‘In hell everything is hellish'
Werner Bonefeld, Critical Theory and the Critique of Political Economy: On Subversion and Negative Reason
Bloomsbury, 256pp, £65.00, ISBN 9781441161390
reviewed by John P. Merrick
Since the financial crisis of 2008 there has been a reinvigoration of discussions around the importance of Marx and Marxism for any understanding of the workings of capitalism. This reassessment has occurred across the social sciences, but perhaps most importantly within the field of economics, where there is a move by many to see this once-maligned figure return to the canon. However, central to Werner Bonefeld's new book, Critical Theory and the Critique of Political Economy, is the seemingly obvious question: is Marx is an economic thinker? Bonefeld's lucid and original reading answers this question in the affirmative, with the caveat that any reading of Marx which takes his mature work as purely economic misses the vital element of Capital – namely that the book is a critique of political economy. As Bonefeld notes, Capital is not a book of economics; Economics ‘sides with the mischief of a world that ascribes subjective power to economic things and invisible principles,’ it is ‘the formula of an inverted world.’ All forms of economics, whether they be orthodox, heterodox or Marxist, end up naturalising capitalist social relations. For Bonefeld, it is this inversion inherent to economics that is key to understanding both Marx's critique and capitalist social relations.
What Bonefeld means by inversion is the peculiar and ‘perverted’ forms of social reproduction taken by a capitalistically organised society. This inversion occurs in the form of the fetish character of commodities, in which sensuous human practice takes the form of an economic relation between things. This is no mere epistemological error in which people mistakenly ascribe properties to the products of their own labour which, behind the veil of a false consciousness, they themselves possess. Rather, what plays out in Capital, according to Bonefeld, is a dialectic of subject and object, abstract and concrete, in which humans in their social relations produce a world that then enslaves them. These dominating economic abstractions are both real and illusionary. They are real – and hence objective – in the way they structure the social relations within which humans produce and reproduce the conditions of their existence, and illusionary as they appear as self-moving laws of economic nature precisely by hiding this sensuous human content. It is this illusionary appearance that is reflected in economic science and, according to Bonefeld, much of the Marxist tradition.
Economics sees humans and their definite set of social relations in which they act as metaphysical distractions from the real work of the analysis of behaviour of markets and prices. Economists can develop complex mathematical formulations to describe the fluctuation of commodity prices, or analyse market conditions in diverse areas of the globe, yet social practice, the ultimate aim of all of economic activity, goes unanalysed. Perhaps the best example of this is the near-constant rhetoric in the media of what is best for the ‘Market,’ as if the ‘Market’ itself were the ultimate aim of society rather than the human subjects who constitute and reproduce it. More controversially, Bonefeld critiques much of what passes as Marxism along similar lines. ‘Worldview Marxism,’ as Bonefeld – following Michael Heinrich and others – terms it, is the conception of capitalism as one mode of production in a straight line stretching back through feudalism, antiquity and primitive communism, and forward inexorably into Communism. Each of these modes of production is merely a different form of a set of transhistorical laws of economic nature. Many diverse versions of Marxism see labour as the ontological basis of being human, which then takes historically specific forms. One of these forms will also be Communism, which is conceived as the freeing of labour from its capitalistically organised fetters. Bonefeld's critical project, however, is the critique of labour itself, rather than a critique from the standpoint of labour. Communism, seen from the angle of the critique of labour, becomes the freeing of humans from labour as necessity, the measure of which is no longer labour time but free time.
This reading of Marx is heavily indebted to the Frankfurt School tradition, particularly to the work of Theodor Adorno. Although Adorno himself wrote very little directly on Marx's critique of political economy, an unspoken engagement with Marxian categories stretches throughout Adorno's work. Bonefeld then attempts to read this fragmentary engagement alongside Marx's critique in order to not only dispel the detritus of generations of traditional Marxism, but also to immanently open up those very same Marxian categories. This reading of Adorno becomes increasingly important as Bonefeld attempts to read the real abstractions of capital (in the forms of value, money, etc) as a real conceptuality which always refers itself to its non-identical content. Sensuous social practice is present within the perverted economic categories that it creates, albeit in a perverted form. The critique of political economy is an ad hominem critique, one that seeks the human content within economic abstractions rather than naturalising those capitalistically organised social relations by deriving them from the ‘seemingly self-moving economic forces.’ Its aim is to break the spell of the reified world, showing its perverted nature.
