic demand of the work of art–Observe! In other words, the viewer becomes desubjectified as she is made identical with the camera, or, rather, the mechanical process of consuming images. For Fried, the mechanical process of being interested–merely interested–in the Minimalist work.

While the art form as a commodity is–objectively–the creation of surplus-value through the production of art. The commodity art work acts subjectively in that it reconstitutes the mode of consumption of images. The capitalist form of artistic production is not only determinate in the site of production, but also in the process of consumption. Marx points out in Capital that consumption should really be understood as part of the productive process (711). As art production became a form of capitalist production, the modes of production changed so that artists came to produce art on the behalf of dealers. This change in the mode of production also changes the character of the art and the artist. The artist herself became desubjectified as art was no longer “about” the creation of objectifications of oneself (for instance Courbet’s The Desperate Man) but rather the aestheticization of objectified labour-time, such as Damien Hirst’s For the Love of God. This process also has had effects in the mode of consumption of art images. Some of the most “capitalist” artists have come to command prices so high that museums cannot afford to purchase their work. Most of their work is purchased or commissioned by wealthy individuals or corporations; whether the work is lent to a museum for public display or is displayed privately in a home or office, artistic production becomes a part of “branding.”

Determinate social forms do not only mediate the production and consumption of art works, but also their aesthetic composition. Courbet’s The Desperate Man has always seemed to be among his most striking works (along with L’Origine du Monde–his famous painting of the vulva). Both of these works have an incredible power in that they seem to stare at the viewer. Clearly, however, this analysis is somewhat problematic. There are at least two convincing interpretations of The Desperate Man, either Courbet is staring at the viewer or staring at a reflection of himself. In a strange way, both of these interpretations are correct. At the same time as the painting has become (literally) an objectification of the artist, the stare of the painting forces the viewer to also engage. One cannot help but think of famous Raft of the Medusa, which the artist insisted be displayed at ground hight so that the viewer would feel pulled into the artwork. Pulling the viewer in initially may seem like a sort of parasitism, but there is a key difference. The viewer of the Raft of the Medusa cannot help but be swept up with the movement of the lines. These lines clearly show Gericault’s radical political ideology (with Africans being those who “show” the way). The painting brings about a transcendence as it both draws in the viewer and lifts her up. Ultimately the painting reaffirms the subjectivity–even the power–of the viewer. Viewing this painting, even in reproduction, is inspiring. This similar dialectic is in place with Courbet’s The Desperate Man. The gaze, in its technical Lacanian sense, namely the viewpoint of the Other from which I cannot see myself, of the painting both looks at the viewer and at itself. Looking at the painting one cannot help but feel both convicted by the gaze and, also, a desire for a similar self-reflexivity. Courbet can stares at both the viewer and at himself in that The Desperate Man is a dialectical process of self-fashioning. The painting is both the objectification of Courbet’s subjectivity and a subjectification of the viewer.

Damien Hirst’s For the Love of God has no gaze. This work consists of a diamond plated cast of a skull, and, as with any skull, the eye sockets are empty. The emphasis of this work is in either the mouth where the teeth are the only thing not covered with diamonds or the large diamond in the middle of the forehead. It is not entirely true to say that the work has no gaze; rather, the gaze of the work does not come from the empty eye-sockets but the mouth. This point is true of many of Hirst’s works. For instance the shark in his The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991) has its mouth open. Again, viewer looks at the mouth rather than the eyes. In all this one cannot help but think of the many controversies that plagued Manet whose female model’s eyes stared at the viewer. The difference between Manet, Courbet and Gericault–artists of conviction–and Hirst. Is that that the first three place the emphasis on gaze from the eyes (engagement in a phenomenological dialectic) while the later on the gaze of the mouth–on appetite.

Consumption is not only determined by the location of consumption, but also its subjective form. The capitalist form of artistic production desacralizes art–art loses its aura. Ironically the object of art becomes a subject–has an internal life like in Robert Morris–while the subject who consumes images must become more machinelike–must identify with the camera. This results in a fetishism of the artwork (which exceeds the commodity in its “theological niceties”): the artwork appears to be an objective thing, but it really has an inner-life; it appears to be the product of an artistic genius, but it really comes from a factory staffed with art school graduates; it appears to be the embodiment of a subjectivity, but it really saps the subjectivity of the viewer.

