REVIEWS

Hegelian Leninism today!

Timothy Bewes and Timothy Hall, eds, Georg Lukács: The Fundamental Dissonance of Existence. Aesthetics, Politics, Literature, Continuum, London and New York, 2011. 256 pp., £60.00 hb., 978 1 44115 790 4. Michael J. Thompson, ed., Georg Lukács Reconsidered: Critical Essays in Politics, Philosophy and Aesthetics, Continuum, London and New York, 2011. 272 pp., £70.00 hb., 978 1 44110 876 0.

They are like buses. You wait twenty years for a Association with Stalinism also limits the interest substantive critical book on Lukács, then along come of Lukács as the single most important and founding two at once, and both from the same publisher. In ÀJXUH RI :HVWHUQ 0DU[LVP 7KHVH WZR ERRNV PDNH these two hardback books priced for library sales VWURQJ FDVHV IRU UHVWDWLQJ WKH VLJQLÀFDQFH RI /XNiFV rather than student activists, Continuum offer nearly for critical thought. With the possible exception of 500 pages of new material on and by Lukács. Anyone /XFLHQ*ROGPDQQ·VFODLPWKDW/XNiFVZDVDQLQÁXHQFH interested in Lukács will need to read both volumes. on Heidegger, Lukács has scarcely been of interest to There are some differences of orientation and some philosophers outside the traditions of Marxism. The common ground: Andrew Feenberg, Michael Löwy prospect of a group of Oxford analytical philosophers and Timothy Hall offer substantial essays in both VLWWLQJ GRZQ ZLWK VRPH 0,7 VSHFLDOLVWV LQ DUWLÀ- volumes. Anyone approaching these two books might cial intelligence to work through History and Class wonder why they were not combined into one large Consciousness is about as plausible as imagining the volume. The experience of reading both books together central committee of the SWP organizing a week-long nevertheless foregrounds the more interesting ques- retreat to immerse themselves in Being and Time. tions: why Lukács and why now? $OWKRXJKDQLPSRUWDQWLQÁXHQFHRQOLWHUDU\FULWLFLVP Since the collection Lukács Today: Essays in /XNiFVKDVKDGOLWWOHLQÁXHQFHRQSKLORVRSKHUVKRVWLOH Marxist Philosophy (1988), edited by Tom Rockmore, WR0DU[LVWPRGHVRIDUJXPHQWDQGZRUVHVXFKLQÁX- there have been a number of post-1989 shifts in the ence Lukács has had appears tainted by association reception of Lukács. The discovery, publication and with a fuzzy set of humanist and politico-existentialist translation of Lukács’s A Defence of History and Class ODPHQWV DJDLQVW UHLÀFDWLRQ DOLHQDWLRQ DQG WKH OLNH Consciousness (2002) provided important new critical Merleau-Ponty’s critique of Lukács in Adventures of contexts. But, although there has been a steady trickle the Diaelctic ÀQLVKHGRIIWKHFUHGLELOLW\RIVXFKGLD- of critical studies, there has not been an obvious resur- lectical attitudinizing as long ago as 1955. gence in active enthusiasm for Lukács. As a committed Recently, one sign of renewed interest in Lukács’s revolutionary communist, he can just about be defended major work, History and Class Consciousness, has as someone who criticized Stalinism from within, but been Axel Honneth’s critical reworking of Lukács in his evident complicities have won him few friends in 5HLÀFDWLRQ$1HZ/RRNDWDQ2OG,GHD (2008). In the non-Stalinist traditions of Marxism. A parenthetical two volumes reviewed here, Timothy Hall and Andrew remark from Georg Lukács Reconsidered suggests Feenberg both offer persuasive critiques of Honneth: some of the problem: ‘Lukács actually participated in put bluntly, although detailed, Honneth’s reading of the short-lived Hungarian Soviet of 1919, regrettably History and Class Consciousness appropriates Lukács killing a number of hostages…’ Regrettably?! The for his own purposes, and distorts his central philo- social will required to rehabilitate the meaning and sophical and political purposes. Lukács’s work stands struggles of Soviet communism is evidently some way as a Marxist rebuke to Habermasian critical theory off, even if necessary, if anti-capitalist movements are rather than offering anything much to the project of ever to overthrow actually existing capitalism. Lukács communication ethics or the politics of recognition. should be part of any reassessment of the legacy of the 2QH VLJQLÀFDQW IDXOWOLQH WKURXJK ERWK WKHVH FRO- Russian Revolution. It will take more than intellectual lections of essays on Lukács is what might be called HIIRUW KRZHYHU WR GHOLPLW WKH DIÀQLWLHV RI /XNiFV the spectre of Adorno. An initial argument for the with totalitarian communism, not least as regards the necessity of Lukács now might stem from the reali- centrality to his work of categories such as totality. zation that Adorno’s debts both to Lukács and to

Radical Philosophy 171 (January/February 2012) 33 Marx remain suggestive rather than substantively torted ideal. There is nevertheless a global labour argued. History and Class Consciousness remains the force whose relation to the forces and relations of most sophisticated attempt to sketch a philosophical production of capital remains a site of struggle. Is it so Marxism, and one whose critique of the commodity implausible that the workers of the world might decide IRUPDQGRIUHLÀFDWLRQLVFHQWUDOWR$GRUQLDQFULWLFDO WRUHVLVWWKH¶DXVWHULW\·PHDVXUHVLQÁLFWHGXSRQWKHP theory. Given that the research paradigms gleaned from in the interests of capital, and reinvent revolutionary Adorno’s work appear now to be nearing exhaustion, socialism? Lukács offers the opportunity to rethink and renew (YHQLIWKRURXJKO\UHLÀHGDOLHQDWHGFRPSOLFLWZLWK what is critical about Adorno’s residual Marxism and capital, and mired in the failed solidarity of historical the critique of capitalism. In a number of essays in defeats, the class struggle of the proletariat is bound Georg Lukács Reconsidered and in Georg Lukács: The up with the fortunes of capital and not so simply con- Fundamental Dissonance of Existence, the arguments signed to the historical dustbin. It might make it more offered set up critical dialogues between Lukács and Adorno, with regard to both Adorno’s critical theory and his aesthetics, and the results are often suggestive. Adorno evidently protested his difference from the later Lukács too strongly. But for all the efforts to understand Lukács through Adorno, the substantive confrontation between them remains in the wings of these books: what, then, is more central? In their introductions to the two volumes, the editors variously acknowledge the shibboleths of Lukácsian 0DU[LVP UHLÀFDWLRQ WRWDOLW\ WKH SUROHWDULDW DV WKH VXEMHFW²REMHFWRIKLVWRU\WKHGHIHQFHRIUHDOLVPDJDLQVW acceptable to the habitats of academic argument to modernism. Of these problematics, the question of the pose this as the question of the proletariat, but one of proletariat emerges as a persistent thorn, seeming the provocations of History and Class Consciousness almost an embarrassment. Neil Larsen’s essay in the is the challenge to understand the critical perspec- Bewes and Hall collection is even entitled ‘Lukács sans tive of the proletariat through praxis, rather than as Proletariat, or Can History and Class Consciousness some messianic or utopian horizon of spectrality. Be Rehistoricised’. Andrew Feenberg notes that ‘there The standpoint of proletarian revolution is surely a are many aspects of Lukács’ book [History and Class determinate and historical abstraction, less idealist Consciousness] that are thoroughly outdated, notably than the standpoint of redemption associated with his faith in proletarian revolution.’ Timothy Hall puts Western Marxism’s various negative theologies. Put it a little less bluntly: ‘His work, I believe, remains differently, for all the Hegelian and Marxist original- relevant and this notwithstanding the historical demise ity of History and Class Consciousness, Lukács also of classical class politics.’ There is something more articulates a Leninist understanding of Marxism, con- than a little awkward, if not contradictory, about the cerned with praxis, with party organization, and with intellectual genealogy of ‘classical’ as an adjective the revolutionary legacy of Bolshevik politics. Gramsci used to describe ‘Marxism’. This is compounded by the famously described the Russian Revolution as the assertion that class politics as understood by Marxism revolution against Karl Marx’s Capital, and the extent is historically obsolete. Through much of these books to which history might be made consciously through it is assumed that what has come to be understood as revolutionary praxis rather than as some sociologically ¶FODVVLFDO·0DU[LVP²WKH0DU[LVPRI0DU[(QJHOV determined inevitability is clearly the problematic /HQLQ*UDPVFL7URWVN\DQGSHUKDSVRI/XNiFV²LV horizon for Lukács. As Stanley Aronowitz suggests, at best a kind of negative resource for the critique of in Georg Lukács Reconsidered, ‘a careful reading of capitalism, besides which the critical perspective and History and Class Consciousness reveals a sophis- political praxis associated with proletarian revolu- ticated exposition of the philosophical basis of the tion are moribund. It may be that the proletariat as .DXWVN\²/HQLQWKHVLVDJDLQVWWKHSRVVLELOLW\WKDWWKH understood by Marxism remains immanent only as a working class can, on the basis of its exploitation and potential force, and thereby stands accused of being struggle, achieve revolutionary class consciousness.’ D SUREOHPDWLF FULWLFDO ÀFWLRQ D WKHRUHWLFDO ¶PDVN· D In History and Class Consciousness, and especially speculative counter-factual or an ideologically dis- in his 1924 book Lenin, Lukács is perhaps the prime

34 Radical Philosophy 171 (January/February 2012) example of Hegelian Leninism. Readers of Radical tion and the critique of the commodity form, though Philosophy may perhaps nevertheless be reassured to more might have been made of Lukács’s The Young hear that there is not much sign of ‘classical’ Marxism Hegel. Stewart Martin captures the urgency of Lukács or Leninism in the attempts offered by these two books in his account of the question of ‘capitalist life’, as a to bring the present into dialogue with Lukács. problem for thought now. Where they are discussed, Some of the most interesting interpretations of supposed luminaries such as Fredric Jameson, Slavoj Lukács offered attempt to break down the periodiza- æLçHN$ODLQ%DGLRX$QWRQLR1HJULDQG-XGLWK%XWOHU tion of Lukács’s work. Lukács’s pre-Marxist books are relatively marginal, and treated with respectful but Soul and Form and The Theory of the Novel rightly forceful scepticism. Neil Larsen cites Kevin Floyd’s ÀJXUH SURPLQHQWO\ LQ D QXPEHU RI HVVD\V ,Q Georg 7KH5HLÀFDWLRQRI'HVLUH7RZDUGVD4XHHU0DU[LVP Lukács Reconsidered, Peter Uwe Hohendahl’s essay on (2009), but queer theory, psychoanalysis and the dis- ‘The Theory of the Novel and the Concept of Realism cursive formations associated with post-structuralism LQ /XNiFV DQG $GRUQR· H[HPSOLÀHV WKLV KHUPHQHXWLF are largely absent from these books. Gail Day’s lively reconstruction of arguments in Lukács, explaining and if incongruous reading of contemporary art perhaps clarifying Lukács’s epistemology of ‘realism’. Indeed, comes closest to straining the relevance of Lukács. across the two books, there are a number of insights The substance of these books remains refreshingly into the problem of realism. János Keleman illuminates persistent, then, in focusing on critical illuminations of Lukács through his early work on literary history Lukács, most effectively in the central set of essays in and continuing interest in Dante and Goethe. In the Georg Lukács: The Fundamental Dissonance of Exist- Bewes and Hall volume, David Cunningham offers ence. What emerges is the need for a thorough reread- a more radical and original argument, suggesting, in ing and rethinking of History and Class Consciousness effect, that the question of abstraction posed by the as a primary text in contemporary political philosophy. logic of capital is already immanent within Lukács’s $QHZWUDQVODWLRQHVSHFLDOO\RIWKH¶5HLÀFDWLRQ·HVVD\ pre-Marxist The Theory of the Novel. would help, along with more detailed notes and critical Less convincing or persuasive than these attempts commentary of the kind developed here. WRUHFRQÀJXUHWKHGLIIHUHQWSHULRGVRI/XNiFV·VZRUN The case for Lukács as a literary critic has been are the attempts offered to defend the work Lukács widely recognized for some time, though no less widely produced after the 1930s. In Georg Lukács Reconsid- resisted, and while engaging is less persuasive or urgent ered, Stanley Aronowitz bravely attempts to defend here. These two books do make good the argument that Lukács’s Destruction of Reason, but is more persuasive Lukács’s work needs to be read across philosophy, poli- in reminding readers of, for example, the interest and tics and aesthetics. Yoon Sun Lee’s essay on the work of LQÁXHQFHRI6LPPHO·VH[SRVLWLRQRIUHLÀFDWLRQLQWKH form is persuasive; Timothy Bewes offers some original Philosophy of Money. Michael J. Thompson draws for angles through cinema; there are interesting essays on himself the short straw, attempting a reconstruction Lukács’s Walter Scott by Norman Arthur Fischer and and defence of ‘ontology and totality’ in Lukács’s John Marx; Andrew Hemingway provides an excellent later writing. There may be a project of real substance contextualization of the pivotal essay ‘Art for Art’s Sake in the late ontology and aesthetics of Lukács, but a and Proletarian Writing’; and Michael Löwy reopens convincing case has not yet been made. More engag- the question of Kafka’s realism for Lukács. The inclu- ing is the cluster of arguments offered by Timothy sion of translations of two essays by Lukács himself Hall’s two essays, which suggest reconsideration of in Georg Lukács: The Fundamental Dissonance of Lukács as a thinker of ontological novelty, articulat- Existence helps to give that book an edge. To choose ing the ontological risks and non-normative praxis of between the two, however, would be to reify criticism improvisatory politics. DV WKH FRPPRGLÀFDWLRQ RI MXGJHPHQW $JDLQVW WKLV The most substantial and engaging of the essays Katie Terezakis offers some bracing reminders as to in these two books share Hall’s attempt to illuminate the perilous state of living criticism: ‘Lukács today Lukács in ways that have both philosophical depth … directs academic professionals to renew criticism and political currency. The attempt to understand the ZLWK FRPSUHKHQVLRQ RI WKH UHLÀFDWLRQ WKDW SHUYDGHV role of Kant in History and Class Consciousness is its professionalized enclaves.’ Paperback or electronic illuminated from a number of different perspectives, versions would be much appreciated. And perhaps, who including subtle accounts of the use Lukács makes knows, these will be snapped up by the proletariat busy of Fichte, Simmel and Weber. There’s much of philo- renewing Hegelian Leninism today. VRSKLFDOLQWHUHVWLQWKHYDULRXVGLVFXVVLRQVRIUHLÀFD- Drew Milne

