Reification, Class and 'New Social Movements'

Paul Browne

All significant social movements of the last thirty years structural features of social reality. This being done, the latter have started outside the organised class interests and must then be reconstructed in all of its complexity and his institutions. The peace movement, the ecology move toricity. As Lukacs has argued in his Ontology of Social ment, the women's movement, solidarity with the third Being, the totality of society is a historically constituted and world, human rights agencies, campaigns against pov developing complex of complexes. As such it is one yet many, erty and homelessness, campaigns against cultural continuous yet discontinuous, homogeneous yet heterogene- poverty and distortion: all have this character, that they ous. sprang from needs and perceptions which the interest In the first part of this paper I will argue that reification based organisations had no room or time for, or which is the structuring principle of the capitalist mode of produc they had simply failed to notice. This is the reality tion which provides the key to the conceptualization of the which is often misinterpreted as 'getting beyond class relation between working-class politics and 'new social politics'. The local judgement on the narrowness of the movements'. The second part of the article will concretize major interest groups is just. But there is not one of this by showing that the all-pervasive character of reification these issues which, followed through, fails to lead us in capitalist society (so well analyzed in Lukacs's History and back into the central systems of the industrial-capital Class Consciousness) is still only a tendency (albeit a domi ist mode of production and among others into its sys nant one), and when taken in isolation, an abstract universal. tem of classes. These movements and the needs and Capitalism in its complex totality, as a concrete universal, has feelings which nourish them are now our major posi to be understood as the contradictory historical unity of this tive resources, but their whole problem is how they tendency and all of its counter-tendencies. This ongoing proc relate or can relate to the apparently more important ess of totalization and retotalization of society can be under institutions which derive from the isolation of employ stood in abstract terms as the capital-labour relation analyzed ment and wage-labour. in Marx's Capital. But in concrete terms it must be grasped as the process of formation of individual, class, gender and race Raymond Williams, Towards 2000 through conflictual social activity. In concluding I will thus claim that the capital-labour relation is primordial from the point of view of the theorization of capitalist society, but that In recent years a debate of considerable proportions has arisen this does not automatically translate politically into the cen around the relationship in contemporary capitalist societies trality of the labour movement in the struggle for human 'between class politics and social movements (especially emancipation in any given conjuncture. A genuine, emancipa movements addressing the issues of disarmament, women's tory revolutionary strategy must find ways to synthesize the oppression, racism, ecological devastation and human struggles against all forms of exploitation and oppression, rights). 1 A central issue in this controversy has been whether without reductively and dogmatically attributing vanguard the Marxist concepts of class and class struggle can and must status to one form of struggle among others. be at the heart of any theoretically satisfactory explanation of these 'new social movements'. In the eyes of many, the only tenable, non-reductionist approach involves decentering the Reification and Real Abstractions concept of class, combining it with other explanatory strate The capitalist division of labour produces an ever greater gies, or even revising it completely. integration and systematization of all human activities within The following reflections are intended as a modest intervention in this debate. I believe that if the issue is re a social totality which is the world market. At the same time, garded dialectically, it is possible to hold both to the central the specifically capitalist nature of the process consists in its character of class struggle in the conceptualization of society, mediation by the private appropriation of the means of pro and to the specific character of social movements, without duction and products of labour. Although all productive ac falling into either eclecticism or reductionism. tivities become more and more interdependent as part of a The aim of social analysis must be to conceptualize fully integrated system, nevertheless the different moments or social formations as 'a rich totality of many determinations stages within this process are only linked by commodity andrelations' .2 This is above all a task of mediation. Begin exchange, by the purchase or sale of what has been produced. ning with the 'incoherent abstractions' of everyday experi These many different moments of production taken as a whole ence, analysis must labour to discover the most fundamental constitute total social labour. But this social character does

