Reading Capital Research Articles

Marx on Leisure: An Aristotelian Interpretation

Abstract Despite his influence on those interested by leisure, Marx's own conception of leisure is rarely discussed. Insofar as it is, he is generally either thought to see leisure as free time or as indistinct from necessary labour in communist society. In this article, I suggest that by reading Capital and the Grundrisse through an Aristotelian lens, we can find a third potential conception of leisure in Marx, which shares three features in common with Aristotle's. Leisure is distinct from free time simpliciter, it is a “state-condition” people are in when they perform ends in themselves, and it is constitutive of the final end. I conclude that adopting a conception of leisure grounded in this Marxian conception could have implications for contemporary debates around free time and the value of leisure goods like arts and culture.

Spinoza, Marx and Anti-Oedipus: A Labour Theory of Repression

This paper contemplates repression as a factor of production in Anti-Oedipus. Repression is part of the division of labour which defines the composition of the labour–capital relation, what Deleuze and Guattari conceive of as a differential relation. In interpreting Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts of repression, commentaries have elaborated on the influences of Marx’s theories of reification and of the state. However, the influence of Marx’s theory of division of labour in capitalism has not been fully examined. This theory, which involves dispossession of intellectual potentialities and suppression of productive drives, is essential to Deleuze and Guattari’s Spinozist hypothesis that the masses came to desire fascism under a particular set of historical conditions. Through a reading of Capital, guided by Balibar’s reading in particular, and an analysis of schizophrenia in alignment with Foucault’s, Deleuze and Guattari develop a theory of repression as immanent to production. Based in this theory, they conceive of fascism as a line of flight from the limits of capital, emerging among several counteracting factors against the tendency for the rate of profit to fall. In assessing how repression operates in Deleuze and Guattari’s form of psychoanalysis, this paper references Marx’s Capital and Spinoza’s Ethics as well as Balibar’s contribution to the 1965 book Reading Capital and Foucault’s 1962 Mental Illness and Psychology. The paper concludes with remarks on the further development of this theory in Deleuze and Guattari’s 1980 A Thousand Plateaus and Deleuze’s 1990 ‘Postscript on Control Societies’.

Chinoiserie and The (Un)staging of French Hegelianism

China and Maoism were intertwined with the fate of French Hegelianism due to Louis Althusser’s ceaseless effort of bundling them with his anti-Hegelian project. Althusser reinvented Hegelianism as a matrix of One to challenge Western metaphysical tradition, which laid the ground for the continuous involvement between China/Maoism and the core concerns of contemporary French theory, namely differences, anti-determination, anti-reductivism, anti-essentialism, and anti-teleology. Althusser harnessed the complexity of revolutionary China and Maoist difference and unevenness to remake a Marxism of difference and a non-teleological imagination of history; paradoxically, he constrained their momentum at least in the period of For Marx and Reading Capital.

Karl Marx in Brazil: the reading capital of Capital (1958–2014)

ABSTRACT The national appropriations of Marx’s work have received two kinds of approaches. On the one hand, Marxists have dealt with the topic based on their internal disputes, elaborating “genealogies of ideas” in the service of demanding “ideological coherence” from each other or highlighting faithful interpretations and supposed betrayals. On the other hand, the field of historical sociology has neglected to address the transnational circulation of the work of Marx and Marxist authors. This area has accepted the current theoretical hierarchy, in which Marxism has no credibility – therefore, studies about its presence in the scientific field are unnecessary. Contrary to these two trends, the following article does not judge the value of Marx’s work. It focuses on the disputes surrounding its legitimate readings and uses, by addressing the main initiative that lifted this author out of a marginal position and turned him into an unavoidable figure in Brazil: the first university reading circle of Capital in the country started in 1958 at the University of São Paulo (USP). This is followed by an in-depth analysis of the determining factors behind Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s membership in that initiative and his stance on capitalism, slavery, and Marxism. Then, it defines the “reading capital” (in a Bourdieusian sense) of Capital and addresses its fate in current times.