Radical Philosophy 171 (January/February 2012) 35 What is historical epistemology?

Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, On Historicising Epistemology: An Essay, trans. David Fernbach, Stanford University Press, Stanford CA, 2010. 128 pp., £44.50 hb., £16.95 pb., 978 0 80476 288 5 hb., 978 0 80476 289 2 pb. Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, An Epistemology of the Concrete: Twentieth-Century Histories of Life, trans. G.M. Goshgarian, with a foreword by Tim Lenoir, Duke University Press, Durham NC and London, 2010. 352 pp., £70.00 hb., £16.99 pb., 978 0 82234 560 2 hb., 978 0 82234 575 6 pb.

At a recent conference I attended, a member of the of gene has changed accordingly ‘beyond recognition audience impatiently asked the members of the ‘histori- HYHU\ WLPH >VFLHQWLVWV KDYH UHGHÀQHG LW@· )DU IURP cal epistemology’ panel what historical epistemology lamenting this situation, however, Rheinberger argues ZDV,IWKHVSHDNHUVFRXOGQRWSURYLGHDGHÀQLWLRQKH that ‘fuzzy’ concepts have proved extremely produc- argued, he would then have to conclude that their talks WLYH LQ VFLHQWLÀF UHVHDUFK ZKHUHDV ¶RYHUO\ SUHFLVH might not have been about anything in particular. It is GHÀQLWLRQVKDYHWHQGHGWRIXQFWLRQDVHSLVWHPRORJLFDO undeniable that the label ‘historical epistemology’ has obstacles’; indeed he argues for an ‘epistemology of the been applied to diverse projects, developed in different imprecise’. Consistent with his argument, we thus do WLPHVDQGWRGLIIHUHQWHQGV²ÀUVWWRWKHSKLORVRSK\ QRWÀQGDQ\VLPSOHRU¶SUHFLVH·GHÀQLWLRQRIKLVWRULFDO of Gaston Bachelard and Georges Canguilhem (the epistemology itself in these two volumes. However, latter’s work also called ‘epistemological history’), and what we do get are answers, suggestions and illustra- sometimes extended not only to other historians and tions of how to do historical epistemology. philosophers within the French traditions (Jean Cavail- Both volumes are collections of papers: On His- lès, Alexandre Koyré, Michel Foucault), but also to toricizing Epistemology is inspired by seminars that other philosophers of science who have taken history the author held at the Technical University in Berlin seriously, such as Thomas Kuhn. However, ‘historical LQ ² DQG ² An Epistemology of the epistemology’ is not only, and nowadays not mainly, a Concrete brings together papers that in many cases label for past philosophies, but one that, instead, very had been previously published elsewhere, but have much covers current projects. Many contemporary undergone extensive revision. The choice and arrange- scholars describe their own work as historical episte- ments of these papers tell us almost as much as do mology, including, among others, the philosopher Ian the content of the papers themselves. On Historicizing Hacking (although, in order to avoid confusion with Epistemology is a history of historical epistemology: the philosophies of Bachelard and Canguilhem, he has for Rheinberger the fathers are certainly Bachelard preferred to switch to ‘historical meta-epistemology’), DQG&DQJXLOKHPEXWDOVR*HUPDQSKLORVRSKHUVÀUVW and the historians Lorraine Daston and Hans-Jörg of all Husserl, Heidegger and Cassirer, while the Polish 5KHLQEHUJHU0RUHVSHFLÀFDOO\WKHUHLVDKLJKFRQFHQ- immunologist Ludwick Fleck deservedly occupies an tration of scholars who regard their work as inscribed important space in the narrative of early historical within the historical epistemology project located in epistemology also. At the same time, Rheinberger particular at the Max Planck Institute for History of looks to thinkers earlier than Bachelard, by dedicat- Science in Berlin, of which Rheinberger was a director ing a section to the ÀQ GH VLqFOH, where he locates until his recent retirement. the beginning of a movement to make epistemology All my name-dropping does not go very far in historical. At the other end, Alexandre Koyré, Stephen answering that academic’s question: what is historical Toulmin and Thomas Kuhn all receive due attention, epistemology? Luckily, two new books by Rheinberger while the penultimate chapter examines the extension himself provide a kind of cumulative 430-page answer of the French tradition that, stemming from Bachelard, to this question. A much shorter, if indirect, reply can continued with Canguilhem, Althusser and Foucault. also be found in a discussion about the concept of gene Derrida does not always appear in discussions of contained in An Epistemology of the Concrete, in such historical epistemology, but he also plays a prominent DZD\DVWRSUHHPSWDQ\GHPDQGIRUDGHÀQLWLRQ+HUH part here, placed at the end of the book’s narrative Rheinberger points out that in the last half-century dedicated to the past. His presence is unsurprising, as JHQHWLFLVWVKDYH¶UHGHÀQHG>WKHJHQH·V@SURSHUWLHVDQG Rheinberger has extensively used Derrida in his own boundaries’ so often and so deeply that our conception work, and is also Derrida’s German translator.

36 Radical Philosophy 171 (January/February 2012) Following the account of Derrida, the last section of circulating objects that make up our modern world’. On Historicizing Epistemology is dedicated to ‘recent These two aspects, the focus on experimental activity developments’. Rheinberger places his own work at the and the critique of the distinction between the diverse end of this history of historical epistemology, though elements of knowledge, are crucial in Rheinberger’s very modestly in a short sentence in the middle of a own historiography and epistemology, as shown in paragraph. In doing so, he includes himself in a list of the other book reviewed here, An Epistemology of the those science studies scholars who, for him, are most Concrete. relevant to both the movement of historicizing episte- An important part of the tradition of historical mology and that of ‘concretizing epistemology’ (which epistemology has focused on the formation of concepts is the focus of the other book reviewed here): the and on the changing ways of thinking displayed in sociologists of the Edinburgh school (including David the history of science. For some scholars, for instance Bloor, Harry Barnes and Harry Collins), Andrew Pick- Koyré, the role of experiments in science was compre- ering, and the historians Simon Schaffer, Norton Wise, hensively downplayed. However, current historical epis- Peter Galison, Mirko Grmek and Frederic Holmes. The temology has decisively emphasized the experimental chapter, however, has two major focuses: Ian Hacking part of science, and the role of material things in it. and Bruno Latour. Their placement here is interesting: Arguably, nobody has done more in this respect than Rheinberger emphasizes that their projects to develop Rheinberger, whose ‘epistemology of the concrete’ has a historical anthropology of science are at odds with SURYLGHGLPSRUWDQWUHÁHFWLRQVRQWKHQDWXUHDQGUROHRI the post-structuralist tradition that he discusses in the ‘epistemic things’ (in his expression) in experimental previous chapter (Derrida in particular), but not at ZRUN5KHLQEHUJHUÀQGVWKHURRWVRIKLVFRQFHSWLRQRI odds, or at least not necessarily so, with the previous epistemic things in ‘classic’ historical epistemology (as tradition of historical epistemology, in so far as this opposed to the current projects that bear this label). was focused not only on the historical development of Indeed An Epistemology of the Concrete opens with a knowledge, but also on ways of knowing. Hacking’s section on historical epistemology that comprises three and Latour’s versions of historical anthropology are chapters on Fleck, Bachelard and Canguilhem, respec- rather different, but, in this respect, Rheinberger is tively. Bachelard’s concept of phenomenotechnique particularly interested in some features of their works is particularly important for Rheinberger; indeed it that resonate with his own. One, needless to say, is appears to be at the core of his own concept of ‘epis- the historicity of knowledge; another is their attention temic thing’ (or epistemic object; Rheinberger seems to the practices of obtaining knowledge. This last to use the two expressions interchangeably), which is SRLQW LV FUXFLDO DQG LV VSHFLÀFDOO\ OLQNHG ZLWK WKH an object that is informed by particular experimental tradition of historical epistemology, to the extent that techniques and manipulation practices. Hacking and Latour focus on the process of produc- Part II and Part III of An Epistemology of the LQJ NQRZOHGJH UDWKHU WKDQ RQ VFLHQFH DV D ÀQLVKHG Concrete are collections of case studies. The former product. Indeed, many scholars, including Rheinberger covers the period ‘from the establishment of classic himself, demonstrate that it is a rather complex issue genetics to the dawn of molecular biology in Germany’, HYHQWRLGHQWLI\DVFLHQFHDVDÀQLVKHGSURGXFWRUDV and focuses on four different model organisms, respec- DVWDEOHDQG¶GHÀQLWLYH·ERG\RIWKHRULHVDQGSUDFWLFHV tively: Pisum, Eudorina, Ephestia, and Tobacco mosaic VFLHQWLÀF NQRZOHGJH GRHV QRW ¶VWRS· EXW LV UDWKHU D virus. These case studies are interesting from different process whose beginnings or conclusions are often just points of view. They are interesting from the most DUELWUDU\SRLQWVWKDWDUHÀ[HGpost factum. obvious point of view, that of history of science, as they In very different fashions, Latour and Hacking both construct new historical narratives. The methodology IRFXVRQH[SHULPHQWVWKHODWWHUIRXQGVKLVVFLHQWLÀF and the sources used are important historiographically. realism on ‘doing’, or, as he puts it, on ‘intervening’, For instance, the case study ‘Carl Correns’s Experi- that is to say on laboratory activities (see his Rep- PHQW RQ ;HQLD ²· 3LVXP  PDLQO\ UHOLHV RQ resenting and Intervening); the former carried out laboratory protocols. This reliance on protocols shows an ethnological study of experimental science in his the distance between scientists’ tortuous, sometimes and Woolgar’s Laboratory Life: The Social Construc- contradictory itinerary that leads to their results, and WLRQRI6FLHQWLÀF)DFWV Rheinberger also stresses that the linear, logical and tidy narratives of many tra- Latour’s perspective in analysing the day-to-day work ditional histories of science. The case study ‘Alfred of scientists ‘puts in question the separation between Kühn’s experimental design for a developmental physi- the natural, the social and discursive aspects of all the RORJLFDOJHQHWLFV²· (SKHVWLD DIIRUGVDVLPLODU