Where Bonefeld is most original is in his discussion of the other side of reification: personification. Not only do economic things become active social subjects, but the humans who produce those things are forced, on pain of ruin, to act as the mere bearers of economic laws. Capitalists, on one hand, must constantly and incessantly compete for markets and innovations with other capitalists for fear of going bankrupt. Workers, on the other, must always compete for a finite number of jobs and once they have secured one, must then compete against their fellow workers and the armies of the unemployed waiting to take their place. Individuals in capitalism, as the rational economic actors of economic theory, are nothing other than personifications of economic categories. When they act rationally in capitalism, they act as the executors of abstract economic laws, laws that they themselves produce, and reproduce historically through their actions. This would appear to be a monstrous vision of capitalism – everyone must act as a rational economic actor to eke a meagre (or luxurious) existence, but in doing so they also perpetuate the system that makes them act in those ways. There are several potential dangers of such an approach, including lapsing into a revolutionary fatalism or, alternatively, falling into an abstract dualistic approach (such as the one proposed by Antonio Negri) which views an ontological constitutive practice that is then co-opted by capital. Each of these makes the same mistake of separating two levels of reality, and doing in so sets capital up as an all-consuming subject. Yet, Bonefeld insists on there being only one reality, a reality which is riven by contradictions and antagonisms. Capitalism is a unity of disunity, and cannot be otherwise. This can only be revealed dialectically, as dialectics ‘thinks against the dazzling spell of the world of value,’ showing its socially constituted basis.
Bonefeld also turns his critical attention on other exponents of Value-form Theory for developing ‘closed conceptual systems’ which relegate the political content of Marx's critique in favour of logical exposition. Bonefeld, against many of his Marxological peers, attempts to show that politics soaks every one of Marx's categories. This occurs, especially, in the primacy ascribed to primitive accumulation for an understanding of the value-form. Primitive accumulation is no mere historical episode for Bonefeld, as much Marx scholarship would have it, rather it is the constantly reproduced presupposition of capitalist social relations. For capital to lay its golden eggs it must meet on the market a ready supply of labour-power which has no other means of subsistence. This labour is doubly free; free to enter a contract with the owner of the means of production and free from having any access to the means of production other than through this contract. Capital must then always rely upon this ‘logic of seperation’ as its constitutive premise. Against those that read Capital as a conceptually closed system, with capital as the automatic subject of its own valorisation, Bonefeld constantly stresses the primacy of labour, and hence the labourer, in this system. Every concept of capital contains the historical branding of the always reproduced violence of primitive accumulation.
Yet surely capital is the subject of capitalism. Bonefeld's conception of capital as an ‘impersonal’ subject whose presupposition is the violence of primitive accumulation poses fundamental questions for how we conceive an anticapitalist position. Both the capitalist and the worker are merely personifications, each of whom acts from the compulsions of the perverted world of capital. Therefore, the bearers of this economic compulsion are not themselves responsible, they can only assert themselves in and through the reality in which they live. All practice, even anticapitalist practice, is perverted by capital. If this is the case then large parts of what passes for anticapitalist thought and practice – for instance, much of the rhetoric of the Occupy movement – misses the object of critique and aims merely at personifications of capital. In effect, this aims to personalise economic abstractions (the banker, the speculator) and sets them against the true creative core of capitalism (the worker, the creative entrepreneur). In this, Bonefeld follows Adorno and Moishe Postone in linking this logic to that of modern anti-Semitism. Modern anti-Semitism, as the ‘rumour about the Jews,’ sees society as split between society (Jewish) and the national community that society perverts. This is, in effect, a split between the concrete, creative activity of the many and its exploitation by the abstract, parasitical few.
