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ARTICLES

WANDERING ABSTRACTIONBy Ray Brassier 13 February 2014

Politics Communism Theory Continental Posthumanist

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Image Albrecht Durer Melencolia I 1514

Developing a presentation given at the Accelerationism symposium in Berlin December 2013 Ray Brassierdraws upon the divergent theories of accelerationism and communisation whose mutual illuminationexposes the problems of articulating cognitive abstraction and social practice

lsquoAccelerationismrsquo excites passionate condemnation and equally fervent affirmation1 Perhaps this is because whatis at stake in this lsquoMarxist heresyrsquo is our relation to the future is communism understood as lsquothe real movementwhich abolishes the present state of thingsrsquo2 Is the consummation of Enlightenment understood as humanityrsquosemancipation from its lsquoselfshyincurred tutelagersquo3 Or is communism rather the repudiation of an Enlightenmentmodernity that is nothing but an alibi for the despotism of capital The version of accelerationism recently proposedby Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams affirms the former by reasserting the Enlightenment ndash and classical Marxist ndashcompact between emancipation and rationality4 This new lsquorationalistrsquo accelerationism is intended as a corrective tothe vitalist proclivities of its postshystructuralist predecessors best epitomised by Deleuze amp Guattaris AntishyOedipusin which political agency was hitched to an Aeolian processes of deterritorialisation and emancipation was propelledby the metaphysics of desiringshyproduction5 Srnicek and Williamsrsquo attempt to decouple accelerationism from vitalistmetaphysics requires distinguishing between epistemic and political acceleration as indexes of conceptual andsocial abstraction respectively It is the conjunction of the latter pairing that their proposal seeks to articulate Thus

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the issue of abstraction and of its epistemic social and political valences turns out to be central to theirreformulation Of course Srnicek and Williamsrsquo suggestion that the feedback between social and conceptualabstraction might play a positive emancipatory role is controversial So how are we to understand the relationbetween these two registers of abstraction

From a Marxist perspective understanding the link between them or between knowledge and politics requires atheory of social abstraction More precisely the Marxist account of lsquoreal abstractionrsquo would provide the key requiredfor the strategic articulation of cognitive abstraction with social abstraction But if as Alfred SohnshyRethel maintainedthe latter asymmetrically determines the former then the reassertion of their symmetry will be summarily dismissedas idealist delusion6 By the same token the varieties of representational modeling that on Srnicek and Williamsrsquoaccount are supposed to yield cognitive traction on the abstract dynamics of capital will be disqualified in advanceby the claim that such representation is congenitally blind to its own social determination This demotion ofrepresentation follows from the bald claim that capitalrsquos real subsumption of intellectual labour reduces all scientificrepresentation to calculation aping the abstractions of the valueshyform But this in turn invites perplexity as to whatexactly distinguishes lsquogoodrsquo ie cognitively virtuous and politically emancipatory abstraction from lsquobadrsquo iecognitively deficient and politically reactionary abstraction7 How do the abstract categories of the Marxist dialectic ndashcapital labour valueshyform commodity circulation production etc ndash succeed or fail to map contemporary socialreality when deployed in competing (and often politically antagonistic) explanations What theory is fit to recogniselsquothe real movement abolishing the present state of thingsrsquo in conditions of real subsumption I want to broach this question by contrasting accelerationismrsquos attempt at tracking the lsquoreal movementrsquo with that ofJacques Camatte whose text The Wandering of Humanity is not only contemporaneous with those of classicalaccelerationism but shares their central premise ndash labourrsquos complete integration into capital ndash while drawing aradically different conclusion8 Capitalrsquos lsquodomesticationrsquo of humanity is to be countered not through the Nietzscheanovercoming of the lsquoall too humanrsquo (the unleashing of desiringshyproduction etc) but through the human communityrsquoscomplete exit from the lsquocommunity of capitalrsquo enforced under real subsumption9 Camattersquos analyses in many waysprefigure those of contemporary proponents of communisation The group Endnotes define communisation as lsquothedirect destruction of the selfshyreproducing relation in which workers as workers ndash and capital as selfshyvalorising valuendash are and come to bersquo10 But as we shall see Endnotes reject Camattersquos account of the logic of subsumption aswell as his claim that human communities can withdraw from capitalrsquos selfshyreproducing relation They argue (rightlyin my view) that there can be no exit from the capital relation because it constitutes us lsquoWhat we are is at thedeepest level constituted by this relation and it is a rupture with the reproduction of what we are that willnecessarily form the horizon of our strugglesrsquo11 Thus there can be no secession from the capital relation only itsabolition Communisation is the name for this abolitionshyinshyprocess This is a lucid and compelling thesis But it is the

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exact sense in which we are constituted by the capital relation as well as the link between the cognitive andpractical conditions for its abolition that I would like to examine below The rationale for doing so is the followingalthough radically antagonistic communisation and accelerationism can be usefully contrasted in such a way thateach illuminates the otherrsquos blindspot in the articulation of cognitive and social abstraction Materialising Abstraction First a preliminary clarification is necessary The opposition between the abstract and the concrete is closelyconnected to the opposition between the universal and the particular12 These pairs of opposites form a logical gridwhich allows of four basic permutations concrete particular and concrete universal abstract particular and abstractuniversal Only the conjunctions of abstractshyconcrete and universalshyparticular are ruled out as contradictory Buteven this is controversial since Marx speaks of lsquoconcrete abstractionsrsquo while Alain Badiou has popularised thenotion of a lsquouniversal singularityrsquo Moreover many philosophers follow Hegel in defining the lsquoconcretersquo as that whichis relationally embedded in contradistinction to the lsquoabstractrsquo which is isolated or oneshysided In what follows theterms lsquoconcretersquo and lsquoabstractrsquo do not designate types of entity such as the perceptible and the imperceptible or thematerial and immaterial They are used to characterise the ways in which thinking relates to entities As Hegelshowed what seems most concrete particularity or sensible immediacy is precisely what is most abstract andwhat seems most abstract universality or conceptual mediation turns out to be most concrete13 A materialism committed to the reality of abstraction as Marxism is must be able to account for thisinterpenetration of the abstract and the concrete without lapsing into idealism for which such interpenetration is preshyordained because reality is ultimately endowed with conceptual structure The challenge for materialism is toacknowledge the reality of abstraction without conceding to idealism that reality possesses irreducible conceptualform Thus materialism must be able to explain what constitutes the reality of conceptually formed abstractionwithout hypostatising that form The key to the deshyreification of abstraction is an account of conceptual form asgenerated by social practices This requires distinguishing between practice and labour all labour involves practicebut not every practice counts as labour This distinction will turn out to be significant when we consider Endnotesrsquoaccount of the relation between labour and capital Camattersquos Exit Thesis Camatte was a close associate of Amadeo Bordiga (coshyfounder of the Italian Communist Party) and a member ofthe International Communist Party In the early 1970s disenchanted with communist lsquoprogrammatismrsquo he set out aninternal critique of Marxrsquos lsquoproductivismrsquo Marxism argues Camatte is lsquothe authentic consciousness of the capitalistmode of productionrsquo14 But the onset of real subsumption reduces Marxrsquos work to lsquohistorical materialismrsquo which is

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[T]he glorification of the wandering in which humanity has been engaged for more than a century [the]growth of productive forces as condition sine qua non for liberation But by definition all quantitative growthtakes place in the sphere of the indefinite the false infinite Who will measure the lsquosizersquo of the productiveforces to determine whether or not the great day has come For Marx there was a double and contradictorymovement growth of productive forces and immiseration of proletarians this was to lead to a revolutionarycollision Put differently there was a contradiction between the socialization of production and privateappropriation15

The trouble is that the contradictory movement has failed to issue in the longed for revolutionary crisis the momentof collision between capital and labour appears to have been indefinitely postponed What has averted the crisis iscapitalrsquos lsquorunshyawayrsquo the fact that lsquoit has absorbed the crises and it has successfully provided a social reserve forproletariansrsquo16 Capitalrsquos runshyaway development is secured by the onset of its lsquoreal subsumptionrsquo of labour What isreal subsumption Marx defines lsquoformal subsumptionrsquo as the process in which capital integrates an existing labourprocess techniques markets means of production workers etc But the development of capital inexorablytransforms social relations and modes of labour in accordance with its own requirements The real subsumption ofthe labour process occurs once every aspect of the latter has been subordinated to capitalist production whose endis simply the selfshyvalorisation of value For Camatte as for many other Marxists this is the situation we findourselves in Writing in the early 1970s Camatte traces its inception to the end of the Second World War (we willconsider below Endnotesrsquo critique of Camattersquos use of subsumption as a tool of periodisation) Once capital haswholly subsumed labour Camatte writes

Development in the context of wandering is development in the context of mystification Marx consideredmystification the result of a reversed relation capital the product of workersrsquo activity appears to be thecreator [But] the mystification is rooted in real events it is reality in process that mystifies Something ismystified even through a struggle of the proletariat against capital the generalized mystification is thetriumph of capital But if as a consequence of its anthropomorphization this reality produced by mystificationis now the sole reality then the question has to be put differently 1) Since the mystification is stable and realthere is no point in waiting for a demystification which would only expose the truth of the previous situation[ie the condition of formal subsumption] 2) Because of capitalrsquos runshyaway the mystification appears asreality and thus the mystification is engulfed and rendered inoperative We have the despotism of capital17

The process of valorisation subordinates workerrsquos activity to the activity of capital The despotism of realsubsumption renders ideology critique redundant (here Camatte arrives via a different route at the same conclusionas his accelerationist contemporaries Deleuze amp Guattari Lyotard and Baudrillard) He continues

