Responding to Graham’s talk at Dundee, Reid has a terrific post up discussing the manner in which Marxist materialism differs from reductive materialisms that trace back to the atomism of Democritus, Epicurus, and Lucretius. In many respects, Reid’s remarks come very close to a number of the central intuitions of OOO and onticology where social and political thought are concerned. These intuitions revolve around hoisting social and political thought from its almost exclusive focus on what I call the semiotic, to take into account other domains of collectives and the role they play in social formations. Thus Reid writes:
Materialism in Marx’s sense is neither a metaphysical nor an epistemological doctrine; it is not a philosophical doctrine or theory in any ordinary sense. Rather, it is a meta-philosophical doctrine about the relation between philosophy and its material conditions of possibility. In this regard, both the content of philosophical discourse and the methodological form of that discourse must be referred to the conditions under which philosophical practice occurs. Material conditions in this regard can begin quite narrowly: philosophy requires various material and institutional supports, from universities and publishing houses down to brains and paper. But these conditions, of course, never exist in isolation, and depend upon a certain mode of production that not only conditions their genesis, but their distribution, maintenance, etc. Ultimately, philosophical practice depends upon a broad economic, political, and social condition that enables it to occur, whatever its function within society may be.
The point here is that we can’t focus on the discursive or ideological alone, but must take into account the role that nonhumans play in the collectives within which we find ourselves. Reid drives this point home a moment later when he writes:
Because philosophy always operates under a specific material condition, materialist philosophy must be attentive to the specificity of its relation to this condition. This relation is not necessarily manifest in theoretical content, but it certainly is in the practice through which this content is produced. For example, as a graduate student at a university, I have a specific relation to the political-economic mode conditioning my philosophical work: I take out loans, I pay tuition, I work, I have limited resources whose use is determined by administrators with whom I have limited contact, etc. The central concern of materialism in this regard is not the content of one’s position, which becomes relatively equivocal, but the practical form of its production. The content would become a concern if it were used to justify a particular practice of philosophy. It is on this basis that Marx so strongly condemns all varieties of philosophical idealism, especially Hegel, which in his eyes amount to an apologetics for idealism about philosophy, or the thesis that the practices conditioning philosophical thought are either no concern for philosophy, or must necessarily be as they are for philosophical activity to proceed (Hegel would advocate a variant of the latter).
There’s a lot more there (some of which I’m not entirely in agreement, but which is nonetheless very good), so read the rest here.
All of this brings to mind a beautiful diagram I came across in David Harvey’s sublime Companion to Marx’s Capital. There Harvey seeks to diagram the relations involved in those collectives that involve humans (it’s also important to recall that there are collectives that don’t involve humans at all). The powerful feature of Harvey’s diagram is that in mapping the interrelations between elements that belong to collectives in which humans participate, he expands that field of relations well beyond an obsessive focus on representation, the semiotic, the ideological, or the linguistic. The domain of representation is one element in these collectives, but only one. In addition representation we get nature, technology, modes of production, social relations, and the reproduction of daily life.
read on!
If this is important, then this is because Continental social and political theory has focused almost obsessively on the domain of representation for the last few decades. Whether we’re talking about Adorno and his focus on the culture machine, or thinkers like Zizek, Badiou, Ranciere, and Laclau, the question of politics gets restricted to questions of representation or ideological in the domain of language and signs. As a consequence, these other five elements become almost entirely invisible and social and political engagement comes to be conceived as an engagement with representation. And here I think this is an effect of commodity fetishism and the rise of the new communications technologies, where the non-semiotic becomes invisible and we experience the world as composed of representations alone.