Radical Philosophy 171 (January/February 2012) 37 lesson, and also shows how disciplinary boundaries get book goes back to the use of laboratory protocols as UHGUDZQRUHYHQHUDVHGE\VFLHQWLÀFDFWLYLW\ historical sources, and to the ways in which meaning Part III’s case studies are dedicated to concepts emerges from them. In the case studies, as well as in and instruments in the history of molecular biology. WKHFRQFOXGLQJUHÁHFWLRQV5KHLQEHUJHUDLPVRYHUDOO In addition to the aforementioned study of the concept at a new way of writing history of science, in which of gene, these include a case study of the liquid scin- ‘the concrete’, or material things, occupies centre stage. tillation counter, and of the concept of information This is in fact Rheinberger’s long-term project, as some (focused on the writings of François Jacob). The mix readers are likely to know from his previous book of concepts and instruments in the same part is far Towards a History of Epistemic Things, translated into from odd; in fact it displays one of the fundamental English in 1997. epistemological lessons that Rheinberger intends to Rheinberger strongly vindicates the classical roots JLYH LQ WKHVH ERRNV ² WKDW WKH YDULRXV HOHPHQWV RI of his own historical epistemology (in the sense of VFLHQWLÀFDFWLYLW\DOOLQWHUDFWZLWKRQHDQRWKHULQGHHG what I called ‘classical’ historical epistemology above). are not readily separable, and that they all have a His own philosophy and historical method certainly history, entangled inseparably with the histories of the show that he derived his inspiration from the works other elements. of the philosophers and historians discussed both in Part IV of An Epistemology of the Concrete brings On Historicizing Epistemology DQG LQ WKH ÀUVW SDUW all the various themes together, and presents the epis- of An Epistemology of the Concrete. These essays temological lessons that are to be drawn from the case will be of considerable interest for historians of phil- studies. From a philosophical point of view, this is the osophy and epistemologists alike, but their main value crucial part of the book. Rheinberger’s attention to is as independent studies. The historical arrangement the space of the ‘intersections’ in Chapter 11 implies in On Historicizing Epistemology, possibly due to that instruments and experimental objects (in many an editorial rationale, is however less satisfactory. cases only visible or detectable through an instru- The narrative that emerges is clearly linear, and the ment) cannot be conceived as separate entities. Even scholars discussed seem to share a zeitgeist across less should one forget the role of the instrument itself places and traditions. A reader may wonder why in the understanding of the results of experimental history of science is rightly represented as far from a science. The intersecting elements do not stand in a linear development, and as a local enterprise in which void either: Rheinberger emphasizes that ‘as a rule places and material circumstances play a crucial role, instruments neither work nor produce insights by them- whereas the history of philosophy is presented as selves. Rather, they are embedded in historical and enjoying such linear and homogenous development. local contexts, and their success depends on the more Similarly, whereas science is represented as a collec- or less informed manner in which they are applied.’ tive and social enterprise, philosophy appears to be the 2EMHFWVEHFRPHVFLHQWLÀFWKHQWKDQNVWRWKHSODFHWKDW product of isolated individuals. Indeed, their isolation they are made to occupy. For instance, a rock or a plant is often overstated: for instance Bachelard, a powerful EHFRPHVVFLHQWLÀFWKDQNVWRLWVSODFHLQDURFNFROOHF- Sorbonne professor, is repeatedly represented, in both tion or a botanical garden. The rock, or plant, becomes books, as an ‘outsider’, not belonging to any school, part of an order which is theoretical but also practical, and self-taught in epistemology. In fact, despite his as it is subjected to particular handling practices. relatively unconventional curriculum vitae, Bachelard This is because these objects are not only placed in a nevertheless obtained a degree in philosophy, and a particular context, but they are ‘prepared’ and trans- doctorate in the same subject at the Sorbonne, with a IRUPHG LQWR VFLHQWLÀF REMHFWV 5KHLQEHUJHU SURSRVHV thesis on ‘approximate knowledge’ (supervisor Abel the name of ‘epistemologica’ for ‘all material things Rey) and one on philosophy of physics (Léon Brunsch- rendered permanent in various ways that play a part in vicg). His philosophical debt to Brunschvicg is widely knowledge production by enabling facts to be exposed and rightly recognized, both by his contemporaries and elucidated’. ‘Preparations’, to which Chapter 12 is (e.g. Jean Wahl) and by later critics (including Gary dedicated, are a special class of epistemologica. They Gutting, François Dagognet, Jacques Gagey, Teresa include a vast gamut of objects, from anatomical and Castelão and myself). More to the point, Bachelard was botanical preparations to microscopic ones. For Rhein- very much part of the movement of combining history EHUJHUWKH\DUHRIVSHFLDOLQWHUHVWEHFDXVH²XQOLNHIRU and philosophy, and indeed history of science and epis- LQVWDQFHPRGHOV²¶WKH\FRQVLVWRIWKHVDPHPDWHULDO temology, that had been developing at the University of thing for which they stand’. The last chapter of the Paris. Indeed, he was immersed in a milieu in which

38 Radical Philosophy 171 (January/February 2012) knowledge more generally was being historicized in a but accessible understandings of Marxist thought have profound manner, from Lucien Lévy-Bruhl’s theories hardly been well served in recent years. This year, RI PHQWDOLWLHV WR +pOqQH 0HW]JHU·V UHÁHFWLRQ RQ WKH however, has seen the publication of at least two new, different ways of thinking of natural philosophers KLJKO\ DFFHVVLEOH ERRNV ² ZULWWHQ E\ UHVSHFWLYHO\ D and scientists, just to mention a couple of examples. veteran Marxist literary critic and one of the US’s These many scholars organized themselves in groups PRVWFOHDUVLJKWHG0DU[LVWSRO\PDWKV²ZKLFKDUJXH and committees (e.g. Société française de philosophie, in detail, for the continuing and deepening relevance Centre de synthèse, International Committee for the of Marx’s ideas for our times. History of Science), which, although certainly not In Why Marx Was Right, with characteristic erudition comparable with laboratory work, greatly facilitated and verve, Terry Eagleton addresses the common place their exchanges and circulation of ideas. I found that charges that Marxism represents a utopian, soulless, the minutes of their discussions give insights into the outdated, unduly statist, unnecessarily violent or eco- formation of their ideas in relation to one another’s in nomically determinist school of thought. Eagleton a way that their polished books do not always afford. gamely takes on and demolishes these criticisms one However, it is not Rheinberger’s aim to write a E\RQHVKRZLQJ0DU[WREHDÁH[LEOHSUDJPDWLFDQG history of philosophy of that period, and his interest in undogmatic thinker and arguing for the eminently past philosophers is theoretical. The reader will learn KXPDQ²HYHQKXPDQLVW²FKDUDFWHURI0DU[·VSROLWLFDO a great deal from his essays on the scholars whom he outlook. Importantly, too, he distances Marxism from VHHVDVFUXFLDOLQRUGHUWRFRQFHLYHRIVFLHQWLÀFNQRZO- the terrorisitic regimes of the twentieth century that edge as inherently historical, social and ‘concrete’. The claimed to operate in its name. Maoism and Stalinism, reader of An Epistemology of the Concrete will also he notes, were ‘botched, bloody experiments which ÀQGDQDQVZHUWRZKDWLVKLVWRULFDOHSLVWHPRORJ\WRGD\ made the very idea of socialism stink in the nostrils of or at least one version of it, both in theoretical terms WKRVHHOVHZKHUHLQWKHZRUOGZKRKDGPRVWWREHQHÀW and through case studies that show how a historical from it’. epistemological perspective enables the epistemologist, The criticisms of Marxism addressed in the book KLVWRULDQDQGVRFLRORJLVWWRUHDGVFLHQWLÀFDFWLYLW\ are the ones typically levelled by Marx’s right-wing critics (while they are not mentioned by name, the Cristina Chimisso latter would surely include philosophical anti-Marxists VXFKDV-RKQ*UD\ ²DQGULJKWO\VRVLQFHWKHVHDUH the criticisms that Eagleton’s intended audience is most likely to have encountered. Those seeking some Why Keynes discussion of the more sophisticated interventions into Marxist theory made by anarchists, autonomists and was wrong left communists will, however, be disappointed. Indeed, while it would be impossible for a short polemic such Terry Eagleton, Why Marx Was Right, Yale University as Eagleton’s to deal even cursorily with every political Press, New Haven CT, 2011. 258 pp., £16.99 hb., 978 VFKRRORIWKRXJKWLQÁXHQFHGE\0DU[LVPWKHYHUVLRQ 0 30016 943 0. of Marxism defended here is broadly Trotskyist, and other Marxist traditions are given somewhat short Paul Mattick, Business As Usual: The Economic Crisis and the Failure of Capitalism, Reaktion Books, shrift. Eagleton dismisses as ‘ultra left’, for example, London, 2011. 126 pp. £12.95 pb., 978 1 86189 801 2. those Marxists who ‘look to revolution rather than to parliamentary democracy and social reform’, a point In 2008, as journalists and pundits struggled to account which is followed by a joking footnote that mocks the IRU WKH UHWXUQ RI D FULVLV WKDW ZDV QRW ² IROORZLQJ supposed absurdity of left-communist positions: ‘In political promises of ‘the end of boom and bust’ the militant 1970s, … the true purists or ultraleftists ²VXSSRVHGWRUHFXUFRSLHVRICapital and The Com- … were those who were able to return an unequivo- munist Manifesto UHSRUWHGO\ÁHZRIIERRNVKRSVKHOYHV FDO1RWRWKHTXHVWLRQ´:RXOG\RXFDOOWKHERXUJHRLV Even some mainstream media commentators began to ÀUHEULJDGHµ·7KLVGLVPLVVLYHQHVVWRZDUGV¶XOWUDOHIW· wonder if Marx might have been right all along. But positions is unfortunate, since elsewhere in the book VXFKGRXEWV²FRPLQJIURPFRPPHQWDWRUVQRWDFFXV- Eagleton is at pains to emphasize that matters to which WRPHGWRKDUERXULQJWKHP²ZHUHRIWHQDVHSKHPHUDO KH GHYRWHV H[WHQGHG GLVFXVVLRQ ² VXFK DV WKH GHVLU- as they were grudging, and lay readers seeking robust DELOLW\RI¶PDUNHWVRFLDOLVP·²KDYHEHHQWKHVXEMHFW

