Building Blocks II

This must have been done. Animism in Totem and Taboo as fetishism. Not Freudian fetishism, but Marxian, or Freudo-Marxian fetishism. ( Suddenly aware of how indicative this thought is of my standing as an academic in training where thoughts are not only valued by their merit but are given extra value if they haven’t been thought before. If such a thing is possible is it desirable? fodder for another post).

First. one of Freud’s several definitions of animism is the ‘living character of what appear to be inanimate objects’ (this essentially is one of traditional meaning of the fetish according my computer dictionary which says a fetish can either be an object with magical powers or alive ) Of course Freud being Freud, doesn’t address this or make a distinction between animism as traditional fetishism and sexual fetish as abnormal perversion etc.

2 Freud describes animism as the most complete weltanschung. Obvious parallels here with capitalist totality.

3 the Practical aspect of animism is described as ‘including body of instructions how to obtain mastery over men, beasts and things or over their spirits.78 Capital, of course is described as this seemingly magical fetishzed world that has mastery over men. we are our own gravediggers day after day But the appearance is otherwise  an enchanted, perverted, topsy-turvy world, in which Monsieur le Capital and Madame la Terre do their ghost-walking as social characters and at the same time directly as things.

4 According to Freud, animism is ‘ the first weltangschung. But It would go beyond our present purpose to show how much of it still persists in modern life, either as the debased form of superstition or as the living basis of our speech our beliefs our philosophy.

Its tempting to say here, in the confluence of Marxian fetishism and Freudian animism, is where the Dialectic of Enlightenment steps in.

Rather sketchy, I know, but more to come.

 

The Building blocks of Freudo-Marxism

Freud:

‘it seems likely that what are known as materialistic views of history sin in under estimating this factor. (the super egos conforming influence passed down through generations) They brush it aside with the remarks that human ideologies are nothing other then the product and superstructure of their economic conditions. That is true, but very probably not the whole truth. Mankind never lives entirely in the present. The past, the tradition of the race and of the people live on in the ideology of the super-ego, and yields only slowly to the influence of the present and to new changes and so long as it operates thru the super ego it plays a powerful role in human life indie of economic conditions.” (New Introductory Lectures)

But, of course, Freud did not have an extensive knowledge of Marx

Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.

The social revolution of the nineteenth century cannot take its poetry from the past but only from the future. It cannot begin with itself before it has stripped away all superstition about the past. The former revolutions required recollections of past world history in order to smother their own content. The revolution of the nineteenth century must let the dead bury their dead in order to arrive at its own content. There the phrase went beyond the content – here the content goes beyond the phrase. (The 18th Brumaire)

They seem to complement each other well.

 

What Epistemological Break?

Marx in the 1844 Manuscripts:

Aleination shows itself not only in the result, but also in the act of production, inside production itself…For the product is merely a summary of the activity of production. So if the product of labour is externalization, production itself must be active externalization, the externalization of activity, the activity of externalization. The alienation of the object of labour is only the resume of alienation, the externalization in the activity of labour itself. (Mclellan trans. 88)

Marx in Capital

The general value form, which represents all products of labour as mere congelations of undifferentiated human labour, shows by its very structure that it is the social resumé of the world of commodities. That form consequently makes it indisputably evident that in the world of commodities the character possessed by all labour of being human labour constitutes its specific social character.

 

The Fetish Character of Capital

It would be interestintg to study what parts of Marx are taught in each discipline and come up with a comparison of the historian’s Marx, the Theorist’s Marx, the philosopher’s Marx, the political-economist’s Marx etc. etc. They’re bound to be different. (Personal experience has taught me that the political science Marx is the hopelessly vulgarized Marx of teleology and laws, whereas of course , the philosophical and theoretical sophisticated Marx abounds with Hegelian sublties.) As I’m categorized as a theorist, I can’t muddy my hands with empirical work, so somebody get to it!

