[D66] Fwd: # SPINOZA /// Episode 1: The Marxian Reading of Capitalism through a Spinozist Conceptology

[Nord]

"Si l'idée communiste a essentiellement à voir avec l'égalité, la 
question se pose alors de savoir quelle peut être la nature de l'égalité 
accompagnant une inégalité substantielle, reconnue, des contributions, 
et qui ne nie pas l'asymétrie de ces situations où la force d'une 
proposition initiale donne objectivement aux autres contributions un 
caractère auxiliaire. Voilà donc l'équation communiste : quelle forme 
d'égalité réaliser sous le legs de la division du travail ? -- et 
notamment du plus pesant de ses héritages, à *savoir la séparation 
princeps de la « conception » et de l' « exécution ». P167"*



On 25-03-13 20:48, Nord wrote:
>
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: 	# SPINOZA /// Episode 1: The Marxian Reading of Capitalism 
> through a Spinozist Conceptology
> Date: 	Mon, 25 Mar 2013 07:58:58 +0100
> From: 	Nord <protocosmos at home.nl>
>
>
>
> http://thefunambulist.net/2013/03/24/spinoza-episode-1-the-marxian-reading-of-capitalism-through-a-spinozist-conceptology/
>
>
>   # SPINOZA /// Episode 1: The Marxian Reading of Capitalism through a
>   Spinozist Conceptology
>
> Posted onMarch 24, 2013 
> <http://thefunambulist.net/2013/03/24/spinoza-episode-1-the-marxian-reading-of-capitalism-through-a-spinozist-conceptology/>|1 
> Comment 
> <http://thefunambulist.net/2013/03/24/spinoza-episode-1-the-marxian-reading-of-capitalism-through-a-spinozist-conceptology/#comments>
>
> spinoza bill 
> <http://thefunambulistdotnet.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/spinoza-bill.jpeg>
>
> Today, I am starting a series of articles about 17th century 
> Portuguese-Dutch philosopher*Baruch Spinoza*and thus dedicates to his 
> work a 'week' like I didtwo years ago for Gilles Deleuze 
> <http://thefunambulist.net/2011/06/20/deleuze-constitution-of-an-archive/>andlast 
> year for Michel Foucault 
> <http://thefunambulist.net/2012/06/20/foucault-episode-1-michel-foucaults-architectural-underestimation/>.
>
> The first article of this week will attempt to examine how Spinoza can 
> supply a terminology, or rather, a/conceptology/to extend the sharp 
> analysis of capitalism made by Karl Marx in the 19th century to a its 
> neo-liberal version we have been experiencing for the last thirty 
> years. In order to do so, I would use a particular chapter from the 
> book*/Capitalisme, désir et servitude: Marx et Spinoza/* 
> <http://www.lafabrique.fr/catalogue.php?idArt=530>(Capitalism, desire 
> and servitude, Marx and Spinoza) written by*Frédéric Lordon* 
> <http://www.fredericlordon.fr/>and published by the always excellent 
> publisherLa Fabrique <http://www.lafabrique.fr/>in 2010.
>
> Through this book, F. Lordon depicts, among other things, the two 
> important shifts of paradigms in capitalism that occurred since the 
> publication of*Das Kapital*, in order for it to survive against the 
> potentiality of a revolution prophetized by Marx when he was observing 
> the continuous production of a discontented working class. The first 
> shift of paradigm, often known as Fordism, occurred in the first part 
> of the 20th century and consisted in a neat amplification of the 
> production rhythm associated with the integration of the working class 
> itself in the mass consumption of their own product. The second shift 
> of paradigm, closer to us, examined how the working class (which also 
> shifted for a big part of it, from the industry to the realms of 
> services) could gain in productivity by integrating it to an ideology 
> of "self-accomplishment" that could apparently relate to the Spinozist 
> idea of/joyful affect/(for a very basic introduction to his concepts, 
> you can read my textArchitectures of Joy 
> <http://thefunambulist.net/2010/12/18/philosophy-architectures-of-joy-a-spinozist-reading-of-parentvirilio-and-arakawagins%E2%80%99-architecture/>from 
> 2010). For Spinoza, the servitude is anyway universal as all our acts 
> are determined by the sum of circumstances that caused it (much more 
> about that in a upcoming article), but we can nevertheless increase 
> our power (/potentia/in latin, more on that soon too) by acquiring the 
> knowledge of the causes of our behavior. As we know too well, 
> strategies of/inducing/do not allow the subject to understand the 
> context of his decisions better than an assembly line worker in the 
> beginning of the 20th century and therefore force it to remain within 
> the/sad affects./
>
> So far, I was evoking the book in its entirety but in order to be 
> precise, I would like to examine more particularly a specific chapter 
> entitled*/Alors le (ré)communisme!/*The neologism of/(ré)communisme/is 
> a French play on word insisting on the idea of revisiting communism, 
> but more importantly to oppose to the/respublica/(the public thing) 
> the /rescommuna/(the common thing) as two different models of society. 