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The assertion that the mystification is still operative would mean that human beings are able to engage inreal relations and are continually mystified In fact the mystification was operative once and became realityIt refers to a historical stage completed in the past [hellip] Both the mystifyingshymystified reality and as well as thepreviously mystified reality have to be destroyed The mystification is only lsquovisiblersquo if one breaks (withoutillusions about the limitations of this break) with the representations of capital18

Having installed mystification in place of reality capitalism now constitutes itself as a lsquomaterial communityrsquo bybecoming its own representation Camattersquos reasoning is frustratingly allusive here but it can be tentativelyreconstructed Under real subsumption everything produced by human beings whether manually or intellectually ismediated by the valueshyform and hence represented as abstractly equivalent to everything else Value as generalequivalent reduces everything to the value it represents and converts everything into a representation of value Inso doing capital represents itself as the relation through which each thing (ie commodity) is represented in itsrelation to every other thing All labour is reduced to capitalrsquos own abstract selfshyvalorisation

Capitalism becomes representation through the following historical movement exchange value becomesautonomous human beings are expropriated human activity is reduced to labour and labour is reduced toabstract labour [hellip] Capital reconstructs the human being as a function of its processhellip[Thus] all humanactivity lsquoeternalizesrsquo capital19

Camatte then envisages three possible outcomes for the capitalist mode of production

[1] [The] complete autonomy of capital a mechanistic utopia where human beings become simpleaccessories of an automated system though still retaining an executive role[2] [The] mutation of the human being or rather a change of the species [the] production of a perfectlyprogrammable being which has lost all the characteristics of the species homo sapiens [these characteristicsbeing in Camattersquos account the capacities of lsquocreators producers usersrsquo rather than mere labourers][3] Generalized lunacy in the place of human beings and on the basis of their present limitations capitalrealizes everything they desire (normal or abnormal) but human beings cannot find themselves andenjoyment continually lies in the future The human being is carried off in the runshyaway of capital and keepsit going

The upshot of this diagnosis is the claim that the classical Marxist project of unfettering the forces of productionfrom capitalist relations of production is nothing but the selfshyconsciousness (ie the mystificatory selfshyrepresentation)of the capitalist mode of production Because it failed to foresee the lsquorunshyawayrsquo of capital Marxism remains complicitin capitalrsquos own selfshyvalorisation it lacks the critical resources required to effect a definitive break with capitalism

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and all its works Thus Camatte rejects the primacy of production and the concomitant definition of communism asthe lsquofree association of producersrsquo

Communism is not a new mode of production it is the affirmation of a new community [Gemeinwesen] It is aquestion of being of life if only because there is a fundamental displacement from generated activity to theliving being who produced it Until now men and women have been alienated by this production They will notgain mastery over production but will create new relations among themselves which will determine anentirely different activity20

While society subordinates generating life to generated activity community reshyestablishes the primacy of generatingover generated Shorn of the mystifications of productivism revolution is simply the overturning of this invertedhierarchy Through this overturning communismrsquos lsquoreal movementrsquo constitutes a new form of life It is inauguratedby a new human community that breaks with existing social structures thereby facilitating different if notunprecedented modes of expressive activity There is a straightforward rejoinder to Camattersquos account his appeal to a human community whose basicexpressive modalities remain constant across millennia of social and historical transformation is an abstraction inthe most problematic sense Camatte hypostatises a set of human expressive capacities that persist not onlyindependently of capitalism but of every form of social organisation lsquocreatingrsquo lsquoproducingrsquo and lsquousingrsquo arepostulated as invariants of human life as such But attributing these capacities to lsquolifersquo renders them indeterminatethey are no longer socioshyhistorical or even biological categories but postulates of a speculative anthropologyMoreover the affirmation of community over society unwittingly echoes a familiar reactionary trope whilecommunity ensures that social roles values and beliefs remain firmly rooted in interpersonal relations societyjeopardises these by instituting impersonal roles formal values and objective beliefs on the basis of indirectinteractions Here Camattersquos denunciation of the despotism of capital shades into a repudiation of modernity whichbecomes a cipher for humanityrsquos wandering away from its authentic communality However on a planet of seven billion people the mediation of the interpersonal by the impersonal is not justunavoidable but indispensable Tethering collectivity to community obstructs the need for a maximally expansivehuman solidarity The inclusiveness of the lsquowersquo requires some measure of depersonalisation Impersonalityimpartiality and objectivity are not necessarily pathologies of social alienation they can be (and have been) positiveresources for expanding the horizons of socialisation beyond parochial communitarian limits It is precisely genericidentification with what Marx called lsquospecies beingrsquo understood not as a biological category but as the capacity forcollective selfshytransformation (beyond selfshyreproduction) that staves off the divisive identifications of individualityethnicity nationality etc21 Communism in Marxrsquos sense is the materialisation of what would otherwise remain anabstract ideal of humanity Because it is not anchored in any historical mode of production the community invoked

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by Camatte becomes an Archimedean point from which humanity has supposedly been wandering For Camattethe onset of real subsumption seems to mark the terminal phase of humanityrsquos fateful selfshyestrangement But thereis reason to doubt whether the distinction between formal and real subsumption can be used to characterise distinctsuccessive phases of capitalismrsquos historical development Viewed analytically rather than historically it seems thatformal and real subsumption are simultaneous intertwined aspects of the capital relation Moreover Camattersquosinsistence that capital has now achieved complete dominion not just over the sphere of production but over everyaspect of social existence is equally contentious This is a point forcefully made by Endnotes

The labour process in both real and formal subsumption is the immediate production process of capitalNothing comparable can be said of anything beyond the production process for it is only production whichcapital directly claims as its own While it is true that the valorisation process of capital in its entirety is theunity of the processes of production and circulation and whilst capital brings about transformations to theworld beyond its immediate production process these transformations by definition cannot be grasped in thesame terms as those which occur within that process under real subsumption Nothing external to theimmediate production process actually becomes capital nor strictly speaking is subsumed under capital22

Thus while giving credit to Camatte for having grasped lsquothe ontological inversion the possession of material life bythe spirit of capitalrsquo23 Endnotes see in his account of total subsumption lsquothe logic which would propel [him] towardsa politics involving little more than the abstract assertion of some true human community against a monolithiccapitalist totality and of the need to ldquoleave this worldrdquorsquo24 Yet although concurring with Camatte that lsquovalue andcapital constitute a forceful totalising form of socialisation that shapes every aspect of lifersquo and acknowledging thatlsquoovercoming [value and capital] demands a radical transformation of every sphere of lifersquo25 Endnotes alsorecognise that Camattersquos lsquoundomesticatedrsquo humanity existing outside the capitalist social relation is the corollary ofan ideal rather than the motor of a real movement The question then is given the lsquoontological inversionrsquo throughwhich lsquomaterial lifersquo itself is now lsquoanimatedrsquo by capital who or what are the agents of communisation The Paradox of SelfshyAbolition Endnotes firmly repudiate the notion that communisation consists in an immediate secession from the capitalrelation They formulate what is perhaps the most cogent objection to the lsquoexit thesisrsquo It is addressed not only toCamatte but to groups like Tiqqun and The Invisible Committee

Instead of theoretical reckoning with the concrete totality that must be overcome in all its determinations or areconstruction of the real horizon of the class relation we get a sundering of the totality into two basicabstractions [ie capitalist society and the human community] and a simple set of exhortations and practical

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prescriptions whose real theoretical function is to bring these abstractions into relation once more26 It is the very abstractness of humanityrsquos notional exit from capital that unwittingly guarantees its continuingsubsumption by capital This is the fundamental problem For Endnotes the fact that the dialectical antagonismbetween capital and labour has failed to issue in the revolutionary overthrow of capitalist relations of production isnot just an unfortunate contingency the result of missed opportunities It is an inevitable consequence of the logic ofcapital accumulation

As it accumulates capital both exploits tendentially fewer workers expelling labourshypower from production(both relatively and ultimately absolutely) and it attempts to raise the rate of exploitation among the relativelydiminished work force27

Thus capitalrsquos accumulation of an evershygrowing surplus value is accompanied by an evershygrowing lsquosurpluspopulationrsquo excluded from the process of production The proletariat becomes lsquothat which is produced by capitalwithout producing capitalrsquo28 The result is the disintegration of the proletariatrsquos selfshyidentification as producers ofcapital It becomes impossible for the working class to affirm itself as such in its antagonism with capital29 This iswhy communisation can no longer be conceived as the end result of the workersrsquo revolutionary seizure of themeans of production It must be reconceived as an intransitive process an immanent movement which consists indestroying the relation through which capital reproduces labour while labour reproduces capital30 Thus Endnotes define communisation as an attempt to respond to the following question

How will the overcoming of the capitalist class relation take place given that it is impossible for the proletariatto affirm itself as a class yet we are still faced with the problem of this relation31

Their answer to this question sets out what is perhaps the most sophisticated formulation of the communisationthesis and deserves quoting at length

Communization is a movement at the level of totality through which that totality is abolished The logic of themovement that abolishes this totality necessarily differs from that which applies at the level of the concreteindividual or group it should go without saying that no individual or group can overcome the reproduction ofthe capitalist class relation through their own actions The determination of an individual act as lsquocommunizingrsquoflows only from the overall movement of which it is part not from the act itself and it would therefore bewrong to think of the revolution in terms of the sum of alreadyshycommunizing acts as if all that was needed