Radical Philosophy 171 (January/February 2012) 39 of serious debate among Marxists themselves; but it is Since Eagleton is more concerned with defending also indicative of Eagleton’s tendency to emphasize the Marxism from attack than advocating it as a means humanistic and reformist, rather than the revolutionary, RI FULWLTXH D EHWWHU ² DOEHLW OHVV VWLUULQJ ² WLWOH IRU aspects of Marx’s thought. his book might be Why Marx Wasn’t Wrong. In fact, Indeed, while Eagleton is certainly not neglectful of Eagleton’s actual title rather better describes the stance KLVWRU\²KHQRWHVIRUH[DPSOHWKDWWKHFRPSRVLWLRQ of Paul Mattick Junior’s Business As Usual. At just RI WKH ZRUNLQJ FODVV KDV FKDQJHG VLJQLÀFDQWO\ VLQFH 126 pages including footnotes, Mattick’s book offers 0DU[·VWLPH²KHGRHVWHQGWRSUHVHQWWKHUHIRUPLVW a Marxist explanation of capitalist crisis for a lay character of nineteenth-century socialism as more or readership in a highly condensed format. Beginning less adequate in the current era. But capitalism today with an analysis of the longue durée of capitalist is not the same as that which confronted workers in business cycles, Mattick shows, in characteristically Marx’s time. The nineteenth century, for all its horrors, precise and jargon-free prose, how Marxian economic was a period of rising wages and capitalist expansion, theory offers resources for explaining the latest crisis in which unions served as more or less effective organs of the system in its historical context. Mattick is well of working-class reformism. The revolutionary wave of TXDOLÀHGIRUWKLVWDVNMXVWDVKLVIDWKHUWKHFRXQFLO the early twentieth century, by contrast, indicated that communist Paul Mattick Senior, had used Marxian the communist transformation of society was possible. economics to predict the ultimate failure of postwar The state, meanwhile, has grown enormously in size welfare Keynsianism in his 1962 book Marx and and scope since that period, absorbing the unions, Keynes, Mattick’s Marxist method has enabled him which have in turn played a mostly reactionary role correctly to predict the ways in which the economic by supporting the world wars and dividing struggling crisis would unfold since 2007. As Mattick stresses, ZRUNHUV E\ QDWLRQ VHFWRU DQG MRE UROH ² KRZHYHU such predictional accuracy is not a matter of intelli- PLOLWDQWWKHLUUDQNDQGÀOHPHPEHUVPD\EH+RZHYHU gence or insight, but is rather ‘a matter of knowing how one describes such historical shifts (as a movement to think about what is going on’. Indeed, continuing from formal to real subsumption, from ascendance to the theme of one of Mattick’s earlier books, Social GHFDGHQFH HWF  WKHLU SROLWLFDO UDPLÀFDWLRQV FDQQRW Knowledge, Marxism is posited here as the best guide be ignored. The qualitative differences between the to acquiring knowledge in the social sciences. As capitalism of Marx’s day and ours have changed the VXFKRQHRIWKLVERRN·VFOHDUHVWPHVVDJHV²UHFDOOLQJ rules of the game, transforming the nature of working- his father’s argument in Marx and Keynes²KDVWRGR FODVVRUJDQVRIVWUXJJOH$GPLWWHGO\LWLVGLIÀFXOWWR with the bankruptcy of mainstream economic analysis. take full account of a century and a half of capitalist ,QWKHÀUVWSDUWRIWKHERRN0DWWLFNDGGUHVVHVVRPH development in a short polemic such as Eagleton’s; common misconceptions, arguing that economic crises nevertheless, Why Marx Was Right does rather under- are not, as is often claimed, caused by ‘exogenous estimate the dramatic shift in the nature of capitalism shocks’ to the system, but are internal to the dynamics since the beginning of the twentieth century and its of capitalism. However, the central problem with main- implications for proletarian political strategy. stream accounts of the recent crisis, Mattick argues, 2QDPRUHSURVDLFOHYHOVRPHUHDGHUVPD\ÀQGWKH lies in their mistaken assumption that the point of capi- relentlessly puckish literary style of Why Marx Was talism is to create goods in order to satisfy consumer Right irritating. Eagleton, as always, is droll; but the GHPDQGUDWKHUWKDQWKDWFDSLWDOLVWVDLPWRFUHDWHSURÀW characteristic trope of illustrating abstract concepts Thus, in response to Keynesian commentators such as with vividly concrete images and eccentric analogies Paul Krugman, whose recommendations for beating ²WRZKLFKWKHDXWKRUJLYHVIXOOUHLQ²LVRIWHQPRUH the recession include massive stimulus spending and grating than illuminating. ‘To judge socialism by its job-creation schemes, Mattick points out that ‘capital- results in one desperately isolated country’, he writes of LVPLVDV\VWHPQRWIRUSURYLGLQJ´HPSOR\PHQWµDVDQ the Soviet Union under Stalin, ‘would be like drawing abstract goal, but for employing people who produce conclusions about the human race from a study of SURÀWV· $QG WKHUHLQ OLHV WKH SUREOHP )ROORZLQJ WKH psychopaths in Kalamazoo’. Despite these reservations, work of Robert Brenner, Mattick points to the more however, Why Marx Was Right will provide reassur- or less steady decline, since the mid-1970s, in levels DQFHWRQHZFRPHUVWR0DU[LVP²RIZKLFKLQWKHVH RIFDSLWDOLQYHVWPHQWDQGSURÀWDELOLW\²DGHFOLQHWKDW WURXEOHG WLPHV WKHUH DUH PDQ\ ² WKDW 0DU[ GLG QRW would have led to a crisis much earlier had its effects hold all, or even any, of the views attributed to him not been staved off by enormous levels of private, by his detractors. public and government debt.

40 Radical Philosophy 171 (January/February 2012) While emphasizing the cyclical nature of economic downturn, Mattick notes that the present crisis is unfolding in a radically different context to that of earlier depressions. The state-capitalist solution of large-scale government spending that was implemented by leaders from Roosevelt to Hitler in response to the depression of the 1930s is virtually impossible to implement today (and in any case, as Mattick points out, it was actually the Second World War, not these .H\HQHVLDQPHDVXUHVWKDWÀQDOO\HQDEOHGFDSLWDOLVPWR climb out of depression). Keynesians, argues Mattick, have never faced up to the long-term consequences of government borrowing, which has now spiralled out of FRQWURO²LQWKH86$LWKDVULVHQIURPELOOLRQLQ WR WULOOLRQWRGD\²UDLVLQJWKHSURVSHFWRI default for many countries. Governments are therefore caught between the rock of allowing the crisis to ‘play as a process of communization that bypasses the out’, imposing austerity and trying to contain the need for proletarian dictatorship, underestimates the ensuing social unrest, and the hard place of stimulus importance of working-class political organization to spending, which will lead to disastrously high levels any post-capitalist transition. of government debt. Some will say, too, that Mattick’s account of eco- An added problem is that capitalism today is inte- nomic crisis overemphasizes the causal importance grated as never before in its history, so that any RIWKHWHQGHQF\RIWKHUDWHRISURÀWWRIDOO7KHUHLVD solutions that capitalism invents to remedy its own VLJQLÀFDQWGLYHUJHQFHIRUH[DPSOHEHWZHHQ0DWWLFN·V SUREOHPVPXVWEHLQWHUQDWLRQDOLQQDWXUH²DYLUWXDO IRFXVRQSURÀWUDWHDQGWKHPRUHSOXUDOLVWDFFRXQWRI impossibility in a world of competing nation-states. capitalist crisis given in David Harvey’s The Enigma World war has, of course, traditionally offered one of Capital (another of the few accessible Marxist such global solution for capitalism; but, as Mattick books about the crisis to have appeared of late). Those QRWHVDOWKRXJKWKHZRUOGWRGD\LVUDFNHGE\FRQÁLFW interested in Mattick’s critique of Harvey’s position mobilizing an (as yet) undefeated working class for a will, however, need to look elsewhere for illumination, ZRUOG ZDU ZRXOG SURYH GLIÀFXOW IRU WKH UXOLQJ FODVV since Mattick focuses here primarily on his own thesis, (although, in a world full of nuclear weapons, one rather than engaging in lengthy dialogues with the wonders if troop mobilization would even be neces- arguments of others. Still, whatever view one takes sary). Moreover, even if the economy does temporarily RIWKHUROHRISURÀWUDWHVLQFDSLWDOLVWFULVLV0DWWLFN·V recover, this will only exacerbate the environmental book valuably locates the roots of the crisis in the destruction and depletion of natural resources that nature of the capitalist system, providing a forceful already threaten to render the planet uninhabitable counter-argument to those liberal-left commentators for human life. who have sought to blame the recent crisis on ‘greedy ,QWKHERRN·VÀQDOSDJHV0DWWLFNLVXSEHDWDERXW bankers’, ‘neoliberalism’ or other manifestations of the decline of the ‘traditional’ Left of ‘parties, unions ‘excessive’ capitalism, while arguing for a return to a and radical sects’, arguing that the solution to the regulated Keynesianism. Like his father before him, problems created by capitalism will have to come Mattick argues convincingly that neither the ‘free through the actions of ordinary people. This might market’ nor the Keynesian policies of the ruling class begin with people simply taking and using housing, offers a way to overcome the cycle of boom-and-bust food and other goods, organizing production and in an increasingly beleaguered system. Indeed, both distribution to meet their own needs. In this, Mattick Eagleton’s and Mattick’s books serve as accessible sounds a refreshingly pragmatic and undogmatic reminders that, as Sartre observed half a century ago in note, and, unlike Eagleton, shows an awareness that Search for a Method, we cannot ‘go beyond’ Marxism organs such as the unions no longer serve the pro- until we have transcended the circumstances which gressive function they once did. Inevitably, however, engendered it. some Marxists will feel that Mattick, by seeming to present the overcoming of capitalist social relations Stephen Harper

Radical Philosophy 171 (January/February 2012) 41 The new paternalism

Frank Furedi, On Tolerance: A Defence of Moral Independence, Continuum, London and New York, 2011. 224 pp., £16.99 hb., 978 1 44112 010 6.

Peter John et al., Nudge, Nudge, Think, Think: Experimenting with Ways to Change Civic Behaviour, Bloomsbury, London and New York, 2011. 208 pp., £40.00 hb., 978 1 84966 059 4.

Gilles Saint-Paul, The Tyranny of Utility: Behavioural Social Science and the Rise of Paternalism, Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ, 2011. 174 pp., £27.95 hb., 978 0 69112 817 7.

‘Nudge’ and ‘Think’ are currently popular buzzwords classical liberal principles of freedom of conscience of government policy reform, informed by develop- and individual autonomy. The freedom to choose dif- ments in contemporary behavioural economics, psy- ferently is the basis of democratic public reasoning, chology and the neurosciences. ‘Nudge’ suggests that and the availability of choices develops our capacities governments should act to manipulate lifestyle choices for judgement and moral reason. As against this, ²IRUH[DPSOHE\FKDQJLQJWKHZD\VLQZKLFKFKRLFHV Furedi argues, today we feel uncomfortable with toler- DUHSUHVHQWHGRUWKHGHIDXOWRSWLRQVLQYROYHG²ZKLOH ance for its own sake and the responsibility it imposes ¶7KLQN·VXJJHVWVWKDWFLWL]HQVQHHGWREHLQÁXHQFHGWR for individual judgement. Rather than see difference change their decisions or behaviour through participa- as a healthy and necessary challenge to clarify our tory or deliberative engagement. Such discussions of own beliefs, we are more likely to see difference as a government intervention to change lifestyle behaviours problem that needs to be managed. This bureaucratic thus tend to bypass two commonplace approaches: or administrative operationalization of toleration as WUDGLWLRQDO SDWHUQDOLVP RU GLUHFW LQWHUYHQWLRQ ² WKH a technique for evading the problems of difference, banning or taxation of behaviour (such as smoking, through the imperative not to cause offence, hence VPDFNLQJRUIR[KXQWLQJ ²DQGQRQSDWHUQDOLVPVXFK essentializes difference. In this way, discourses and as the provision of information that enables citizens to practices of tolerance constrain individual freedom and make up their own minds on a supposedly autonomous responsibility rather than becoming the precondition basis. for them. What is often loosely termed the ‘new paternalism’ For Furedi, radical and left advocates had already is thereby a self-consciously ‘Third Way’ approach to created a culture less tolerant of free judgement, in social policy. On the one hand, government does not order to protect the sensibilities of minorities and directly assert and impose political authority; on the to protect the vulnerable from offence and poten- other, citizens cannot be left to decide for themselves. tial psychological harm. This has meant that more For many critics of Nudge and Think, it is the second recent, right-wing government assertions of the need to part of this equation that is the focus of their ire. regulate interpersonal relationships, in order to prevent Two new books (by Saint-Paul and Furedi) argue that harm to vulnerable groups and individuals or to our WKH VKLIW WRZDUGV QHZ SDWHUQDOLVP ² RU ¶OLEHUWDULDQ FROOHFWLYHZHOIDUHKDYHEHFRPHGLIÀFXOWWRFRQWHVW,Q paternalism’: the term coined by Thaler and Sunstein today’s therapeutic culture, the perception of the harm in their best-selling book Nudge²LVDGDQJHURXVWUHQG we can do through our autonomous reasoning has threatening civil liberties and social freedoms. The multiplied and, with this perception, our tolerance of third (Nudge, Nudge, Think, Think), by contrast, advo- autonomy has contracted. In this climate, intervention cates such a policy shift and argues for the importance by the state, in censoring opinions or promoting other, RIWKHÀUVWSDUWRIWKHHTXDWLRQWKHPRYHIURP¶ELJ ‘better’ choices, is not understood as oppressive but as government’ to what David Cameron has famously a progressive act: protecting the vulnerable or power- promoted as the ‘big society’. less from offence or harm. The individual’s capacity For Frank Furedi, in On Tolerance: A Defence of for autonomy is therefore problematized as we are Moral Independence QHZ SDWHUQDOLVP UHÁHFWV DQG increasingly seen to be victims of the media, irra- institutionalizes social intolerance. Drawing on clas- tional prejudices, or as making irresponsible choices. sical liberal philosophers, including Locke, Kant and For Furedi, the ideas of evolutionary psychology and Mill, he remarks that the shift towards the regulation EHKDYLRXUDOHFRQRPLFVSURYLGHDVFLHQWLÀFMXVWLÀFDWLRQ and manipulation of our private choices undermines and coherent rationale for government interventions in

