First Aesthetic Meditations on Capital

Abstract

The general development of Marx's theory (which we believe involves progressive conservation and reintegration of prior stages) may be conceptualized in terms of three successive emphases: 1. Diachronic: Production-Praxis/alienation (1844 Manuscripts). 2. Syrichronic: Base/superstructure (Grundrisse Intro., 1859 Preface) 3. Synthetic: Commodity form/other forms (Capital). Our focus in this initial aesthetic meditation on derives from the intermitant Marxist effort to develop a theory of art and literature on the basis of Marx's analysis of the commodity. To our knowledge, this possibility was first announced by Mikhail Lifshitz in The Philosophy of Art of Karl Marx1, and given totalizing theoretical resonance by Lukics in On Reification.2 From that point on the theme was elaborated among Western Marxists by the Frankfurt School, notably Benjamin and Marcuse, by Adolfo Sinchez Vizquez in Mexico and by Lefebvre and Goldmann in France.3 The emphasis in this development was on an attempt to escape the vulgar base/superstructure Marxist economism of the Second International, by establishing a linkage between the question of diachronic analysis and form (1 and 3 above), an attempt given momentum by the publication of the 1844 Manuscripts. However, with the advent of structuralism came a new, highly sophisticated and non-economistic stress on the base/superstructural question, with the possible totalization between the diachronic and formal as now subject to the proper conceptualization of their relation to synchronic structural dominance, and with the sign itself acting as a primary source of mediation. The chief figure in this enterprise is Louis Althusser, who attempted to unite structuralist views of base/superstructure, historicism, humanism and forms with a Marxism now purified of its pre-Marxist alienation emphasis. The themes of representation (Darstellung), structured production and diachrony as structural metonymy are brought together in Althusser's Lire Le Capital selections, and are related to the commodity form in Pierre Macherey's contribution to the same volume.4 Macherey also attempted to apply these concepts to literature in Pour une theorie de la production litteraire, as did, in different ways, a whole group of writers directly or indirectly identified with the periodical, Tel Quel.5 The structuralist enterprise has led to a reaction by the Hegelian anti-structuralist Marxists, now in terms of a focus on Marx's Grundrisse, especially in the later work of Marcuse in Lefebvre and Goldmann, in Ernst Mandell, and in the recent works by Mdz~iros and Ollman on alienation, as well as in Martin Nicolaus's Foreward to his new translation of the Grundrisse.6