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Capitalism and Collective Action: a Marxist Account of the Erosion of Political Commitment in Liberal Capitalist Cultures

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Capitalism and Collective Action: a Marxist Account of the Erosion of Political Commitment in Liberal Capitalist Cultures CAPITALISM AND COLLECTIVE ACTION: A MARXIST ACCOUNT OF THE EROSION OF POLITICAL COMMITMENT IN LIBERAL CAPITALIST CULTURES By KATHRYN DEAN A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), London School of Economics, University of London November 1997 UMI Number: U10B529 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI U103529 Published by ProQuest LLC 2014. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 OF POLITICAL AND Th-cS iS F 7^53 £01/73 ABSTRACT The task of this thesis is to show that a renovated Marxism can offer a comprehensive explanation for the erosion of political commitment in contemporary liberal capitalist cultures. Post-Marxism forms the point of departure for the explanation to be developed. An evaluation of this work suggests that the problem is related to the forms of subjectivity instituted by neo-liberal capitalism. A renovated dialectical Marxism offers the means of filling the gaps in the post-Marxist account. Renovation requires a specific anti-economistic, anti-deterministic reading of two distinct but related strands of the Marxist corpus. The first of these is the theory of capitalism as total mode of life, as found in the work of Marx and Althusser. The second is the account of proletarian revolution developed by Marx and Gramsci. Both strands are read as accounts of subjectivity. The second is also read as an analysis of the constitution of collective political commitment. A comparison of the two will show that the subjects produced by neo-liberal capitalism are incapable of the kind of self- disciplined political commitment needed to undertake and complete demanding collective tasks. This conclusion is only possible, however, if a psychoanalysis rendered in historical institutional terms (mainly that of Freud and Lacan), is articulated to a renovated Marxism, as argued for by Althusser. In addition to the work of Althusser, that of Habermas on the bourgeois public sphere and Castoriadis on institutions suggest the means of articulating psychoanalysis to Marxism. The resulting theory offers a comprehensive explanation of the realities of contemporary social relations as instituted by neo-liberalism since the early 1980s, specifically as manifested in the erosion of political commitment. 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS Title page Abstract 2 Table of contents 3 Acknowlegements 4 1 Introduction 5 2 Outline of method and approach 16 3 Disorganized capitalism and the death of society 44 4 Subjectivity, meaning and materiality 70 5 The radical imaginary of pure capitalism 98 6 Capitalism and collective action: the Marxian account 124 7 Transformative communal action: the Gramscian perspective 147 8 Capitalism and collective action: a psychoanalytic perspective 175 9 The argument concluded 212 Bibliography 229 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My thanks are due to my supervisor, Mr Angus Stewart, who provided unwavering intellectual and moral support over the long and often arduous period required to produce this thesis. I must also acknowledge the help of Professor Paul Hirst, who provided me with useful references, and of Dr Sudipta Kaviraj and Professor Ernesto Laclau, both of whom read and commented upon parts of the work. Finally, I wish to express my appreciation for the indispensable personal and technical help, as well as intellectual stimulation, given to me by Deirdre Dean. 4 CAPITALISM AND COLLECTIVE ACTION: A MARXIST ACCOUNT OF THE EROSION OF POLITICAL COMMITMENT IN LIBERAL CAPITALIST CULTURES Chapter one Introduction: the problem posed The purpose of this thesis is to provide a Marxist explanation for the erosion of political commitment in liberal capitalist cultures.1 In effect, the purpose is a dual one, in that the task of providing the explanation is linked to that of demonstrating the continuing relevance of Marxism as an explanation of such cultures. However, Marxism needs reinvigorating and replenishing if this relevance is to be demonstrated and if it is to be rendered fit for the explanatory task in hand. Before outlining the requirements of such a task, I must explore the nature of the problem to be addressed. I It has become a journalistic and political commonplace in recent years that populations in contemporary liberal capitalist cultures are resistant to contributing (in whatever form) to the advancement of collective purposes. The difficulty of