42 Radical Philosophy 171 (January/February 2012) cases where the public is seen to be unable to reach EHQHÀWWKHPDUNHWDQGWKHGHPRFUDWLFSXEOLFVSKHUH the best decisions on its own accord. According to This liberal framework was derived from individuals’ this framework, government social engineering is an preferences as ‘revealed’ in their market choices, which DFW RI ¶HPSRZHUPHQW· ² DXJPHQWLQJ IUHHGRP UDWKHU ZHUHDVVHUWHGWREHWKHPRVWHIÀFLHQWZD\RIDFKLHY- than denying it. ing utilitarian outcomes. Today, however, utilitarian Furedi concludes that the new paternalism in this arguments have parted company with classical liberal way inverts democratic theory: rather than government defences of the moral autonomy of decision-making. serving the will of the people, the task of government Instead, we live in a ‘post-utilitarian’ world, where it is is to change, re-educate and transform the will of assumed that we cannot be trusted to make decisions the people. This inversion threatens to eliminate the in our best interests. Yet, Saint-Paul argues, when distinction between the public and private spheres, ‘revealed preferences are tossed out of the window, continually presenting the autonomy of the private Big Brother enters through the back door’, in so far sphere as a problematic limit to addressing problems of as behavioural economics cannot but lead to greater economic, social and environmental order. Increasing government intrusion into private choice-making. regulation of the private sphere cannot address the Saint-Paul makes a bold set of arguments informed underlying problem of government’s inability to deal by the desire to separate a principled opposition to the with the weakening of moral and intellectual certain- new paternalism from an instrumentalist one, assert- ties, but will merely increase the demand for further ing the need for a return to Friedrich von Hayek’s regulations as autonomy and choice-making come to defence of constitutional liberties on intrinsic grounds. be seen as increasingly problematic. A defence of liberty today involves engaging in debate Whereas Furedi sees the new paternalism as driven about human nature. A society that organizes around by a cultural problematization of moral autonomy, the assumption of incapacity will produce citizens Gilles Saint-Paul understands the shift to the regula- uncomfortable with moral independence and less able tion of the private choices as a product of behavioural to use their own judgement. New paternalism, rather economics and the neurological sciences. He argues WKDQVFLHQWLÀFDOO\UHVROYLQJSUREOHPVUHSURGXFHVWKHP that experts have now proved that individuals are not on a larger scale through encouraging the erosion of ‘rational, consistent and capable of self-control’. This individual and collective responsibility. evidence, in conjunction with tremendous advances in In their critiques, albeit coming from rather differ- digital technology, opens up the possibility that govern- HQWSROLWLFDOGLUHFWLRQV)XUHGLDQG6DLQW3DXOÁDJXS ments can intervene to regulate individual behaviour the dangers of an erosion of individual responsibility to improve economic and social outcomes. Scientists and moral autonomy. Yet it should be noted that the can ‘prove’ that we would live longer, healthier and current UK government, which has most enthusiasti- wealthier lives if there was greater regulation and gov- cally endorsed the ideas of Nudge and Think, itself ernment intrusion into the private decisions we make argues that it is keen to restore ‘people’s appetite to with regard to our health and exercise, child-rearing, take control for themselves’. In his foreword, to Peter consumer purchases, recycling, education and welfare, John and his colleagues’ study of the effectiveness ZKLOH WKH GHYHORSPHQW RI VFLHQWLÀF XQGHUVWDQGLQJV of such policy interventions in Nudge, Nudge, Think, of the brain and the problematic nature of human Think: Experimenting with Ways to Change Civic decision-making will continually shift the boundary of Behaviour, Greg Clark, the Tory minister for planning government intervention, further restricting our private and decentralization, hence unsurprisingly argues that sphere of autonomy. individual responsibility needs to be enhanced. Nudge Saint-Paul agrees with Furedi that this form of and Think are held to be necessary here because intervention does not appear oppressive; in fact it government can no longer ‘simply tell people what FDQ EH VFLHQWLÀFDOO\ DUJXHG IRU DV WKH EHVW ZD\ RI to do’ or achieve policy success just by ‘pulling on increasing aggregate individual preferences. However, the levers of central power’. Such discourse is that of as he points out, the ideology of laissez-faire, as a the war on paternalism: the scaling back of central- principle of government of the social and economic ized directives and bureaucratically developed national sphere, was founded on the methodological principle policy solutions. As such, addressing social, economic of Homo economicus²WKDWLQGLYLGXDOVZHUHUDWLRQDO and environmental problems apparently comes down utility maximizers. In the world of the rational subject, to the ‘subtle question of behaviour change’ and how the more information there was the better the deci- the government can help ‘encourage responsible behav- sion would be: free speech and free exchange would iour by individuals and communities’. Researching the

Radical Philosophy 171 (January/February 2012) 43 effectiveness of Nudge and Think is held to be vital liberal assumptions of moral autonomy and individual as the government looks for ‘more effective ways responsibility. In doing so, however, they merely reveal to deliver behaviour change in the wider interest of the weakness of any critique based on such assump- society’. tion, in so far as they must also recognize the degree to In shifting policy responsibility from the state to which these very assumptions appear profoundly alien society, the private sphere is inevitably problematized. to us today. Nineteenth-century philosophical grave- As John et al. argue, ‘The kinds of problems that robbing is understandable as an act of desperation, but, many societies now need to solve require changing in the end, it simply makes it all the more clear that the behaviour of citizens, whose private actions are this can be no substitute for a future-orientated vision hard to regulate by laws and commands.’ Nudge and of the human subject and the social or political projects Think are not, it is said, about public or macro-level which could enable it to come into being. policy; they are administrative techniques, which the David Chandler research project authors advocate in order to ‘deepen and broaden out the behaviour-change programme’. The authors thus advocate a utilitarian perspective for which government interventions in the private sphere A feminist on the are ‘appropriate and legitimate’ to the extent that better policy outcomes can be achieved this way. Individual edge of time citizens have a limited or ‘bounded’ rational capacity for decision-making and, at present, their understand- Mandy Merck and Stella Sandford, eds, Further ings are shaped and manipulated by numerous ‘actors, Adventures of The Dialectic of Sex: Critical Essays institutions and practices that (explicitly or implicitly) on Shulamith Firestone, Palgrave Macmillan, Basing- promote non-civic behaviour’. If we are irrational and stoke, 2010. 304 pp., £55.00 hb., 978 0 23010 029 9. already manipulated by social, economic and political DFWRUV²IURPDGYHUWLVLQJDJHQFLHVWRRXUIULHQGVDQG Further Adventures of The Dialectic of Sex celebrates IDPLO\²ZKDWFRXOGSRVVLEO\EHZURQJZLWKJRYHUQ- the fortieth birthday of Shulamith Firestone’s radical ments intervening to improve our surrounding ‘choice feminist manifesto The Dialectic of Sex by providing architecture’? a collection of eleven essays that examines Firestone’s Yet, Nudge, Nudge, Think, Think, through its classic work within the context of contemporary femi- case-study examples, in fact highlights not only the nist debates. Over its forty-year-plus life, The Dialectic patronizing nature of Nudge and Think initiatives of Sex has received its share of negative attention. ²ZLWKVPLOH\IDFHVRQIHHGEDFNDQGFRPSHWLWLYHVWUHHW The book has been roundly criticized for what are UHF\FOLQJ OHDJXHV ² EXW DOVR WKHLU OLPLWHG LPSDFW RQ claimed to be Firestone’s essentializing perspectives on actually changing people’s behaviour in the ‘treat- sex, her radical departure from embracing traditional ment groups’ studied. In some cases, the provision of motherhood and pregnancy, and the book’s promotion information and deliberation had the opposite effect to of alternatives to the nuclear family. In fact, between that intended by the well-meaning pedagogic experts feminist rejection of the text and conservative backlash from the local council, as issues became less black and against it, the book was out of print for almost twenty- white. It demonstrates well the paradoxes and limits of ÀYH\HDUVRQO\EHLQJUHLVVXHGLQWKHPLGV,WQRZ government interventions which are meant to empower serves to help describe second-wave radical feminism people through patronizing and manipulating them. and as a result has found its place in the feminist Each of these three books demonstrates the ambi- canon, even if Firestone’s ideas continue to be used guities involved in the drift towards a new paternal- primarily as a foil for more contemporary work. ism. Through its denial of responsibility and war on Forty years later, however, the retrospective essays traditional paternalism, the discourse of power has published in this collection allow for a reading of shifted from that of ‘big government’ to ‘big society’, Firestone to emerge that is both nuanced and complex. yet with this has come a pressure to limit or restrict They also reclaim much, if not all, of what Firestone individual autonomy. Furedi and Saint-Paul are surely sought to achieve as still relevant to feminism today, right to warn that culturally and politically we seem ZLWKDOOWKHHVVD\VÀQGLQJDPSOHSRLQWVRIHQJDJHPHQW strikingly ill-equipped to oppose or challenge this between Firestone’s radical feminist vision and today’s shift. Yet, in mounting a challenge to the politics of feminist politics. The essays remark upon the strengths behaviour change, they both seek to return to classical and weaknesses of Firestone’s pathbreaking work and,