When Things Impoverish: An Approach to Marx’s Analysis of Capitalism in Conjunction with Heidegger’s Concern over Technology

To construct a dialogue between Marx and Heidegger, this essay reads the first volume of Capital together with Heidegger’s writings on technology, contending there is a common concern over the impoverishment of things and, more precisely, of their qualitative consistency that occurs under the sway of capitalism/modern technology. Regarding Marx, the essay argues for reading Capital in an ontological key, thereby placing it in the same philosophical register as Heidegger, and for conceiving it as a description of the impoverishment of beings, the reduction of their being to value. The essay then takes Heidegger’s writings on technology as corresponding to Capital, arguing that modern technology also leads to the same ontological Dürftigkeit. Finally, the essay succinctly sketches what Heidegger’s poietic way out of this situation might be, which in essence coincides with Marx’s position.

Economic Imperception; or, Reading Capital on the Beach with Thoreau

AbstractThis essay argues that throughout his oeuvre, Henry David Thoreau develops a theory of sensory perception that comes to its literary culmination in Cape Cod (1865). I argue that Thoreau’s thinking on the senses demonstrates that the senses are a product of historical development. In Cape Cod, Thoreau is particularly interested in how economic interest has trained the senses to become structurally incapable of sensing the death that is a necessary part of the commodity form and social life in general—similar to what Karl Marx in Capital (1867) would describe as “dead labor.” This essay explores how in Cape Cod, Thoreau offers his reader a method of reading that seeks to make legible through literary form—specifically through puns, metaphor, and juxtaposition—the point at which the senses fail. Thoreau’s method in Cape Cod therefore differs from his more well-known works such as Walden (1854), where he only explicitly tells his readers about that to which they are blind. Ultimately, I claim that Thoreau’s political message throughout his career remains much the same, but the way in which he mobilizes literary form to convey that message marks an important change in how we might make sense of—and make sensible—political economy.

Althusser with Machiavelli: ‘Thinking the Deed to Be Accomplished’ as a New Materialist Practice of Philosophy

One of Louis Althusser’s most important and abiding preoccupations was, as is well-known, the construction of a definition of materialist philosophy. Such a task, which Althusser set himself in the sixties, underwent several shifts, the most famous of which is the one from the idea of a Marxist philosophy understood as a “theory of theoretical practices” (For Marx, 1965 and Reading Capital, 1965) to the idea of philosophy as “class struggle in theory” (Lenin and Philosophy, 1971, Essays in Self-Criticism, 1976). However, this paper argues for the relevance of another and still underrated definition of materialist philosophy that can be found in Althusser, which he called in some notes from the seventies a “philosophy of the fait a accomplir.” The paper will extract and elaborate Althusser’s redefinition of materialist philosophy through a reading of his engagement with Machiavelli and will outline its specific and original characteristics.

