Remarx

Abstract

In this rejoinder, we respond to Vasilis Grollios's critical engagement with our essay “Rethinking Socialism: Community, Democracy, and Social Agency.” We defend the idea that rethinking the problem of subjectification is consistent with materialism and necessary for a Marxian politics of transition from capitalism.

Keywords:

• Marxism
• Materialism
• Capitalism
• Politics
• Subjectification

Notes

¹Grollios refers to the activity as “labor,” and this, we think, carries with it a certain fetishistic tendency. We are also reluctant to accept Grollios's reference to labor (or laboring) as “the most important of human relations” without philosophical qualifications. These points of difference are, of course, discussed further below.

²There are, of course, two dimensions to this project: one dimension theoretical, the other practical. The mutual constitution of these two dimensions rises to the level of an epistemic parameter in the Marxian tradition. Gramsci developed the term “praxis” precisely to refer to this mutual constitutivity, and, for us, the acceptable kernel of Grollios's own discussion of “dialectics” resides in the connection it has to this mutually constitutive relationship between theory and practice. Nevertheless, both Grollios's response and our rejoinder, in addition to our original essay, move almost entirely on the theoretical level. We are cognizant of the limitations this imposes on the conversation.

³See Étienne Balibar (1995) for a discussion of the evolution, and incompleteness, of Marx's project at the level of philosophy.

⁴This language, of course, is reminiscent of the way Marx himself portrayed the failure of certain other thinkers (e.g., Adam Smith) to see as “concepts” certain categories (such as labor-power and surplus-value) that nonetheless effectively functioned in their expositions. Althusser (and Balibar 1970) offers a powerful reminder of this methodological consciousness in Marx's approach to other thinkers (notably in the Theories of Surplus Value).

⁵And, of course, there is a further presumption here that these uncertainties would need to be closed—a presumption which, in fact, need not be accepted as final.

⁶It is perhaps not so odd that the absence of a full-fledged analysis of subjectification might have gone theoretically unnoticed for a long time since the very strength of Marx's analysis of the structure of capitalism was an effective source of strength and hope for workers’ movements in the first century of Marxism. However, it would be impossible to explain during that same century the meaning of, for example, a Gramsci, without alluding to the incompleteness of Marx's oeuvre when it came to a theory of politics. And it would be impossible, as the second century got under way, to explain the meaning of an E. P. Thompson, an Althusser, a Laclau, a Balibar, and a Negri, just to mention some key figures, without alluding to an incompleteness, too, when it comes to a theory of subjectification.

⁷The alternative (that of presuming for them their laboring or class identity) is exactly the theoretical alternative that would fail to make sense of an analysis of the construction of identity as a theoretical project in its own terms.

⁸Of course, this was not a project given to us in an impromptu way. It had matured over the course of our long engagement with Marxist theory. Our essay thus built on prior work—on commodity fetishism (Amariglio and Callari 1993), materialism (Callari and Ruccio 1996), and socialism (Ruccio 1992)—which, retrospectively (but, of course, not teleologically), prepared the conditions for our current stance.

⁹Other contributions to this project are included in the special issue on “The Common and the Forms of the Commune” in which our essay was originally published, as well as in the 2006 special issue of Rethinking Marxism, “Subjects of Economy.”