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was a certain accumulation of such acts to a critical point [hellip] Communization occurs only at the limit of astruggle in the rift that opens as this struggle meets its limit and is pushed beyond it [hellip] [I]n any actualsupersession of the capitalist class relation we ourselves must be overcome lsquowersquo have no lsquopositionrsquo apartfrom the capitalist class relation What we are is at the deepest level constituted by this relation and it is arupture with the reproduction of what we are that will necessarily form the horizon of our struggles [hellip] In thisperiod the lsquowersquo of revolution does not affirm itself does not identify itself positively because it cannot itcannot assert itself against the lsquotheyrsquo of capital without being confronted by the problem of its own existencendash an existence which it will be the nature of the revolution to overcome There is nothing to affirm in thecapitalist class relation no autonomy no alternative no outside no secession32

This is a remarkable passage Since the lsquowersquo is constituted by the class relation the selfshyovercoming of the lsquowersquo isthe overcoming of the relation that constitutes it This is certainly theoretically uncompromising (and admirablebecause of it) But it is also paradoxical and its paradoxical character exacerbates its status as a claim thatarticulates conceptual and social abstraction at an ontological level The paradox is the following if lsquowersquo areconstituted by the class relation that we have to supersede then the supersession of this relation is also theovercoming of the agent of the supersession and therefore the cancelling of the supersession and the reshyinstatement of the lsquowersquo Since lsquowersquo have no position apart from the class relation lsquowersquo are nothing outside of it Butthen the moment of the abolition of this relation is also that of the abolition of its abolition Can revolutionary agencyndash which is supposed to track lsquothe real movement abolishing the present state of thingsrsquo ndash really be constructed onthe basis of such an apparently disabling paradox If the answer is affirmative we need to clarify the precise sensein which Endnotesrsquo articulation of conceptual and social abstraction has an ontological purchase33 The articulation is ontological because the abstractions of capitalism are real in subsuming labour the valueshyformlogicises the social practices through which human beings reproduce themselves and capital

That which on one level is merely contingent relative to the logic of capital accumulation ndash the material andspiritual interactions betweens humans and between humans and nature ndash is itself logicised ndash ie broughtunder the logic of the capitalshyform of value ndash as a result of the subsumption of labour under capital and ofthe selfshyreproduction of the relation of reciprocal implication between capital and proletariat34

This logicisation of social reality explains why there can be a contradiction between what human beings think anddo in relating to themselves or what they think and do in reproducing capital But this logicisation by the valueshyformis not absolute it applies to human activities and practices only insofar as they constitute labour These activitiesand practices persist within the capital relation as phenomena that it has incorporated but not wholly absorbedThey are not wholly absorbed because they constitute the process through which capital absorbs labour Capitalrsquosselfshyreproduction is constituted by phenomena that it cannot reproduce even as it reproduces the labour which in

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turn reproduces it Thus capitalrsquos logicisation of reality is itself conditioned by that reality this is the bulwark againstabsolute idealism which would hypostatise capital as a wholly autonomous selfshymoving subject (a causa sui orselfshycausing being) floating free of material reality altogether

Without human relations and practices which subsist in the lsquomode of being deniedrsquo through the pervertedfetishistic form of economic categories there could be no economic categories no value no commoditiesmoney or capital This does not mean however that labour should be understood as somehow constitutiveof the entire process nor should it be understood as primary The fetishshyforms of capital are properlyunderstood and criticised as selfshymoving perverted forms of social practice35

Thus lsquocapital is nothing other than a perverted form of human social relationsrsquo36 But it is lsquohuman relations andpracticesrsquo rather than labour which generate the real abstractions of capital From the perspective of the systematicdialectic espoused by Endnotes labour is always already inscribed within the valueshyform as its lsquopositedpresuppositionrsquo37 While capital posits the labour that provides its substance (ie its presupposition) this positingitself is ultimately constituted through the extraordinarily complex set of human practices without which capitalrsquos selfshyvalorisation could not be Valuersquos subsumption of labour as lsquoposited presuppositionrsquo also presupposes somethingthat it does not posit spontaneous human activity As Endnotes themselves make clear the spontaneity invokedhere should be understood in the Kantian sense as the determination of sensation exercised by the human mind inthe act of thinking Kant attributed this spontaneity to what he called lsquopure apperceptionrsquo

In the eighteenth century when Kant described the transcendental unity of apperception ndash the fact that I amaware of myself as having my own experiences ndash he called this a spontaneous act Kant meant the oppositeof something natural A spontaneous act is one that is freely undertaken In fact the word spontaneousderives from the Latin sponte meaning lsquoof onersquos own accord freely willinglyrsquo In this sense spontaneity isnot about acting compulsively or automatically It is a matter of acting without external constraint38

Spontaneity in Kantrsquos transcendental as opposed to empirical sense is the ultimate source of human freedom Itseems plausible to suggest that Endnotes need recourse to freedom in this transcendental sense in order to staveoff the paradox of selfshyabolition by grounding the possibility of human agency in a source that is independent of theclass relation As the ultimate wellspring of human activity this transcendental (as opposed to empirical)spontaneity may be construed as what constitutes the class relation independently of the class relationrsquosconstitution of the lsquowersquo The paradox is then defused because the agent of the abolition is distinct from theabolished agent But in opposing spontaneity to compulsion Endnotes risk resuscitating a transcendentalvoluntarism in which the human will functions as a mysterious not to say supernatural unmoved moverimpervious to external determination This is the familiar and much pilloried caricature of Kant There is a better

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more dialectical reading of him which understands the freedom exercised in the spontaneity of apperception asresulting from the willrsquos embrace of an intersubjectively instituted rule rather than a wholly unshydetermined eruptionex nihilo Freedom in this sense is not simply the absence of external determination but the agentrsquos rational selfshydetermination in and through its espousal of a universally applicable rule39 In this regard nominalism can be deployed as a weapon of materialist analysis that demystifies the idealisthypostatisation of abstraction In Wilfrid Sellarsrsquo metalinguistic version of nominalism which is perhaps the mostsophisticated elaboration of the thesis yet devised reference to abstract entities is explained as material modemetalinguistic discourse about linguistic functioning while this functioning is in turn identified with patterns oflinguistic tokenings40 What is especially valuable about Sellarsrsquo analysis from a materialist viewpoint is that it treatsabstract entities as hypostatised linguistic functions It shows how conceptual form is anchored in linguistic functionand grounds linguistic function in social practice Of course Sellarsrsquo account stops short of explaining the nature ofthe linkage between linguistic function and social practice He has no theory of the latter But his work has the signalmerit of telling us what abstract entities really are This is an important step towards explaining how capitalrsquosapparently selfshymoving abstractions are in fact motored by the activities and practices of human beings The Impossible Relation But while it is one thing to reveal that the reality of abstraction is rooted in human practice it is another thing toexplain how and which practice can be deployed to release us from the grip of the abstractions to which it hassubjected us Even if one grants that the abstractions of capital are generated through human practices how arethese practices supposed to constitute a communising agency Endnotes propose an answer of sorts in anotherremarkable passage that delves deeper still in its attempt to define the relation between communist theory andcapitalist reality

Communist theory sets out not from the false position of some voluntarist subject but from the positedsupersession of the totality of forms which are implicated in the reproduction of this subject As merelyposited this supersession is necessarily abstract but it is only through this basic abstraction that theorytakes as its content the determinate forms which are to be superseded forms which stand out in theirdeterminacy precisely because their dissolution has been posited41

These lsquodeterminate formsrsquo are the real abstractions of capitalism the commodityshyform the moneyshyform the valueshyform the labourshyform the productionshyform etc The passage continues

This positing is not only a matter of methodology or some kind of necessary postulate of reason for the

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supersession of the capitalist class relation is not a mere theoretical construct

It is not a lsquomere theoretical constructrsquo but nor is it some objective or lsquogivenrsquo datum for it is something towards whichtheory orients itself rather than something it statically contemplates Thus this posited supersession is somethingthat

[R]uns ahead of thought being posited incessantly by this [capitalist class] relation itself it is its very horizonas an antagonism the real negative presence which it [communist theory] bears Communist theory isproduced by ndash and necessarily thinks within ndash this antagonistic relation it is thought of the class relation andit grasps itself as such It attempts to conceptually reconstruct the totality which is its ground in the light ofthe alreadyshyposited supersession of this totality and to draw out the supersession as it presents itself hereSince it is a relation which has no ideal lsquohomeostaticrsquo state but one which is always beyond itself with capitalfacing the problem of labour at every turn ndash even in its victories ndash the adequate thought of this relation is notof some equilibrium state or some smoothly selfshypositing totality it is of a fundamentally impossible relationsomething that is only insofar as it is ceasing to be an internally unstable antagonistic relation Communisttheory thus has no need of an external Archimedean point from which to take the measure of its object andcommunization has no need of a transcendent standpoint of lsquowithdrawalrsquo or lsquosecessionrsquo from which to launchits lsquoattackrsquo42

Endnotesrsquo various writings certainly provide an eminently plausible conceptual reconstruction of the totality which isthe ground of the class relation and hence of communist theorising And it is clear from their analyses of capitalrsquoslsquomoving contradictionrsquo how this relation is selfshyundermining lsquothe relation of exploitation corrodes its own foundationas that which is exploited ndash labourshypower ndash is tendentially expelled from the production process with thedevelopment of the productivity of social labourrsquo43 Thus the thought that is lsquoadequatersquo to the class relation (ie therelation of exploitation) is the thought of a lsquofundamentally impossible relationrsquo which is lsquoonly insofar as it is ceasingto bersquo That only the thought of an impossible relation can render theory adequate to its object is the index of the torsionthat is supposed to bind theoretical abstraction to the reality of social abstraction independently of therepresentational recourse to an objective correspondence relation (which would require lsquoan external Archimedeanpoint from which to take the measure of its objectrsquo) No doubt this impossible relation is supposed to markcommunist theoryrsquos immanence to revolutionary practice any subordination of practice to theory (or vice versa)would threaten to reintroduce the transcendence of an external Archimedean point which is to say arepresentation But it seems that what prevents communist theoryrsquos adequation to the class relation from fissioninginto a relation to this impossible relation which is to say a theoretical representation of reality and ultimately aprogram is its immediate consummation as selfshyproclaimed revolutionary activity an activity that guarantees its