The art work, in Marx, is a historically determinate object. Not only does it express specific social relations of its time, but the consumption of it is also mediated by these same social relations. This paper should be seen as an attempt at a third proposition in the dialectical relation between Benjamin and Fried. As Benjamin described the collapse of aura, and Fried the nature of post-auratic art, the goal of this paper is preparatory theses on the nature of art after minimalism–i.e. art which is constituted by the aestheticization of value.

Thinking through history: or, Marx’s subject that can critique

All theoretical projects require a subject that can conduct the project. At least this is a marker of all successful theoretical projects. One can imagine a theory which cannot be conducted by a subject, but any elucidation of this project would be–in Austin’s terms–infelicitous. Even the author of this theory would, presumably, be not up to the task of its theorization–a situation which surpasses the standard “symbolic castration” which allows a successful theory to transcend the specificity of its author. Some theoretical projects seem to have the subject as their primary–or even sole concern–Fichte, for instance, and, at times, Lacan. Others, like Kant, seem to totally lack a theory of the subject. While The Critique of Pure Reason is a masterful epistemology, one might feel that there is no explanation of the way in which one can reproduce this critique as a subject. Some have critiqued Hegel for this same lack, in that Hegel provides no answer as to the means to attain “Absolute Knowing.” Marx, the subject of this paper, lies in a very particular place of the history of Critique. While Marx is required reading for many–and has been ever since his death–many theoretical aspects of his work have been banalized in order to stress the emancipatory side of his work; as many contemporary philosophers have returned to the German tradition to stress its emancipatory side–Žižek and Buck-Morss, for instance–this paper instead looks at Marx primarily as a philosopher. This paper is a close reading of the section “The Method of Political Economy” from Marx’s Grundrisse, the preparatory manuscripts for Capital. The Grundrisse presents a thinking through of what one must do in order to write a Critique of Political Economy, rather than a simply critical or journalistic account of the injustices inherent in the capitalist form of society.

Marx begins, “When we consider [wir betrachten] a given country politico-economically…” (Marx 1973, p. 100). This work was not published, and was not–as far as anyone knows–ever intended to be published. Martin Nicolaus, in the Forward, writes, “This is a series of seven notebooks rough-drafted by Marx, chiefly for purposes of self-clarification…. The manuscript became lost in circumstances still unknown and was first effectively published…in 1953.” This work was not published, in other words, until almost 100 years after its writing. It is for these reasons key that Marx begins with the royal we rather than an impersonal “one” or another possible rhetorical device. Marx immediately assumes an other which can also partake in the considering of a given country. This passage immediately makes one think of Terry Pinkard’s book on Hegel which stresses the Sociality of Reason. Marx, too, founds his form of reason in its social form, in that the subject which reasons is not alone but finds reason through social praxis. This is reason in its political form–in the Aristotelian sense of the political animal.

As Marx continues he discusses the mode of concept formation, “It seems to correct to begin with the real and the concrete, with the real precondition, thus to begin, in economics, with e.g. the population” (ibid., p. 100). This form of inquiry proves false, however, “The population is an abstraction…” (ibid., p. 100) The critique cannot stand still at that which seems the most concrete–clearly there must be such a thing as a population, does not every one live as a member of a population? Are not these populations measured on occassion through censuses? Can one not look around and see other members of a population surrounding oneself? The population, however is an abstraction in so far as its presumed concreteness gives it an air of homogeneity. The concept of population creates a myth of a homogenous political body made up of individual subjects which experience the polis in a way identical to that of the population in general. Marx writes,

The population is an abstraction if I leave out, for example, the classes of which it is composed. These classes are in turn an empty phrase if I am not familiar with the elements on which they rest. E.g. wage labour, capital, etc…. For example, capital is nothing without wage labour, without value….Thus, if I were to begin with the population, this would be a chaotic conception [Vorstellung] of the whole, and I would then, by means of further determination, move analytically towards ever more simple concepts [Begriff], from the imagined concrete towards ever thinner abstractions until I had arrived at the simplest determinations. (ibid., p. 100)

This is to be contrasted to the method of the “economists of the seventeenth century”  which was satisfied with a chaotische Vorstellung des Ganzen. Now, however, Marx points out that “From there the journey (Reise) would have to be retraced until I had arrived at the population again…” (ibid., p. 100). The journey of critique cannot be satisfied with the thinnest of determinations–this would be mere empiricism. Nor can one rest at the whole of society–which in its apparent concreteness is the most abstract of all conceptions. Rather one must begin with the most abstract conception and work to see its concrete determinations–its mediations–and then retrace one’s steps to the chaotic whole. One must begin with the concept of the polis and work one’s way to the determinate nature of that abstract fiction, but through this work one returns to the concept of the polis in its mediated–concrete–form.