44 Radical Philosophy 171 (January/February 2012) ZKLOHLWLVGLIÀFXOWWRVSHDNJHQHUDOO\DERXWWKHULFK lineage of ideas? In part the break emerges because of contributions collected in this volume, as a whole they different understandings of biology and the argument seek to offer a sympathetic reading of Firestone, defend WKDWPDQ\RWKHUHVVD\VLQWKHERRNVHHNWRDGGUHVV² her against her most vociferous critics, and pay homage that Firestone held a reductionist view of biology. One to her radical vision. of the key insights from this essay is how Firestone In the prologue, Mandy Merck contextualizes both becomes a way of seeing what was possible to think the feminist movement of the 1960s and Firestone’s about in the 1970s and what we no longer think about place in the movement’s radical segment. Merck situ- now. The value of her work, for Paasonen, is in its ates the central themes of Firestone’s text within the view of what a future society might look like. Caroline modern theoretical landscape, and points out the irony Bassett similarly offers a thoughtful piece on Fire- that even as the technologies that could have made stone’s utopianism and how one can assess how well Firestone’s reproductive future possible are developed, her visions have travelled. In her essay, ‘Impossible, her work has been largely forgotten. As a result, Admirable, Androgyne: Firestone, Technology, and the growth of reproductive technologies goes forward Utopia’, Bassett argues that while Firestone writes in without any substantive feminist theorizing and it a way that has rendered her somewhat anachronistic becomes clear that the nexus between motherhood and to the modern reader, she must be given her due as technology remains a deeply troubling point of tension a feminist futurist and utopian visionary. Her ‘body for feminism. What becomes clear from Merck’s hatred’, as Bassett puts it, which she used to envi- reading is that, much like the heroine in Marge Piercy’s sion technological wombs that would free women Woman on the Edge of Time, we remain trapped in a from pregnancy, is a radically different approach to WHFKQRVFLHQWLÀFZRUOGWKDWKDV\HWWREHGHFRQVWUXFWHG thinking through modern concepts of childbirth and by a feminist ethic, radical or otherwise. motherhood. Bassett argues that Firestone’s project failed, however, because neither the state nor the family has withered away (though I am not sure we can blame Firestone for this), even if her analysis remains relevant. To be sure, Firestone’s utopian vision remains almost unthinkable in today’s child- centred political world. Yet that is exactly what we need to do ²WKLQNWKHXQWKLQNDEOH In the second section, Stevi Jackson’s contribution, ‘Ques- tioning Heterosexual Families’, helps to demonstrate that even if we end up with different answers to the problems Firestone raised, these problems continue to exist. Her critique of families, children The book itself is divided into three sections that DQG ORYH ZKLOH ÁDZHG DFFRUGLQJ WR -DFNVRQ VWLOO address Firestone’s work thematically. Section one suggest we have not seen much in terms of more equal deals with technology, section two with sex, love and relationships emerge in the past forty years. Jackson’s the family, and section three with dialectics. In section conclusion that feminists have become more pessimis- one, Susanna Paasonen’s essay, ‘From Cybernation to WLFLQWKHHQVXLQJ\HDUVZKLOHDSWLVVREHULQJ²DVLV Feminization: Firestone and Cyberfeminism’, provides the idea that heterosexual relationships remain mired DJUHDWRYHUYLHZRIWKHDUWLVWLFDQGVFKRODUO\ÀHOGRI in inequality and dissolve even more often now than cyberfeminism before taking up the question of why they did forty years ago. ‘Integration, Intersex, and WKH F\EHUIHPLQLVP RI WKH V GRHVQ·W ÁRZ IURP Firestone’, by Mandy Merck, takes up the evolution Firestone’s cybernetic vision. In other words, why the of Firestone’s claims for androgyny and situates these break in what could otherwise be understood as a claims within a more contemporary debate over race,

Radical Philosophy 171 (January/February 2012) 45 integration and the challenges posed by intersexed in the evolution of feminist thought, The Dialectic individuals. Much of the essay is not about Firestone of Sex is only a snapshot from a brilliant mind. How per se, but the world after Firestone that has yet her own thinking evolved, or would have evolved had to grapple with the existence or implications of the she remained in the movement will remain a mystery. intersexed body. Thus, while Firestone’s future remains Debora Halbert unrealized, the core effort to transcend sex is pertinent. Especially interesting is the focus on female elite athletes and the ways in which their performance chal- lenges conventional gender norms. I would have liked Leftist reason to see Merck bring this contemporary controversy into a clearer dialogue with Firestone’s work. Bruno Bosteels, The Actuality of Communism, Verso, The section on dialectics seeks to retrieve Firestone London and New York, 2011. 304 pp., £12.99 hb., 978 from the claims of essentialism. Gillian Howie argues 1 84467 695 8. that we should treat Firestone’s work as a political treatise, asking: ‘how can we think a future that does The accusation of ‘leftism’ has often surfaced at not follow from our current political condition, which crucial moments in the struggle against capitalism. eliminates all normative imperatives that seem to Lenin’s broadside against left-wing communism is of follow from sexed embodiment?’ To answer this ques- course the most important analysis of this deviation tion, what Firestone contributes is a ‘world-changing internal to the communist movement, and the various ÀFWLRQ· +RZLH·V HVVD\ WKXV GRHV D JRRG MRE OLQNLQJ symptoms it groups to diagnose this ‘infantile’ disorder Firestone to her Marxist and materialist heritage with are well known: a dogmatic and moralist position the feminist twist that the role of the family and against political struggles; the confusion of strategies patriarchy in the process of oppression and the need and tactics, means and ends; a refusal to feel out a for change must also be considered. In one of the more given situation for weak links; a deafness to the logic theoretically complex and well-argued pieces, Stella of objective enemies and alliances; an incapacity to Sandford takes up the issue of the dialectic within The enter into the dialectic of legality and illegality, and Dialectic of Sex. Sandford does the best job of clarify- a corresponding aestheticization of illegality. When ing Firestone’s approach to sex and gender issues as Lenin launched his polemic, the fate of the communist well as how misreadings of Firestone have led to her movement remained uncertain, and the stakes were marginalization as a feminist theorist. For Sandford, high: the Bolshevik Revolution still consolidating itself the key issue is that Firestone felt it was possible to in the throes of civil war; the recent crushing of the PDNHELRORJLFDOGLIIHUHQFHVLUUHOHYDQW²WKDWZHFRXOG *HUPDQLQVXUUHFWLRQVRI²7KHWHUPUHDSSHDUHG live in a world where genital differences didn’t matter. during the earliest hours of May 1968, and came to As a result, while generations of feminists have painted GHÀQHWKHVXEVHTXHQWSROLWLFDOVHTXHQFHODVWLQJXQWLO Firestone as someone who takes on a ‘naturalistic’ the mid-1970s, marked as it was by a proliferation of approach to sex, in reality she acknowledges biology as Maoist and libertarian communist groupings to the relevant but sees that ‘nature, not culture, is the poten- far left of the PCF and the increasingly compromised tial site of revolution’. Technology has revolutionary RUJDQVRIWKHRIÀFLDOFRPPXQLVWPRYHPHQW7KLVOHIWLVW power. However, Sandford is correct when she says it is episode ended in the paradoxical yet telling right- YHU\GLIÀFXOWWRDYRLGFRQÁDWLQJ)LUHVWRQH·VDSSURDFK ist turn taken by the ex-Gauche Proletarienne ‘new with ‘anti-feminist apologies for the inevitability of philosophers’, whose anti-Marxist polemics deployed patriarchy’. against the complex articulation of masses, classes and In the end, each essay argues that it is not possible organization of classical communist politics, a global to reject Firestone completely. I applaud the efforts and timeless confrontation between a seamless and of the authors to draw Firestone’s work back into XELTXLWRXVÀJXUHRI3RZHUDQGWKHPDUW\UHGUHVLVWDQFH the academic fold and treat it with the seriousness it of the changeless plebe. deserves. However, the book also conveys the distinct Bruno Bosteels’s The Actuality of Communism feeling that we have moved on, at least intellectually, UHODXQFKHVWKLVSROHPLFDJDLQVWOHIWLVPLQLWVVSHFLÀ- and so, while we will never solve the issues raised by cally contemporary form, taking on the emergence of Firestone, they have become less theoretically interest- what he calls, after Alain Badiou and Jacques Ran- ing to modern feminists, or to academic feminists at FLqUH ¶VSHFXODWLYH OHIWLVP· DQG ZKLFK KH GHÀQHV DV least. Given that Firestone has not remained active ‘a name for the philosophical appropriation of radical

46 Radical Philosophy 171 (January/February 2012) emancipatory politics’. As the long introduction to the For readers attracted to the word ‘communism’ ERRNPDNHVFOHDUWKHVSHFLÀFVWUDLQRIDSSURSULDWLRQ in Bosteels’s title, and familiar with the line-up put he is keen to assess is the recent recirculation of the together for the London conference, some of the chap- VLJQLÀHU ¶FRPPXQLVP· LQ FRQWHPSRUDU\ SKLORVRSK\ ters included in this volume are bound to disappoint. whether in the work of Badiou or Rancière, or that of Readers who expect, for example, a critical account of -HDQ/XF1DQF\DQG$QWRQLR1HJUL²DOOSDUWLFLSDQWV the most ontologically ambitious and therefore most along with Bosteels himself, in the 2009 London con- speculative contemporary accounts of communism ference on ‘The Idea of Communism’. Alberto Toscano ²-HDQ/XF1DQF\·VRQWRORJ\RIWKHFRPPRQDQGLWV has recently underlined the historical paradox of this dissociation from the history of communist politics, resurgence of philosophical interest in the term ‘com- say, or Antonio Negri’s Spinozian variant of commu- munism’, noting that this very theoretical vitality seems QLVWSRWHQWLDOLW\²ZLOOKDYHWRVHWWOHLQWKHÀUVWWZR a symptom of the historical weakness and resounding FKDSWHUVIRUDUDQJHÀQGLQJDFFRXQWRIDUHFHQWYROXPH defeat of the communist movement. By contrast, Bos- on the possibility ‘leftist’ ontology and the ‘impolitical’ teels confronts the theoretical recirculation of the term DQG¶LQIUDSROLWLFDO·UHÁHFWLRQVRI5REHUWR(VSRVLWRDQG ²ZKHUH¶FRPPXQLVP·LVRIWHQGUDPDWLFDOO\RSSRVHG Alberto Moreiras, respectively. These chapters, while to ‘socialism’ and the historical forms this term has pertinent accounts of various modes of the contempo- WDNHQ RQ ² QRW ZLWK WKH DEVHQFH RI DQ LQWHUQDWLRQDO rary philosophical appropriation of ‘radical politics’, revolutionary movement, but with its recent resurgence seem like deviations from the fundamental question in South America and in particular Bolivia. If the Bosteels wants to pursue. The treatment of Rancière larger part of Bosteels’s intervention consists in devel- and his account of the historical articulation of phil- oping a ‘critique of pure leftist reason’, whose central osophy and politics, as well as Rancière’s own call for ÀJXUHLV5DQFLqUH²WKHFHQWUDOFKDSWHURIWKHERRNLV D¶SURSHUO\SROLWLFDO·UHDGLQJRIWKHSROLWLFDOUHFWLÀHV devoted to him, as is a large part of the second chapter otherwise concerning Roberto Esposito and $OEHUWR 0RUHLUDV ² LW LV QRW E\ FKDQFH WKDW WKH ÀQDO FKDSWHU RI the book, which shares the book’s title, is devoted to the writings and political militancy of the standing vice president of Bolivia, Alvaro García Linares. While an enor- mous debt is clearly owed to those ÀJXUHVZKRQREO\DQGLQLVRODWLRQ WHQGHGWKHÀUHVRIWKHFRPPXQLVW spirit through the winter years of the crushing or winding out of the workers’ movement, the eviscera- tions of the welfare state and the social ‘entitlements’ won through worker struggles, the police interventions of the West WKLV LQLWLDO GULIW ZKLOH WKH ÀQH FKDSWHU GHYRWHG WR and NATO against a changing array of ‘rogue’ states, æLçHN·VHYROYLQJFRQFHSWLRQVRIWKH/DFDQLDQDQG/HQ- DQGWKHSUHGDWLRQVRIÀQDQFHFDSLWDO%RVWHHOVDUJXHV inist ‘act’ brings us to the threshold of what Bosteels WKDWDQ\UHÁHFWLRQRQWKHIDWHDQGIXWXUHRIWKHWHUP understands to be the actuality of communism today. ‘communism’ today must begin with an immanent cri- In tracing the different structures of the ‘act’, which WLTXHRIWKLVOHIWLVW¶UHDVRQ·²DQGLWVLPSOLFLWRUH[SOLFLW æLçHNKDVSURSRXQGHGVLQFH·V The Sublime Object opposing of a speculative norm of pure communism of Ideology, Bosteels is able to pass from the recursive to the actual workings of communist power, including temporality of an act that posits its own conditions, and WKH HQJDJHPHQW ZLWK VWDWH SRZHU ² DQG DQ DWWHQWLRQ a subject whose act is to identify with inconsistencies WR DQG DIÀUPDWLRQ RI WKH UHDO SROLWLFV RI UHYROXWLRQ- DQGLPSDVVHZLWKLQWKHV\PEROLFRUGHURQWRæLçHN·V DU\H[SHULPHQWDWLRQRXWVLGHRIWKHDLUOHVVFRQÀQHVRI more recent reconsideration of the dictatorship of the Parisian and para-Parisian theoretical innovation. proletariat and the seizure of the state as a weapon