> It is interesting to observe how F. Lordon is slowly introducing this 
> new model: (the original French version is at the end of the article, 
> the translation is mine but since the text is difficult to translate 
> for the multiple meanings each important word carries, I left the word 
> used by him in parenthesis)
>
>     The starting point was the following: someone wants to do
>     something that needs several people to achieve. This community of
>     action is in its very essence a political community if we
>     attribute the political status to any situation that composes
>     powers (/puissance/) of action [...]. The question is then about
>     the constitution of this entrepreneurial political community. This
>     implies the genetic dimension of the mechanisms for which the
>     community emerges, as well as the constitutionality of the formal
>     as the formal layouts (/agencements/) that rule its function once
>     it is assembled. What are the desirable relationships for which a
>     company (/entreprise/) can be constituted when it is conceived as
>     an association of powers (/puissance)/of action?
>
> While condemning the relationships of servitude created by capitalism, 
> F. Lordon also introduces a form of doubt in the sacred equality 
> enforced by communism in its orthodox version (presented as the only 
> alternative to capitalism for many years). His discourse is, of 
> course, mostly focused on the realms of companies; however, in order 
> to make his point clearer, he uses the example of the creative process 
> of a theater play (from here, I translated the ambivalent term 
> of/entreprise/(both company and project as the same time) with the 
> English word of/enterprise/that needs to be understood with those two 
> simultaneous meanings as well):
>
>     A playwright comes with an amazing text: who would deny that his
>     contribution is not of the same nature than the one of the
>     electricians and the costume designers? who would contest his
>     status of power (/puissance/) authentically creative? Yet, he
>     needs electricians and costume designers so that the show could
>     occur and that his genius text could be transmitted to the public.
>     The problem is never tackled this way as the immediate solution
>     brought by the wage relationship (/rapport/) in the form of a
>     supplied hired manpower made it forgotten as a problem. To find
>     back its meaning, we need to achieve the thought experiment that
>     consists in imagining which kind of political arrangements would
>     emerge so that the collective enterprise would be withdrawn from
>     the structure of wage relationship (/rapport/).
>     /[...]/
>     If the communist idea is essentially related to the notion of
>     equality, the question is then to wonder what can be the nature of
>     equality in the context of a substantial, recognized inequality of
>     contributions, and how not to deny the asymmetry of these
>     situations in which the strength of an initial proposition makes
>     the other contributions appear as auxiliary. Here is the communist
>     equation: which form of equality can we realize in the context of
>     the division of work and its heaviest inheritance, the fundamental
>     separation between 'conception' and 'execution'?
>
> This latter point is important as it bring back Marx's contempt for 
> the strict division of work as it was invented by the mass production 
> of goods. F. Lordon later insists that, even in relatively 
> 'democratic' working environments, it is rare to see a person 
> sometimes in charge of the lights and some other times in charge of 
> the play-writing. There is no real redistribution of the roles 
> depending on the desire and inspiration of each person involved in the 
> enterprise.
>
>     If the complete solution of the communist equation consists in a
>     restructuration of the division of desire that shares the chances
>     of conception -- and symmetrically the execution tasks too --
>     nobody indicated better than Etienne Balibar its horizon
>     (Spinozist as well as Marxian) : " To be as many as possible to
>     think the most as possible."
>
> Finally, F. Lordon introduces his model of/(ré)communisme/as an 
> alternative based on the principle above. He then describes an 
> enterprise that would adopt this model as a working paradigm. Such a 
> description can make us recall the Argentinean /fábricas recuperadas/ 
> <http://www.fabricasrecuperadas.org.ar/>, factories took over by their 
> workers when their owner wanted to liquidate them after the 2001 
> economical crisis. The new system set-up by the workers involves (in 
> addition of a unique salary) a democratic process of decision making.
>
>     Since they put a part of their life in an enterprise, its members
>     can only exit the enrolment relationship (/rapport/), born from a
>     monarchical constitution (the/imperium/of the master-desire), by
>     sharing, beyond the object itself, the entire control of the
>     conditions of the collective pursuit of the object, and finally by
>     affirming the indisputable right to be fully associated to what
>     they are affected by. What the productive enterprise has to
>     fabricate, in which quantity, with which rhythm, which volume,
>     which wage structure, which reattribution for the surplus, how it
>     will accommodate variations to its environment: none of these
>     things can escape to the common deliberation since they all have
>     common consequences. The very simple recommunist (/récommuniste/)
>     principle is thus that what affects everyone should be the object
>     of everyone, i.e. constitutionally and equally debated by everyone.
