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Fetishism and Social Domination in Marx, Lukács, Adorno and Lefebvre

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Fetishism and Social Domination in Marx, Lukács, Adorno and Lefebvre 1 Fetishism and Social Domination in Marx, Lukács, Adorno and Lefebvre Chris O’Kane Doctor of Philosophy Centre for Social and Political Thought UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX March 2013 2 Declaration I, Chris O’Kane, hereby declare that this thesis has not been, and will not be, submitted in whole or in part to another University for the award of any other degree. Signature ............................................................ Date ....................... 3 UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Fetishism and Social Domination in Marx, Lukács, Adorno and Lefebvre Summary This thesis presents a comparative account of the theory of fetishism and its role in the social constitution and constituent properties of Marx’s, Lukács’, Adorno’s and Lefebvre’s theories of social domination. It aims to bring this unduly neglected aspect of fetishism to the fore and to stress its relevance for contemporary critical theory. The thesis begins with an introductory chapter that highlights the lack of a satisfactory theory of fetishism and social domination in contemporary critical theory. It also demonstrates how this notion of fetishism has been neglected in contemporary critical theory and in studies of Marxian theory. This frames the ensuing comparative, historical and theoretical study in the substantive chapters of my thesis, which differentiates, reconstructs and critically evaluates how Marx, Lukács, Adorno and Lefebvre utilize the theory of fetishism to articulate their theories of the composition and characteristics of social domination. Chapter 1 examines Marx’s theory of fetish-characteristic forms of value as a theory of domination socially embedded in his account of the Trinity Formula. It also evaluates the theoretical and sociological shortcomings of Capital. Chapter 2 focuses on how Lukács’ double-faceted account of fetishism as reification articulates his Hegelian, Marxian, Simmelian and Weberian account of dominating social mystification. Chapter 3 turns to Adorno’s theory of the fetish form of the exchange abstraction and unpacks how it serves as a basis for his dialectical critical social theory of domination. Chapter 4 provides an account of how Lefebvre’s theory of fetishism as concrete abstraction serves as the basis for a number of theories that attempt to socially embody an account of domination that is not overly deterministic. The critical evaluations in chapters 2-4 interrogate each thinker’s conception of fetishism and its role in their accounts of the genesis and pervasiveness of social domination. The conclusion of the thesis consists of three parts. In the first part, I bring together and compare my analysis of Marx, Lukács, Adorno and Lefebvre. In part two, I consider whether their respective theories provide a coherent and cohesive critical social theory of fetishism and of the mode of constitution and the constituents of social domination. In part three, I move toward a contemporary critical theory of fetishism and social domination by synthesising elements of Lukács’, Adorno’s and Lefebvre’s theories with a model of social constitution, reproduction and domination modelled on Marx’s account of the Trinity Formula. 4 CONTENTS Acknowledgements 8 Introduction 10 1. Literature review 15 1.1 Conceptual Typologies of Fetishism 16 1.2 Fetishism as False Consciousness 18 1.3 Althusserian Conceptions of Fetishism 19 1.4 Fetishism as Reification 20 1.5 Fetishism as Alienation 22 1.6 Fetishism as Value 2. Conceptual Histories 24 2.1 Conceptual Continuity 24 2.2 Conceptual Discontinuity 30 3. Conclusion 33 1. Marx, the Fetish-characteristic Forms of Value and Abstract Social Domination 37 1. The Young Marx and Social Domination 39 1.1 The Conceptual Structure of Marx’s Theory of Domination 40 1.2 Social Domination in the Theory of Alienation 41 2. The Critique of Political Economy 45 2.1 The Object of Capital 45 2.2 The method of Capital 46 2.3 Marx’s Theory of Value 47 3. Capital 49 3.1 The Form-Analysis 50 3.2 The General Formula of Capital, Surplus Value and the Class Relation 54 5 4. Fetishism 55 4.1 The Fetish Character of Commodities 56 4.2 The Fetish-Characteristic Form of Money 64 4.3 The Fetish-Characteristic Properties of Capital 67 4.4 The Trinity Formula 70 5. Conclusion 77 5.1 Summary 77 5.2 Evaluation 80 2. Lukács, Fetishism as Reification and his Social Theory of Dominating Mystification 83 1. Literature on Lukács’ accounts of Fetishism as Reification 83 1.2 Continuity 84 1.3 Discontinuity 85 2. Historical Context 88 2.1 The Marxism of the 2nd International 88 2.2. The early Lukács’ Theory of Domination 89 3. Lukács’ Hegelian Marxism 91 3.1 Lukács’ Interpretation of Fetishism 92 A) Methodological Fetishism 93 B) Everyday Fetishism 94 4. Fetishism as Reification 98 4.1 Practical Reification 102 4.2 Theoretical Reification 107 4.3 Reification as Dominating Mystification 109 