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own traction upon the capitalist class relation simply by engaging in the struggle to destroy it There is a laudableconsistency here By taking the lsquoposited supersessionrsquo of the capitalist totality as its starting point communisttheorising secures its traction upon the antagonism constitutive of social reality But the danger remains that thisposited supersession of totality will substitute for its actual supersession not in spite of but precisely because itrefuses its theoretical construction Repurposing and Social Form By abjuring such construction as a representational intrusion compromising thoughtrsquos adequation to the classrelation communist theory secures its grip on the lsquoreal movementrsquo which communism is but at the risk of elidingreal movement with the movement of ideas Thus as Endnotes themselves make clear

Communization [hellip] has little positive advice to give us about particular immediate practice in the here andnow [hellip] What advice it can give is primarily negative the social forms implicated in the reproduction of thecapitalist class relation will not be instruments of the revolution since they are part of that which is to beabolished44

The question then is how are we to identify those social forms that are not implicated in the reproduction of theclass relation The distinction between compulsive labour and spontaneous practice is required not only to stave offthe paradox of selfshycancellation but also to distinguish between those activities programmed to reproduce the classrelation and those capable of interrupting this reproduction But the spontaneity whose exercise is the prerequisitefor the destruction of the class relation will also generate new abstractions together with new forms of mediationWhat is required is an understanding of social practices that would allow us to begin distinguishing betweenoppressive and emancipatory forms of mediation This is what we currently lack In the meantime must we abjure every existing instrument technique or methodenveloped by capitalist social forms No doubt it is relatively easy to identify those modes of contemporaryinformation technology whose stupefying antishysocial consequences render worthy of abolition But there are othertechnologies that are perhaps not so easily abolished Consider antivirals Every aspect of their development isimplicated in capitalist institutions and enveloped by its social forms Does this mean antivirals are intrinsicallycapitalist and hence ought to play no role in a postshycapitalist society A negative response recommends itself herewhile technological function is socially mediated and enveloped by the value form this need not be a saturatedmediation it need not exhaust the functional potentialities of the technology in question Some might retort that talkof repurposing is a distraction at best an alibi for reformism at worst because the development of antivirals (likeevery other contemporary technology) is necessarily linked to that of capitalist social relations the proliferation of

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lethal viruses being a direct consequence of industrialised livestock production and globalisation45 Were it not forthese two factors the objection goes we would not be so susceptible to increasing varieties of pathogens andhuman welfare would not be mortgaged to the development of antivirals The dismantling of capitalism according tothis line of argument would radically diminish if not wholly eliminate our increasing dependence on antivirals as wellas other technological artefacts Now it is undoubtedly true that there is a direct correlation between the proliferation of lifeshythreatening viruses andthe conditions of globalised capitalist society It may also be true that dismantling the latter is the surest means oferadicating the former And there is no doubt that the redistribution of antivirals on the basis of need rather thanwealth is a more pressing political concern than speculating on their role in postshycapitalist society Nevertheless theurgency of the former does not obviate the importance of the latter The absolute or indeterminate negation ofcapitalist society and all its works would eradicate the pathologies generated by capitalism only at the cost ofcancelling the emancipatory potentials latent in technologies whose functioning is currently subordinated to capitalThe abstract negation of functional context is also the negation of emancipatory possibilities whose releasedepends upon the reshycontextualisation of function Such abstraction inshydetermines instead of determining the fusionof cognitive and practical orientation required for the realisation of communism It abolishes the capitalist present atthe cost of cancelling the postshycapitalist future locked up within it Foreclosing the future blinkered negation cannotbut wish to reshyinstate the past It becomes the longing for a previous state of things lsquoIf only we hadnrsquot domesticatedanimals and started down the road to industrialised agriculture if only we didnrsquot live in a massively interconnectedglobal societyhelliprsquo And ultimately lsquoIf only capitalism hadnrsquot happenedrsquo But Marxrsquos starting point is the acknowledgement that capitalism has happened and given this premise hisfundamental question is how can we move beyond capitalism without regressing to preshycapitalist social formationssuch as agrarian feudalism The problem of repurposing cannot be circumvented by wishing capitalism had neverhappened History suggests that there are things worse than the value form A suitably abstract conception offunction will allow for its transplantation and where necessary repurposing across social contexts It goes withoutsaying that this should only be envisaged as a consequence of overcoming the capital relation not a substitute forthis overcoming More generally determination is not constitution We have to find a way to articulate theoreticaland social abstraction that does not involve the complete or indiscriminate relinquishment of the achievements ofcapitalist modernity en bloc Conclusion The issue of the realisation of function is crucial for clarifying the relation between conceptual and real abstractionCommunisation shortshycircuits conceptual abstraction and social abstraction in an insurrectionary praxis whosefixation on totality prevents it from formulating criteria for distinguishing between progressive and regressive social

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and all its works Thus Camatte rejects the primacy of production and the concomitant definition of communism asthe lsquofree association of producersrsquo

Communism is not a new mode of production it is the affirmation of a new community [Gemeinwesen] It is aquestion of being of life if only because there is a fundamental displacement from generated activity to theliving being who produced it Until now men and women have been alienated by this production They will notgain mastery over production but will create new relations among themselves which will determine anentirely different activity20

While society subordinates generating life to generated activity community reshyestablishes the primacy of generatingover generated Shorn of the mystifications of productivism revolution is simply the overturning of this invertedhierarchy Through this overturning communismrsquos lsquoreal movementrsquo constitutes a new form of life It is inauguratedby a new human community that breaks with existing social structures thereby facilitating different if notunprecedented modes of expressive activity There is a straightforward rejoinder to Camattersquos account his appeal to a human community whose basicexpressive modalities remain constant across millennia of social and historical transformation is an abstraction inthe most problematic sense Camatte hypostatises a set of human expressive capacities that persist not onlyindependently of capitalism but of every form of social organisation lsquocreatingrsquo lsquoproducingrsquo and lsquousingrsquo arepostulated as invariants of human life as such But attributing these capacities to lsquolifersquo renders them indeterminatethey are no longer socioshyhistorical or even biological categories but postulates of a speculative anthropologyMoreover the affirmation of community over society unwittingly echoes a familiar reactionary trope whilecommunity ensures that social roles values and beliefs remain firmly rooted in interpersonal relations societyjeopardises these by instituting impersonal roles formal values and objective beliefs on the basis of indirectinteractions Here Camattersquos denunciation of the despotism of capital shades into a repudiation of modernity whichbecomes a cipher for humanityrsquos wandering away from its authentic communality However on a planet of seven billion people the mediation of the interpersonal by the impersonal is not justunavoidable but indispensable Tethering collectivity to community obstructs the need for a maximally expansivehuman solidarity The inclusiveness of the lsquowersquo requires some measure of depersonalisation Impersonalityimpartiality and objectivity are not necessarily pathologies of social alienation they can be (and have been) positiveresources for expanding the horizons of socialisation beyond parochial communitarian limits It is precisely genericidentification with what Marx called lsquospecies beingrsquo understood not as a biological category but as the capacity forcollective selfshytransformation (beyond selfshyreproduction) that staves off the divisive identifications of individualityethnicity nationality etc21 Communism in Marxrsquos sense is the materialisation of what would otherwise remain anabstract ideal of humanity Because it is not anchored in any historical mode of production the community invoked

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by Camatte becomes an Archimedean point from which humanity has supposedly been wandering For Camattethe onset of real subsumption seems to mark the terminal phase of humanityrsquos fateful selfshyestrangement But thereis reason to doubt whether the distinction between formal and real subsumption can be used to characterise distinctsuccessive phases of capitalismrsquos historical development Viewed analytically rather than historically it seems thatformal and real subsumption are simultaneous intertwined aspects of the capital relation Moreover Camattersquosinsistence that capital has now achieved complete dominion not just over the sphere of production but over everyaspect of social existence is equally contentious This is a point forcefully made by Endnotes

The labour process in both real and formal subsumption is the immediate production process of capitalNothing comparable can be said of anything beyond the production process for it is only production whichcapital directly claims as its own While it is true that the valorisation process of capital in its entirety is theunity of the processes of production and circulation and whilst capital brings about transformations to theworld beyond its immediate production process these transformations by definition cannot be grasped in thesame terms as those which occur within that process under real subsumption Nothing external to theimmediate production process actually becomes capital nor strictly speaking is subsumed under capital22

Thus while giving credit to Camatte for having grasped lsquothe ontological inversion the possession of material life bythe spirit of capitalrsquo23 Endnotes see in his account of total subsumption lsquothe logic which would propel [him] towardsa politics involving little more than the abstract assertion of some true human community against a monolithiccapitalist totality and of the need to ldquoleave this worldrdquorsquo24 Yet although concurring with Camatte that lsquovalue andcapital constitute a forceful totalising form of socialisation that shapes every aspect of lifersquo and acknowledging thatlsquoovercoming [value and capital] demands a radical transformation of every sphere of lifersquo25 Endnotes alsorecognise that Camattersquos lsquoundomesticatedrsquo humanity existing outside the capitalist social relation is the corollary ofan ideal rather than the motor of a real movement The question then is given the lsquoontological inversionrsquo throughwhich lsquomaterial lifersquo itself is now lsquoanimatedrsquo by capital who or what are the agents of communisation The Paradox of SelfshyAbolition Endnotes firmly repudiate the notion that communisation consists in an immediate secession from the capitalrelation They formulate what is perhaps the most cogent objection to the lsquoexit thesisrsquo It is addressed not only toCamatte but to groups like Tiqqun and The Invisible Committee