However, if both the capitalist and the worker are equally personifications, and ‘in hell everything is hellish,’ then each side of this abstract dualism is as integral to the whole as the other. An anticapitalism that valorises the position of the worker is not only congruent with the logic of anti-Semitism but also unable to comprehend capitalism as a dynamic totality. Communism must not be an affirmation of the position of the worker but its abolition. It can only be conceived negatively against capitalism. There is no progressivist or teleological resolution to capitalism, as if it were merely an organic outgrowth into communism, but only a thorough and negative break with it. In this fight against barbarism there is no pre-made plan. As he says, ‘class struggle has to be rediscovered as the laboratory of human emancipation,’ it is not the following of abstract ideas or schemas for action. In an age when much of what passes as communist thought and practice is either the ossified dogmas of the past, or moralistic denunciations of the abstractions of wealth and finance, this book should, despite its density, act as a wake-up call to anyone who hopes for a reinvigoration of the anticapitalist left. Against the monstrosity of capitalism the left must become, as Goethe's Mephistopheles, ‘the spirit of eternal negation/ and rightly so; all that is deserves to perish.’
What Bonefeld means by inversion is the peculiar and ‘perverted’ forms of social reproduction taken by a capitalistically organised society. This inversion occurs in the form of the fetish character of commodities, in which sensuous human practice takes the form of an economic relation between things. This is no mere epistemological error in which people mistakenly ascribe properties to the products of their own labour which, behind the veil of a false consciousness, they themselves possess. Rather, what plays out in Capital, according to Bonefeld, is a dialectic of subject and object, abstract and concrete, in which humans in their social relations produce a world that then enslaves them. These dominating economic abstractions are both real and illusionary. They are real – and hence objective – in the way they structure the social relations within which humans produce and reproduce the conditions of their existence, and illusionary as they appear as self-moving laws of economic nature precisely by hiding this sensuous human content. It is this illusionary appearance that is reflected in economic science and, according to Bonefeld, much of the Marxist tradition.
Economics sees humans and their definite set of social relations in which they act as metaphysical distractions from the real work of the analysis of behaviour of markets and prices. Economists can develop complex mathematical formulations to describe the fluctuation of commodity prices, or analyse market conditions in diverse areas of the globe, yet social practice, the ultimate aim of all of economic activity, goes unanalysed. Perhaps the best example of this is the near-constant rhetoric in the media of what is best for the ‘Market,’ as if the ‘Market’ itself were the ultimate aim of society rather than the human subjects who constitute and reproduce it. More controversially, Bonefeld critiques much of what passes as Marxism along similar lines. ‘Worldview Marxism,’ as Bonefeld – following Michael Heinrich and others – terms it, is the conception of capitalism as one mode of production in a straight line stretching back through feudalism, antiquity and primitive communism, and forward inexorably into Communism. Each of these modes of production is merely a different form of a set of transhistorical laws of economic nature. Many diverse versions of Marxism see labour as the ontological basis of being human, which then takes historically specific forms. One of these forms will also be Communism, which is conceived as the freeing of labour from its capitalistically organised fetters. Bonefeld's critical project, however, is the critique of labour itself, rather than a critique from the standpoint of labour. Communism, seen from the angle of the critique of labour, becomes the freeing of humans from labour as necessity, the measure of which is no longer labour time but free time.
This reading of Marx is heavily indebted to the Frankfurt School tradition, particularly to the work of Theodor Adorno. Although Adorno himself wrote very little directly on Marx's critique of political economy, an unspoken engagement with Marxian categories stretches throughout Adorno's work. Bonefeld then attempts to read this fragmentary engagement alongside Marx's critique in order to not only dispel the detritus of generations of traditional Marxism, but also to immanently open up those very same Marxian categories. This reading of Adorno becomes increasingly important as Bonefeld attempts to read the real abstractions of capital (in the forms of value, money, etc) as a real conceptuality which always refers itself to its non-identical content. Sensuous social practice is present within the perverted economic categories that it creates, albeit in a perverted form. The critique of political economy is an ad hominem critique, one that seeks the human content within economic abstractions rather than naturalising those capitalistically organised social relations by deriving them from the ‘seemingly self-moving economic forces.’ Its aim is to break the spell of the reified world, showing its perverted nature.