5. The Constitution of Reified Totality 112 6. Conclusion 116 6.1 Summary 116 6.2 Evaluation 117 3. Adorno, the Fetish-Form of the Exchange Abstraction and the Critical Theory of Social Domination 123 6 1. Literature Review 124 1.1 Adorno’s Theory of Social Domination as Equivalent to Lukács’ Theory of Reification 124 1.2 Adorno’s Theory of Social Domination as His Theory of Reification 125 1.3 Value-Form Theory and Adorno 126 2. Adorno’s Marxism 127 2.1 Adorno’s Early Work: Natural History, Lukács, Benjamin and the Commodity Form 128 2.2 Adorno’s Later Work: Adorno, Marx, Hegel and the Fetish-Form of the Exchange Abstraction. The Hegel-Marx Analogy 132 2.3 The Fetish-Form of the Exchange Abstraction 134 3. Adorno’s Dialectical Social Theory of Domination 141 3.1 Objective Supra-Individual Domination 143 3.2 Subjective Domination 146 4. Conclusion 153 4.1 Summary 153 4.2 Critical Social Theory 153 4.3 Evaluation 155 4. Lefebvre, Fetishism as Concrete Abstraction and Socially Embodied Domination 161 1. Literature Review 161 1.1 Domination as Alienation 162 1.2 Specific Studies of Lefebvre 163 2. Lefebvre’s non-systematic Marxism 165 2.1 Fetishism as Concrete Abstraction 167 3. The Critique of Everyday Life 173 3.1 Notes for a Critique of Everyday Life 173 3.2 The Critique of Everyday Life 174 4. The Critique of Everyday Life in the 1960s 178 4.1 Critique of Everyday Life: Volume II 178 4.2 Everyday Life in the Modern World 181 7 5. Fetishism and Social Domination in Cities and Space 184 5.1 The Urban Form 184 5.2 Space 187 6. Conclusion 193 6.1 Summary 193 6.2 Evaluation 194 Conclusion 198 1. Comparing Fetishism and Social Domination in Marx, Lukács, Adorno and Lefebvre 201 2. Evaluating Fetishism and Social Domination in Marx, Lukács, Adorno and Lefebvre 206 3. Towards a Contemporary Critical Theory of Fetishism and Social Domination 209 Bibliography 217 8 Acknowledgements I had the idea for the topic of this thesis in 2007 in the middle of an unsatistfying year of studying Political Science at a different academic institution. What developed over the course of four years of research would not have been possible without the myriad influences I was exposed to in the unique research environment of the Centre for Social and Political Thought at the University of Sussex. Thanks to the support staff, faculty, students and adminstrators who continue to fund, support and perpetuate the Centre is these difficult times. I was also fortunate to befriend a number of colleagues over the last four years who include Tom Bunyard, Phil Homburg, Rob Lucas, Zoe Sutherland, Nick Gray, Sam Dolbear, Hannah Proctor, John Clegg, Nils Turnbull, Sami Khatib, Sebastian Truskolaski, Lawrence Sussex, Ben Seymour, Jacob Blumenfeld, Bender, Elena Louisa Lange, Stefano Ludovisi, Chris Allsobrook, Simon Mussell, Tim Carter, HM, the Adornbros, the Benjamen, Principia Dialectica, other members of various reading groups and commentators at conferences and blogs who have been instrumental in the process of researching and writing this thesis. Their support and criticism on drafts and conference papers have also proven invaluable. Further thanks are due to Verena Erlenbusch for translating Backhaus’ notes on Adorno and Sami Khatib and Alex Locascio for help on translation issues. I have also been lucky to have engaged or solicited advice from two of the leading figures in Marxist scholarship. Chris Arthur’s generous participation in our value-form theory reading group helped me grapple with many of the obtuse ideas that have become important to the thesis. Michael Heinrich, through the intermediary work of Alex Locascio, was kind enough to answer textual questions about untranslated MEGA manuscripts and let me read unpublished translations of his work. In addition, my two supervisors, Darrow Schecter and Gordon Finlayson, deserve special thanks for their unyielding support and constructive criticism. Along with my two copy-editors, Tom Bunyard and Georgios Daremas, I would also like to thank them for their patience with my grammatical and stylistic blunders. Finally, I have immeasurable gratitude for my friends from the BBB, Olympia and Brighton especially Aaron Tuller, Andrew Daily, Tobi Vail, PDC, Jon Slade, 9 Stephanie Goodman, Steve Dore, Alan Hay, and Laura Dawkins. Along with my family they have given me immeasurable support, and they have shared with me a type of kindness, patience and good times the world could do with more. Whilst what follows could not have come to fruition without the above, it goes without saying the mistakes that follow, grammatical, theoretical or otherwise, are all my own as are the ideas that will hopefully develop out of them. 10 Introduction The Marxian theory of fetishism is certainly capable of describing the current economic and social crisis: volatile world markets and the sovereign debt crises have acted like autonomous entities, and their social repercussions possess the character of inverted forms of domination in which these collectively constructed social entities have turned back on the individuals who have constituted them.
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