The Practice of Philosophy within its Limits

The Practice of Philosophy within its Limits Jason Read (bio) CITIZEN SUBJECT: FOUNDATIONS FOR PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY BY ETIENNE BALIBAR TRANSLATED BY STEVEN MILLER New York: Fordham University Press, 2017 In reviewing Etienne Balibar’s Citizen Subject: Foundations for Philosophical Anthropology, it is important to grasp what kind of book, what kind of work, one is dealing with. The immediate answer would be a collection of essays. This superficial apprehension makes sense, especially because Balibar has written predominantly essays since he emerged on the scene with his contribution to Reading Capital. With the exception of the short studies on canonical figures, such as The Philosophy of Marx, Spinoza and Politics and Identity and Difference: John Locke and the Invention of Consciousness, as well as the Welleck Library Lectures, Violence and Civility, Balibar’s publications have mainly appeared as a series of essays collected in such books as Masses, Classes, Ideas; We, The People of Europe?; and Politics of the Other Scene. Treating Citizen Subject as merely a collection of essays misses the methodological point. Not only were the essays not intended as an organized book, but their episodic character belies a fundamental methodological point. As Balibar writes in the Introduction all the essays in this volume consist of readings; they bear upon texts or traverse the interpretation of texts. These texts are always rigorously individualized not only in the sense they are authored but also in that, above all, they are each time unique. I compare these texts to one another but I do not discuss “works” in the sense that literary and university ideology gives this term, nor, even less, the “systems” or “tendencies” [End Page 152] that would be represented in each product. I propose a new reading of the Second Meditation and not of Cartesianism . . . of the Phenomenology of Spirit (or a few moments therein) and not of Hegelianism, of the section from Capital on “commodity fetishism” and not of Marxism and so forth. (2017, 9) Balibar’s attention to the specific moments of reading is framed by a theoretical interest in what it means to “write in the conjuncture,” to write within a specific historical moment, with its constitutive tensions and contradictions. As Balibar argues, “not only do philosophers write within a conjuncture, but conversely, within the conjuncture, they write” (2017, 10). Balibar’s emphasis on the conceptual pair of the conjuncture and writing suggests that the context determines but does not define writing. Text exceeds context. The specificity of the moment is short-circuited by the practice of writing, which inserts the moment in a longer signifying chain, while this chain is in turn broken, or turned into knots by the exigencies of the conjuncture. The two of these converge in aporias, tensions, everything that Althusser formerly identified through symptomatic reading, now slightly reconfigured as a symptom of the tension between thought and its historicity. Balibar does not seek some balance between text and context or situate these texts in some overall historical progression but puts them to their maximum tension, seeking the point of heresy, the moment where the conjuncture interrupts the writing of philosophy and writing of philosophy breaks open the conjuncture. Despite this attention to the moment, to the points of heresy, Balibar’s book is not without its overarching theme, its large problem. It is more than a series of interventions and readings of particular conjunctures. As the subtitle suggests, it is work in philosophical anthropology, on the intersection of citizen and subject as ways of conceptualizing and problematizing what it means to be human. These concepts and problems, philosophical anthropology, citizen and subject not only are concepts that are in some sense implicitly universal, as perhaps all concepts are, but also make an explicit claim for universality. Philosophical anthropology claims to be an understanding of humanity as such. The citizen is in some sense the political corollary of such a universal figure. If one wanted to sum up in a word why “philosophical anthropology” has fallen out of favor as a philosophical problem or why the citizen is no longer seen as the center of politics, the criticism could [End Page 153] be summed up with one word: “universal.” The problem...

Time

Time

From Rivers to Confetti: Reconfigurations of Time through New Media Narratives

From Rivers to Confetti: Reconfigurations of Time through New Media Narratives

The Political Encounter with Louis Althusser:

This special issue presents a collection of essays on the work of Louis Althusser. These essays commemorate Althusser’s centennial and the publication of For Marx and Reading Capital more than fift...

Reading Capital in the Twenty-First Century: Thomas Piketty and political economy

This paper offers a radical political economy critique of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century, drawing on heterodox economics and the social structure of accumulation (SSA) theory. We argue that the dynamics of inequality in capitalist systems cannot be fully explained at the level of capitalism in general, or by supplementing such an account with reference to state policies or contingent events, but require attention to the specific institutional form of capitalism.

Reading Capital: Graphic Novels, Typography, and Literacy

Michelle Ann Abate examined the typographical features of the comics and graphic novels frequently finding their way into ELA classrooms and discovered that they may be more challenging for struggling readers than most teachers think.

A Return to the Concept

The journal Cahiers pour l’Analyse was founded in 1966 and disappeared in the aftermath of May 1968. At the time the intellectual and publishing world was dominated by texts that were broadly characterized as “structuralist.” Edited by a board of students at the prestigious École normale supérieure (Jacques-Alain Miller, François Régnault, Alain Grosrichard and Jean-Claude Milner), with the participation of Alain Badiou in its later stages, the journal accorded great importance to Jacques Lacan and to psychoanalysis in general. But it also played a role in Althusser’s political and intellectual strategy a year after the publication of For Marx and Reading Capital. Cahiers pour l’Analyse represents, then, the most complete example of the politicization of structuralism on the eve of May 1968. Yet it also had a focus on political philosophers, such as Machiavelli and Rousseau, and the political writings of classical philosophers such as Hume and Descartes. The editors also favoured the philosophy of the concept (Canguilhem) over phenomenology (particularly in its Sartrean interpretation). Analyzing the content of the journal and published interviews with its authors, this article indicates how the broad aim was to restore primacy of place to philosophy at a point when it was under challenge from the social sciences.