Instead of theoretical reckoning with the concrete totality that must be overcome in all its determinations or areconstruction of the real horizon of the class relation we get a sundering of the totality into two basicabstractions [ie capitalist society and the human community] and a simple set of exhortations and practical

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prescriptions whose real theoretical function is to bring these abstractions into relation once more26 It is the very abstractness of humanityrsquos notional exit from capital that unwittingly guarantees its continuingsubsumption by capital This is the fundamental problem For Endnotes the fact that the dialectical antagonismbetween capital and labour has failed to issue in the revolutionary overthrow of capitalist relations of production isnot just an unfortunate contingency the result of missed opportunities It is an inevitable consequence of the logic ofcapital accumulation

As it accumulates capital both exploits tendentially fewer workers expelling labourshypower from production(both relatively and ultimately absolutely) and it attempts to raise the rate of exploitation among the relativelydiminished work force27

Thus capitalrsquos accumulation of an evershygrowing surplus value is accompanied by an evershygrowing lsquosurpluspopulationrsquo excluded from the process of production The proletariat becomes lsquothat which is produced by capitalwithout producing capitalrsquo28 The result is the disintegration of the proletariatrsquos selfshyidentification as producers ofcapital It becomes impossible for the working class to affirm itself as such in its antagonism with capital29 This iswhy communisation can no longer be conceived as the end result of the workersrsquo revolutionary seizure of themeans of production It must be reconceived as an intransitive process an immanent movement which consists indestroying the relation through which capital reproduces labour while labour reproduces capital30 Thus Endnotes define communisation as an attempt to respond to the following question

How will the overcoming of the capitalist class relation take place given that it is impossible for the proletariatto affirm itself as a class yet we are still faced with the problem of this relation31

Their answer to this question sets out what is perhaps the most sophisticated formulation of the communisationthesis and deserves quoting at length

Communization is a movement at the level of totality through which that totality is abolished The logic of themovement that abolishes this totality necessarily differs from that which applies at the level of the concreteindividual or group it should go without saying that no individual or group can overcome the reproduction ofthe capitalist class relation through their own actions The determination of an individual act as lsquocommunizingrsquoflows only from the overall movement of which it is part not from the act itself and it would therefore bewrong to think of the revolution in terms of the sum of alreadyshycommunizing acts as if all that was needed

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was a certain accumulation of such acts to a critical point [hellip] Communization occurs only at the limit of astruggle in the rift that opens as this struggle meets its limit and is pushed beyond it [hellip] [I]n any actualsupersession of the capitalist class relation we ourselves must be overcome lsquowersquo have no lsquopositionrsquo apartfrom the capitalist class relation What we are is at the deepest level constituted by this relation and it is arupture with the reproduction of what we are that will necessarily form the horizon of our struggles [hellip] In thisperiod the lsquowersquo of revolution does not affirm itself does not identify itself positively because it cannot itcannot assert itself against the lsquotheyrsquo of capital without being confronted by the problem of its own existencendash an existence which it will be the nature of the revolution to overcome There is nothing to affirm in thecapitalist class relation no autonomy no alternative no outside no secession32

This is a remarkable passage Since the lsquowersquo is constituted by the class relation the selfshyovercoming of the lsquowersquo isthe overcoming of the relation that constitutes it This is certainly theoretically uncompromising (and admirablebecause of it) But it is also paradoxical and its paradoxical character exacerbates its status as a claim thatarticulates conceptual and social abstraction at an ontological level The paradox is the following if lsquowersquo areconstituted by the class relation that we have to supersede then the supersession of this relation is also theovercoming of the agent of the supersession and therefore the cancelling of the supersession and the reshyinstatement of the lsquowersquo Since lsquowersquo have no position apart from the class relation lsquowersquo are nothing outside of it Butthen the moment of the abolition of this relation is also that of the abolition of its abolition Can revolutionary agencyndash which is supposed to track lsquothe real movement abolishing the present state of thingsrsquo ndash really be constructed onthe basis of such an apparently disabling paradox If the answer is affirmative we need to clarify the precise sensein which Endnotesrsquo articulation of conceptual and social abstraction has an ontological purchase33 The articulation is ontological because the abstractions of capitalism are real in subsuming labour the valueshyformlogicises the social practices through which human beings reproduce themselves and capital

That which on one level is merely contingent relative to the logic of capital accumulation ndash the material andspiritual interactions betweens humans and between humans and nature ndash is itself logicised ndash ie broughtunder the logic of the capitalshyform of value ndash as a result of the subsumption of labour under capital and ofthe selfshyreproduction of the relation of reciprocal implication between capital and proletariat34

This logicisation of social reality explains why there can be a contradiction between what human beings think anddo in relating to themselves or what they think and do in reproducing capital But this logicisation by the valueshyformis not absolute it applies to human activities and practices only insofar as they constitute labour These activitiesand practices persist within the capital relation as phenomena that it has incorporated but not wholly absorbedThey are not wholly absorbed because they constitute the process through which capital absorbs labour Capitalrsquosselfshyreproduction is constituted by phenomena that it cannot reproduce even as it reproduces the labour which in

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turn reproduces it Thus capitalrsquos logicisation of reality is itself conditioned by that reality this is the bulwark againstabsolute idealism which would hypostatise capital as a wholly autonomous selfshymoving subject (a causa sui orselfshycausing being) floating free of material reality altogether

Without human relations and practices which subsist in the lsquomode of being deniedrsquo through the pervertedfetishistic form of economic categories there could be no economic categories no value no commoditiesmoney or capital This does not mean however that labour should be understood as somehow constitutiveof the entire process nor should it be understood as primary The fetishshyforms of capital are properlyunderstood and criticised as selfshymoving perverted forms of social practice35

Thus lsquocapital is nothing other than a perverted form of human social relationsrsquo36 But it is lsquohuman relations andpracticesrsquo rather than labour which generate the real abstractions of capital From the perspective of the systematicdialectic espoused by Endnotes labour is always already inscribed within the valueshyform as its lsquopositedpresuppositionrsquo37 While capital posits the labour that provides its substance (ie its presupposition) this positingitself is ultimately constituted through the extraordinarily complex set of human practices without which capitalrsquos selfshyvalorisation could not be Valuersquos subsumption of labour as lsquoposited presuppositionrsquo also presupposes somethingthat it does not posit spontaneous human activity As Endnotes themselves make clear the spontaneity invokedhere should be understood in the Kantian sense as the determination of sensation exercised by the human mind inthe act of thinking Kant attributed this spontaneity to what he called lsquopure apperceptionrsquo

In the eighteenth century when Kant described the transcendental unity of apperception ndash the fact that I amaware of myself as having my own experiences ndash he called this a spontaneous act Kant meant the oppositeof something natural A spontaneous act is one that is freely undertaken In fact the word spontaneousderives from the Latin sponte meaning lsquoof onersquos own accord freely willinglyrsquo In this sense spontaneity isnot about acting compulsively or automatically It is a matter of acting without external constraint38

Spontaneity in Kantrsquos transcendental as opposed to empirical sense is the ultimate source of human freedom Itseems plausible to suggest that Endnotes need recourse to freedom in this transcendental sense in order to staveoff the paradox of selfshyabolition by grounding the possibility of human agency in a source that is independent of theclass relation As the ultimate wellspring of human activity this transcendental (as opposed to empirical)spontaneity may be construed as what constitutes the class relation independently of the class relationrsquosconstitution of the lsquowersquo The paradox is then defused because the agent of the abolition is distinct from theabolished agent But in opposing spontaneity to compulsion Endnotes risk resuscitating a transcendentalvoluntarism in which the human will functions as a mysterious not to say supernatural unmoved moverimpervious to external determination This is the familiar and much pilloried caricature of Kant There is a better

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more dialectical reading of him which understands the freedom exercised in the spontaneity of apperception asresulting from the willrsquos embrace of an intersubjectively instituted rule rather than a wholly unshydetermined eruptionex nihilo Freedom in this sense is not simply the absence of external determination but the agentrsquos rational selfshydetermination in and through its espousal of a universally applicable rule39 In this regard nominalism can be deployed as a weapon of materialist analysis that demystifies the idealisthypostatisation of abstraction In Wilfrid Sellarsrsquo metalinguistic version of nominalism which is perhaps the mostsophisticated elaboration of the thesis yet devised reference to abstract entities is explained as material modemetalinguistic discourse about linguistic functioning while this functioning is in turn identified with patterns oflinguistic tokenings40 What is especially valuable about Sellarsrsquo analysis from a materialist viewpoint is that it treatsabstract entities as hypostatised linguistic functions It shows how conceptual form is anchored in linguistic functionand grounds linguistic function in social practice Of course Sellarsrsquo account stops short of explaining the nature ofthe linkage between linguistic function and social practice He has no theory of the latter But his work has the signalmerit of telling us what abstract entities really are This is an important step towards explaining how capitalrsquosapparently selfshymoving abstractions are in fact motored by the activities and practices of human beings The Impossible Relation But while it is one thing to reveal that the reality of abstraction is rooted in human practice it is another thing toexplain how and which practice can be deployed to release us from the grip of the abstractions to which it hassubjected us Even if one grants that the abstractions of capital are generated through human practices how arethese practices supposed to constitute a communising agency Endnotes propose an answer of sorts in anotherremarkable passage that delves deeper still in its attempt to define the relation between communist theory andcapitalist reality

