Marx’s Capital, Method and Revolutionary Subjectivity Historical Materialism Book Series Editorial Board Sébastien Budgen (Paris) Steve Edwards (London) Juan Grigera (London) Marcel van der Linden (Amsterdam) Peter Thomas (London) volume 112 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/hm Marx’s Capital, Method and Revolutionary Subjectivity By Guido Starosta leiden | boston Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Starosta, Guido. Title: Marx's Capital, method and revolutionary subjectivity / by Guido Starosta. Description: Brill : Boston, 2015. | Series: Historical materialism book series ; 112 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2015031121| ISBN 9789004306479 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9789004306608 (e-book) Subjects: LCSH: Marx, Karl, 1818-1883. Kapital. | Marxian economics. | Dialectical materialism. 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This book is printed on acid-free paper. … and all science would be superfluous if the form of appearance of things directly coincided with their essence. marx 1991, p. 956 … The idea of one basis for life and another for science is from the very outset a lie. marx 1992b, p. 355 ∵ Contents Acknowledgements xi Introduction: On the Current State of Revolutionary Theory 1 Structure of the Book 5 part 1 Marx’s Early Critique of Political Economy: The Discovery of the Revolutionary Subject and the Development of Science as Practical Criticism 1 The Dialectic of Alienated Labour and the Determinations of Revolutionary Subjectivity in the Paris Manuscripts 13 Introduction 13 Transformative Method and the Discovery of Alienated Labour 17 The Historicity of the Social Relations of Production and the Determination of Communism as the Supersession of Alienated Labour 24 The Determinations of the Revolutionary Subjectivity of the Proletariat and the Limits of the Paris Manuscripts 34 2 The Overcoming of Philosophy and the Development of a Materialist Science 46 Introduction 46 The Need to Come to Terms with Hegel’s Philosophy 47 Hegel and the ‘Dilemma of Epistemology’ 56 Marx’s Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy in the Paris Manuscripts 63 3 Marx on Proudhon: The Critique of Dialectical Logic and the Political Determination of Science as Practical Criticism 76 Introduction 76 The Dialectical Method as Logic in Proudhon 77 Abstraction vs. Analysis: From Hegel’s Ideal Reproduction of the Ideal to Marx’s Ideal Reproduction of the Material Concrete 88 Marx’s Movement of Contradiction beyond Proudhon’s Representational ‘Unity of Opposites’ 95 viii contents Marx on Proudhon ii: Dialectical Knowledge and Political Action 100 The Limits to Marx’s Early Attempt at a Dialectical Revolutionary Critique of Political Economy 109 part 2 Dialectical Knowledge in Motion: Revolutionary Subjectivity in Marx’s Mature Critique of Political Economy 4 The Commodity Form and the Dialectical Method 119 Introduction 119 Inquiry and Presentation, Analysis and Synthesis: On Some Controversies over the Initial Passages of Marx’s Argument in Capital 122 The Phase of Analysis 129 The Synthetic Phase of Reproduction Proper 134 5 The Role and Place of Commodity Fetishism in Marx’s Dialectical Exposition in Capital 141 Introduction 141 The Immediate Object of Exposition of the Section on Commodity Fetishism and Its Systematic Place and Significance 142 The Determinations of the Alienated Form Taken by the Productive Consciousness of the Private Individual 152 6 The Commodity Form, Subjectivity and the Practical Nature of Defetishising Critique 164 Introduction 164 Free Subjectivity as Alienated Subjectivity 166 Why Does Method Make a Difference? The Implications of Marx’s Investigation of the Commodity Form for the Determinations of Revolutionary Subjectivity 172 Fetishism and Critique in Contemporary Marxian Theory: A Methodological Assessment of Some Recent Contributions 179 Commodity Fetishism and Science as Practical Criticism 189 contents ix 7 Capital Accumulation and Class Struggle: On the Content and Form of Social Reproduction in Its Alienated Form 196 Introduction 196 Capital: The Materialised Social Relation That Takes Possession of the Species-Powers of Humanity 198 