While it is certainly true that representation plays an important role in capitalist collectives– especially inn the reproduction of daily life –overall I think that role is somewhat minor compared to the role played by the other five domains. Capitalist relations function quite well in the absence of ideological apologetics and are congenial to a wide variety of ideological formations to continue in their functioning. And a big reason for this is that the sorts of dynamics that generate capitalist social relations are not simply of an ideological nature. We can imagine, for example, a capitalist that is passionately devoted to Marxist thought and that deplores the system within which he finds himself that nonetheless obeys all the dynamics of capitalism in the pursuit and production of surplus-value. And the reason for this is not that he’s being dishonest with himself, but rather that the immanent relations of production characterizing a capitalist system require him to produce surplus-value, modernize technologically, cut costs of production, etc., if his company is to maintain itself and continue to exist. Such a capitalist knows very well what’s going on, but finds himself caught in the midst of a forced decision like the sort described by Lacan: Your money or your life! If he doesn’t obey these dynamics not only he, but all of his employees lose their subsistence. This is not a matter of ideology, but of immanent relations in the social field.
The consequence here is that modes of social and political analysis that focus on the representational alone are very likely to be completely impotent with respect to the possibility of producing any change. Here I find myself disagreeing with Reid (if I’m reading him right). He pitches the problem of capitalism as one of ideology. Ideology is certainly part of the problem, but a very minor one in the grand scheme of things. Rather, the more significant issues are to be located at the level of the means of production, technology, and the relations to nature; all of which require careful analysis of the role played by nonhuman actors in human collectives.
The critic that places all his eggs in the basket will find himself encountering two problems: First, he will wonder why nothing changes despite the fact that he’s revealed the insidious ideology at the root of contemporary social relations. And here the reason nothing changes is that because many of the relations– indeed the lion’s share of relations –organizing contemporary social relations are not of a representational nature at all. Second, the critic that focuses on representation alone will, as Reid nicely points out, become blind to the conditions of their own representations, failing to see the manner in which these are imbricated with reigning relations of production. This can have massive detrimental theoretical consequences as I argued in a recent post.
Yet another attractive feature of Harvey’s diagram is that the six domains he outlines here are more or less autonomous from one another. Often we get a picture of Marx where the base determines the superstructure. While the base certainly affords and constrains the superstructure, things are far more complex than this. Each of these domains interpenetrate yet develop at different rhythms and in different ways. Thus, for example, when you get electricity and the electric light in the domain of technology, this impacts modes of production, social relations, and representation. The working day becomes longer, you get new groupings of people afforded by the possibility of lighting at night, and the nature of representation undergoes shifts as a result of being able to read and write late into the evening. The point here is that change can come from many domains beyond the domain of representation. We cripple our thought if we focus on representation alone to the detriment of these other spheres.
April 2, 2010 at 5:28 pm
This post reminds me that I wish more Marxists would go into computer science, engineering, environmental science, etc. rather than acting as social scientists, academic professionals, or even activists (in the traditional sense of the term). While it’s always a useful insight that change can come from non-ideological arenas, there could be a whole lot more progressive work going on in those domains. The Open Source movement comes to mind, though that’s a pretty active movement with a lot of followers ranging from Google to hermit hackers.
April 2, 2010 at 8:14 pm
@Ejypt: I think it’d definitely be a productive way of enacting at least some kinds of changes, but I think there are probably more complex reasons for the lack than just choices to go into one field vs. another. I’d suspect that there whether an 18-year-old who has a vague feeling that something is wrong with “the system” turns into a Marxist, an anarchist, a libertarian, an economically apolitical civil libertarian, or becomes “keep your head down” apolitical person, etc., is at least partly influenced by their choice of field of study.
Academia might even un-produce engineering Marxists: I know a decent number of former or closet Marxists in engineering areas, but most find it pretty unproductive to try to engage with activist groups or modern academic Marxism, because the academic left so thoroughly doesn’t believe that there’s any productive political work to do in technology; as OOO of course points out, many at a fundamental ontological level don’t believe that technology even exists.