Where Bonefeld is most original is in his discussion of the other side of reification: personification. Not only do economic things become active social subjects, but the humans who produce those things are forced, on pain of ruin, to act as the mere bearers of economic laws. Capitalists, on one hand, must constantly and incessantly compete for markets and innovations with other capitalists for fear of going bankrupt. Workers, on the other, must always compete for a finite number of jobs and once they have secured one, must then compete against their fellow workers and the armies of the unemployed waiting to take their place. Individuals in capitalism, as the rational economic actors of economic theory, are nothing other than personifications of economic categories. When they act rationally in capitalism, they act as the executors of abstract economic laws, laws that they themselves produce, and reproduce historically through their actions. This would appear to be a monstrous vision of capitalism – everyone must act as a rational economic actor to eke a meagre (or luxurious) existence, but in doing so they also perpetuate the system that makes them act in those ways. There are several potential dangers of such an approach, including lapsing into a revolutionary fatalism or, alternatively, falling into an abstract dualistic approach (such as the one proposed by Antonio Negri) which views an ontological constitutive practice that is then co-opted by capital. Each of these makes the same mistake of separating two levels of reality, and doing in so sets capital up as an all-consuming subject. Yet, Bonefeld insists on there being only one reality, a reality which is riven by contradictions and antagonisms. Capitalism is a unity of disunity, and cannot be otherwise. This can only be revealed dialectically, as dialectics ‘thinks against the dazzling spell of the world of value,’ showing its socially constituted basis.
Bonefeld also turns his critical attention on other exponents of Value-form Theory for developing ‘closed conceptual systems’ which relegate the political content of Marx's critique in favour of logical exposition. Bonefeld, against many of his Marxological peers, attempts to show that politics soaks every one of Marx's categories. This occurs, especially, in the primacy ascribed to primitive accumulation for an understanding of the value-form. Primitive accumulation is no mere historical episode for Bonefeld, as much Marx scholarship would have it, rather it is the constantly reproduced presupposition of capitalist social relations. For capital to lay its golden eggs it must meet on the market a ready supply of labour-power which has no other means of subsistence. This labour is doubly free; free to enter a contract with the owner of the means of production and free from having any access to the means of production other than through this contract. Capital must then always rely upon this ‘logic of seperation’ as its constitutive premise. Against those that read Capital as a conceptually closed system, with capital as the automatic subject of its own valorisation, Bonefeld constantly stresses the primacy of labour, and hence the labourer, in this system. Every concept of capital contains the historical branding of the always reproduced violence of primitive accumulation.
Yet surely capital is the subject of capitalism. Bonefeld's conception of capital as an ‘impersonal’ subject whose presupposition is the violence of primitive accumulation poses fundamental questions for how we conceive an anticapitalist position. Both the capitalist and the worker are merely personifications, each of whom acts from the compulsions of the perverted world of capital. Therefore, the bearers of this economic compulsion are not themselves responsible, they can only assert themselves in and through the reality in which they live. All practice, even anticapitalist practice, is perverted by capital. If this is the case then large parts of what passes for anticapitalist thought and practice – for instance, much of the rhetoric of the Occupy movement – misses the object of critique and aims merely at personifications of capital. In effect, this aims to personalise economic abstractions (the banker, the speculator) and sets them against the true creative core of capitalism (the worker, the creative entrepreneur). In this, Bonefeld follows Adorno and Moishe Postone in linking this logic to that of modern anti-Semitism. Modern anti-Semitism, as the ‘rumour about the Jews,’ sees society as split between society (Jewish) and the national community that society perverts. This is, in effect, a split between the concrete, creative activity of the many and its exploitation by the abstract, parasitical few.
However, if both the capitalist and the worker are equally personifications, and ‘in hell everything is hellish,’ then each side of this abstract dualism is as integral to the whole as the other. An anticapitalism that valorises the position of the worker is not only congruent with the logic of anti-Semitism but also unable to comprehend capitalism as a dynamic totality. Communism must not be an affirmation of the position of the worker but its abolition. It can only be conceived negatively against capitalism. There is no progressivist or teleological resolution to capitalism, as if it were merely an organic outgrowth into communism, but only a thorough and negative break with it. In this fight against barbarism there is no pre-made plan. As he says, ‘class struggle has to be rediscovered as the laboratory of human emancipation,’ it is not the following of abstract ideas or schemas for action. In an age when much of what passes as communist thought and practice is either the ossified dogmas of the past, or moralistic denunciations of the abstractions of wealth and finance, this book should, despite its density, act as a wake-up call to anyone who hopes for a reinvigoration of the anticapitalist left. Against the monstrosity of capitalism the left must become, as Goethe's Mephistopheles, ‘the spirit of eternal negation/ and rightly so; all that is deserves to perish.’