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A review by akemi_666
Reading Capital Politically by Harry Cleaver
4.0
My copy of this book has 100 pages of prefaces before chapter 1. The publisher really makes you labour to get to that theory, ahahahahaaahagdgdasgfv—
In all seriousness, this is one of the best texts on class struggle I've read. Marx wrote Capital but he never wrote Proletariat. Cleaver contends, however, that capital cannot be understood without the proletariat, for capital and the proletariat exist in a dialectic, each defined by the other in a contradictory totality, whose dual movements of the commodity form and class struggle contest social reality.
His two main arguments are that 1) economic crises are driven by class struggle, and 2) class struggle exists to free us from work. By arguing this, he seeks to distance Marx from both Western Marxism and Soviet-styled Marxism.
While Western Marxism provided the foundation for complex ideological analyses in the 70's (Stuart Hall, Laclau and Mouffe), its earlier strains were mired by German pessimism (Weber, Freud), either providing no analysis of proletarian resistance (Adorno and Horkheimer, Althusser), or externalising resistance out of class struggle altogether (Marcuse).
Soviet-styled Marxism, on the other hand, failed to rid itself of capitalist relations. While it jettisoned the content of capitalist ideology, it reproduced the form of capitalist relations, reifying labour into the penultimate purpose for existence. The proletariat, who was supposed to disappear with capital in the great sublation of opposites, was instead elevated into an ideal whose shadow remained capital through and through (we see this in the way Lenin imported Taylorism from America).
Ultimately, both Western and Soviet-styled Marxism left the worker alienated from their ownmost desires.
Yet the diverse struggles of the late 60's and 70's showed that resistance was alive and well, from student protests and wildcat strikes, to second-wave feminism and black power. Cleaver argues that classical Marxism couldn't understand such struggles because it had reified the proletariat as a factory worker, an identity historically appropriate for Marx, but inadequate for the 20th century's post-war era.
So, Cleaver returns to the commodity form, and in doing so, redefines both it and class struggle.
Many believe the commodity is an object for sale. Cleaver argues that the commodity is a relation, a way of organising society. What the commodity does is bring everyone and everything into the dominion of capital. The commodity comes to stand in for social relations. It mediates what was once an immediate relation with the world and with others. All the things once incomparable become levelled on a field of equivalency (see Baudrillard's Impossible Exchange). In other words, everything gains a price.
Class struggle then, is the rejection of commodification. A great NO! in the face of exchange. A demand for the dual destruction of use-value and exchange-value, whose contradictory relation generates the commodity form (see Bataille's Accursed Share for an exploration of useless expenditure). Cleaver ruptures the reified image of class struggle, to return it to its original conception as a motor of history.
The struggles of unwaged workers become just as proletarian as those of waged workers, for both share the demand for (not social ownership, but) life without work. Abolition of the 16 hour work day, abolition of housework, abolition of exams — these struggles demand a life no longer captured by productivity, drudgery or quantification. They are demands a labour that gives life, rather than drains it ever faster.
What's the point of productivity if it doesn't free us from work? If it creates a division between waged and unwaged workers, one dying from overwork, the other dying from destitution?
In all seriousness, this is one of the best texts on class struggle I've read. Marx wrote Capital but he never wrote Proletariat. Cleaver contends, however, that capital cannot be understood without the proletariat, for capital and the proletariat exist in a dialectic, each defined by the other in a contradictory totality, whose dual movements of the commodity form and class struggle contest social reality.
His two main arguments are that 1) economic crises are driven by class struggle, and 2) class struggle exists to free us from work. By arguing this, he seeks to distance Marx from both Western Marxism and Soviet-styled Marxism.
While Western Marxism provided the foundation for complex ideological analyses in the 70's (Stuart Hall, Laclau and Mouffe), its earlier strains were mired by German pessimism (Weber, Freud), either providing no analysis of proletarian resistance (Adorno and Horkheimer, Althusser), or externalising resistance out of class struggle altogether (Marcuse).
Soviet-styled Marxism, on the other hand, failed to rid itself of capitalist relations. While it jettisoned the content of capitalist ideology, it reproduced the form of capitalist relations, reifying labour into the penultimate purpose for existence. The proletariat, who was supposed to disappear with capital in the great sublation of opposites, was instead elevated into an ideal whose shadow remained capital through and through (we see this in the way Lenin imported Taylorism from America).
Ultimately, both Western and Soviet-styled Marxism left the worker alienated from their ownmost desires.
Yet the diverse struggles of the late 60's and 70's showed that resistance was alive and well, from student protests and wildcat strikes, to second-wave feminism and black power. Cleaver argues that classical Marxism couldn't understand such struggles because it had reified the proletariat as a factory worker, an identity historically appropriate for Marx, but inadequate for the 20th century's post-war era.
So, Cleaver returns to the commodity form, and in doing so, redefines both it and class struggle.
Many believe the commodity is an object for sale. Cleaver argues that the commodity is a relation, a way of organising society. What the commodity does is bring everyone and everything into the dominion of capital. The commodity comes to stand in for social relations. It mediates what was once an immediate relation with the world and with others. All the things once incomparable become levelled on a field of equivalency (see Baudrillard's Impossible Exchange). In other words, everything gains a price.
Class struggle then, is the rejection of commodification. A great NO! in the face of exchange. A demand for the dual destruction of use-value and exchange-value, whose contradictory relation generates the commodity form (see Bataille's Accursed Share for an exploration of useless expenditure). Cleaver ruptures the reified image of class struggle, to return it to its original conception as a motor of history.
The struggles of unwaged workers become just as proletarian as those of waged workers, for both share the demand for (not social ownership, but) life without work. Abolition of the 16 hour work day, abolition of housework, abolition of exams — these struggles demand a life no longer captured by productivity, drudgery or quantification. They are demands a labour that gives life, rather than drains it ever faster.
What's the point of productivity if it doesn't free us from work? If it creates a division between waged and unwaged workers, one dying from overwork, the other dying from destitution?