This presents the question of concreteness. If that which, by its imposing presence, seems most concrete–for instance, population–is not concrete but actually abstract, but is, after the process of conceptualization, actually concrete, then what is concreteness itself.

The concrete is concrete because it is the concentration of many determinations, hence unity of the diverse. It appears in the process of thinking, therefore, as a process of concentration, as a result, not as a point of departure, even though it is the point of departure in reality… (ibid., p. 101).

In other words, concrete is not a mode of presence, but a mode of being. Presence itself is an illusion as long as it is considered actual presence–a totality–rather than dialectical concretion. Concreteness is Aufhebung of experience. The population, Marx’s key example for this section, lies as an abstraction in the political economies of the bourgeois economists. Marx, however, retakes this category in a concrete manner by understanding dialectically through its determinate (historical) mode of being contra a reified existence.

Marx also differentiates his theory from Hegel, who “fell into the illusion of conceiving the real as the product of thought concentrating itself [determinate negation/the labour of the concept]…whereas the method of rising from the abstract to the concrete is only the way in which thought appropriates the concrete, reproduces it as the concrete in its mind [es als ein geistig Concretes zu reproduciren]” (ibid., p. 101). The rhetoric of this passage is distinctly reminiscent of passages discussing physical labour in the “concrete” economy. Does not the subject in Capitalism “appropriate” fixed capital in order to reproduce it (and, therefore, to create value)? The mind, therefore, conforms to the capitalist mode of production.

Oddly an excursus on Aristotle is necessary to explain this point. Specifically, Aristotle’s distinctive theory of being. Plato conceived of being (ontos) as residing in the eternal ideas/forms (eidoi). That there was no change in being and that being itself had real existence regardless of the existence of concrete particulars which resembled the eternal being in, necessarily, imperfect ways. Aristotle critiqued Plato, arguing, instead, that the ontos resides in the real existence of its concrete form. The eidos did not exist in the world (gē) but in the mind (nous) of the viewer. This theory in many ways resembles Marx’s, but–as simple resemblances tend to dissolve into banal homogeneities–it is more interesting to understand their difference. Aristotle viewed the formation of eidoi as a result of perception. Not as a result of the labour of the mind. Aristotle’s eidoi, in other words, subsist in the object of perception in an unmediated manner; he writes, “…they [the forms eidoi] help in no way towards the knowledge [episteme] of the other things [things in the world]… , nor towards their being [oude gar ousia ekeina touton], if they are not in the particulars which share in them…” (Aristotle 1984, p. 1566). The eidos of a dog is immediately present in its proper perception. Marx dissents from this view in so far as Marx clearly demonstrates the falsity of immediate perception–this is, of course, the error of bourgeois economists. Of course, there is no escaping immediate perceptions, rather there is a consciousness of their falsity. The unmediated eidos of population, in Marx’s example, is false. The population discussed by bourgeois economists, one could say, has no existence outside of the mind of the perceiver. This is not the case because there is no object which is immediately for-another as population, but, as any reader of Hegel knows, the immediate for-another is the false one. Population–the immediate concept–is the starting point of inquiry. One must begin with that which is most abstract and rise up to the simplest of determinations.

The traditional lacuna between Marx and Hegel–that Marx put Hegel on his feet–is left as the major digression between the two–political differences notwithstanding. It is generally assumed that Marx remained a Hegelian in form. This interpretation is aided by Marx’s own declaration of himself as a proud Hegelian and Lenin’s oft quoted comment that one must read Hegel’s Wissenschaft der Logik if one wants to understand Marx’s Capital. While this reading of Marx seems generally correct. Marx seems to owe an unacknowledged debt to Fichte as well. Specifically to Fichte’s masterful (and much disrespected) theory of das Ich. This similarity has, to my knowledge, only been investigated circuitously through various Freudian/Lacanian Marxisms. Which take Fichte’s Ich, whether they realize it or not, as somewhat foundational.

