Basis und Überbau posted by Richard Seymour

The excellent blogger Richard Crary cites, among some luminous passages from David Graeber, this criticism of the base/superstructure metaphor:

What has passed for "materialism" in traditional Marxism—the division between material "infrastructure" and ideal "superstructure," is itself a perverse form of idealism. Granted, those who practice law, or music, or religion, or finance, or social theory, always do tend to claim that they are dealing with something higher and more abstract than those who plant onions, blow glass, or operate sewing machines. But it's not really true. The actions involved in the production of law, poetry, etc., are just as material as any other. Once you acknowledge the simple dialectical point that what we take to be self-identical objects are really processes of action, then it becomes pretty obvious that such actions are (a) always motivated by meanings (ideas); and (b) always proceed through a concrete medium (material). Further, that while all systems of domination seem to propose that "no, this is not true, really there is some pure domain of law, or truth, or grace, or theory, or finance capital, that floats above it all," such claims are, to use an appropriately earthy metaphor, bullshit. As John Holloway (2003) has recently reminded us, it is in the nature of systems of domination to take what are really complex interwoven process of action and chop them up and redefine them as discrete, self-identical objects—a song, a school, a meal, etc. There's a simple reason for it. It's only by chopping and freezing them in this way that one can reduce them to property and be able to say one owns them.

A genuine materialism then would not simply privilege a "material" sphere over an ideal one. It would begin by acknowledging that no such ideal sphere actually exists. This, in turn, would make it possible to stop focusing so obsessively on the production of material objects—discrete, self-identical things that one can own—and start the more difficult work of trying to understand the (equally material) processes by which people create and shape one another.

This is a lucid passage, and also a very frustrating one. It is lucid about the fetishism of ruling class ideology, and frustrating in how it represents its supposed foil. To begin with, it is unclear what is meant by "traditional Marxism". Suffice to say that it wouldn't include E M Wood, E P Thompson, Alasdair Macintyre, or any number of anti-Stalinist marxists who have problematised the idea of a base-superstructure dichotomy, either rejecting the whole metaphor, or maintaining that conceiving it as a dichotomy is contrary to Marx's original intention. These arguments were often directed against a highly mechanical and scholastic interpretation of Marx that was popularised by the Soviet Union and its supporters, the purpose of which was to rationalise Stalinist accumulation methods. The logic of the Stalinists was that if the superstructure is determined by the economic base then we must only develop the means of production and the political superstructure of socialism is sure to follow. So it is possible that by "traditional Marxism", Graeber actually means Stalinist vulgarisation. Or it could just be another sock-puppet-as-protagonist, cf. "standard leftist", "typical PC liberal", etc.

That Marx himself does not intend the base-superstructure metaphor as a dichotomy is clear in the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, the text which Graeber finds particularly problematic (as opposed to, eg, The German Ideology):

In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or – this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms – with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure.

This passage, in which the troublesome base/superstructure metaphor is advanced, is also the basis of many misleading formulations about "the contradiction between the forces and relations of production", which are certainly idealist and mechanical. But it is clear that what this passage does differs from what Graeber supposes "traditional Marxism" does. The superstructure is not posited as a sphere of pure ideality separate from a material base. Rather it is part of the same material process. To speak of "relations of production" and "property relations", Marx says, is to speak of different aspects of the same phenomenon. The economic and juridical are not opposed by Marx in the crass way that this "traditional Marxism" would apparently have us believe.

As importantly, nowhere does Marx suggest that the superstructure is ideal, or that there is actually an "ideal sphere" distinct from material activity. In fact, Marx's position on this is remarkably similar to that of Graeber. Marx, and I suspect most marxists, would not be scandalised by the assertion that the actions which produce law and poetry are themselves material. The thrust of the quoted passage from the 'Preface', as I read it, is not that material processes produce a separate, ideal superstructure. It is that what is referred to as superstructural is in fact a material process - more specifically, a process brought about by human activity. It is, in other words, precisely to reject the reification of social processes and their transformation into autonomous entities that dominate life in an almost god-like fashion. The upshot is that when categories such as property, democracy, law, wages, nations, etc., are discussed, one should look not for some corresponding 'economic base' that determined them, but for the forms of activity which instantiate them, and which produce them, and which are in turn produced by them.

Labels: anarchism, anthropology, historical materialism, marx, marxism

Accidental death of an anarchist. posted by Richard Seymour

As you have heard by now (well, not if you rely on the BBC, which has to my knowledge devoted a single line to the topic), a man died in the police 'kettle' yesterday, where protesters were held for seven hours without food, water, or toilet facilities. In order to forestall criticism of the tactic, which is now a legally mandated crackdown on the right to protest, the police have claimed that they were prevented from helping the man at the scene by members of the crowd throwing bottles at medics. Now, given that the cops lie on every possible occasion when they get into trouble (De Menezes, the Koyairs, to name but a couple), given their absolute contempt for the general public, there is every reason to disbelieve them. I am not saying they are trying to subvert the IPCC process in advance, but I'm certainly thinking it very loudly. I would also be wary of the press. Most reports are relying on one unnamed source to say that the man was aged about 30, and died of "natural causes". A thirty year old man could die of natural causes, but unless this witness was a doctor I am reluctant to take this as the conclusive word on the matter.

Anyone who witnessed any part of this, or has any pertinent information, should write a full statement and contact the legal team at Bindmans Solicitors on 020 7833 4433 and the Legal Monitoring groups present at the demonstrations.

