Exploring Marx’s Capital (Historical Materialism Book Series) | AAAARG.ORG
This volume, originally published in French under the title Que faire du Capital?, offers a new interpretation of Marx’s great work. It shows how the novelty and lasting interest of Marx’s theory arises from the fact that, as against the project of a ‘pure’ economics, it is formulated in concepts that have simultaneously an economic and a political aspect, neither of these being separable from the other. Jacques Bidet conducts an unprecedented investigation of Marx’s work in the spirit of the history of science, exploring it as a process of theoretical development. Traditional exegesis reads the successive drafts of Capital as if they were complementary and mutually illuminated one another. In actual fact, like any scientist, Marx only wrote a new version in order to correct the previous one. He started from ideas borrowed from Ricardo and Hegel, and between one draft and the next it is possible to see these being eliminated and restructured.
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December 1, 2009 1:45 pm
Of course Marx’s insight was his notion that the market system works to disguise relationships between human beings as relationships between things, commodities, maybe a house? And the etheral connections that we make with ‘this box made of bricks and things’ as illustrated by the dearth of ‘property pornography’(which I define as lurid or sensational material: see http://www.dictionary.com) on our TV’s and in our magazines is an example of this. Really it is us human beings who are seen, and sadly, see themselves as commodities. WE HUMANS HAVE BECOME PRODUCTS SUBJECT TO THE MARKET & GOVERNED BY THE WOKING OF THE MARKET.
And it is hard to argue that his insight has not been proven correct. We have been governed by the workings of the market in terms of our jobs our livelihoods, which in effect expanded with disasterous housing market.
Herbert Marcuse I think called our relationship with things like property ‘one dimensionality’ which basically states that the development of consumer based capatilism produces ‘one dimensionality’ – produces a false contentment and directs peoples energies and ambitions into objects (such as property) rather than towards relationships. In effect ‘binding’ them into the system by manipulating their desires.
My problem is that I like to be kissed when I’m being screwed and the purveyours of soft core property porn like Duncan Stewart and the more hard-core stuff that Kevin McCloud produces in shows like ‘Grand Designs’, have left us with that awful ‘morning after the night before’ feeling…like it woudn’t be so bad if our houses had been designed and built with care and attention to detail… and by this I mean witha sort of emotional feeling that really good design elicts. Devlopers emotional ‘kiss my a**e’ as DA out of ‘The Royal Family’ might say…
Our architectural profession also have a lot to answer for in this respect because they were either part of this horrible ‘Housing does Dallas’ movie or they stood on the side lines and watched us sink into low budget porn design.
Anyway enuff…
December 1, 2009 6:48 pm
Well, that is colourful Robert, and I don’t think you’re the first person to come up with the term property porn – although I think your enjoying the allusion a little too much.
However, this idea that ‘we humans have become…’ is a bit weak in my view. It’s not humans that have changed but capitalism that has remained the same. I think of that bit of Marx that you refer to when I hear people call for wage cuts to improve ‘competitiveness’, but claim that we can’t borrow to develop the economy and keep people in jobs because it would ‘spook’ the market, which as far as I know is based on the exchange of goods:
December 2, 2009 12:03 am
Hi Donagh…Rosie Millard former BBC arts pundit is credited with having coined the term ‘property porn’; “property porn is addictive”, she wrote in 2002, and so is internet pornography, believe me I know about these things…I had trouble a few years back explaining away a 70 euro internet phone bill for a phone call made to some-one in the Bahamas!!!???… the point is that I and indeed a lot of people have/are seeking the dopamine hit that TV property porn in its many forms provides…
And this reveals the serious side to addiction in any form…or rather the nature of human emotional needs.
The desire for shelter & security is one of our most basic human needs…and really I am attempting to argue that the issue of house and home is/should be a ‘rights based’ issue which of course is an anathema to the anglo-saxon free market system. This feeds into notions of ‘place’ and sustainability, notions that are, and will be, central to our well-being and in terms of how we care for each other. Our shelters, our homes and the way they have been designed and built, are in effect the mirror in which we see ourselves reflected, and the political ideologies that have shaped Ireland’s ‘obscene’ property market provide truly, an awful reflection.
The philospher Heidegger posited the notion that to ‘dwell is to inhabit the earth, it is to have a life that is habitual…’. In effect to dwell (in a house or in a nomads tent for that matter) is to have a way of life. Our very habitual way of life, the shape of our society, the houses we live in is a modern day version of the cultivation of our patch of the ground. And again it is in our homes, in our architecture, that we see ourselves as a society reflected…but again (taking from Heidegger) if our homes are no more than a collection of bricks and mortar, a commodity to be bought and sold, just like a packet of biscuits, then maybe we are faced with the thought as Heidegger stated,
“…the world is darkening. The essential elements of this darkening are: the destruction of the earth, the standardization of man, the pre-eminence of the mediocre…”
Now Heidegger might have had a bit of a soft spot for the national socialist regime in Germany the same one that vomited up Hitler, but I think he was on to something, and this leads me to your comment that ‘humans have not changed but capitalism has remained the same’. Im not so sure. Capitalism has surely changed from Adam Smiths notion: the ‘invisible hand’ of the free-market…sure we now live in a new age of economic socialism which in effect is a modified version of capitalism. the governments are propping up, or should I say screwing us ordinary folk, while kissing & cuddlling the banks to the tune of billions. Now call me naive but those billions could have given us all the free house of our choice…not everyone wants to live in a neo-mock-tudor-georgian-avant-garde-contempory glass-box house in Dalky so it would all balance itself out somehow. Housing for all should be free to all. Those who have built a big house or a small house, it dont matter, should be given the means to unburden themselves of the material cost of living in those houses. Just imagine all the worry that we have as a result of our addiction to property pornography will be gone in one fell swoop. Of course we would have lots of money to spend on lots other ‘stuff’…so maybe this idea needs a bit more ‘teasing’ out…innuendo intentional…we could of course discuss Alfred Loos essay Ornament & Crime…
Cheers.
Robert.
December 2, 2009 8:38 am
‘Rosie Millard former BBC arts pundit is credited with having coined the term ‘property porn’
Mark Morris was using the term ‘property porn’ in film reviews for the guardian back in the 1990s.
In definition, he said ‘It’s the great fetish of our times: not sex, but places to live with enviable furniture.’ (2 May 1999)
And you get the feeling he didn’t invent it either.
December 2, 2009 12:14 pm
Hi Connor…you correct I seem to recall now something about the Mark Morris comment on our fetish with furniture…this seems to reinforce the notion that we have got our relationships (material things vs people?) mixed up. Though I have to say that the Aston Martin James Bond was driving in his last adventure was pretty cool…or was it sexy?…take your pick. Or maybe it was just another ‘machine to drive in’ just like Le-Corb built houses as ‘machines to live in’?.