Jameson on Capitalist Totality & Marx's Politics
Frederic Jameson in a recent piece published in Mediations, writes the following on what he takes to be the main problem of Marx's text, Das Capital. That is, the representation of the order of capital, society's being or capitalism as a "totality". Thus Jameson underscores from the outset the crucial point:
«...the central formal problem of Capital Volume I is the problem of representation: namely how to construct a totality out of individual elements, historical processes, and perspectives of all kinds; and indeed how to do justice to a totality which is not only non-empirical as a system of relationships, but which is also in full movement, in expansion, in a movement of totalization which is essential to its very existence and at the heart of its peculiar economic nature. Yet also essential to this structure is a process of perpetual breakdown: so we have here a machine which is necessarily and inevitably breaking down and which must therefore, to remain in existence, constantly repair itself by enlarging itself and its field of control. How such a peculiar and indeed such a unique phenomenon can be represented or made to appear in our mind’s eye is I believe explained by the equally unique and peculiar powers of dialectical thought, which might almost be considered a new type of thinking invented specifically to overcome the dilemmas of representation posed by this unique and peculiar totality called capital».
Jameson will then conclude his reading of Volume I of Capital, by reading politics in (but also out of?) Marx's text.
«Marx was a truly political animal, no one has ever been more profoundly political in his instincts and thinking except for Lenin himself. He was extraordinarily opportunist, in the good Machiavellian sense of the word, and open to any and every possible path towards the transformation and abolition of capitalism: by unionization, by violence, by parliamentary victory, by a return to the peasant commune, or even by the self-destruction of capital in its own crisis, and so on and so forth. Every variety of political Marxist movement today, from social democracy to Leninism, Maoism, and even anarchism, is a viable candidate for Marx’s agenda, which changed as the historical situation and the development of capitalism itself changed and evolved. But there are no political programs or strategies advocated in Capital itself, which remains, in the Althusserian sense, scientific rather than ideological».
Jameson will then conclude his reading of Volume I of Capital, by reading politics in (but also out of?) Marx's text.
«Marx was a truly political animal, no one has ever been more profoundly political in his instincts and thinking except for Lenin himself. He was extraordinarily opportunist, in the good Machiavellian sense of the word, and open to any and every possible path towards the transformation and abolition of capitalism: by unionization, by violence, by parliamentary victory, by a return to the peasant commune, or even by the self-destruction of capital in its own crisis, and so on and so forth. Every variety of political Marxist movement today, from social democracy to Leninism, Maoism, and even anarchism, is a viable candidate for Marx’s agenda, which changed as the historical situation and the development of capitalism itself changed and evolved. But there are no political programs or strategies advocated in Capital itself, which remains, in the Althusserian sense, scientific rather than ideological».
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