Reification and immaterial production

Abstract

Reification, a central theme in radical social/political theory from the 1920s onward, has started falling out of fashion since the 1970s, a period when a number of crucial alterations in the composition of capital and labour start taking place, for example, the tendential hegemony of immaterial/biopolitical labour. The main goal of this article is to discuss reification in light of contemporary changes in the shape of capitalism such as the above. After discussing the relation between reification, alienation and commodity fetishism, I highlight, largely following Hardt and Negri, how reification under the hegemony of immaterial/biopolitical production is, on the one hand, intensified and, on the other hand, (potentially) easier to diagnose, diminish or overcome, due to the increasing emergence of the common as a social relation antagonistic to capital. The article concludes with a note on Wittgenstein and the critique of reification of the symbolic (language) and the ‘inner’ (affects) as the new extended terrain of struggle.