3
So there could be reasons for the decline of the public intellectual, and not all of them self-inflicted. Those who think the problem is that today’s academics write too much “jargon” should look at the business press. Was ever there a language more filled with spurious, made-up words of indeterminate meaning? But rather than engage with the standard stories of the public intellectual, let’s think instead about general intellects. By general intellects, I mean something a bit different to Marx’s formula of the general intellect, although they might be connected. By general intellects, I mean people who are mostly employed as academics, and mostly pretty successful at that, but who try through their work to address more general problems about the state of the world today.
They are, on the one hand, part of the general intellect, in that they are workers who think and speak and write, whose work is commodified and sold. But they are, on the other hand, general intellects, in that they try to find ways to write and think and even act in and against this very system of commodification that has now found ways to incorporate even them. They try to address a general situation, one that many people find themselves in today. And they try to do so intelligently, by applying their training and competence and originality.
So there could be reasons for the decline of the public intellectual, and not all of them self-inflicted. Those who think the problem is that today’s academics write too much “jargon” should look at the business press. Was ever there a language more filled with spurious, made-up words of indeterminate meaning? But rather than engage with the standard stories of the public intellectual, let’s think instead about general intellects. By general intellects, I mean something a bit different to Marx’s formula of the general intellect, although they might be connected. By general intellects, I mean people who are mostly employed as academics, and mostly pretty successful at that, but who try through their work to address more general problems about the state of the world today.
They are, on the one hand, part of the general intellect, in that they are workers who think and speak and write, whose work is commodified and sold. But they are, on the other hand, general intellects, in that they try to find ways to write and think and even act in and against this very system of commodification that has now found ways to incorporate even them. They try to address a general situation, one that many people find themselves in today. And they try to do so intelligently, by applying their training and competence and originality.
4
It may be a good thing to know and cite leading authorities, but the paradox is that the reason someone like Marx becomes an authority is because of their ability to break with the authorities of their own time and formulate a new problematic within which to think and act. It has to be said that much of this work has tenuous and distant relations to social movements and sites of struggle. There is a tradeoff between intellectual rigor, power and coherence and capacity to engage directly in the issues of the hour. In a more subtle way, there’s a hardening of the division of labor, wherein general intellects lose touch with other kinds of labor, even intellectual labor, or even other kinds of work in the same universities, such as in the sciences, engineering and design.
It may be a good thing to know and cite leading authorities, but the paradox is that the reason someone like Marx becomes an authority is because of their ability to break with the authorities of their own time and formulate a new problematic within which to think and act. It has to be said that much of this work has tenuous and distant relations to social movements and sites of struggle. There is a tradeoff between intellectual rigor, power and coherence and capacity to engage directly in the issues of the hour. In a more subtle way, there’s a hardening of the division of labor, wherein general intellects lose touch with other kinds of labor, even intellectual labor, or even other kinds of work in the same universities, such as in the sciences, engineering and design.
7
There is a tension in this philosophical reading of Marx. It wants to hang on to some way of using the category of eternal capital. It does not quite want to admit that if capital is indeed continually mutating and self-modifying, then it has no essence, and “appearances” need to be taken seriously as not mere phenomenal forms but as actual forms in the world. In short: there can be no “Marxism” as a philosophy produced by means of philosophy, which takes the essence of capital as its subject. The modifications in so-called phenomenal forms need to be understood as more than mere phenomena, and that requires a more modest approach to the forms of knowledge it might possess of those modifications.
In short, intellectual work after Marx could only be a collaborative practice of knowledge among different but equal ways of knowing, where philosophy is not the ruling party. Or to put it in a quite different language: the statement “the essence of technology is nothing technological” is fundamentally untrue and a barrier to thought.11 Technology really does need to be understood through the collaboration of specialized forms of knowledge about what it actually is and does. The attempt to make philosophy a ruling “technology of essence” is retrograde: the technology of essence is nothing essential.
There is a tension in this philosophical reading of Marx. It wants to hang on to some way of using the category of eternal capital. It does not quite want to admit that if capital is indeed continually mutating and self-modifying, then it has no essence, and “appearances” need to be taken seriously as not mere phenomenal forms but as actual forms in the world. In short: there can be no “Marxism” as a philosophy produced by means of philosophy, which takes the essence of capital as its subject. The modifications in so-called phenomenal forms need to be understood as more than mere phenomena, and that requires a more modest approach to the forms of knowledge it might possess of those modifications.
In short, intellectual work after Marx could only be a collaborative practice of knowledge among different but equal ways of knowing, where philosophy is not the ruling party. Or to put it in a quite different language: the statement “the essence of technology is nothing technological” is fundamentally untrue and a barrier to thought.11 Technology really does need to be understood through the collaboration of specialized forms of knowledge about what it actually is and does. The attempt to make philosophy a ruling “technology of essence” is retrograde: the technology of essence is nothing essential.