18 Radical Philosophy 55, Summer 1990

.,L not manifest itself fully in the planning or execution of pro between the social character of labour and the private appro duction. It does so fully only in the process which links the priation of its products, this real abstraction asserts itself in different sites of production to each other, namely the process the face of individuals as an alien power, as a force of nature, of commodity exchange. Individual labour and its products independent of their wills, namely as the laws of the only acquire their social appearance in the commodity form. marketplace. This reification, or fetishistic character of com Therefore, the social relations which link together the many modities as Marx calls it, is paralleled by the fetishistic different labour processes in the world economy do not ap character of the state, law and religion: in each case social pear immediately to be social relations between the producers relations between people assume the form of real abstrac themselves. Rather they appear as relations of equivalence tions, of forces existing independently of human will, and between these producers' products. dominating human existence like forces of nature. According to Marx, the measure of how many of one In History and Class Consciousness, Lukacs combined type of commodity can be exchanged for how many of an Marx's theory of commodity fetishism with Weber's con other is value. The latter is predicated on the quantity of cepts of rationalization and bureaucratization in order to ana socially necessary labour time that is required to produce each lyze how intellectual and manual labour processes, as well as commodity. The exchange of commodities involves the ex social relations and structures of personality, are transformed change of two aggregates of human labour. To be commensu under capitalism into rationalized, autonomous, self-regulat rable, these aggregates must be homogeneous and abstracted ing processes which confront individuals as objective things from their specific qualities as different kinds of concrete to which they must submit. It is thus not just products of labour. labour which appear in such a way as to conceal the social If different types of labour are only joined with other relations between their producers. Human activity as such, types - and thus only become social- by means of commodity and the institutional structures within which it takes place exchange, then, in Marx' swords, 'the mutual relations of the (objectifications of collective practice) become reified. Reifi producers, within which the social character of their labour cation consists in situations in which human activity and its affirms itself, take the form of a social relation between the products confront and dominate human beings, taking on the products. '3 The overall division of labour in the world market, appearance of objective, independent entities and processes and the level of development of productive forces which governed by seemingly natural laws. determines the amount of labour time necessary to produce Following Marx and Weber, and laying the basis for each commodity, only appear to each individual human being Braverman, Cooley, Hales, Marglin, Thompson, and others,S in the form of relationships between individual commodities: Lukacs shows how capital redesigns the production process 'the relation of the producers to the sum total of their own according to the logic of profit. The precapitalist, concrete, labour is presented to them as a social relation, existing not organic connection of the individual artisans to their labour, between themselves, but between the products of their la craft and products, is abolished and replaced by a new, ab bour.'4 stract, mechanical relation of wage-labourers to their labour The exchange value of commodities, determined by power and the means of production. The capitalist rationaliza the amount of socially necessary labour time embodied in tion of production is meant to subtract it as much as possible them, is in no way conditioned by the physical properties of from the workers' cognitive and practical grasp.6 the objects exchanged. In being exchanged, commodities in Processes of rationalization, systematization and quan fact display a dual objectivity: on the one hand they are tification extend to all spheres of society. Impersonal, reified specific types of things with their respective, diverse, mate- systems are created which separate individuals from their

rial properties, which make them useful for diverse purposes own activity, knowledge, skills and products, and subordinate and to different people. On the other hand commodities all them to a rationality independent of their will. By means of a appear to have homogeneous, uniform, social character, inso detailed division of labour, all of society is decomposed and far as they are exchange values. The labour of separate private redesigned as a series of lawlike, rule-governed processes producers under capitalism has a double character, (a) as which can be predicted, planned-for and applied, regardless specific concrete labours (key-punch operator, design engi of the specific object to be processed or of the peculiar neer, construction worker) forming constitutive parts of total characteristics of the individual subjects. Rationalization and social labour; and (b) as abstract labour, i.e. as the common uniformization increasingly make all individuals interchange essence of all the products which enables them to be ex able and transform them into mere objects, functionaries changed for each other. reproducing and perpetuating the rule of capital, of alienated Abstract labour is, however, no mere mental construct, human powers and products, over humanity. This applies as but the social character of human labour. As such, it is, in much to capitalists and intellectual workers as to manual Marx's words, a real abstraction. Thanks to the contradiction labourers.