Fichte has frequently been ignored and passed off as naïve by critiques who find his Ich=Ich to be unmediated (at best) or a worthless redundancy (at worst), this seems to be somewhat of a disavowal. Reading Fichte after having read Freud and Lacan emphasizes certain similarities between the three. While Fichte does not have present a psychoanalytic theory in the modern sense, he does theorize, essentially, the subject–which involves a subtle psychological move. Fichte’s major philosophical book Die Wissenschaftslehre is essentially a theory of the way in which one becomes–and remains–an I that can change yet remain the same subject. This is, of course, one of the classical philosophical dilemmas. Fichte is caught in a particular historical space of philosophy. On the one hand, he comes after Kant; on the other, he predates Hegel. In other words, Fichte has remained somewhat ignored in so far as many have felt that Hegel’s critiques were sufficient to discredit his project. Fichte, however, theorizes the subject in a way that is original from Kant’s critical project, but takes its cues from there. An initial reading of the Wissenschaftslehre can give one the idea that Fichte is attempting to save the Cartesian subject–ever self-present, etc.–from Kant’s critique. However, a closer reading reveals that Fichte is much more interesting. The first reading is possible, however, in that Fichte still uses certain philosophical terms which seem tainted by pre-critical thought–intuition, for instance. Fichte seems to make his first mistake in the second paragraph of his summary of the text, where he writes, “…one posits oneself as self-positing” (Wissenschaftslehre, p. 65 italics in original). This line of course presents a circular logic; however, the goal of the text is to show how this circular logic works, i.e. to show how the I that is at once itself and not present to/reflexive/observing itself. This reflexive character is found in the first negation of the I–which is not yet an I–in the encounter with the not-I

All consciousness of spontaneous self-activity is a consciousness of our own restricting of our own activity; but I cannot intuit myself as restricting my activity in this way without also positing a transition from indeterminacy to determinacy [not-I]… (ibid., p. 121 italics in original)

The not-I works as the limitation to the I–which is not yet an I–in that it poses as a determinate limitation to the drive (Trieb) which fuels the not-yet-I. Essentially, Fichte posits the emergence of the subject resulting from a pre-conscious Trieb which, as a result of an external, determinate limitation comes to recognize a negation of itself (something outside itself, different from itself) and therefore comes to posit itself as an autonomous subject. One, at this point, has to remember Spinoza’s dictum, “Omni determinatio ist negatio” (All that is determinate is negated).

One of Freud’s great accomplishments–and one that was continued by Lacan–was the understanding of the role of Libido in Trieb. Freud’s clearest statement on Trieb is contained in his short paper “Instincts (Trieben) and Their Vicissitudes,” where he writes, “The aim of  an instinct is in every instance satisfaction…” (Freud 1989, p. 566). This concept of a primal Trieb which predates subjectivity is further addressed in a short passage–perhaps one of Freud’s most famous–in Civilization and its Discontents. Freud writes of the “Oceanic Feeling” which his friend experiences. This feeling of course is tied to an improper weaning from the breast (Freud 1961, p. 13). The issue of weaning leads one to Lacan’s theory of the dialectic of desire in his masterful essay “The Subversion of the Subject and  the Dialectic of Desire in the Freudian Unconscious” which recounts the fundamental formation of the infantile subject divided between the mother’s desire and the supplement objet petit a found in the barrier of the Nom du père, the subject becomes such by “mak[ing] a barred subject [$] out of an almost natural barrier” (Lacan, p. 696). In other words the subject assumes the barrier (negation/determination) of his desire and incorporates it into himself–the Trieb encounters the not-I and becomes the divided I, or, the mediated subject.

As mentioned above, Marx differs from Aristotle’s conception of eidos in so far as it implies that an understanding of the form can be found in its proper conception rather than in its concentrated–i.e. mediated–perception. Marx seems to take this point from Hegel. However, in this very conjuncture with Hegel, Marx comes upon the Fichtean, later psychanalytic, conception of subjectivity.  Hegel begins his analysis of perception with the example of salt, “This salt is a simple ‘Here’, and at the same time manifold; it is white and also tart, also cubical in shape….All these many properties are in a single simple ‘Here’…” (Hegel 1977, p. 68). The simple substance salt exists in a dual nature. At once it is both a “simple ‘Here’” and  a manifold of determinations–which, of course, are negations. The object of perception exists as being-for-self and being-for-another. The salt, as experienced in its being-for-another is a manifold of determinations, but as being-in-itself it is an abstract universality. The essence of Hegel’s point is that the ‘matter’–that which one experiences–does not exist in an either/or, rather the ‘matter’ is both at once. Marx, of course, implies this insight to population. As population is in itself it is universal, all encompassing; another experiences it, however, as a manifold of concrete determinations. The concepts of political economy are, therefore, abstract and concrete. One must, however, experience this ‘matter’, “One of its moments, the dispersal of the independent ‘matters’ in their [immediate] being, is the expression of Force; but Force, taken as that in which they have disappeared, is Force proper, Force which has been driven back into itself from its expression” (ibid., p. 81). This reminds one of Fichte’s Trieb, the drive which compels the pre-I to its negation and finds the I in the negation of the I.