9
For what Marx could have no inkling of, given his times, is the way science itself would become not just a force of production, but in its own right a kind of industrial system, and one which works quite differently to the factory system. The factory system is based on quantified labor time, making standardized products. But what of those (non-)labor processes that make nonstandard things? New things? Or as Asger Jorn understood it: What about those who make not content but forms?15 To what class do they belong?
I was not the first to propose that we think of these people as belonging to another class, although I did attempt to come up with a contemporary-sounding name for them: the hacker class.16 JD Bernal, for example, had already come close in his theory of the scientific worker.17 But I did at least offer a thought about how the relations of production mutated to absorb them into the commodity system: the rise of intellectual property as a mutation in the private property form, that encloses the commons of information and spawns whole new categories of potential commodities.
For what Marx could have no inkling of, given his times, is the way science itself would become not just a force of production, but in its own right a kind of industrial system, and one which works quite differently to the factory system. The factory system is based on quantified labor time, making standardized products. But what of those (non-)labor processes that make nonstandard things? New things? Or as Asger Jorn understood it: What about those who make not content but forms?15 To what class do they belong?
I was not the first to propose that we think of these people as belonging to another class, although I did attempt to come up with a contemporary-sounding name for them: the hacker class.16 JD Bernal, for example, had already come close in his theory of the scientific worker.17 But I did at least offer a thought about how the relations of production mutated to absorb them into the commodity system: the rise of intellectual property as a mutation in the private property form, that encloses the commons of information and spawns whole new categories of potential commodities.
11
One task for general intellects might be to imagine a kind of common hacker class interest among those whose efforts end up being commodified as some sort of intellectual property: artists, scientists, engineers, even humanist and social science academics. We could imagine all of these as belonging to the same class from the point of view of the commodification of information. We all process information that is part of a complex natural-technical-social-cultural metabolism. But nearly all of us get to see a ruling class of a rather unprecedented kind extract most of the value from the combined efforts of hackers and workers worldwide. As general intellects, maybe we could stick our heads above our little cubicles, look around, and figure out how to cooperate with others who understand different parts of the labor process.
Marx did not have the intellectual tools to think about information as a regulator, and he was only just beginning to grasp how metabolic rifts were opening up due to commodified production’s disregard of its natural conditions of existence. Without input from those with more practical knowledge of those emerging developments, Marx allows his conceptual apparatus to overshoot the available data, and in the end to become a hostage to philosophizing. He constructs a false relation between a partially grasped totality and a future conceived via a merely abstract, formal, dialectical negation. He tries to do alone what only the cooperation of many kinds of general intellects could really do.
One task for general intellects might be to imagine a kind of common hacker class interest among those whose efforts end up being commodified as some sort of intellectual property: artists, scientists, engineers, even humanist and social science academics. We could imagine all of these as belonging to the same class from the point of view of the commodification of information. We all process information that is part of a complex natural-technical-social-cultural metabolism. But nearly all of us get to see a ruling class of a rather unprecedented kind extract most of the value from the combined efforts of hackers and workers worldwide. As general intellects, maybe we could stick our heads above our little cubicles, look around, and figure out how to cooperate with others who understand different parts of the labor process.
Marx did not have the intellectual tools to think about information as a regulator, and he was only just beginning to grasp how metabolic rifts were opening up due to commodified production’s disregard of its natural conditions of existence. Without input from those with more practical knowledge of those emerging developments, Marx allows his conceptual apparatus to overshoot the available data, and in the end to become a hostage to philosophizing. He constructs a false relation between a partially grasped totality and a future conceived via a merely abstract, formal, dialectical negation. He tries to do alone what only the cooperation of many kinds of general intellects could really do.
13
This is a point that needs insisting on in the tech-phobic world that is so much of the humanities and social sciences. There politics is the magic answer to all our problems. But not this actual politics whose dismal rituals we see all around us. Some other politics, a virtual politics that is a possibility latent in mere actual politics. For these general intellects, politics has this dual character, virtual and actual, but technology never does. Only the first part of Marx’s thinking on this is acknowledged—that science and tech, or today’s techno-science, is absorbed into capital and takes its form. That tech too is both virtual and actual, and could have other forms, is not up for discussion. General intellects might have to figure out together how all of the particular domains in which we work or which we study, from politics to culture to science to technology, are all at one and the same time part of the problem and part of any possible solution.
This is a point that needs insisting on in the tech-phobic world that is so much of the humanities and social sciences. There politics is the magic answer to all our problems. But not this actual politics whose dismal rituals we see all around us. Some other politics, a virtual politics that is a possibility latent in mere actual politics. For these general intellects, politics has this dual character, virtual and actual, but technology never does. Only the first part of Marx’s thinking on this is acknowledged—that science and tech, or today’s techno-science, is absorbed into capital and takes its form. That tech too is both virtual and actual, and could have other forms, is not up for discussion. General intellects might have to figure out together how all of the particular domains in which we work or which we study, from politics to culture to science to technology, are all at one and the same time part of the problem and part of any possible solution.