carrying out programmes requiring collective political commitment, whether of a radical or reformist kind, has been identified and discussed by both radical and mainstream social scientists.2 As committed a Marxist as E.M. Wood has recently come to the conclusion that the more capitalism is institutionalized the less likely is the kind of communal action required for revolutionary transformation.3 Bauman and Calhoun 1 By liberal capitalist cultures I mean contemporary apparently post-industrial (or de-industrializing) cultures whose earlier industrialization followed (up to a point) a free market model (the AngloSaxon cultures of England, United States and Australia). The concept of culture is used here to refer to the total way of life of a given population. This is culture as a particular way of relating to nature and other humans, or culture as all learned behaviour. This broad conception is considered to be of little use in the social sciences for two reasons: one, it is so all-encompassing as to lack any analytical purchase on the empirical world; two, the distinctive and insulated, autonomous cultures which its use presupposes are not to be found in the contemporary world. While these criticisms are well made, the inclusive conception remains useful for certain explanatory purposes, as I hope to show in this thesis. For a general account of the debates about culture, see Bauman (1973); Haferkamp (1989); Wuthnow et al (1984). 2 Bowring (1997) offers a useful survey which centres on Etzioni (1993). See also Boswell (1990); Lichterman (1996); Urry (1985). 3 See Wood (1991). Wood (1995) offers an excellent argument for the need for a revitalized Marxism, one, that is, drained of economic and technological determinisms. Geras (1990a) argues that the problem is exaggerated. 5 both offer well-argued cases against the Marxian revolutionary scenario and, indeed, the logic of E.P. Thompson's great work on this question is that it is economism - meaning individualized self-interested motivations for collective action - rather than revolutionary fervour that is to be expected from proletarians, as opposed to artisans.4 Turning to the contemporary period, the work of Emesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe5 offers a refutation of the orthodox Marxist account of revolutionary action; one which requires us to interrogate the notion of economism and its myriad implications which informs the work of Bauman, Calhoun and indeed of Wood. The post-Marxism of Laclau and Mouffe will be the object of discussion in a later chapter. A discussion of this work will afford the opportunity to go beyond the kinds of explanations suggested by Bauman and Calhoun by alerting us to the importance of subjectivity. It will thereby open up the possibility of explaining the erosion of political commitment in contemporary liberal capitalist cultures; that is to say, in strongly individuated, fragmented cultures. From theorists in the mainstream social sciences, the work of Mancur Olson, who takes the centrality of the calculating, self-interested subject as given, expresses most decisively the impossibility of effective collective action on the part of large or 'latent' groups, i.e. classes and nations, in the absence of coercion or selective incentives.6 Other commentators, such as David Selboume, reject the givenness of such subjects and focus on the role of a discourse of rights in their constitution. Here the fragility of liberal democracies and the accompanying need for the education of citizens are stressed. Education for citizenship will inculcate 'a sense of place and time', a sense of 'the past human effort' which has brought us where we are today; it will be a 'collective moral education' of the 'next citizen body'. In other words, what is called for here is a kind of collective action oriented to the moral and cultural g revitalization of the population as a community. In a recent contribution to this debate which emphasizes the need to enhance our capacity for collective action, (albeit one which refrains from offering solutions to the problem) John Dunn focuses on the problem of collective action as it pertains to the declining efficacy of the modem state's capacity for action. He sees the problem as one of an increasing gap between the undiminished powers of states and growing demands made on those powers. If there is a crisis of the nation state, he suggests, it emanates from the emergence of 'formidable new threats to human security' in the shape of ecological degradation and 'global economic dynamics' rather than a 4 See Bauman (1982); Calhoun (1982); Thompson (1968). 5 Laclau & Mouffe (1985); Laclau (1990). 6 Olson (1971). 7 These are statements
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