Communist theory sets out not from the false position of some voluntarist subject but from the positedsupersession of the totality of forms which are implicated in the reproduction of this subject As merelyposited this supersession is necessarily abstract but it is only through this basic abstraction that theorytakes as its content the determinate forms which are to be superseded forms which stand out in theirdeterminacy precisely because their dissolution has been posited41

These lsquodeterminate formsrsquo are the real abstractions of capitalism the commodityshyform the moneyshyform the valueshyform the labourshyform the productionshyform etc The passage continues

This positing is not only a matter of methodology or some kind of necessary postulate of reason for the

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supersession of the capitalist class relation is not a mere theoretical construct

It is not a lsquomere theoretical constructrsquo but nor is it some objective or lsquogivenrsquo datum for it is something towards whichtheory orients itself rather than something it statically contemplates Thus this posited supersession is somethingthat

[R]uns ahead of thought being posited incessantly by this [capitalist class] relation itself it is its very horizonas an antagonism the real negative presence which it [communist theory] bears Communist theory isproduced by ndash and necessarily thinks within ndash this antagonistic relation it is thought of the class relation andit grasps itself as such It attempts to conceptually reconstruct the totality which is its ground in the light ofthe alreadyshyposited supersession of this totality and to draw out the supersession as it presents itself hereSince it is a relation which has no ideal lsquohomeostaticrsquo state but one which is always beyond itself with capitalfacing the problem of labour at every turn ndash even in its victories ndash the adequate thought of this relation is notof some equilibrium state or some smoothly selfshypositing totality it is of a fundamentally impossible relationsomething that is only insofar as it is ceasing to be an internally unstable antagonistic relation Communisttheory thus has no need of an external Archimedean point from which to take the measure of its object andcommunization has no need of a transcendent standpoint of lsquowithdrawalrsquo or lsquosecessionrsquo from which to launchits lsquoattackrsquo42

Endnotesrsquo various writings certainly provide an eminently plausible conceptual reconstruction of the totality which isthe ground of the class relation and hence of communist theorising And it is clear from their analyses of capitalrsquoslsquomoving contradictionrsquo how this relation is selfshyundermining lsquothe relation of exploitation corrodes its own foundationas that which is exploited ndash labourshypower ndash is tendentially expelled from the production process with thedevelopment of the productivity of social labourrsquo43 Thus the thought that is lsquoadequatersquo to the class relation (ie therelation of exploitation) is the thought of a lsquofundamentally impossible relationrsquo which is lsquoonly insofar as it is ceasingto bersquo That only the thought of an impossible relation can render theory adequate to its object is the index of the torsionthat is supposed to bind theoretical abstraction to the reality of social abstraction independently of therepresentational recourse to an objective correspondence relation (which would require lsquoan external Archimedeanpoint from which to take the measure of its objectrsquo) No doubt this impossible relation is supposed to markcommunist theoryrsquos immanence to revolutionary practice any subordination of practice to theory (or vice versa)would threaten to reintroduce the transcendence of an external Archimedean point which is to say arepresentation But it seems that what prevents communist theoryrsquos adequation to the class relation from fissioninginto a relation to this impossible relation which is to say a theoretical representation of reality and ultimately aprogram is its immediate consummation as selfshyproclaimed revolutionary activity an activity that guarantees its

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own traction upon the capitalist class relation simply by engaging in the struggle to destroy it There is a laudableconsistency here By taking the lsquoposited supersessionrsquo of the capitalist totality as its starting point communisttheorising secures its traction upon the antagonism constitutive of social reality But the danger remains that thisposited supersession of totality will substitute for its actual supersession not in spite of but precisely because itrefuses its theoretical construction Repurposing and Social Form By abjuring such construction as a representational intrusion compromising thoughtrsquos adequation to the classrelation communist theory secures its grip on the lsquoreal movementrsquo which communism is but at the risk of elidingreal movement with the movement of ideas Thus as Endnotes themselves make clear

Communization [hellip] has little positive advice to give us about particular immediate practice in the here andnow [hellip] What advice it can give is primarily negative the social forms implicated in the reproduction of thecapitalist class relation will not be instruments of the revolution since they are part of that which is to beabolished44

The question then is how are we to identify those social forms that are not implicated in the reproduction of theclass relation The distinction between compulsive labour and spontaneous practice is required not only to stave offthe paradox of selfshycancellation but also to distinguish between those activities programmed to reproduce the classrelation and those capable of interrupting this reproduction But the spontaneity whose exercise is the prerequisitefor the destruction of the class relation will also generate new abstractions together with new forms of mediationWhat is required is an understanding of social practices that would allow us to begin distinguishing betweenoppressive and emancipatory forms of mediation This is what we currently lack In the meantime must we abjure every existing instrument technique or methodenveloped by capitalist social forms No doubt it is relatively easy to identify those modes of contemporaryinformation technology whose stupefying antishysocial consequences render worthy of abolition But there are othertechnologies that are perhaps not so easily abolished Consider antivirals Every aspect of their development isimplicated in capitalist institutions and enveloped by its social forms Does this mean antivirals are intrinsicallycapitalist and hence ought to play no role in a postshycapitalist society A negative response recommends itself herewhile technological function is socially mediated and enveloped by the value form this need not be a saturatedmediation it need not exhaust the functional potentialities of the technology in question Some might retort that talkof repurposing is a distraction at best an alibi for reformism at worst because the development of antivirals (likeevery other contemporary technology) is necessarily linked to that of capitalist social relations the proliferation of

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 1564

lethal viruses being a direct consequence of industrialised livestock production and globalisation45 Were it not forthese two factors the objection goes we would not be so susceptible to increasing varieties of pathogens andhuman welfare would not be mortgaged to the development of antivirals The dismantling of capitalism according tothis line of argument would radically diminish if not wholly eliminate our increasing dependence on antivirals as wellas other technological artefacts Now it is undoubtedly true that there is a direct correlation between the proliferation of lifeshythreatening viruses andthe conditions of globalised capitalist society It may also be true that dismantling the latter is the surest means oferadicating the former And there is no doubt that the redistribution of antivirals on the basis of need rather thanwealth is a more pressing political concern than speculating on their role in postshycapitalist society Nevertheless theurgency of the former does not obviate the importance of the latter The absolute or indeterminate negation ofcapitalist society and all its works would eradicate the pathologies generated by capitalism only at the cost ofcancelling the emancipatory potentials latent in technologies whose functioning is currently subordinated to capitalThe abstract negation of functional context is also the negation of emancipatory possibilities whose releasedepends upon the reshycontextualisation of function Such abstraction inshydetermines instead of determining the fusionof cognitive and practical orientation required for the realisation of communism It abolishes the capitalist present atthe cost of cancelling the postshycapitalist future locked up within it Foreclosing the future blinkered negation cannotbut wish to reshyinstate the past It becomes the longing for a previous state of things lsquoIf only we hadnrsquot domesticatedanimals and started down the road to industrialised agriculture if only we didnrsquot live in a massively interconnectedglobal societyhelliprsquo And ultimately lsquoIf only capitalism hadnrsquot happenedrsquo But Marxrsquos starting point is the acknowledgement that capitalism has happened and given this premise hisfundamental question is how can we move beyond capitalism without regressing to preshycapitalist social formationssuch as agrarian feudalism The problem of repurposing cannot be circumvented by wishing capitalism had neverhappened History suggests that there are things worse than the value form A suitably abstract conception offunction will allow for its transplantation and where necessary repurposing across social contexts It goes withoutsaying that this should only be envisaged as a consequence of overcoming the capital relation not a substitute forthis overcoming More generally determination is not constitution We have to find a way to articulate theoreticaland social abstraction that does not involve the complete or indiscriminate relinquishment of the achievements ofcapitalist modernity en bloc Conclusion The issue of the realisation of function is crucial for clarifying the relation between conceptual and real abstractionCommunisation shortshycircuits conceptual abstraction and social abstraction in an insurrectionary praxis whosefixation on totality prevents it from formulating criteria for distinguishing between progressive and regressive social

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 864

by Camatte becomes an Archimedean point from which humanity has supposedly been wandering For Camattethe onset of real subsumption seems to mark the terminal phase of humanityrsquos fateful selfshyestrangement But thereis reason to doubt whether the distinction between formal and real subsumption can be used to characterise distinctsuccessive phases of capitalismrsquos historical development Viewed analytically rather than historically it seems thatformal and real subsumption are simultaneous intertwined aspects of the capital relation Moreover Camattersquosinsistence that capital has now achieved complete dominion not just over the sphere of production but over everyaspect of social existence is equally contentious This is a point forcefully made by Endnotes

The labour process in both real and formal subsumption is the immediate production process of capitalNothing comparable can be said of anything beyond the production process for it is only production whichcapital directly claims as its own While it is true that the valorisation process of capital in its entirety is theunity of the processes of production and circulation and whilst capital brings about transformations to theworld beyond its immediate production process these transformations by definition cannot be grasped in thesame terms as those which occur within that process under real subsumption Nothing external to theimmediate production process actually becomes capital nor strictly speaking is subsumed under capital22