Marx, in his two mature works Grundrisse and Capital only mentions Fichte once, this singular comment–a footnote–is marvelously fascinating in its insight, not of Fichte but of Marx himself

In a certain sense, a man is in the same situation as a commodity. As he neither enters into the world in possession of a mirror, nor as a Fichtean philosopher who can say ‘I am I’, a man first sees and recognizes himself in another man. Peter only relates to himself as a man through his relation to another man, Paul, in whom he recognizes his likeness. With this, however, Paul also becomes from head to toe, in his physical form as Paul, the form of appearance of the species man for Peter. (Marx 1990 , p. 144 n. 19)

While ostensibly this passage is a repudiation of Fichte’s I, Marx, instead seems to present a correct interpretation of Fichte’s theory. What is more of a not-I than another? One must again bring up Lacan’s dialectic of desire which roots the entirety of subject formation in the subject’s division between two not-I’s: the Nom du père and the desire of the Mother. While this theory is developed from analytic observation and experience it has validity even off of the psychoanalyst’s couch. Lacan, famously, always wrote with the masculine universal, but essentially this dialectic is between two roles (the Law of Jouissance versus the lack in the Other) that need not find their fulfillment in any specific gender or individual. Needless to say, the dialectic of desire does not end with the infant’s attainment of maturity; rather, the dialectic–which serves as a coordination of desire–constantly returns. Lacan describes this constant return/re-coordination as a sort of loop which constantly circles the objet petit a without ever hitting it. Is not Marx, in some sense, a Lacanian avant la lettre? At the same time there is another trend occurring in Marx’s text–a trend that ties him to Aristotle, in so far as one finds one’s ontological character in the immediate perception of another; not, it seems in the dialectic of Lacan or the negation of Fichte. It seems odd, however, to think that Marx–an excellent reader of Hegel–could simply accept Aristotle’s somewhat immediate perception. This incongruence becomes even more apparent in comparison to the above cited passages from the Grundrisse, in which there is a dialectical richness to the perception of social forms. Marx is clearly, in these passages and throughout the text, a disciple of Hegel.

Marx begins the note, “In a certain sense, a man is in the same situation as a commodity.” What does it mean for a person to be ‘in the same situation as a commodity’? Marx surely does not mean that an individual person is the product of alienated homogenous labour. It also is doubtful that the production of human beings produces surplus-value–one imagines that if this were the case then someone would have founded a human producing factory by now. I person is not a commodity, but, rather, in the same situation as a commodity: both are mediated, in their social ontology, by capitalism.

Karl Marx describes capitalism as a social form distinctive in that its sociality is mediated by an abstraction, value

The value-form of the product of labour is the most abstract, but also the most universal form of the bourgeois mode of production;…it stamps the bourgeois mode of production as a particular kind of social production…. If then we make the mistake of treating it as the eternal natural form of social production, we necessarily overlook the specificity of the value-form, and consequently of the commodity form… (Marx 1990, p. 174 n. 34)

Value, in other words, is a historically specific abstraction which is distinctive of the capitalist, here Marx writes bourgeois, mode of production. Of course this value is produced through physical labour, not by it (Postone, p. 145). This is the case in so far as value is a product of abstract human labour. In capitalism, Marx makes clear, human labour must create use-values and abstract-values. Use values, one could say, useful things in the world; value is distinctive in that it is a product of the capitalist mode of production and in that it lacks real existence, rather, value is the eidos which exists solely in the mind of the citizen of capital.