>
> As a conclusion, we might want to go back from where we left, the 
> philosophy of Spinoza, by using its Deleuzian interpretation to 
> explain the notion of freedom:/There is no freedom, only forms of 
> liberation/. In other words, if we follow the writings of Spinoza 
> absolutely (i.e. as diagrams we might say), one is never free as (s)he 
> is subjected to a form of determinism, however (and maybe in a less 
> orthodoxic reading) one can get involved in processes of liberation by 
> participating to a power (/potentia/again) that is 'bigger' than him 
> or her. This power is called God (i.e. nature or the world to put it 
> maybe too simply) in Spinoza's philosophy. However, in his political 
> project, which is in complete agreement with his philosophy but founds 
> itself on more pragmatic bases, this 'bigger' power can be more simply 
> the harmonious composition of a collective enterprise. In F. Lordon's 
> interpretation of the latter, it might not be functioning in a strict 
> equality, but rather in the shared association of skills and desires, 
> the regular shift of roles, and the systematic access to the decision 
> process that makes this enterprise exist and operate.
>
> Original French version of the excerpts:
>
> Frédéric Lordon, Capitalisme, désir et servitude: Marx et Spinoza, 
> Paris: La Fabrique, 2010.
>
> [...] le point de départ était ceci : quelqu'un a envie de faire 
> quelque chose qui nécessite d'être plusieurs. Cette communauté 
> d'action est/ipso facto/une communauté politique si on donne le nom de 
> politique à toute situation de composition de puissance d'agir [...]. 
> La question est alors celle de la constitution de cette communauté 
> politique d'entreprise, aussi bien au sens génétique des mécanismes 
> par lesquels la communauté vient à se former qu'au sens 
> « constitutionnel » des agencements formels qui en régissent les 
> fonctionnements une fois assemblée. Quels sont les rapports désirables 
> sous lesquels peut se constituer une entreprise conçue très 
> généralement comme un concours de puissances d'agir ? P164
>
> Un dramaturge survient porteur d'un texte inouï: qui niera que cette 
> contribution-là n'est pas de même nature que celle des éclairagistes 
> et des costumiers? qui lui contestera son caractère de puissance 
> authentiquement créatrice ? Et pourtant il faut des éclairagistes et 
> des costumiers pour que le spectacle ait lieu et que le texte génial 
> soit porte à la connaissance du public. Le problème n'est jamais posé 
> en ces termes car la solution « immédiate » que lui apporte le rapport 
> salarial sous la forme d'une fourniture de main-d'oeuvre employée a 
> fini par le faire oublier comme problème. En retrouver le sens suppose 
> l'expérience de pensée consistant à imaginer quels arrangements 
> politiques devraient se former pour que l'entreprise collective voie 
> le jour/retirées des structures du rapport salarial/. P166
>
> Si l'idée communiste a essentiellement à voir avec l'égalité, la 
> question se pose alors de savoir quelle peut être la nature de 
> l'égalité accompagnant une inégalité substantielle, reconnue, des 
> contributions, et qui ne nie pas l'asymétrie de ces situations où la 
> force d'une proposition initiale donne objectivement aux autres 
> contributions un caractère auxiliaire. Voilà donc l'équation 
> communiste : quelle forme d'égalité réaliser sous le legs de la 
> division du travail ? -- et notamment du plus pesant de ses héritages, 
> à savoir la séparation princeps de la « conception » et de 
> l' « exécution ». P167
>
> Si la solution complète de l'équation communiste consiste en une 
> restructuration de la division du désir qui repartage les chances de 
> conception -- et symétriquement redistribue les taches d'exécution 
> [...] -- nul n'en a indiqué comme Etienne Balibar l'horizon 
> (spinoziste autant que marxien) : « Etre le plus nombreux à penser le 
> plus possible. » P168
>
> Puisque c'est une part de leur vie qu'ils mettent en commun dans une 
> entreprise, ses membres ne sortent du rapport d'enrôlement, dual par 
> construction d'une constitution de type monarchique (l'/imperium/du 
> désir-maitre), qu'en partageant au-delà de l'objet, l'entière maitrise 
> des conditions de la poursuite collective de l'objet, et finalement en 
> affirmant le droit irréfragable d'être pleinement associés à ce 
> qui/les concerne/. Ce que l'entreprise (productive) doit fabriquer, en 
> quelle quantité, à quelle cadence, avec quel volume d'emploi et quelle 
> structure de rémunérations, sous quelle clé de réaffectation des 
> surplus, comment elle accommodera les variations de son 
> environnement : aucune de ces choses ne peut par principe échapper a 
> la délibération commune puisqu'elles ont toutes des conséquences 
> communes. Le simplissime principe récommuniste est donc que ce qui 
> affecte tous doit être l'objet de tous -- c'est le mot même de 
> récommune qui le dit ! -, c'est-à-dire constitutionnellement et 
> égalitairement débattu par tous. P170
>
>
>
>
>
>
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