Synthesis Wanted: Reading Capital After 20th Century Orthodoxies and Revisions

The article distinguishes between revisionist and orthodox readings of Capital and identifies two waves of innovations in Marxist political economy. The first produced the classical theories of imperialism; the second produced a diversity of Neo-Marxisms and new orthodoxies sowing the seeds for the 1000 Marxisms developing in the age of neoliberal globalisation. Reading all of these approaches to Marxist Political Economy in context, the article suggests and offers a key to the understanding of capitalist development and socialist movements in the 20th century. Using them as background for a new reading of Capital also allows an understanding of contemporary capitalism and considerations of socialist futures.

The Concept in Crisis: Reading Capital Today

The Concept in Crisis: Reading Capital Today

Preface to Le concept de loi économique dans “Le Capital,” by Gérard Duménil

This preface constitutes Althusser’s most consistent epistemological account of Marx's Capital since Reading Capital. Althusser considers Duménil's reading to be at odds with both empiricist and rationalist interpretations of Marx's Capital. He argues that Capital is characterized by different orders of exposition. The major order of exposition, comprising a range of concepts, including capital itself, is visible, homogeneous, and unified. The other orders of exposition, which are not simply “historical” or “concrete,” interrupt and cut across the major one. For Althusser, Marx’s chapters on the “working day” or “primitive accumulation” act as an “exterior” with respect to the concepts of the major order. Thus each concept takes its place within limits set by this exterior. These limits are not deducible from the categories of political economy; rather they transform those categories, revealing their contingency. For Althusser, this contingency in the presentation of Capital challenges us constantly to rethink Marx’s thought in the context of our own times.

Autonomia oporu – Marks, Spinoza i akumulacja pierwotna.

This article is an attempt at a simultaneous reading of Marx and Spinoza. We venture to show that the immanentistic ontology and the political anthropology of the latter enriches the critique of capitalism with a better understanding of a subjectivity’s function in the process of creating dominance. At the same time we view this process as incomplete. This view is enabled by the use of Spinoza's concept of imagination, which is crucial to our endeavour. Imagination is understood as an ambivalent conductor of affects, which, according to the communicated desires, can work to the effect of both subjectification and emancipation. To prove its usefulness we inspect Marx's analysis of primitive accumulation, as presented in the history below, in which we highlight the visions of equal order and their relevance to the protoproletarian resistance against emerging capitalism. Consequently, we show Spinoza as an author who proves helpful in the task of re reading capital, not from the transcendental point of view, but from the autonomistic one. This type of lecture focuses on the productivity of resistance, seen as an inherent element of capitalism, existing in-beyond-and-against it.

A Marxist Education of the Encounter: Althusser, Interpellation, and the Seminar

This essay traces out a new organization of Louis Althusser’s work that rests on his fundamental educational problematic: interpellation. There are three moments where Althusser discusses education in his writings: in the famous essay on schools as Ideological State Apparatuses, in his infamous essay on the university and the pedagogical function, and in a much more obscure reference to trade unions. In all three, Althusser is dealing with the problem of interpellation, yet none of these essays enable us to actually theorize what Althusser’s own practice of the seminar offers as educational logic—a practice that resulted in the student-teacher collaboration Reading Capital. In short, whereas the Institutional State Apparatus interpellates individuals and the trade union offers a counterinterpellation, the seminar is a form of disinterpellation that must be thought of as the educational unconscious of Althusser’s late writings on the encounter.

UnthinkingCapital: Conceptual and Terminological Landmarks

In this article I take issues with some Eurocentric limits of the two contradictions of capital: capital/labour and capital/nature. These limits are exposed by elaborating on two theoretical insights from researches in critical race studies and indigenous political ecologies: respectively thingification and uncommon. These insights produce a tension between colonialism and capitalism, which calls for a post-Eurocentric process of concept formation. This reconceptualization of capital is pursued through the notion of muri, which the Japanese thinker Uno Kōzō deployed to designate a bold non-western pathway to reading Capital. The article elaborates and formulates three conceptual and terminological landmarks to unthinking capital for a global social theory.