Radical Philosophy 55, Summer 1990 19 Even individuals' psychological aptitudes and propen society) which brings about dialectical supersession, consti sities are separated out from their personalities, made autono tuting a new, higher synthesis. Reified theory and practice are mous from them, and objectified as integral parts of special most typically characterized then by the opposition between ized, rationalized systems, where they can be quantified and the formal rationalism of partial spheres of theoretical/practi manipulated, 'like the various objects of the external world': cal activity, and an irrationalist mysticism of the content and 'The specialized "virtuoso", the vendor of his objectified and of the whole, standing in for the unattained grasp of the reified faculties does not just become the [passive] observer concrete universal (examples of this can be found in the state, of society; he also lapses into a contemplative attitude vis-a law, the market, medicine, nuclear-war planning, or Nazi vis the workings of his own objectified and reified faculties. '7 concentration campsJO). To the extent that individual traits surface at all in objective processes (such as production), it is as sources of error inter From Real Abstraction to Concrete Class fering with the alien rationality of the system's laws of opera Formation tion. In this way, the individual's subjectivity is fragmented. All individuals exist on the one hand as agglomerates of Reification is a dominant structuring principle of the capital characteristics imprinted by different objective systems. On ist mode of production. In Althusserian terms, one could call the other hand they also possess an inner self, in relation to it la problematique des probtematiques. But the description which these objective concrete aspects of personality appear of reification just provided is itself an abstract universal. It is contingent. necessary to specify its concrete content and manifestations. Social processes come to appear as a 'second nature'; The state, law, the market - these are really existing abstrac and indeed, capital abstracts, rationalizes and quantifies phe tions. But it is necessary to avoid discussing them in an nomena in just the same way as the natural sciences do: 'all abstract way. Concrete analysis here means showing how human relations (viewed as the objects of social activity) these real abstractions, which are the common structuring assume increasingly the objective forms of the abstract ele principles of all capitalist societies, manifest themselves ments of the conceptual systems of natural science.' As a concretely, what their specific aspects are in a given time and corollary, 'the subject ... likewise assumes increasingly the place. 11 attitude of the pure observer of these - artificially abstract - Marx shows that the content of abstract relations of processes. '8 Specified as free individuals, yet simultaneously equality between individual citizens in the liberal-democratic caught up in a web of events which controls their every state is class struggle, and that abstract market relations be effective action, subjects first become conscious of the great tween capital and labour conceal class exploitation. In con complex of social powers and relations as something foreign crete terms, reification is generated and reproduced only in to them, and the course of their own liv.~s comes to appear as the complex process of social struggles within bourgeois a destiny which they must suffer. society. Marx' s presentation of class relations in Volume I of The structure of bourgeois society shows all the symp Capital is abstract. The concrete process of class formation is toms of Hegel's 'cunning of reason': a multitude of individu one of dynamic and contradictory forms of struggle, in which als, all acting independently in pursuit of their own individual the specific character of classes is constantly. evolving. For goals, realize an outcome which none of them had intended, foreseen or comprehended, but which embodies a more fun damental rationality. And yet, as Lukacs points out, the latter is purely formal. The sum of separate rationalized complexes which make up bourgeois society may appear to lay the basis for a totalizing theoretical system of general laws. However, once society is broken up into a series of partial, autonomous systems, each governed by a logic of its owon, the relation ship of these complexes to each other is quite contingent. For example, the realization of exchange value on the market does not follow automatically from the production of com modities. The rationality of each limited sphere thus stands in glaring contrast to the irrationality of the whole system: 'It is evident that the whole structure of capitalist production rests on the interaction between a necessity subject to strict laws in all isolated phenomena and the relative irrationality of the whole process. '9 In normal circumstances, the contingency in relation to each other of different economic spheres does not reveal itself plainly, as the separate complexes appear to function without difficulty. In a time of economic crisis, this contingency bursts into view as an incomprehensible irration ality. Reification involves the splitting apart of abstract and concrete, of form and content, of universal and particular, of subject and object, etc. Dominated by reification, social life under capitalism is riven by antinomies (the contradictions of capitalism); it is impossible, while remaining on the ground of such a society, to mediate these antinomies adequately in theory or in practice, and thus fully to grasp the totality. Such mediation can only be accomplished by a totalizing move ment (which can only be collective, mass activity within