Thus while giving credit to Camatte for having grasped lsquothe ontological inversion the possession of material life bythe spirit of capitalrsquo23 Endnotes see in his account of total subsumption lsquothe logic which would propel [him] towardsa politics involving little more than the abstract assertion of some true human community against a monolithiccapitalist totality and of the need to ldquoleave this worldrdquorsquo24 Yet although concurring with Camatte that lsquovalue andcapital constitute a forceful totalising form of socialisation that shapes every aspect of lifersquo and acknowledging thatlsquoovercoming [value and capital] demands a radical transformation of every sphere of lifersquo25 Endnotes alsorecognise that Camattersquos lsquoundomesticatedrsquo humanity existing outside the capitalist social relation is the corollary ofan ideal rather than the motor of a real movement The question then is given the lsquoontological inversionrsquo throughwhich lsquomaterial lifersquo itself is now lsquoanimatedrsquo by capital who or what are the agents of communisation The Paradox of SelfshyAbolition Endnotes firmly repudiate the notion that communisation consists in an immediate secession from the capitalrelation They formulate what is perhaps the most cogent objection to the lsquoexit thesisrsquo It is addressed not only toCamatte but to groups like Tiqqun and The Invisible Committee

Instead of theoretical reckoning with the concrete totality that must be overcome in all its determinations or areconstruction of the real horizon of the class relation we get a sundering of the totality into two basicabstractions [ie capitalist society and the human community] and a simple set of exhortations and practical

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 964

prescriptions whose real theoretical function is to bring these abstractions into relation once more26 It is the very abstractness of humanityrsquos notional exit from capital that unwittingly guarantees its continuingsubsumption by capital This is the fundamental problem For Endnotes the fact that the dialectical antagonismbetween capital and labour has failed to issue in the revolutionary overthrow of capitalist relations of production isnot just an unfortunate contingency the result of missed opportunities It is an inevitable consequence of the logic ofcapital accumulation

As it accumulates capital both exploits tendentially fewer workers expelling labourshypower from production(both relatively and ultimately absolutely) and it attempts to raise the rate of exploitation among the relativelydiminished work force27

Thus capitalrsquos accumulation of an evershygrowing surplus value is accompanied by an evershygrowing lsquosurpluspopulationrsquo excluded from the process of production The proletariat becomes lsquothat which is produced by capitalwithout producing capitalrsquo28 The result is the disintegration of the proletariatrsquos selfshyidentification as producers ofcapital It becomes impossible for the working class to affirm itself as such in its antagonism with capital29 This iswhy communisation can no longer be conceived as the end result of the workersrsquo revolutionary seizure of themeans of production It must be reconceived as an intransitive process an immanent movement which consists indestroying the relation through which capital reproduces labour while labour reproduces capital30 Thus Endnotes define communisation as an attempt to respond to the following question

How will the overcoming of the capitalist class relation take place given that it is impossible for the proletariatto affirm itself as a class yet we are still faced with the problem of this relation31

Their answer to this question sets out what is perhaps the most sophisticated formulation of the communisationthesis and deserves quoting at length

Communization is a movement at the level of totality through which that totality is abolished The logic of themovement that abolishes this totality necessarily differs from that which applies at the level of the concreteindividual or group it should go without saying that no individual or group can overcome the reproduction ofthe capitalist class relation through their own actions The determination of an individual act as lsquocommunizingrsquoflows only from the overall movement of which it is part not from the act itself and it would therefore bewrong to think of the revolution in terms of the sum of alreadyshycommunizing acts as if all that was needed

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 1064

was a certain accumulation of such acts to a critical point [hellip] Communization occurs only at the limit of astruggle in the rift that opens as this struggle meets its limit and is pushed beyond it [hellip] [I]n any actualsupersession of the capitalist class relation we ourselves must be overcome lsquowersquo have no lsquopositionrsquo apartfrom the capitalist class relation What we are is at the deepest level constituted by this relation and it is arupture with the reproduction of what we are that will necessarily form the horizon of our struggles [hellip] In thisperiod the lsquowersquo of revolution does not affirm itself does not identify itself positively because it cannot itcannot assert itself against the lsquotheyrsquo of capital without being confronted by the problem of its own existencendash an existence which it will be the nature of the revolution to overcome There is nothing to affirm in thecapitalist class relation no autonomy no alternative no outside no secession32

This is a remarkable passage Since the lsquowersquo is constituted by the class relation the selfshyovercoming of the lsquowersquo isthe overcoming of the relation that constitutes it This is certainly theoretically uncompromising (and admirablebecause of it) But it is also paradoxical and its paradoxical character exacerbates its status as a claim thatarticulates conceptual and social abstraction at an ontological level The paradox is the following if lsquowersquo areconstituted by the class relation that we have to supersede then the supersession of this relation is also theovercoming of the agent of the supersession and therefore the cancelling of the supersession and the reshyinstatement of the lsquowersquo Since lsquowersquo have no position apart from the class relation lsquowersquo are nothing outside of it Butthen the moment of the abolition of this relation is also that of the abolition of its abolition Can revolutionary agencyndash which is supposed to track lsquothe real movement abolishing the present state of thingsrsquo ndash really be constructed onthe basis of such an apparently disabling paradox If the answer is affirmative we need to clarify the precise sensein which Endnotesrsquo articulation of conceptual and social abstraction has an ontological purchase33 The articulation is ontological because the abstractions of capitalism are real in subsuming labour the valueshyformlogicises the social practices through which human beings reproduce themselves and capital

That which on one level is merely contingent relative to the logic of capital accumulation ndash the material andspiritual interactions betweens humans and between humans and nature ndash is itself logicised ndash ie broughtunder the logic of the capitalshyform of value ndash as a result of the subsumption of labour under capital and ofthe selfshyreproduction of the relation of reciprocal implication between capital and proletariat34

This logicisation of social reality explains why there can be a contradiction between what human beings think anddo in relating to themselves or what they think and do in reproducing capital But this logicisation by the valueshyformis not absolute it applies to human activities and practices only insofar as they constitute labour These activitiesand practices persist within the capital relation as phenomena that it has incorporated but not wholly absorbedThey are not wholly absorbed because they constitute the process through which capital absorbs labour Capitalrsquosselfshyreproduction is constituted by phenomena that it cannot reproduce even as it reproduces the labour which in

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 1164

turn reproduces it Thus capitalrsquos logicisation of reality is itself conditioned by that reality this is the bulwark againstabsolute idealism which would hypostatise capital as a wholly autonomous selfshymoving subject (a causa sui orselfshycausing being) floating free of material reality altogether

Without human relations and practices which subsist in the lsquomode of being deniedrsquo through the pervertedfetishistic form of economic categories there could be no economic categories no value no commoditiesmoney or capital This does not mean however that labour should be understood as somehow constitutiveof the entire process nor should it be understood as primary The fetishshyforms of capital are properlyunderstood and criticised as selfshymoving perverted forms of social practice35

Thus lsquocapital is nothing other than a perverted form of human social relationsrsquo36 But it is lsquohuman relations andpracticesrsquo rather than labour which generate the real abstractions of capital From the perspective of the systematicdialectic espoused by Endnotes labour is always already inscribed within the valueshyform as its lsquopositedpresuppositionrsquo37 While capital posits the labour that provides its substance (ie its presupposition) this positingitself is ultimately constituted through the extraordinarily complex set of human practices without which capitalrsquos selfshyvalorisation could not be Valuersquos subsumption of labour as lsquoposited presuppositionrsquo also presupposes somethingthat it does not posit spontaneous human activity As Endnotes themselves make clear the spontaneity invokedhere should be understood in the Kantian sense as the determination of sensation exercised by the human mind inthe act of thinking Kant attributed this spontaneity to what he called lsquopure apperceptionrsquo

In the eighteenth century when Kant described the transcendental unity of apperception ndash the fact that I amaware of myself as having my own experiences ndash he called this a spontaneous act Kant meant the oppositeof something natural A spontaneous act is one that is freely undertaken In fact the word spontaneousderives from the Latin sponte meaning lsquoof onersquos own accord freely willinglyrsquo In this sense spontaneity isnot about acting compulsively or automatically It is a matter of acting without external constraint38

Spontaneity in Kantrsquos transcendental as opposed to empirical sense is the ultimate source of human freedom Itseems plausible to suggest that Endnotes need recourse to freedom in this transcendental sense in order to staveoff the paradox of selfshyabolition by grounding the possibility of human agency in a source that is independent of theclass relation As the ultimate wellspring of human activity this transcendental (as opposed to empirical)spontaneity may be construed as what constitutes the class relation independently of the class relationrsquosconstitution of the lsquowersquo The paradox is then defused because the agent of the abolition is distinct from theabolished agent But in opposing spontaneity to compulsion Endnotes risk resuscitating a transcendentalvoluntarism in which the human will functions as a mysterious not to say supernatural unmoved moverimpervious to external determination This is the familiar and much pilloried caricature of Kant There is a better

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 1264

more dialectical reading of him which understands the freedom exercised in the spontaneity of apperception asresulting from the willrsquos embrace of an intersubjectively instituted rule rather than a wholly unshydetermined eruptionex nihilo Freedom in this sense is not simply the absence of external determination but the agentrsquos rational selfshydetermination in and through its espousal of a universally applicable rule39 In this regard nominalism can be deployed as a weapon of materialist analysis that demystifies the idealisthypostatisation of abstraction In Wilfrid Sellarsrsquo metalinguistic version of nominalism which is perhaps the mostsophisticated elaboration of the thesis yet devised reference to abstract entities is explained as material modemetalinguistic discourse about linguistic functioning while this functioning is in turn identified with patterns oflinguistic tokenings40 What is especially valuable about Sellarsrsquo analysis from a materialist viewpoint is that it treatsabstract entities as hypostatised linguistic functions It shows how conceptual form is anchored in linguistic functionand grounds linguistic function in social practice Of course Sellarsrsquo account stops short of explaining the nature ofthe linkage between linguistic function and social practice He has no theory of the latter But his work has the signalmerit of telling us what abstract entities really are This is an important step towards explaining how capitalrsquosapparently selfshymoving abstractions are in fact motored by the activities and practices of human beings The Impossible Relation But while it is one thing to reveal that the reality of abstraction is rooted in human practice it is another thing toexplain how and which practice can be deployed to release us from the grip of the abstractions to which it hassubjected us Even if one grants that the abstractions of capital are generated through human practices how arethese practices supposed to constitute a communising agency Endnotes propose an answer of sorts in anotherremarkable passage that delves deeper still in its attempt to define the relation between communist theory andcapitalist reality