Radical Philosophy 171 (January/February 2012) 47 necessary for the crushing of remnants of bourgeois analysis of a text by the Bolivian vice president whose FODVVSRZHU,WLVRQO\DVWHSWKHQIURPæLçHN·VZU\O\ title is The Plebeian Potential, yoking together two of ¶YXOJDU·/HQLQLVWDFWWR/LQDUHV·VRZQUHÁHFWLRQVRQWKH the fundamental categories of speculative leftism: the ‘takeover of state power in a non-statal way’. plebe DV D TXDVLRQWRORJLFDO ÀJXUH RI UHVLVWDQFH DQG Bosteels is particularly insightful when he proposes potentiality as the excess of this communist ontology a historical hypothesis regarding not simply the origins over any actualization in the form of an institution. of speculative leftism, but one of its widely shared Bosteels reassures us, however, that these terms in fact axioms: the rarity of politics. This axiom makes a IXQFWLRQDVPDUNHUVIRUWKHVSHFLÀFLW\DQGFRPSOH[LW\ YLUWXHRIKLVWRULFDOZHDNQHVVUHÁHFWLQJWKHIDFWWKDW of the class and ethnic composition of the actors in WKHSHULRGZKHQWKLVWKHVLVHPHUJHG²WKHVDQG %ROLYLD VR DV ¶WR E\SDVV WKH FODVVLFDO ÀJXUH RI WKH V²ZDVLQGHHGPDUNHGE\DSDXFLW\RIVXVWDLQHG SUROHWDULDW«LQIDYRURIDZLGHUDQGPXFKPRUHÁH[- consistent political sequences. The third chapter of the ible composition of the revolutionary subject’. book, devoted to Rancière’s own account of the three The merits of Bosteels’s intervention are at least possible philosophical appropriations and cancellations double, and self-evident. It breaks open the speculative RI WKH SROLWLFDO ² DUFKL SDUD DQG PHWDSROLWLFV ² closure of recent philosophical accounts of commu- emphasizes the way in which, unlike Badiou, Rancière nism by confronting them with the actuality of the offers no periodization of political sequences, positing communist movement as it unfolds in Bolivia, or at instead a model of egalitarian rupture that has no least as it is analysed and theorized by Linares in a internal historicity, and is marked only by the repeated book that, paradoxically, is itself shadowed by some of yet discontinuous and rare staging of ‘moments’ and the very ‘speculative’ positions it is here supposed to ‘scenes’ of dissensus. Such an account, which places correct. And it does so while also offering an imma- so much emphasis on the invariance of the relation nent critique of ‘leftist reason’ itself, through patient between politics and what Disagreement calls the analysis of its positions and their internal tensions logic of the police, is always threatened by that most and contradictions. The book does what interventions egregious and fatal of leftism’s errors, namely the must, namely draw a line of demarcation, in this case positing of an unchanging antagonism between two between communism as a real overdetermined process static poles: between the plebe and power, between that must engage with the question of power and recent the potentiality of the demos and the actual workings philosophical attempts to resuscitate the term as a pure, of the state order of the police. It is not without some invariant kernel of sheer potentiality that exceeds any irony, to which Bosteels is sensitive, that in this book’s FRQVWLWXWHGSRZHURUKLVWRULFDODFWXDOLW\²DQDFWXDOLW\ arc from speculation to the actual, we end up with an which always amounts, in this instance, to the ques- tions of state power and of socialism, as a certain modelling and management of the production of social wealth. In criticizing this tendency, however, Bosteels makes little effort to demonstrate the ways in which eruption or consolidation of leftist tendencies might, despite their status as deviations, also ‘serve as a constant source of revitalization for communism’. Bos- teels instead tends to distinguish between leftism and communism strictu sensu, which as a result remains characteristically Leninist, structured around, on the one hand, the articulation between party and state (however problematized), and, on the other, the tri- angulation between organization, classes and masses. :KDWWKLVXQH[SHFWHGPRYH²OHIWLVPQRWDVWHQGHQF\ ZLWKLQFRPPXQLVPEXWLWVRWKHU²VHHPVWRDPRXQW to is a refusal to separate communism from socialism; that is, to distinguish between a relentless movement that touches upon a certain real and the management of social production. This distinction is, nevertheless, the foundation of a properly communist politics. Jason E. Smith

48 Radical Philosophy 171 (January/February 2012) workers compete with one another to be the objects Undressed of the bosses’ desire by entering into new productive relations in and outside of work.’ Cremin draws on Colin Cremin, Capitalism’s New Clothes, Pluto Press, Erving Goffman’s critique of ‘performative practices’ London, 2011. 208 pp., £19.99 pb., 978 0 74532 814 0. to examine the role of employment agencies, career guides, and so on, to foster within the working class 6ODYRM æLçHN KDV GHVFULEHG KLV SROLWLFDO SURMHFW DW a ‘social personality that employers want’: one who least since his ‘Leninist’ turn) as one of mounting is never employable enough, always willing to work an attack on the ‘hegemonic ideological coordinates’ ORQJHUIRUOHVVWRZRUNDWKRPHWREHOLNHDEOHÁH[- of the present. Alongside this, however, has been a ible and always available. There is useful empirical GHFODUDWLRQ RI WKH ¶GHÀFLHQF\ RI WKH 0DU[LVW SURMHFW· work here on the ways in which ‘ethical’ employers and a frequently voiced rallying call to ‘the urgent task encourage community volunteering, and thereby both of the economic analysis today … to repeat Marx’s colonize free time and humanize their corporate per- ´FULWLTXH RI SROLWLFDO HFRQRP\µ ZLWKRXW VXFFXPELQJ sonality in the process. As Cremin states (and this is to the temptation of the multitude of the ideologies of his essential theme), ‘Ethical values are the retractable ´SRVWLQGXVWULDOµVRFLHWLHV·:KDWKDVEHHQDEVHQWIURP ÁHVKFRYHULQJWKHFRUSRUDWHLQFLVRUVWKDWFXWLQWRWKH æLçHN·VZULWLQJVWKRXJKLVDQ\DWWHPSWWRZRUNWKURXJK human tissue.’ In writing on ethics, Cremin’s position is such a critique. Colin Cremin, a member of the editorial that ethical activity is a ‘pseudo-activity’: ‘the cultural board of the ,QWHUQDWLRQDO-RXUQDORIæLçHN6WXGLHV² logic of left liberalism’. He posits the existence of a \HVUHDOO\²HQGRUVHVæLçHN·VDLPVDQGVHWVRXWWRPDNH ‘culture-of-crisis industry’ in the network of NGOs that use of a range of ‘materialist, linguistic and psychoana- respond to crises through charitable appeals, which lytic concepts’ to analyse ‘important socio-economic allow left-liberals to believe they are acting ethically FKDQJHVZKLFKVSLOORYHULQWRDQGUHFRQÀJXUHWKHSXEOLF by donating to good causes, without addressing the domain, alter social reproduction and cause changes in fundamental inequalities that underpin the crises: ‘the subjective conditions and ideological orientation’. structural antagonism shaping existence must of course Cremin’s book is refreshing in making its endorse- be elided.’ In this way, the crisis industry, Cremin ment of the ‘tradition of critical theory’ explicit. He tells us, functions as an Ideological State Apparatus, writes clearly, and his own political positions are at in Althusser’s terms, defusing crises and allowing the forefront throughout. For Cremin, capitalism is ¶WKH RSSUHVVRU WKH H[SORLWHU DQG WKH DIÁXHQW PLGGOH a ‘system based on the perpetual exploitation of all classes [to] become heroes providing the life jackets resources, human and natural’, and the purpose of his for distribution’. Again, useful material is provided, writing is to seek to show capital as the ‘naked Emperor’ showing ways in which the Murdoch press, Amazon and to tear off the ‘ideological gown we drape over him’. and others have used links with organizations such Capitalism’s New Clothes thus sets out to expose the as the Disasters Emergency Committee to whitewash ways by which the culture of capitalism in its neoliberal themselves by posing as ‘big helpers’. phase exploits notions of ethics, enjoyment and enter- There is, though, also a shrill ultra-leftism that runs prise to depoliticize and hence conceal the reality of WKURXJKWKLVFKDSWHUZKLFKHFKRHVæLçHNDWKLVZRUVW the ‘naked economy’. In setting out his analysis of what Cremin quotes Terry Eagleton in relation to how a naked capitalism represents, Cremin relies heavily on left-liberal ‘social democratic eschatology’ robs the earlier accounts by Simon Clarke, Giovanni Arrighi and working class of its hatred by positing the possibility of )UHGULF-DPHVRQPDSSLQJKRZÀQDQFHFDSLWDOVHHNVWR progress under capitalism. All true enough, save for the become, as the last puts it, a ‘play of monetary entities fact that, at present, capital is the only game in town. which … can live on its own internal metabolism’. As 7KHORJLFRIWKH&UHPLQæLçHNSRVLWLRQUHWKH¶FULVLV Cremin states, ‘the problem is that sooner or later the industry’ appears to be that if the crisis is allowed UHDOHFRQRP\KDVWRFDWFKXSZLWKWKHÀFWLWLRXVRQH·DQG to play out without ‘liberal intervention’ the starving the crisis of 2008 has posed a fundamental challenge masses will rise up. This is palpable nonsense, and to the ‘already threadbare claims in support of neo- obscures the possibility of a more nuanced response liberalism’. The book is written, therefore, at a time of to the crisis industry, arguing for community control real opportunity to expose the ‘myths propagated about of the organization and distribution of emergency the nature of capitalism today’. UHVSRQVH ² DV LOOXVWUDWHG LQ 1DRPL .OHLQ·V ZULWLQJV The section of the book on enterprise deals with on Haiti or Rebecca Solnick’s on the grassroots New the ways in which ‘as power shifts in favour of capital, Orleans response to Hurricane Katrina. Aside from