20 Radical Philosophy 55, Summer 1990 The fetishism of particularity is generated within the blind alley of 'partial' struggles which do not address the totality of social relations, but only aspects of them, and which therefore fail to pursue the genuine universal interest of human emancipation, being diverted instead by the exclusive pursuit of particular sectional interests as an overriding goal. Obvious examples of this are social reformism a la Bernstein, or workers' struggles which do not go beyond immediate issues within the workplace. 14 In becoming fully integrated within state and economy, trade unions and reformist parties end up reproducing the reifying rationality of those spheres. The 'blind alley of partial struggles' gives rise to the enclo sure of theoretical and practical activity within partial spheres of abstract rationality and therefore within the antinomies of bourgeois life. However, it is important not to view this simply as the imposition of the objective power of real ab stractions on impotent individual subjects. Reification here is both the ground upon which struggle takes place, and the outcome of that struggle. As various analysts have shown,15 life within the institutions of capitalist society is always determined by complex patterns of resistance, negotiation and accommodation between contending forces. This is why 'partial' struggles do not just reproduce existing spheres of abstract rationality, but give rise to new ones within the very logic of the capitalist system (see for example the passage from Taylorism to 'softer' management strategies, the institu tionalization of collective bargaining, or the development of the welfare state).16 The fetishism of spurious totality is the site of the generation of the irrational content of the abstract-universal forms of rationality which structure bourgeois society. It consists of processes which compensate for the formal and impersonal character of real abstractions. A number of typical compensatory processes can be distinguished here: (a) religious mysticism (religion as the 'opJum of the people', as the 'heart of a heartless world'); this reason, Marx' s discussions of class struggle in France in 1848-1851 seem quite different from what he presents in (b) fulfilment in labour (aesthetic pleasure derived Capital. 12 from artisanal work, or even from the rhythm of routine In order to grasp the generation and reproduction of work); reification more concretely it is necessary to move from the (c) consumerism; analysis of the mode of production in the abstract to that of the concrete social formation, from the study of capital to that of (d) forms of leisure/style of life (and thus also status in capitalism. 13 The starting point for this passage to the con the Weberian sense); crete is the real abstractions of market, state, law, etc., in other (e) the formation of community identities (group clo words Marx's and Lukacs's analyses of reification. But the sure: religious and other forms of sectarianism, sex latter is now to be grasped as a terrain of struggle. From the ism, nationalism, racism).17 revolutionary Marxist point of view, the highest manifesta tion of this struggle is the proletariat's revolutionary war to The formation of community identities can draw upon pre overthrow capitalism in its entirety. But such a totalizing capitalist formations (structures of kinship, partriarchy, etc.), struggle against capitalism only emerges out of the mediating which become integral parts of the reproduction of capital. processes of partial struggles within which revolutionary However, I would suggest that the very logic of the reproduc consciousness is first forged. These partial struggles are forms tion of capitalism through struggle tends to generate such of resistance to reification which remain on the ground of community formations - they an the alienated realms in reification. Because they do not address reification in its which individuals form bonds of affection with each other in totality, but challenge only some of its manifestations taken in the face of the cold impersonality of the real abstractions of isolation from the whole, such struggles do not bring about state, law and market. But to the extent that these formations revolutionary change in and of themselves. They therefore do not genuinely challenge the antinomies of abstract and can be seen as constituting the contradictory overall process concrete, and of form and content, which structure capitalism, of the reproduction of capitalism in ever renewed forms. they end up reproducing them, and in new forms at that. Thus Within this process it is possible to discern two aspects, which there arise the fetishes of religion (which scientific enlighten I would call the fetishism of particularity and the fetishism of ment has not exploded, due to the abstract, ill-mediated rela spurious totality. It is important to bear in mind here that, tion of science to everyday life under capitalism 18), of the because struggle is a process involving many parties, these 'master race', of 'abstract masculinity',19 and so on. two forms of fetishism may be understood as being both The classical Marxist view was that the proletariat is developed from below and imposed from above. the privileged agent of social emancipation because it is

