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Rethinking the Commons in the Communist Hypothesis

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Rethinking the Commons in the Communist Hypothesis ARTICLE Received 10 Apr 2017 | Accepted 19 Jun 2017 | Published 1 Aug 2017 DOI: 10.1057/palcomms.2017.73 OPEN The unemployable and the generic: rethinking the commons in the communist hypothesis Gabriel Tupinambá1 ABSTRACT One of the main points of contention in the current debates surrounding Marxism has been the problem of finding a concrete substrate, which would orient the recuperation of the communist political strategy. Are there impasses in our contemporary society which justify the use of such a polemical notion as communism? Most authors currently involved with this debate agree that it is the problem of the “commons" under capitalism, which calls for a new theory and practice of communism. Where they disagree is on what the “commons” are and on how they exist within capitalism itself. The present contribution seeks to intervene on this debate and spell out the categorial recomposition of some fundamental aspects of Marxist critique of political economy implicitly at stake in Slavoj Žižek’s theorization of the “antagonisms of the common”. Taking up the insight of Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt concerning the new centrality of the enclosure of the commons in contemporary capitalism, Žižek has developed an alternative—more sober—view of the structural subsumption of these common spaces to the dynamics of Capital, where the very communal dimension of these domains only appear as common after they have been privatized. To extract the consequences of this assertion, we will first reconstruct the Marxist theory of enclosures in a comparative reading of the first volume of Capital and Karl Polanyi’s classic The Great Transformation. This will lead us to a broader discussion of the contemporary transformations in capitalism, with a focus on the crisis of value as primarily sustained by absolute surplus-value extraction. With an understanding of the idea of the commons and a historical background of our current predicament, we will be in position to follow Antonio Negri’s reading of how the enclosure of the commons leads to a new communist strategy and also to criticize it, using Slavoj Zizek’s alternative understanding of our contemporary social antagonisms. Following through Zizek's reading of the logic of enclosures, we come to the conclusion that, first, unemployment has the structure of an enclosure, one which is responsible for the very form of the work commodity—as it was already suggested by Fredric Jameson and others—and, second, that, from a certain philosophical perspective shared by thinkers such as Zizek and Badiou, this realization can lead us to an innovative recuperation of the Marxist theory of “generic being”, proposed by Marx in his Manuscripts of 1844. 1 History Department, Pontifícia Univerdidade Católica, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Correspondence: (e-mail: [email protected]) PALGRAVE COMMUNICATIONS | 3:17073 | DOI: 10.1057/palcomms.2017.73 | www.palgrave-journals.com/palcomms 1 ARTICLE PALGRAVE COMMUNICATIONS | DOI: 10.1057/palcomms.2017.73 The ideas of communism lain Badiou introduced a great deal of clarity into the What all these experiments have in common, as the authors of Adebate over how to critically assess the history of radical the Communist Manifesto remind us, is that, due to "the emancipatory politics in the XXth century by distinguish- undeveloped state of the proletariat, as well as to the absence of ing three different dimensions of egalitarian political projects the economic conditions for its emancipation” (Marx and Engels, (Badiou, 2010): the communist hypothesis—a general and 1848: 32) at the time, the concrete determinations of their concept unlocalized commitment to the principle of equality—the idea of equality came from either the historical past or from religion of communism—different and situated formulations of this and morality. Therefore, these "times of universal excitement, principle, articulated under concrete historical constraints—and when feudal society was being overthrown" gave rise to an idea of the communist experiments—political sequences which put these communism based on ethical communal values, rather than on different "incarnations" of the communist idea to the test, the "material conditions" increasingly determined by the capitalist producing lasting examples and challenges for those who might mode of production itself (1848: 29). seek to reformulate the hypothesis under new historical The analysis of utopian socialism presented in the Communist conditions later on. Manifesto is itself locatable within our schema—after all, there are We could schematize these complementary points of view as two possible ways one can respond to the failure of a communist