My own personal attempts to go to colloquia and find common things to discuss haven’t really been productive either (some areas of media studies excepted). It seems to usually turn into a weirdly condescending lecture attempting to “educate” me about my “naive” politics, which boils down to trying to convince me that all the real issues are social/cultural/semiotic/etc. ones, and I’ve been simply misled by thinking that there were any questions of political import in technology or science.
If you want to discuss how software structures relations of production in a modern economy, say, you never get past that first sentence. Someone will accuse you of technological determinism, of having mistaken the actions of capitalists who run software companies (real) for the effects of technology (socially constructed); someone else will want to deconstruct what precisely you mean by the cultural category “software”, etc.
It also doesn’t encourage much engagement when attempts to do so tend to be panned or ignored; for example, the academic left doesn’t (as far as I can tell) really take seriously things like Eben Moglen’s writings on the free-software movement as a variety of practical anarchism.
April 3, 2010 at 4:26 pm
Any bridging that can occur between disciplines will be facilitated by a dialogue that does not use one discipline’s terms to structure/determine/explain another. In other words, the chief error to avoid is vulgar reductionism.
That’s the worry of an academic Marxist talking to an engineer or an economist or a particle physicist, and vice versa. In each case, there’s the fear of one’s position being undermined by a discipline whose object of study is more fundamental.
I continue to maintain that this fear is overblown. Consider this, while vulgar reductionism is a popular common-sense position trumpeted constantly whenever the media appropriates the latest scientific studies (“Our sexual desires are really in our genes” or something else), how many people, when it comes down to it, are hard core physical reductionists? How many really believe that “society” is merely an idealistic construction, unworthy of study as a real object in its own right?
And even if physical reductionism is your Big Claim about the world, this does not necessarily prevent you from being interested in object-oriented interventions, politics, or cross-discipline cooperation.
April 3, 2010 at 9:06 pm
Cross-discipline cooperation was hinted at by Ian Bogost, in my opinion, in his notion of pragmatic OOO, and also Levi’s deployment of the word democracy. What’s a democracy of objects? Is a cross-disciplinary effort at cooperation also a cooperation between the objects (of study) themselves?
April 12, 2010 at 7:44 am
hi Levi,
I’ve not read that Harvey book but I’ve watched some of the lectures it’s based on and I don’t think Harvey would agree those different things he identifies are autonomous. I think he’d say something like they’re in a complex multi-causal relationship. I’m pretty sure that’s what Marx would say too. For instance, there’s the bit in v1 of Capital where he suggests that someone ought to write a history of technology produced for the purposes of breaking strikes. If you have time, I’d be keen to know what you make of this essay:
http://www.elkilombo.org/the-capitalist-use-of-machinery-marx-versus-the-objectivists/
take care,
Nate
April 12, 2010 at 12:12 pm
Hi Nate,
That’s the way I’d put it, but Harvey is pretty insistent on the point that dialectical relations aren’t causal relations. I suspect he conceives causal relations as unilateral relations such that given a single cause we’re necessarily given a certain effect. The thesis about autonomy is simply that you can have developments in each domain that aren’t directly the result of the other domains. Here I think Harvey borders on Badiou’s truth-procedures.
April 14, 2010 at 5:09 am
hi Levi,
That’s clearer re: autonomy, thanks! That’s a rather weak or relative autonomy, which I think (Harvey aside) is right. That also leaves open the possibility of these acting on each other in some cases (determining in a weak sense, like in the sense Raymond Williams lays out in his base+superstructure essay).
cheers,
Nate
May 3, 2011 at 8:34 pm
have reposted this to
http://libcom.org/library/introduction-marxs-materialist-dialectic
hope you don’t mind!
November 27, 2012 at 8:18 pm
[…] Diagram of the materialist dialectic, courtesey of David Harvey and online at Larval Subjects […]
October 19, 2014 at 6:22 am
Reblogged this on spreadtheinfestation and commented:
a blog called Larval Subjects that discuss the philosophy of marxist materialism? whaaaat? where have you been all my life?