Capital as the Subject of the Circulation Process 198 Capital as the Subject of the Immediate Process of Production 205 Valorisation of Capital and Class Struggle 206 Class Struggle and the Concrete Subject of the Movement of Capitalist Society 216 Once Again, the Question of the Dialectical Method 218 Appendix: Some Marxist Controversies over the Determination of the Value of Labour Power 222 Class Struggle and the Determination of the Value of Labour Power: The ‘Received Wisdom’ and Its Limits 223 Rethinking Marx’s Account of the Determinations of the Value of Labour Power 226 Content and Form of the Determination of the Value of Labour Power: On the Role of the Class Struggle 230 8 Real Subsumption and the Genesis of the Revolutionary Subject 233 Introduction 233 The Production of Relative Surplus Value: General Determinations 237 Co-operation and Capital’s raison d’être in the Historical Process 238 Capitalist Manufacture and the Material Basis of the Class Struggle over the Full Value of Labour Power 246 Large-Scale Industry and Workers’ Productive Subjectivity in Capital 254 The Grundrisse and the System of Machinery: In Search of the Missing Link in the Determinations of Revolutionary Subjectivity 273 9 By Way of a Conclusion: Further Explorations into the Determinations of Revolutionary Subjectivity 289 Revolutionary Subjectivity as Alienated Subjectivity 289 Revolutionary Subjectivity as Productive Subjectivity 293 Revolutionary Subjectivity as Scientific Subjectivity 297 x contents Revolutionary Subjectivity as Consciously Self-Organised Subjectivity 302 Revolutionary Subjectivity ‘Proper’ and the Revolutionary Conquest of the Political Power of the State 305 Final Words: Whose Revolutionary Action is It Anyway? 313 Bibliography 317 Index 339 Acknowledgements This book has been in the making for quite a long time, although in two clearly distinct stages. In its first ‘incarnation’, it resulted from my doctoral research in the Department of Sociology at the University of Warwick under the supervi- sion of Simon Clarke and Robert Fine, who kindly provided advice, intellectual inspiration and support throughout my PhD studies. During those years, and despite geographical distance, I benefited greatly from discussions of many of these ideas with my good friend Axel Kicillof. The thesis was defended in mid- 2005, but sat on my desk waiting to be reworked and expanded into this book until 2013, when, back in my home country (Argentina), and after 10 years in the uk, I managed to find the time, intellectual motivation and ‘peace of mind’ to resume work on the manuscript. However, between those two periods I contin- ued thinking through many of these issues, and also had the chance to discuss them fruitfully with numerous people, who offered insightful comments and criticisms that helped me improve and sharpen the presentation of my argu- ment. Among those from abroad, I would like to thank Greig Charnock and Tom Purcell, who I met while working at the University of Manchester and who have always been very encouraging about this book project. Also, I would like to thank members of the International Symposium on Marxian Theory, who have invited me to join their annual meetings since 2008, an invaluable scientific forum for methodologically informed debate on fundamental issues in the critique of political economy. I am also grateful to Peter Thomas and Sebastian Budgen from the editorial board of Historical Materialism, who have been very supportive of this book project. Back in Buenos Aires, many other friends and colleagues contributed with feedback on earlier drafts of this work. In particular, I would like to mention Gastón Caligaris, Tomás Friedenthal, Alejandro Fitzsimons and Nicolás Perez- Trento, who very enthusiastically agreed to set up a ‘reading group’ that dis- cussed preliminary versions of each of the chapters, and who provided very detailed and pertinent comments on all of them. More broadly, I wish to thank all comrades at the Centre for Research as Practical Criticism (Centro para la Investigación como Crítica Práctica) who have helped sustain a stimulating political milieu in which to debate these ideas. Finally, I am deeply grateful and indebted