depicted in Fig. 1. experiment: taking it either as further proof that there can be no The affirmative hypothesis of communism is thus a statement such thing as an egalitarian society, or as further conditions that is totally devoid of concrete content, a purely philosophical which must be critically taken into account by any attempts to defense of the possibility of thinking justice. The hypothesis as turn the communist hypothesis into a new determined idea. such says nothing of the historical existence of real equality, nor Engels would later term their own reformulation of the of a concept of equality with which we could evaluate particular communist hypothesis the idea of "scientific socialism” (Engels, historical sequences. Only an idea can turn this wager into a 2001), and we can see that this new idea answers both to the formulation which, being woven out of concrete reality, affirmative declaration that, against all odds, real equality is in articulated within the limits of a given historical moment, would fact possible under a given set of historical conditions—namely, allow us to even ask if social equality, under such and such the fully developed capitalist world—and to the negative conditions, has taken place or not (Badiou, 2010: 258). assessment of previous communist experiments, which, from an For example: what Marx and Engels called “critical-utopian analysis based on a "scientific" and "objective" critique of political socialism”,1 the socialism championed by Saint-Simon, Robert economy, failed for believing that both the agents and the Owens or Charles Fourier, was precisely such an idea. It was by resources for socialism would have an origin or place outside of considering the brute social reality of early capitalism that these the capitalist system. political thinkers defended that another sort of communal life was As the critical assessment of how many different forms the idea possible, unlike both the communities organized under decaying of communism took during the last century is far from a settled feudal rule and the emerging "civilized" world of the bourgeois debate (Žižek and Douzinas, 2010; Žižek and Badiou, 2013; cities. Serving themselves of the philosophical worldview of the Bosteels, 2014; Žižek and Taek-Gwang Lee, 2016), we leave this times, which recognized in man a promethean force capable of exercise open as a proof of this model’susefulness,onlynotingthat conjuring up a different future for itself, these different thinkers the idea, experiments and failures of "scientific socialism" could be envisioned the creation of a space subtracted from the blind easily inscribed in the critical cycle we have proposed here. Instead, capitalist drive—an u-topia, in a very tangible sense—where the let us shift our attention to the immediate present, as Badiou’s hypothesis of political equality was articulated as the collective critical model also allows us to locate our current predicament strive to organize, both socially and economically, a self- within the history of the communist hypothesis. sustaining community. Fourier’s phalansteries (Fourier, 2007), for instance, spread across Europe and the Americas, sought to put this formulation to the test, creating several isolated The idea of the commons communities, with varying degrees of duration and social In recent years, the political problem of the "commons" has stability. offered itself as a historical determination capable of igniting a Figure 1 | Badiou’s schematization. This is Alain Badiou’s schematization of the distinction between a hypothesis, an idea, an experiment and the critical assessment of the experiment, or, the negative hypothesis that the experiment can lead to a new idea for an hypothesis. 2 PALGRAVE COMMUNICATIONS | 3:17073 | DOI: 10.1057/palcomms.2017.73 | www.palgrave-journals.com/palcomms PALGRAVE COMMUNICATIONS | DOI: 10.1057/palcomms.2017.73 ARTICLE new formulation of the communist idea. There have been, in fact, capitalist markets and state regulation (2001: 231–244). But even two interrelated movements leading to this: on the one hand, a if his own immediate objective was to intervene in this particular philosophical tendency has emerged, specially among continental debate, the theory of "fictitious commodities" has broader thinkers, seeking to elaborate a new theory of equality, one in consequences, which directly relate to the struggle over a new which thinking what is common among certain elements does not determination of the communist idea today. require these elements to be equivalent or identical in any sense,2 As philosopher Slavoj Žižek writes: while, on the other hand, new critical analyses of our economic and political predicament have highlighted the continuing It is not enough simply to remain faithful to the communist importance of so-called "primitive accumulation" in the era of Idea; one has
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