This research idea crossed my mind today when I was reading up on fetishism in Capital. Now, I’d read the Fetish Character of Commodities and its Secrets, countless times, but, I’d never read the sections on the fetish charcter of Capital, which is a shame because they’re brilliant distallations of the Hegelian influenced idea of Capital. They are also staggeringly relevant descriptions of the financial crisis/ depression cluster fuck going on now;

The appearance;

Relations of capital assume their most external and most fetish-like form in interest bearing capital…. [They] Appear[s] as  a mysterious and self-creating source of interest- the source of its own increase. The thing ( money, commodity, value) is now capital even as a mere thing, and capital appears as a mere thing. The result of the entire process of reproduction appears as a property inherent in the thing itself. …in interest-bearing capital, therefore, this automatic fetish, self-expanding value, money generating money, is brought out in its pure state and in this form no longer bears the birthmark of its origin. The social relation is consummated in the relation of a thing, of money, to itself. Instead of the actual transformation of money into capital, we see here only form without content.

The appearance and the social essence behind the appearance;

This 2 becomes distorted. While interest is only a portion of the profit, i.e. of surplus value, which the functioning capital squeezes out of the labourer, it appears now, on the contrary, as though interest were a typical prod of capital, the primary matter, and profit, in the shape of profit of enterprise, were a mere accessory and by-product of the process of reproduction. Thus, we get the fetish form of capital and the conception of fetish capital…it is the capacity of money, or of a commodity, to expand its own value independently of reproduction—which is a mystification of capital in its most flagrant form

The repercussions;

In its capacity of interest-bearing capital, capital claims the ownership of wealth which can ever be produced, and everything it has received so far is but an instalment for its all-engrossing appetite. By its innate laws, all surplus labour which the human race can ever perform belongs to it. moloch

As long as the social character of labour appears as the money existence of commodities, and thus as a thing external to actual production, money crises- independent of or as an intensification of actual crises—are inevitable.

 

Class War

vulgar marxism has its moment of truth;  “the executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.” describing how the recipients of bank bailouts killed a labor bill. The article also has excerpts from the conference call in which they put forth their rationale to opposing the bill; “This [the bill] is the demise of a civilization,” said CEO Marcus. “This is how a civilization disappears. I am sitting here as an elder statesman and I’m watching this happen and I don’t believe it.”….Donations of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars to Republican senatorial campaigns were needed, they argued, to prevent America from turning “into France.” class, and class war, are alive and well.

 

Neanderthal Murder Mystery

What fascinates me about the latest news in evolutionary biology, is not that scientists have discounted one theory that explains the Neanderthal’s extinction, but one of the remaining leading hypotheses.

What The Guardian explains; ” Theories of what drove the Neanderthals to extinction range from an inability to adapt to a quickly changing environment, to genocide by early humans. “

The Independent elaborates;

“Professor Chris Stringer, head of human origins at the Natural History Museum in London, believes that the long period of separation – and genetic isolation – between the Neanderthals and early modern humans meant that profound physical and mental differences had evolved between them.”The question then is whether, when the populations met, they regarded each other as simply people, enemies, aliens or even prey,” he said. “We simply don’t know the answer, and the answer may have varied from one time and place to another, especially given the vagaries of human behaviour.”

We may never know what happened when modern humans came to live in the same space inhabited by the Neanderthals. They may simply have avoided one another, with Neanderthals retreating to their last stronghold in Europe – a cave system in Gibraltar where the most recent Neanderthal bones have been found.

Or the two species might have engaged in the sort of brutal conflict that has been the hallmark of human history throughout time.

What Interests me here is the assumptions that mediate the “genocide” hypothesis. Stringer implies that there is not enough empirical evidence to answer the extinction question. This allows the assumptions that frame the empiricism to stand on their own. While Stringer is tentative to make any general assertions, the unnamed advocates of the “genocide hypothesis” are not. For them human nature, from its origin in primordial history,  must be seen as inherently murderous. Human history then, rather then culminating in the genocidal 20th century, is a continuous eruption of genocide.

Critical theory would move against the genocidal hypothesis by attacking the mediating assumptions. Scanty evidence, or any empirical evidence for the matter, is framed by our immanent discourse. The genocidal hypothesis, then, is not historical. Instead it reveals the genocidal impulse that is immanent to our culture. An impulse enacted by our society, and the encounter with “the other” is reflected in “human nature” as self-preservation.