Radical Philosophy 55, Summer 1990 21 totally alienated and has no stake in the preservation of exist process of the reproduction of capitalism. Campaigns against ing social relations. But the capital/labour relation presented 'the Bomb' offer excellent examples of this. in Capital is an abstract universal: it must not be confused 'The Bomb' is a universality which is so formal and with concrete, empirical oppositions between capitalists and abstract that it can be filled with a wide range of heterogene workers. In Marx's day, the empirically given relation be ous particular contents, namely the fears of those who become tween capitalists and workers was self-evidently the privi cognizant of it. 'The Bomb' is the ultimate abstraction, like leged site of revolutionary consciousness-raising (because of Parmenides's Being; it represents utter cosmic annihilation. workers' immiseration, etc.). As Istvan Meszaros has pointed Such a thing cannot be imagined in any concrete way, but only out, the proletariat in the 1840s appeared to be a class in, but conceptualized abstractly. Consequently, when it is filled not 0/, civil society. But this cannot be said to be universally with content, the terror aroused by 'the Bomb' has nothing to the case. Notwith- do with any experi standing the testi ence of annihila mony .of the Eco tion itself, the way nomic and Philo a person who has sophical Manu almost drowned scripts,20 it is pos might fear water. sible to claim that Rather, fear of 'the workers (and not Bomb' takes on the just capitalists) can flavour of each par sometimes find ticular person's enjoyment in alien anxieties and ating conditions. nightmares. Like Perhaps the very God, who can be self-evidence of each person's per the conditions de sonal saviour, and scribed by Marx yet remain utterly disguised the nec remote and myste essary distinction to be made between different levels of rious as an inscrutable abstraction, 'the Bomb' is a fetish abstraction (mode of production - social formation, capital - which remains impenetrable while yet striking to the very capitalism) in trying to understand the formation of social core of each person's psyche. To be truly successful, disarma classes and revolutionary consciousness.' ment movements must mediate the form and content of 'the The study of reification (or fetishism) in capitalist Bomb' , its abstractness and concreteness, by educating people society can now be seen to be inseparable from the concrete about its political and economic reality. If they try instead to study of class formation through struggle; but at the same campaign against it simply on the basis of the terror it occa time it can be seen that the process of class formation in sions and the idea that 'together we can stop the Bomb' ,21 they concrete terms yields a complex pattern of individual and resist this fetish on the very ground of reificatfon. corporate identities. The contradictory, dualistic structure of There is a widespread habit of describing many 'new capitalist social relations identified at the beginning of this social movements' as 'single-issue campaigns', in contrast paper can still be viewed as the dominant structuring prin with the labour movement which is seen as universal in the ciple; but at the same time it can now be understood as only scope of its historic mission. But looking at the matter from produced and reproduced through the mediation of a complex the standpoint of reification and its counter-tendencies, it totality. becomes clear that all 'partial' struggles are 'single-issue campaigns', including strikes, elections and parliamentary Working-Class Politics and activity. They only cease to be such when they tend beyond 'New Social Movements' their abstracted sphere, when they are mediated to each other as a more totalizing struggle against reification in all of its If 'new social movements' did not in any way challenge aspects (i.e. those aspects pertaining to capital as such, and reification, then they would indeed have to be considered a those arising out of the very resistance to capital- e.g. racism, diversion from the genuinely radical struggle for emancipa sexism, sectarianism, etc.). tion. At best they could be regarded as a potential recruiting The common message of theorists such as Lenin, Lux ground for the class war. But movements such as those of emburg, Lukacs or Gramsci, is that the universal must medi women, oppressed racial and national groups, ecologists and ate the particular, the final goal of the abolition of capitalism advocates of disarmament, are all fights for empowerment; must mediate everyday struggles against oppression. The they are all ways of resisting the reified real abstractions ultra-left position is to repudiate 'partial' struggles, because which dominate social life, including those abstractions (such they are not immediately revolutionary, or to treat struggles as abstract masculinity, dominant forms of nationalism, etc.) other than workers' struggles centered on the point of produc which can arise from the very struggle against reification. tion simply as temporary recruiting-grounds for party mili Of course, the 'new social movements' do not immedi tants. Such an approach remains trapped in an abstract-uni ately address reification in its totality. At least at first they versal vision of the 'pure' struggle between capital and la address only relatively narrow, sectional interests. But the bour. The universal must mediate the particular, but the uni same can be said of all emancipatory struggles, including versal must itself be mediated by concrete particularity. Expe those of the working class. If one form of struggle becomes an rience can only become a politically progressive and effective end in itself, abstracted from other struggles, then it fails to force when mediated by reason; but reason must itself emerge attack reification at its root, and ends up being subsumed out of subjective experience. Theory which is not rooted in within the reified system; as such it can modify capitalism, everyday life is abstract and hence false. People can only but not abolish it. It ends up being part of the contradictory accede to a truly radical challenge to reification by working