Therefore, human labour is itself split between two teloi: the production of use-value and the production of abstract value. Clearly one does not spend the first have of one’s day producing objects and the other half producing abstractions; the divided nature of labour–in that it produces objects and is a social mediation–is reinscribed onto the very mind of the subject in capitalism. Subjectivity is characterized by this split. Žižek draws a parallel between Lacan and Marx along similar lines, “…[Marx] articulated the universal logic of the historical development of humanity on the basis of his analysis of capitalism as the excessive (imbalanced) system of production” (Žižek, p. 376). Here Žižek explicitly connects the figure of capitalism (as a total system) to the Lacanian image of the superego which commands one to enjoy (Jouir). This connection seems to be, perhaps, a little to neat. While contemporary capitalism fulfills Marx’s category of “insane consumption” (Marx 1973, p. ___) it seems too straightforward to draw an identity between the superego and the capitalist social formation. For Marx–in Freudian terms–capitalism exists as a both/and; capitalism both serves to repress the subject–forcing one to produce surplus-value in exchange for the right to produce sufficient value to survive–and creates needs in order to create consumptive desires. Capitalism is both a repressive force–the Freud’s superego–and a force for consumption–Lacan’s superego. This divided nature of the superego can itself be accounted for by Lacan who, as mentioned above, shows the emergence of subjectivity as coordinated by the Nom du Père and the desire of the mother–the Law or the No and permissive desire. This situation is, of course, parallel to the two coordinates of capitalism. While this parallel between the two is clear, they diverge both in form and content. Lacan’s theory lies on the level of individual subjectivity as it is affected by other individual subjects. Marx, of course, thinks of the individual in more Aristotelian terms–the political animal. For Marx, the human being’s individual subjectivity is a concrete determination of the abstract form of society–one’s subjectivity serves as a mediation which is itself socially mediated. This is not to emphasis that Marx and Lacan do not propose contradictory theories, but, rather, theories of different levels of society; instead, while both the former are accurate, this is meant to show the role of the political in Marx. The subject, in Marx, is divided in its subjectivity through the fundamental division of capitalism: the production of abstract value and use-value. The subject, in other words, is divided between its abstract universality as a social mediation and its determinate role–its concretion. One could describe this as a division between its being-for-another and its being-for-itself. Or, perhaps, Alfred Sohn-Rethel’s fundamental division between intellectual and manual labour.

If the subject that conducts this theoretical project is divided from the outset, how does the subject become that which can be divided? Marx writes

The totality as it appears in the head, as a totality of thoughts, is a product of a thinking head, which appropriates the world in the only way it can, a way different from the artistic, religious, practical and mental appropriation of this world. The real subject retains its autonomous existence outside the head just as before; namely as long as the head’s conduct is merely speculative, merely theoretical. Hence, in the theoretical method, too, the subject, society, must always be kept in mind as the presupposition. (Marx 1976, pp. 101-102)

Marx, here, seems to take the subject, like society, as assumed. The subject is a presupposition of the theoretical method. At the same time this very assumption of the subject betrays much about the nature of the subject. As remarked above, one reproduces the form of society in one’s mind as one moves from an abstract intuition of the social form to an cognition of its concrete determinations. This process is, perhaps, not as graphic as Fichte’s Trieb which compels one to one’s negation, but it expresses a fundamentally similar account of subject formation. The pre-critical subject exists in a state of abstract intuiting which leads to general concepts of social forms that are treacherous in their very familiarity. Marx seems to reverse the direction of Trieb–this recalls Žižek’s comment aligning capitalism with the superego. Žižek describes capitalism as an overwhelming affront to the subject. Does this not strike one as, in some way, profoundly true. Capitalism exists everywhere–if Marx is right–it mediates all social forms in a profound way. Is there not, therefore, a Trieb of abstract capital? Does not capital drive towards its own endless expansion–one here must remember that for both Marx and Freud this drive of expansion is the death drive, thanatos.

It therefore seems that it is the form of social mediation which contains the Trieb of subject formation in Marx–contra the Fichtean Urtrieb which compels the not-yet-I to its negation. There is another, more fundamental, divergence, however, between Marx and Fichte: where Fichte finds the I negatively–as it reacts to the not-I–Marx finds it socially–in its perception of another. Fichte’s I, however, is the negation of the non-I; as the “negation of the negation” this I is fundamentally positive, and exists as a positive social form. For Marx, one is inserted into a social milieu, and finds one’s being in this social space. Again, this raises the specter of Aristotle and the political animal. Marx’s political animal exists, clearly, in a different form of the political–capitalism–and also in a more dialectically mediated manner. In so far as one finds one’s being as a social form of being Marx posits an elastic quality of subjectivity which allows the mode of being human to be historically and socially determinate rather than transhistorical.