A Zizekian question to Marx

 

Marx, in his Preface to the Critique of Political Economy states the case that the standard course of economic development in a society consists in the development of the forces of production, be they land, capital, or labor etc. However with this ‘development’ we find that the relations of production no longer serve interests for the advancement of the forces of production. At this point, there may be a revolution that re-equilibrates the forces and the relations, forming new bonds better suited to the situation.

Were we to even entertain the hypothesis, perhaps drawing from countries where ‘real socialism’ was or is a phenomena such as Cuba or the early Soviet Union – there would be nothing that prevents industrial society to be similarly ossified when its forces of production are developed, to what we now recognize to be post-industrial society. Here, the relations of ‘real socialism’ or indeed of contemporary capitalism ie. any utopian mode which is afforded the phantasy of banking on its indefinite reproducibility, become barriers as it were to development.

Within the broad historical schema of class struggle, Zizek asks a very naïve yet called for - question: - are we not presuming a progressivist history by assuming that the forces of production will come to sublate or overcome the relations of production? Can it not also be the case that the relations of capitalist production function as a barrier to the development of the forces of production, hence impeding progress? Also, given these two contradictory possibilities, of the forces overcoming the relation or the relations impeding the forces - when can we say that the relations of production are in harmony with the forces of production?

 Strictly speaking, within capitalism this can never be the case, as the concept itself entails the contradiction between the social mode of production and the individual mode that is deprived of appropriation.

 The most material manifestation of this would be the reserve army of labor produced by industrial society, a correlate of the very process that utilizes the forces of production to appropriate an amassing share of surplus value. Which itself is required to be pushed higher in the following business cycle for this process to remain competitive in the market with rival companies.

 Indeed this is the difference which can be marked between capitalism and earlier modes of production in which what we have just described took the form of reproduction ‘in its normal ( or perhaps feudal) state’ hence assuming the form of a circular movement.

 The mutation as it were, the necessary mutation in the forces of production is perhaps why Marx declared that henceforth the history of all societies is the history of class struggle. It is also the necessary differential required in the C - M - C’ circuit, which when de-totalized or perhaps re-inscribed in terms of labor itself brings us to notice differentials in their forms of becoming and to deduce hypothesis for it. This necessity to revolutionize the conditions of production is what is the internal contradiction of capitalism, from molar coordinates such as layoffs, investments etc. to its minor manifestations such as schizophrenia which Deleuze and Guattari account for.

 The hypothesis that must be put forth is whether, we in our ascription to roles in the reproduction of capitalism, as the mode of production revolutionizes itself to generate surplus value, do not cast aside even the possibility of thinking an alternative role for ourselves. This ossification as it were is the unstated observation which supports Zizek’s question regarding the relations of production acting as an impediment to the forces, contra orthodox Marxism, and of course drawing from the historic experience of countries in the eastern bloc where the ossification of a militarized state bureaucracy often literally was used to liquidate dissent even within the Party.

 To be clear Zizek is not implying that Marx was not aware of this. He however does assert that he acts as though he is not, when he insists that when the forces of production are met with capitalist relations of reproduction, their stunting would necessitate the intervention of a socialist revolution that would re-equilibrate the forces and the relations. What is left out by such a representation, according to Zizek, is the paradox of surplus jouissance, or surplus enjoyment.