Radical Philosophy 171 (January/February 2012) 49 WKHGHÀFLHQFLHVRIWKHSROLWLFDOSURSRVDOVRQRIIHULQ Deleuze and Guattari’s ludic politics were conjured in Cremin’s writings on ‘naked ethics’, there remains, explicit opposition to Lacan’s pessimism, and, while more generally, a facile element to the critique advanced it may well be possible to use elements of both in of the ‘ethical stance’ of the Davos brigade. Simply developing a critique of the way in which capitalism put, as much as I’d like to see Bill Gates taxed until diverts and perverts desire, one cannot do so without the pips squeak, and as much as I’d love to live long seeking to resolve or at least acknowledge the real enough to see him and his kind dispossessed, in the differences between them. interim I’d sooner he spent his fortune on AIDS relief There is much about Cremin’s book that is of than cocaine. It is true, as Cremin states, that ‘capital real value, and his commitment to forging a politics absorbs, transforms and then rebrands critique, turning which would aim to ‘crush the system that inhibits it into a commodity. Crisis, critique and consumption and transforms desire for its own logic’ gives his enter into a virtuous circle.’ A politics of critique, writing a bite that other similar texts lack. Ultimately, though, without any thought towards practice, can just though, he comes up against the same problem as as easily run aground through its own contradictions, æLçHNKLPVHOI7KHERRNÁLUWVZLWKDVSHFWUHLWZLOO as through absorption or adoption by its enemy. not openly acknowledge. Writing on ecology, Cremin A further problem with Capitalism’s New Clothes states: ‘we need a political subject to do the dirty work is that the sections on enjoyment and ecology appear … There is no such agent within the climate change merely to recycle the arguments advanced in, respec- tively, the sections on enterprise and ethics, with further illustrations of the same points. Again, Cremin writes well on the ways in which the ‘crisis industry’ around issues of ecology seeks to avoid the fact that ‘the struggle to preserve the environment for human habitation is foremost a struggle against capitalism’. There is good material here, too, on the ways in which the likes of BP seek to put forward ‘politically neutral’ solutions to problems of their own creation. All of this is useful enough, but it does give rise to a feeling of an argument being pushed to the point of exhaustion. The problem with the book overall is that Cremin appears at times to lose any sense of his own voice. discourse.’ The absent agent hinted at throughout He posits, as a solution to the ‘catastrophic crises’ the text is clearly intended to be the working class. endemic to capitalism, a notion of ‘iCommunism’ Elsewhere in the book Cremin commits to the ‘power as ‘the psychic image of a society organized around RI WKH SUROHWDULDW· EXW WKHQ GHÀQHV WKH SUROHWDULDW DV the pleasure principle.… In iCommunism there is the ‘men, women, students, immigrants, Jews, Christians, Deleuze of productive desire, the Adorno of negative Muslims, homosexuals, peasants or social activists’. dialectics and John Holloway’s idea of communising.’ Committing to ‘engaging in political projects that The problem, though, is that iCommunism comes aim to seriously challenge the existing order’ (as the across, in fact, as little more than a stitched-together ¶/HQLQLVW·æLçHNSURFODLPV KDVWRLQFOXGHGHWHUPLQ- notion intended to allow the author to cite as many ing whether the working class as a political subject currently hip academics as possible. Like so many H[LVWVDQGLIVR²DQGZHDUHEDFNWRWKDWQHFHVVDU\ DURXQG æLçHN &UHPLQ VLPLODUO\ HYDGHV WKH SUREOHP but never attempted need to repeat Marx’s critique of of how one can reconcile rationally and coherently a SROLWLFDOHFRQRP\DJDLQ²KRZWKHZRUNLQJFODVVPLJKW critique that relies, on the one hand, upon a ‘Lacan- QRZEHGHÀQHGDQGKRZEHVWWRLGHQWLI\LWVSROLWLFDO ian’ Marx who ‘would argue that there is no intrinsic interests within the struggle against capitalism. Simply being as such and so alienation is something that can stating, as Cremin does, that the working class is, in QHYHU EH RYHUFRPH· ² DQG WKXV D FDSLWDOLVP URRWHG effect, everybody, isn’t a solution. Clearly, not all Jews in a society which commands us not to repress our or homosexuals are working class, even if they may desires, but to ‘enjoy the desire, you must because you have political interests in common. How such interests FDQ·²DQGRQWKHRWKHUD'HOHX]HDQSROLWLFVRI¶OLQHV PLJKWEHGHÀQHGUHTXLUHVWKHFULWLTXHWKDWWKHæLçHNLDQ RIÁLJKW·IRUZKLFK¶WKHUHLVDOZD\VWKHSRVVLELOLW\WR project only ever hints at. exceed the co-ordinates of any machine of capture.’ Nick Moss

50 Radical Philosophy 171 (January/February 2012) EXHIBITION REVIEW Squeegee

Gerhard Richter: Panorama7DWH0RGHUQ/RQGRQ2FWREHU²-DQXDU\

The only comic moment in Gerhard Richter: Panorama in its morbidity, retreat and self-absorption, Richter’s comes in the form of a double portrait of the artist with practice has always been more tragically Barthesean his long-term friend and interlocutor Benjamin H.D. than Benjaminian, then his principal leftist interlocutor Buchloh, outside the doors of an art school, but titled has done little to change that. as if emerging from a church post-nuptially. There’s In many ways, however, Storr’s 2002 curation did nothing particularly funny about two men getting show Richter in a light more germane to the artist’s married of course. Rather, the comic aspect comes words, not the least because it showed just how inept in the form of the inescapability of the image itself. the painter could be, and that made the work all the A decade ago, Robert Storr’s exhibition of Gerhard more interesting. Up until then there had been the Richter at MoMA New York featured the same painting. sense that this was a practice as slick and peerlessly Storr’s 2002 show fashioned an alternative of sorts to HQJLQHHUHG DV D %DDGHU²0HLQKRI :DJHQ RXWGULYLQJ the hitherto dominant account of the then 70-year-old, the cultural cops, with no space for error or miscalcula- moving away from those critics who had sought to tion. However, as Storr seemed to recognize, such an present Richter’s choices of media as merely contingent account overlooked that which was becoming increas- in a broader neo-avant-gardist project driven by the ingly celebrated and sought after in Richter’s œuvre, photograph as found object or readymade. This take namely his celebrations of colour and painterly abstrac- on Richter is epitomized, if not indeed initiated, by tion, and the apparent embrace of the reassurances of Buchloh. It was Buchloh’s dialogues with Richter which, genre, rather than any problematization of such. Storr’s to a large extent, put the painter in digs in which he never VKRZFHOHEUDWHGDFDUHHURIKDUGZRQSURÀFLHQF\QRW actually seemed at home: the Frankfurt School. Indeed, OHDVWE\LWVLQFOXVLRQRIPLVÀUHVVXFKDVVDQGDGGHGWR WKHUHLVVRPHWKLQJRIWKH3ROORFN²*UHHQEHUJUHODWLRQ- oils to make a bad joke of a beach scene, lazy slurred ship here. The marriage was always dysfunctional, yet it photo pieces that weren’t a patch on what Malcolm GLGSURGXFHRIIVSULQJ²PRVWQRWDEO\LQWKHSXEOLFDWLRQ Morley had done at the same time, and heavy-handed of Richter’s Atlas with its partial correspondences with opportunist stabs such as a maudlin pair of painted Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas project. glass monochromes shaped something similar to how As the well-known 1988 conversation between them the World Trade Center looked, up until that Tuesday shows, however, it was, paradoxically, Buchloh priv- morning a few months earlier. There, Richter was, ileging the neo-Warburgian aspect of Richter’s project indeed, presented as a painter’s painter, off-days and which left no credible place for the artist’s other all. Nevertheless, this last point is not easily dismissed FRQFHUQVUHÁHFWHGPRVWQRWDEO\LQWKHLQFUHDVLQJO\ for the resonance it probably carries with a lot of artists large number of abstracts emerging during the course working today. In a massively expanded commercial of that decade. This leads to accusations of cynicism, and institutional art world with its attendant pressures, in turn pushing an increasingly contrary and obstinate Richter comes to represent certain ontological claims painter to assert belief in content. Whereas Buchloh amidst the internal and external pressures to be a nihilistically instrumentalizes the paintings, aiming certain kind of artist: namely the putative necessity at the bankruptcy of the forms, Richter retreats into of studio time and studio practice, and the desire WKHPIRFXVLQJLQVWHDGRQGRXEWVRIKLVRZQHIÀFDF\ to apply individually honed craft skill in a manner in the face of painting’s putative transcendent capacity. seemingly relevant to the contemporary world. Among It was Buchloh, also, who sought to describe Richter practitioners, as with painters such as Bacon or Freud, as ‘the heir to an historically divided and fragmented this is where the appeal of Richter’s conservatism lies. situation, in which there was no pictorial strategy This is, effectively, where Gerhard Richter: Pano- that had any real validity … meditating on what rama show takes its cue. Over the course of fourteen was once possible’ at the very same time as Richter rooms of Tate Modern, and spilling out onto the con- himself sought to recoup Hans Sedlmayr. And this course, the show chronologically charts Richter’s work conjuring of ghosts is what clearly unites them, for if, through the early 1960s to the present as a series of

Radical Philosophy 171 (January/February 2012) 51 unmitigated triumphs. In Tate’s website clip, its direc- where it takes on that larger political tragedy, drawing tor, Nicholas Serota, states: ‘For Baudelaire, Manet LWEDFNWRWKHGHÁDWLRQDU\DQGXQOLNHO\ZKLOVWDYRLGLQJ was the painter of modern life, and for me Richter WKHVLQJOHGHÀQLWLYHLPDJHWKURXJKDZNZDUGUHSHWLWLRQ was always the painter of modern life.’ Misattribution and non-progressive sequence. aside (it was Constantin Guys, and not Manet, of whom This essayistic aspect is celebrated in this retrospec- Baudelaire made the claim), therein lies the rub, since tive, but for the most part Richter’s fan-brushing and in the course of this show, the contrast between Manet squeegee-ing often reads as no more than an increas- and Richter could not be more evident. ingly cloying stylistic painterly conceit, which, rather This is because, rather than comedically concretiz- like Turner’s sulphurous smogs, detaches from its ing the false universals of genre and art history in historical referent. As evident in the National Portrait the contingent particularities of medium, moment and Gallery exhibition in 2009, many rely upon a feather- FRQWH[W²DVZLWKVD\0DQHW·VOlympia or, curiously LQJEDFNWULFNZKLFKPLJKW MXVW EHUHDGDVVLJQLÀHUV of the televisual or some strangely dot-free web-fed offset, so long as everyone present agrees. More often, now, it just looks teary-eyed. On those frequent occa- sions when a painting is more blurred or its blacks more dropped out than its photographic origin, there is an obstinate echo of Turner’s claim that ‘such things Gerhard Richter,Gerhard are, though you mayn’t believe it’. Looking more the result of inebriation than mediation, the vertical slurs of Demo (1997), a picture of a PKK demonstration in Cage

(1), 2006, 290 x 290 cm (CR: 897-1) Cologne, bear this out, as surely as the artist’s insist- ence that he really did experience ‘feelings to do with contemplation, remembering, silence and death’ when knocking out the long sequence of candles ’n’ skulls in the 1980s. 7KLV LV QRW WKH ÀUVW VKRZ WR FRQWULYH 5LFKWHU WKH enigma (as in Self Portrait, 1996) as Richter the innovator by suggesting he ‘raises questions’. There enough, as an earlier incarnation of Jeff Wall managed is an increasingly airless quality to the progression of to do with his Blackpool Donkey take on Stubbs’s rooms, ending, appropriately enough, in an enclosure Whistlejacket²WLPHDQGDJDLQ5LFKWHU·VRLOVDVVXPH of massive abstracts entitled Cage, a homage to John an elevatory function. So, too, Richter’s Atlas, of Cage. Perhaps by association this aims also to place course: in marked contrast to Warburg’s innovatory Richter in a tradition. Nevertheless, the case that this collection of popular mediations of works of high is an artist who is still ‘Questioning Painting’ or ‘the culture, Richter’s latter-day project has gained its Limits of Vision’ seems forced and unlikely. In the reputation on the exact inversion, an ultimately tragic case of the former, there are black-and-white snaps of vision in which the snapshot, with all its attendant the surface of a painting, in Room 11, which, despite cultural instabilities, transmutes into a putatively uni- the blurb, actually don’t look like ‘landscapes’ because versal statement in oils about the human condition. WKHSODQHRIIRFXVDQGGHSWKRIÀHOGDUHZURQJLQWKH In Richter, the family album is raided to ensure we latter, paintings derived from micrography and two of all have an Uncle Rudi, snapped in his Nazi uniform, the artist’s occasional forays into vitreous sculpture and we all have blond daughters, like Betty, turning (Room 12) merely point to an occasional experiment, preferentially towards our immortal abstractions rather rather than a thought-out project of enquiry. This than meeting our ageing gaze. Like insects trapped latter point is a shame: the glass and metal forms in amber, this mostly becomes a sequence of dead almost seem like apparatuses of some sort, and pushed exquisites: mournful archetypes distilled from domes- further might have become interestingly madcap ocular tic life and tourist snaps, rather than the agencies and FRQWULYDQFHV$VLWVWDQGVLWLVLQFUHDVLQJO\GLIÀFXOWWR ruptures of photography per se. It is his masterpiece, see beyond the stultifying sense that this is a latter-day October 18, 1977, one of the true great works of the Vermeer’s take on Warhol, without even the possibili- last century, which remains the exception to this rule, ties or iconoclasms of the inverse. precisely because its song turns inwards at the point John Timberlake

52 Radical Philosophy 171 (January/February 2012)