While the later is certainly true, should the “genocidal hypothesis” be proven, it will have enormous philosophical repercussions. It will also serve as yet another reminder that the time to leave what Marx calls the realm of necessity, is long overdue;

The realm of freedom actually begins only where labour which is determined by necessity and mundane considerations ceases; thus in the very nature of things it lies beyond the sphere of actual material production. Just as the savage must wrestle with Nature to satisfy his wants, to maintain and reproduce life, so must civilized man, and he must do so in all social formations and under all possible modes of production. With his development this realm of physical necessity expands as a result of his wants; but, at the same time, the forces of production which satisfy these wants also increase. Freedom in this field can only consist in socialized man, the associated producers, rationally regulating their interchange with Nature, bringing it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by the blind forces of Nature; and achieving this with the least expenditure of energy and under conditions most favourable to, and worthy of, their human nature. But it nonetheless still remains a realm of necessity. Beyond it begins that development of human energy which is an end in itself, the true realm of freedom, which, however, can blossom forth only with the realm of necessity as its basis. The shortening of the working day is its basic prerequisite. (Marx Capital Vol III, 820)

 

Harvey on Marx

For those with regular internet access- arse- i highly recommend David Harvey’s Course on Capital. Speaking of people named Dave Harvey, I also recommend catching nudity, a fine, fine psychedelic band. I had a  transcendent freak out time watching them the other week.

 

Marx Myths and Legends

An invaluable resource to set vulgar Marxists and uninformed critics straight.

 

Alienation in Everyday Life as Negative Universality

My new job bombards me with alienation. Not just my own, but everyones. I just started work in a downtown sandwich shop. The shop caters to the professional lunch rush a state capitol provides. My vantage point behind the counter lets me overhear the small talk made between the long term customers and the shops owners. Like a previous job- at a YMCA in Olympia WA ( another state capitol)- the small talk consists of platitudes that you can be sure have been repeated ad nausem for years. The nature of these platitudes is whats striking; they are about alienation. The cliches about how many days are left until the weekend or retirement, the complaints about how they would make you work on the weekend if they could, even the escapism of golf are examples of estranged labour. This is what ties white collar workers, petit bourgeois  sandwich shop owners and me together; the negative universality of the capitalist totality. But, of course I am not the first to realize this; Marx nails it on the head in The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, he even explains the attraction of the golf; under alienated conditions even free time is banal

“What constitutes the alienation of labour?

Firstly, the fact that labour is external to the worker – i.e., does not belong to his essential being; that he, therefore, does not confirm himself in his work, but denies himself, feels miserable and not happy, does not develop free mental and physical energy, but mortifies his flesh and ruins his mind. Hence, the worker feels himself only when he is not working; when he is working, he does not feel himself. He is at home when he is not working, and not at home when he is working. His labour is, therefore, not voluntary but forced, it is forced labour. It is, therefore, not the satisfaction of a need but a mere means to satisfy needs outside itself. Its alien character is clearly demonstrated by the fact that as soon as no physical or other compulsion exists, it is shunned like the plague. External labour, labour in which man alienates himself, is a labour of self-sacrifice, of mortification. Finally, the external character of labour for the worker is demonstrated by the fact that it belongs not to him but to another, and that in it he belongs not to himself but to another. Just as in religion the spontaneous activity of the human imagination, the human brain, and the human heart, detaches itself from the individual and reappears as the alien activity of a god or of a devil, so the activity of the worker is not his own spontaneous activity. It belongs to another, it is a loss of his self.

The result is that man (the worker) feels that he is acting freely only in his animal functions – eating, drinking, and procreating, or at most in his dwelling and adornment – while in his human functions, he is nothing more than animal.

It is true that eating, drinking, and procreating, etc., are also genuine human functions. However, when abstracted from other aspects of human activity, and turned into final and exclusive ends, they are animal.”

read the rest here

 

Invaders from Marx

The paper I am writing and my new temp job making sandwiches give me little time to blog. I suggest you read Invaders From Marx: On the Uses of Marxian Theory, and the Difficulties of a Contemporary Reading by Michael Heinrich. Its short, has an excellent history of Marxist thought, and it dispels many of the common misconceptions about Marx. Its more learned then anything I will post.