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

by sensuscommunist

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.