This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ The problem of subjectivity in Marxism Karl Marx, George Lukacs and Antonio Gramsci Jackson, Robert Awarding institution: King's College London The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 05. Oct. 2021 This electronic theses or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ Title: The problem of subjectivity in Marxism Karl Marx, George Lukacs and Antonio Gramsci Author: Robert Jackson The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. 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Karl Marx, Georg Lukács and Antonio Gramsci Robert Paul Jackson European and International Studies Department, King’s College London, University of London. Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD). 29 March 2013 DECLARATION The work presented in this thesis is my own. Signed Robert Paul Jackson Word-count (including footnotes, excluding bibliography) for the present thesis: 99,928 words 1 ABSTRACT The recent revival of interest in Marxism has addressed the question of subjectivity in new ways. This thesis undertakes a critical investigation of the theme of subjectivity in key texts from the classical Marxist tradition in preparation for assessing its contribution to contemporary debates. My aim in this project has been to explore how one might construct a defensible version of the solution to the problem of subjectivity advanced by Marx and his successors. Examining Marx’s effort to develop the dialectical unity of subject and object in his Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, I propose the coexistence of two conceptions of subjectivity in these Manuscripts. A tension is created within the text that I argue pre-figures the development of his theory of commodity fetishism. This theory addresses the problem of the authentic or quasi- subjectivity of capital. This theme is developed through an exploration of the obstacles confronting proletarian subjectivity in Marx’s Capital. Within this framework, I show how Marx elaborates concrete forms of working class self-activity, such as in his chapter on The Working Day. The relationship between human actors and social structures is studied, in particular the role of the knowing subject in the process of class struggle, such as with the case of the factory inspectors. I also critically examine the interpretation of Capital advanced by Moishe Postone in his work: Time, Labour and Social Domination. In the third chapter, Lukács’s theory of reification is examined, extending commodity fetishism to locate the commodity-form as the structuring principle fragmenting subjectivity in all spheres of social life. Following Marx’s discovery of the proletariat as the ‘universal’ class, Lukács poses the proletariat as the philosophical basis for overcoming these obstacles. I attempt to locate the questions that Lukács’s History and Class Consciousness allows us to ask and those it excludes. Whilst Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks do not directly address the theme of alienation and fetishism, in the final chapter, I argue that his distinctively concrete account of class subjectivity has a de- 2 fetishising function related to the central role played by intellectuals in political leadership. I discuss the apparent autonomy of the State in Gramsci’s framework and examine whether this poses a problem for his conception of class subjectivity. In order to assess this challenge, I propose a new categorisation of two modes – holistic and constitutive – by which Gramsci analyses the State. Finally, I consider the possibility that Lukács and Gramsci’s heterogeneous frameworks might yield complementary contributions towards contemporary discussions of the problem of subjectivity. 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Alex Callinicos for his support and supervision over 8 years. I would also like to thank Stathis Kouvelakis, Jim Wolfreys, and everyone in the Department of European and International Studies at King’s College London, particularly fellow postgraduate students, Aaron Bernstein, Aude De Caunes, Paolo Chiocchetti, John Cooper and Lorenzo Fusaro. I am grateful to Colin Barker for explaining Capital to me over lunch. I am also indebted to Paul Blackledge for instructing me to ‘get it done’, and to Ed Rooksby and Nicholas Evans for their help in preparation for the viva examination. Thank you to Marieke Müller, David Swanson, Yan Overfield-Shaw, Nicholas Evans and Peter Dwyer for comments and proof-reading. Thanks also to Alex Anievas, Joseph Choonara, Peter Thomas, Megan Trudell and Gonzalo Pozo-Martin for the coffee, advice and books. My solidarity and thanks to all those colleagues, comrades and friends, alongside whom I have worked, struggled and laughed whilst completing this project in Manchester, London and Oxford. To my family – Kate, Rita and Peter Jackson – who have supported me throughout. This thesis is dedicated to my partner, Marieke Müller. I love you. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS Declaration 1 Abstract 2 Acknowledgements 4 Table of Contents 5 Introduction 10 1) The Return to Marx and Contemporary Debates in Subjectivity 10 2) The Problem of Subjectivity and the Classical Marxist Tradition 12 a. The Modern Notion of the Self 14 b. Marx and Subjectivity 15 3) The Obstacles Confronting the Proletariat 16 a. Between Alienation and Commodity Fetishism 17 b. From Commodity Fetishism to Reification 19 c. A Theory of Fetishism in Gramsci? 21 4) Methodology 26 5) Further Investigations 27 Chapter 1: How Many Subjectivities in Marx’s Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts? 29 1) Introduction 30 a. One or two subjectivities in the Manuscripts? 30 b. Alienated Labour and Transcendence 33 2) Two Subjectivities 37 a. The Subjectivity of Private Property in the Form of Modern Industry or Capital 37 i. Private Property (Modern Industry/Capital) as a Subject 37 1. What is Industry? 38 2. What is Specific about Modern Industry? 41 3. Modern Industry as a Subject 43 4. Discordant Reality of Industry 46 ii. Political Economy as a Theory of Subjectivity 47 1. Political Economy: Modern Industry as Self 48 2. Marx's Theory of the Development of Political Economy 49 3. The Political Economist and the Layman 50 4. Critique of Political Economy and Critique of the Economic System 51 b. The Subjectivity of Labour 53 5 i. Labour as a Subject 53 ii. Communism as a Theory of Subjectivity 56 3) One Subjectivity 61 a. Estranged Labour and Private Property 61 i. The System of Private Property Revealed as the System of Estranged Labour 61 ii. Objectification and Estrangement 64 iii. Estrangement and Suffering 67 b. Man as a Subject: Species and Species-Being 70 c. Quasi-subjects and the Limits of the Manuscripts 75 i. Primogeniture and Fetishism: Capital as a Quasi-Subject 75 ii. Capital as a Social Relation and the Positive Supersession of Private Property 79 iii. Rising above Political Economy = Communism? 81 4) Conclusion: The Initiation of a New Project 84 Chapter 2: The Problem of Subjectivity in Marx’s Capital 88 1) Introduction 89 a. Capital and the Theory of Revolution 89 b. Class Struggle and Subjectivity 90 c. Alienation and the Fetishism of Commodities 91 2) Real Human Actors, Social Roles and Social Structures 94 a. Marx's Project and Methodology 96 b. Individuals, Classes and Structures 101 c. Personification, Typology and Social Roles 104 d. Class Subjects and Mythical Subjects 108 3) A Typology of Subjectivity in Capital 111 a. The Individual and the Collective: Individuals in the Market Place 111 b. Class, Competition and Private Property 114 c. The Capitalist: Bearer of Capital, Agent of Competition, Consumer of Luxuries? 118 d. Workers as Wage-labourers and Human Beings: Human Needs and the Value of Labour-power 120 e.