22 Radical Philosophy 55, Summer 1990 through their concrete situations, not by escaping from them. not simply capital in the abstract, is the enemy, the opposition This does not mean that people should fight for the emancipa of working-class politics and 'new social movements' is false, tion of women, gays and lesbians, or oppressed racial and sectarian and sterile. What is needed is not some theorization ethnic groups, because such a fight will prepare them for an of the priority of one over the other, but rather a theory of the allegedly more important class struggle. Rather, such move dialectical process of formation of counter-hegemony. This ments are crucial in themselves. They attack reification, and can only mean understanding the unity-within-difference of in doing this they constitute (potentially) revolutionary the diverse emancipatory struggles and discovering those praxis. tendencies within them which can lead to a sublation of their In the final analysis, of course, if the enemy is reifica contradictions with each other. The starting-point of this tion, then it must be attacked and extirpated root and branch. process can only be the radical resistance to reification en The social relation capital is the ground upon which all tailed by popular empowerment, by a mass movement for struggles develop in bourgeois society. But in concrete terms, democratization at every level of society. Mass movements capital only exists in the complex totality of specific relations and identities which arise out of the fetishism of particularity alone provide the laboratories of social change and forms of and the fetishism of spurious totality. Struggles against reifi struggle which can bring this about. But this must not be seen cation are constantly going on spontaneously in every aspect from the perspective of an eclectic coalition, of a simple sum of the everyday life of bourgeois society. Truly radical poli of different movements. We must seek a concrete universal, tics require that reification be attacked consciously, i.e.from a something more than a juxtaposition of abstract universal and totalizing perspective, on all fronts. On this condition, and concrete particular, more than the simple sum of discrete depending on the evolution of society as a whole, in any given individual and group identities. The dialectic of everyday conjuncture struggles over women's oppression, racism, struggles and final goal of human emancipation has to be the housing, environmental issues, etc., have no less revolution guiding principle; and both the final goal and the movement to ary potential than strikes or participation in parliamentary achieve it must constantly be in the process of being con activity. sciously transcended and reconstituted on ever higher levels, Because capitalism as a concrete social formation, and in a totalizing dialectical process.

Notes 8 Ibid., p. 131. Earlier versions of this article were presented to the Joint Seminar of 9 Ibid., p. 102. the Departments of Sociology and Political Science ofthe University 10 In general, on these themes, see Georg Lukacs, History and of Regina, Regina, Saskatchewan, on 5 April 1989, and to the annual Class Consciousness, and Zur Ontologie des gesellschaftli conference of the Society for Socialist Studies, Laval University, chen Seins, Neuwied, 1985 (Vol. 1), 1986 (Vol. 2); Henry T. Quebec, on 1 June 1989. Some material for this article is drawn from Nash, 'The Bureaucratization of Homicide', in E. P. Th my D. Phil. thesis, Lukacs' s Aesthetics and Ontology, 1908-23, Uni ompson (ed.), Protest and Survive, Harmondsworth, 1981; versity of Sussex, 1989. My thanks go to the members of Brighton G. Lukacs, 'Uber Preussentum' and 'Schicksalswende', in Anti-Nuclear Campaign (1980-82); to Sheila Somers, Pat Lupton, Schriften zur Ideologie und Politik, Neuwied, 1967. Kelly Diebel and Joe Roberts; and especially to Bill Livant and Michelle Weinroth. 11 Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. 3, London, 1977, p. 791. 12 For this reason too, the much-debated issue of class bounda ries (e.g. in E. o. Wright's Class, Crisis and the State, or in See Jean Cohen, Class and Civil Society: The Limits of Nicos Poulantzas's concept of the 'nouvelle petite bourgeoi Marxian Critical Theory, Amherst, 1982; Social Research, sie' in Les classes sociales dans le capitalisme aujourd' hui, Vol. 52, No. 4, Winter 1985 (special issue on social move Paris, 1974) is perhaps something of a spurious problem, to ments); J. Yvon Theriault, 'Mouvements sociaux et nouvelle the extent that much of the reason for the debate disappears culture politique', Politique, No. 12, automne 1987, pp. if the concept of boundary is grasped dialectically, rather 5-36; Emesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and than in a static fashion. Poulantzas can be seen to be abso Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics, lutely on the right track in seeking to define classes in London, 1985; Ellen Wood, The Retreatfrom Class. A New political and ideological, as well as abstractly economic 'True' Socialism, London, 1986. terms, and in advancing his distinction between modes of 2 Karl Marx, Grundrisse, Harmondsworth, 1973, p. 100. production and social formations. On the other hand he loses 3 Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, London, 1977, p. 77. his way in viewing totality on the undialectical Althusserian model of a combination of instances and modes of produc 4 Ibid. tion. As a follower of Mao, he ought perhaps to have fol 5 Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital, New York, lowed the Chairman's recommendation not to try to combine 1974; Mike Cooley, Architect or Bee? The Human/Technol two into one, but rather to discover how one divides into two ogy Relationship, Slough, n.d.; Mike Hales, Living Th- - in other words to reject eclecticism and embrace dialectics. inkwork, London, 1980; Stephen Marglin, 'What Do the 13 The following comments, and the passage from abstract to Bosses Do? The Origins and Functions of Hierarchy in Capi- concrete here, can be related to some of the critiques of talist Production', Review of Radical Political Economists, Harry Braverman's Labor and Monopoly Capital. See for Vol. 6, No. 2, 1974; E. P. Thompson, 'Time, Work-Disci example Michael Burawoy, The Politics ofProduction, Lon pline, and Industrial Capitalism', Past and Present, No. 38, don, 1985; Anthony Giddens, The Class Structure of the 1967. Advanced Societies, London, 1980; David Stark, 'Class 6 Harry Braverman analyzed this process exhaustively, and Struggle and the Transformation of the Labour Process: A formulated a general law of the capitalist labour process, Relational Approach', Theory and Society, No. 9,1980. according to which capitalist development entails a general 14 See Rosa Luxemburg, Social Reform or Revolution, in D. tendency towards the ever greater polarization of simple and Howard (ed.), Selected Political Writings of Rosa Luxem complex labour. burg, New York, 1971; V. I. Lenin, What Is to Be Done? in 7 Georg Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness, London, V. I. Lenin, Selected Works (in 12 volumes), Vol. 2, London, 1971, p. 100. 1936; G. Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness.