13
No kind of knowledge production, whether of science or culture or even philosophy, is exogenous to the commodity form any more. But neither is it as simple as saying that “invention becomes a business” (61). Rather, it became a new kind of business, which changed all the others. There is no eternal capital. It has no transhistorical essence. It mutates in both its particulars and its abstract forms. It can neither be negated from without, nor does merely accelerating it do anything other than open metabolic rifts. There can be no Promethean leap.
No kind of knowledge production, whether of science or culture or even philosophy, is exogenous to the commodity form any more. But neither is it as simple as saying that “invention becomes a business” (61). Rather, it became a new kind of business, which changed all the others. There is no eternal capital. It has no transhistorical essence. It mutates in both its particulars and its abstract forms. It can neither be negated from without, nor does merely accelerating it do anything other than open metabolic rifts. There can be no Promethean leap.
23
Borrowing from the energetic worldview, capital becomes an entropic system:
Capitalism is like a poorly designed steam engine that must be run at top speed, despite the fact that this speed contributes to a greater overall loss of heat. This increased overall heat can be neither transformed into productive work nor released in adequate quantities. Instead it threatens to blow up the engine itself. (91)
quoting amy wendling, karl marx on technology and alienation
Borrowing from the energetic worldview, capital becomes an entropic system:
Capitalism is like a poorly designed steam engine that must be run at top speed, despite the fact that this speed contributes to a greater overall loss of heat. This increased overall heat can be neither transformed into productive work nor released in adequate quantities. Instead it threatens to blow up the engine itself. (91)
quoting amy wendling, karl marx on technology and alienation
25
The “Fragment” distinguishes fixed and circulating capital, where fixed capital is embodied in a particular use value (machines) and circulating capital realizes its value in exchange (money). Like natural resources such as water and air, the general level of technology is something capital gets “free of charge” from the commons. But capital has interests in fettering tech and science, which can undermine as well as augment a given regime of accumulation.
Fixed capital replaces labor, raising productivity and profits, but capital is chasing its own tail, and as fixed capital grows, the rate of profit (supposedly) falls. Workers become obsolete. Pushing up profits is a matter of intensifying work or lengthening the working day. Capital’s problem—as Georges Bataille well knew—is not scarcity but abundance, or rather the attempt to maintain scarcity within abundance.17 Against this, Marx sketches only the faintest outline of communism as noninstrumentalist use value, a theme picked up in different ways by Bataille, Marcuse and Haraway, where use value becomes the gift or pleasure or situations.18
The “Fragment” distinguishes fixed and circulating capital, where fixed capital is embodied in a particular use value (machines) and circulating capital realizes its value in exchange (money). Like natural resources such as water and air, the general level of technology is something capital gets “free of charge” from the commons. But capital has interests in fettering tech and science, which can undermine as well as augment a given regime of accumulation.
Fixed capital replaces labor, raising productivity and profits, but capital is chasing its own tail, and as fixed capital grows, the rate of profit (supposedly) falls. Workers become obsolete. Pushing up profits is a matter of intensifying work or lengthening the working day. Capital’s problem—as Georges Bataille well knew—is not scarcity but abundance, or rather the attempt to maintain scarcity within abundance.17 Against this, Marx sketches only the faintest outline of communism as noninstrumentalist use value, a theme picked up in different ways by Bataille, Marcuse and Haraway, where use value becomes the gift or pleasure or situations.18
48
Karatani sees the stages of the world market system in terms of the key world commodity of each. Thus for mercantilism it is textiles, for liberalism it is light industry, for finance capitalism it is heavy industry, for state monopoly capitalism it is durable consumer goods, and for multinational capitalism it is information. Brown would call this neoliberalism, but that’s too benign a term for such an imperialistic world system. The current stage, despite appearances, is one of the weakness of the old hegemon, the United States, within the world system. It is an era of the expanded export of capital and corresponding cuts to redistributive justice by the states at the core of the old world system, as “state-capital was freed from egalitarian demands” (279).
Karatani sees the stages of the world market system in terms of the key world commodity of each. Thus for mercantilism it is textiles, for liberalism it is light industry, for finance capitalism it is heavy industry, for state monopoly capitalism it is durable consumer goods, and for multinational capitalism it is information. Brown would call this neoliberalism, but that’s too benign a term for such an imperialistic world system. The current stage, despite appearances, is one of the weakness of the old hegemon, the United States, within the world system. It is an era of the expanded export of capital and corresponding cuts to redistributive justice by the states at the core of the old world system, as “state-capital was freed from egalitarian demands” (279).