Labels: anarchism, anticapitalism, capitalism, police, protests, socialism

Guérin posted by Richard Seymour

The library is an erotic sort of place anyway, or at least it is to me, but imagine encountering Daniel Guérin for the first time in such a place. Of course, I've read Fascism and Big Business (excerpts here) in a non-commital sort of way, but I didn't know much about the author. About Guérin's life, you can read extensively elsewhere (he has a brief entry in Paul Avrich's Anarchist Voices). About his politics, you can discover some concise summaries online, as well as his own lengthy exposition. I only wanted to say what I like about him. I suppose you would expect me to admire his anti-colonialism, his outrage about American racism, his tireless combat against fascism (about which he theorised brilliantly), his anti-Zionism, his sympathy with Trotskyism and so on, especially since he held these views when both the reformist and Stalinist left in France had pathetic records on colonialism, fascism and Zionism (the less said about their approach to Trotskyism, the better). Well, yes. And there is the small matter of him being a sort of pioneer of gay liberation. But it was the Front Ouvrier International, and the Appeal to the German Proletariat Against the War, that left an indelible impression on my otherwise impassive kisser (as you know, I am one of those strong, silent types that Hemingway so admired). The attempt, that is, to revive the Zimmerwald Left in theory and practise during the darkest years of the Twentieth Century, in the most unpromising circumstances. That was bold, in a sense of the word that has been lost to an age pundits who are persuaded that a slight inflection in a Brown speech on Darfur can so be characterised. That was revolutionary.

You can read the appeal here, and for what it's worth, Google has a decent translation. Here he differed from those Trotskyists (including Trotsky) who advocated a Proletarian Military Policy which tried to turn an imperialist war into a revolutionary one, the Stalinists who offered a 'grand alliance' with bourgeois imperialism (after the tremendous success of the grand carve-up with Hitler), and the reformist left, which subordinated its anti-fascism to straightforward patriotic defense. I am not completely convinced that Guérin's position was the right one, but it's important to stress that it wasn't simple pacifism, or Beautiful Soul purity. He himself worked, after being freed from a Nazi internment camp, for the Comité d'Organisation du Livre, which regulated the publishing business in occupied France. His own Fascism and Big Business was one of the books on his 'banned' list. The opposition to the war was a revolutionary one, based on a rigorous marxist analysis of fascism. Guerin had himself spent some time in Germany before and during the Nazi years (see Dave Renton's review of The Brown Plague). As he wrote in 1945:

[T]he fascist regime, despite its “totalitarian” pretensions is not homogeneous. It never succeeded in dissolving into one single alloy the different elements of which it was composed. Its different wheels did not function without friction. Despite Hitler’s attempts for several years to find a compromise formula between the party and the army, the Wehrmacht on the one hand, and the Gestapo and the SS on the other, continued their cat and dog fight. Behind this conflict is a class question. The fascist regime, despite appearances, appearances that it delighted in maintaining, never domesticated the bourgeoisie.

The regime, despite appearances, was extremely fragile, and its unstable class formation was itself one of the reasons why war was pursued. It was also in part, as both Adam Tooze and Paul Hehn argue from different perspectives, a result of frenetic competition with the United States of America: as a model of development, and in terms of inter-capitalist competition over markets, particularly in Eastern Europe. Like most other revolutionaries, Guérin saw the war for what it was - not 'democracy versus fascism', but an imperialist conflict. So, while resisting the Nazi occupation, he and his confederates would not ally with De Gaulle as Maurice Thorez did. They sought to fraternise with German soldiers and encourage their revolutionary opposition to the war, to prise open the fissures in the regime and force its earliest possible downfall. We know that Hitler was funding his war in large part from extensive 'borrowing' from the German workers, which transaction - however coercive - relied on a certain amount of acquiescence. So it is by no means implausible that an upsurge in military and civil disobedience would have hastened the Nazi regime's implosion, and also hastened the end of the genocidal component of Drang nach Osten. But to think and act in such terms when the left has mostly sought to rely on the strength of the imperialist powers to defeat Hitler and Mussolini? When there were few visible signs that organised dissent was even possible within the Nazi war machine?

Such historical optimism seems insanely out of place, especially in light of the popularity of a version of Arendt's account of 'totalitarianism' in which social classes are liquidated, in which the individual is reduced to a fragment of the 'totalitarian' machinery and likes it, in which there is no match for the policeman inside the head of every 'totalitarian' subject. In light of accounts that accentuate the shadow of catastrophe under which we labour, alleged impulses to evil in the human make-up, the psychological appeal of mass violence - all of which would militate against the idea of socialist internationalism - the idea of a revolutionary struggle against both the war and fascism at that time seems impossible. But Guérin knew what we have been encouraged to forget: that the Nazis could not have succeeded without the timidity, confusion and pessimism of the Left. Had it understood the capitalist state, it would not have been disoriented by the failure of reformism; had it understood fully the threat of fascism, it would not have subordinated the struggle against it to sectarian rivalries or (as the German SPD did) passively sit out its coming to power, pursuing only legalist parliamentary opposition until liquidation; had it understood the rapid degeneration of the Russian bureaucracy, it would not have engaged in the criminal stupidity of 'third period' politics (or been surprised at the de-radicalising role of the Stalinists after the war); had it understood the significance of the Spanish Civil War, it would not have allowed the struggle to be subordinated to Stalin's foreign policy priorities; and so on (one really could go on).

It was through Guérin's analysis of fascism and the reasons for its success that he was able to look beyond the immediately self-evident, renounce the reigning pessimism, and try to subvert a war that killed 50 million people, and yet is still remembered as a 'good war'.

Labels: anarchism, anti-fascism, daniel guérin, leninism, marxism, resistance, trotskyism