Radical Philosophy 55, Summer 1990 23 15 See Michael Burawoy, Manufacturing Consent. Changes in oppressive to other groups. See for example Paul Willis's the Labour Process under Monopoly Capitalism, Chicago, attempt, in Learning to Labour, to show how working-class 1979; Michael Apple, Education and Power, London, 1982; youths may derive a sense of empowerment from the cultiva Paul Willis, Learning to Labour. How Working-Class Kids tion of a sexist and racist male culture. An incomparable, Get Working-Class Jobs, Aldershot, 1980. albeit fictional expression of this can be found in Yilmaz Giiney's film Yol, which portrays men crushed by state 16 It is this process of constant struggle back and forth between repression who find a sense of identity and empowerment in labour and capital which in concrete terms forms classes in the embrace of an even more reactionary, murderous patriar capitalist society. See David Stark, op. cif. Erik Olin chal culture. Wright's notion of 'contradictory class locations' provides some sense of this, although he presents it in a rather static 18 On this idea of the ill-mediated character of science and and abstract way. everyday life, and how it perpetuates religious ontologies, see G. Luk.ks, Zur Ontologie des gesellschaftlichen Seins, 17 Consumerism, status and community identities (items (c), especially the introduction and chapters 3 and 4 of Volume (d) and (e) correspond roughly to David Lockwood's con 11. struction of three ideal-types of working-class conscious ness in Britain, the 'privatized', 'deferential' and 'tradi 19 On 'abstract masculinity', see Nancy Hartwock, Money, Sex tional' worker respectively. See D. Lockwood, 'Sources of and Power. Toward a Feminist Historical Materialism, New Variation in Working-Class Images of Society', Sociologi York,1983. calReview, Vol.I4,No.'2, 1966. These three types of course 20 See Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts also correspond roughly to Max Weber's notions of individ (1844), in Early Writings, introduced by L. Colletti, trans ual, status and class. See Economy and Society, Berkeley, lated by Gregor Benton and Rodney Livingstone, Harmond 1978. sworth, 1975, pp. 322-34. There have been many studies of the ways in which justified 21 The slogan of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament on its resistance to oppression by particular groups takes on forms massive national demonstration in London in October 1981.

r The Oxford Literary Review

Volume 10: Anniversary Issue

Jacques Derrida on Telepathy Nicholas Royle on 'Telepathy' Rachel Bowlby on Transatlantic Feminism Geoffrey Bennington on Deconstruction and Philosophy Robert Young on the Politics of Literary Theory

Volume 11: Philosophical Encounters

Jean-Fran~ois Lyotard on Time Today Joseph Margolis on New Music of the Philosophical Spheres Andrew Benjamin reflecting on Mirrors Peter Osborne on Rorty and Heidegger Jean-Jacques Lecercle on Louis Wolfson Anne Barron on Dworkin and Postmodernism Peter Middleton on Linguistic Turns Alison Ainley on the Subject of Ethics Geoffrey Bennington on Vincent Descombes Robert Young on Peter Dews

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24 Radical Philosophy 55, Summer 1990