Communist theory sets out not from the false position of some voluntarist subject but from the positedsupersession of the totality of forms which are implicated in the reproduction of this subject As merelyposited this supersession is necessarily abstract but it is only through this basic abstraction that theorytakes as its content the determinate forms which are to be superseded forms which stand out in theirdeterminacy precisely because their dissolution has been posited41

These lsquodeterminate formsrsquo are the real abstractions of capitalism the commodityshyform the moneyshyform the valueshyform the labourshyform the productionshyform etc The passage continues

This positing is not only a matter of methodology or some kind of necessary postulate of reason for the

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 1364

supersession of the capitalist class relation is not a mere theoretical construct

It is not a lsquomere theoretical constructrsquo but nor is it some objective or lsquogivenrsquo datum for it is something towards whichtheory orients itself rather than something it statically contemplates Thus this posited supersession is somethingthat

[R]uns ahead of thought being posited incessantly by this [capitalist class] relation itself it is its very horizonas an antagonism the real negative presence which it [communist theory] bears Communist theory isproduced by ndash and necessarily thinks within ndash this antagonistic relation it is thought of the class relation andit grasps itself as such It attempts to conceptually reconstruct the totality which is its ground in the light ofthe alreadyshyposited supersession of this totality and to draw out the supersession as it presents itself hereSince it is a relation which has no ideal lsquohomeostaticrsquo state but one which is always beyond itself with capitalfacing the problem of labour at every turn ndash even in its victories ndash the adequate thought of this relation is notof some equilibrium state or some smoothly selfshypositing totality it is of a fundamentally impossible relationsomething that is only insofar as it is ceasing to be an internally unstable antagonistic relation Communisttheory thus has no need of an external Archimedean point from which to take the measure of its object andcommunization has no need of a transcendent standpoint of lsquowithdrawalrsquo or lsquosecessionrsquo from which to launchits lsquoattackrsquo42

Endnotesrsquo various writings certainly provide an eminently plausible conceptual reconstruction of the totality which isthe ground of the class relation and hence of communist theorising And it is clear from their analyses of capitalrsquoslsquomoving contradictionrsquo how this relation is selfshyundermining lsquothe relation of exploitation corrodes its own foundationas that which is exploited ndash labourshypower ndash is tendentially expelled from the production process with thedevelopment of the productivity of social labourrsquo43 Thus the thought that is lsquoadequatersquo to the class relation (ie therelation of exploitation) is the thought of a lsquofundamentally impossible relationrsquo which is lsquoonly insofar as it is ceasingto bersquo That only the thought of an impossible relation can render theory adequate to its object is the index of the torsionthat is supposed to bind theoretical abstraction to the reality of social abstraction independently of therepresentational recourse to an objective correspondence relation (which would require lsquoan external Archimedeanpoint from which to take the measure of its objectrsquo) No doubt this impossible relation is supposed to markcommunist theoryrsquos immanence to revolutionary practice any subordination of practice to theory (or vice versa)would threaten to reintroduce the transcendence of an external Archimedean point which is to say arepresentation But it seems that what prevents communist theoryrsquos adequation to the class relation from fissioninginto a relation to this impossible relation which is to say a theoretical representation of reality and ultimately aprogram is its immediate consummation as selfshyproclaimed revolutionary activity an activity that guarantees its

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 1464

own traction upon the capitalist class relation simply by engaging in the struggle to destroy it There is a laudableconsistency here By taking the lsquoposited supersessionrsquo of the capitalist totality as its starting point communisttheorising secures its traction upon the antagonism constitutive of social reality But the danger remains that thisposited supersession of totality will substitute for its actual supersession not in spite of but precisely because itrefuses its theoretical construction Repurposing and Social Form By abjuring such construction as a representational intrusion compromising thoughtrsquos adequation to the classrelation communist theory secures its grip on the lsquoreal movementrsquo which communism is but at the risk of elidingreal movement with the movement of ideas Thus as Endnotes themselves make clear

Communization [hellip] has little positive advice to give us about particular immediate practice in the here andnow [hellip] What advice it can give is primarily negative the social forms implicated in the reproduction of thecapitalist class relation will not be instruments of the revolution since they are part of that which is to beabolished44

The question then is how are we to identify those social forms that are not implicated in the reproduction of theclass relation The distinction between compulsive labour and spontaneous practice is required not only to stave offthe paradox of selfshycancellation but also to distinguish between those activities programmed to reproduce the classrelation and those capable of interrupting this reproduction But the spontaneity whose exercise is the prerequisitefor the destruction of the class relation will also generate new abstractions together with new forms of mediationWhat is required is an understanding of social practices that would allow us to begin distinguishing betweenoppressive and emancipatory forms of mediation This is what we currently lack In the meantime must we abjure every existing instrument technique or methodenveloped by capitalist social forms No doubt it is relatively easy to identify those modes of contemporaryinformation technology whose stupefying antishysocial consequences render worthy of abolition But there are othertechnologies that are perhaps not so easily abolished Consider antivirals Every aspect of their development isimplicated in capitalist institutions and enveloped by its social forms Does this mean antivirals are intrinsicallycapitalist and hence ought to play no role in a postshycapitalist society A negative response recommends itself herewhile technological function is socially mediated and enveloped by the value form this need not be a saturatedmediation it need not exhaust the functional potentialities of the technology in question Some might retort that talkof repurposing is a distraction at best an alibi for reformism at worst because the development of antivirals (likeevery other contemporary technology) is necessarily linked to that of capitalist social relations the proliferation of

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 1564

lethal viruses being a direct consequence of industrialised livestock production and globalisation45 Were it not forthese two factors the objection goes we would not be so susceptible to increasing varieties of pathogens andhuman welfare would not be mortgaged to the development of antivirals The dismantling of capitalism according tothis line of argument would radically diminish if not wholly eliminate our increasing dependence on antivirals as wellas other technological artefacts Now it is undoubtedly true that there is a direct correlation between the proliferation of lifeshythreatening viruses andthe conditions of globalised capitalist society It may also be true that dismantling the latter is the surest means oferadicating the former And there is no doubt that the redistribution of antivirals on the basis of need rather thanwealth is a more pressing political concern than speculating on their role in postshycapitalist society Nevertheless theurgency of the former does not obviate the importance of the latter The absolute or indeterminate negation ofcapitalist society and all its works would eradicate the pathologies generated by capitalism only at the cost ofcancelling the emancipatory potentials latent in technologies whose functioning is currently subordinated to capitalThe abstract negation of functional context is also the negation of emancipatory possibilities whose releasedepends upon the reshycontextualisation of function Such abstraction inshydetermines instead of determining the fusionof cognitive and practical orientation required for the realisation of communism It abolishes the capitalist present atthe cost of cancelling the postshycapitalist future locked up within it Foreclosing the future blinkered negation cannotbut wish to reshyinstate the past It becomes the longing for a previous state of things lsquoIf only we hadnrsquot domesticatedanimals and started down the road to industrialised agriculture if only we didnrsquot live in a massively interconnectedglobal societyhelliprsquo And ultimately lsquoIf only capitalism hadnrsquot happenedrsquo But Marxrsquos starting point is the acknowledgement that capitalism has happened and given this premise hisfundamental question is how can we move beyond capitalism without regressing to preshycapitalist social formationssuch as agrarian feudalism The problem of repurposing cannot be circumvented by wishing capitalism had neverhappened History suggests that there are things worse than the value form A suitably abstract conception offunction will allow for its transplantation and where necessary repurposing across social contexts It goes withoutsaying that this should only be envisaged as a consequence of overcoming the capital relation not a substitute forthis overcoming More generally determination is not constitution We have to find a way to articulate theoreticaland social abstraction that does not involve the complete or indiscriminate relinquishment of the achievements ofcapitalist modernity en bloc Conclusion The issue of the realisation of function is crucial for clarifying the relation between conceptual and real abstractionCommunisation shortshycircuits conceptual abstraction and social abstraction in an insurrectionary praxis whosefixation on totality prevents it from formulating criteria for distinguishing between progressive and regressive social

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 964

prescriptions whose real theoretical function is to bring these abstractions into relation once more26 It is the very abstractness of humanityrsquos notional exit from capital that unwittingly guarantees its continuingsubsumption by capital This is the fundamental problem For Endnotes the fact that the dialectical antagonismbetween capital and labour has failed to issue in the revolutionary overthrow of capitalist relations of production isnot just an unfortunate contingency the result of missed opportunities It is an inevitable consequence of the logic ofcapital accumulation

As it accumulates capital both exploits tendentially fewer workers expelling labourshypower from production(both relatively and ultimately absolutely) and it attempts to raise the rate of exploitation among the relativelydiminished work force27

Thus capitalrsquos accumulation of an evershygrowing surplus value is accompanied by an evershygrowing lsquosurpluspopulationrsquo excluded from the process of production The proletariat becomes lsquothat which is produced by capitalwithout producing capitalrsquo28 The result is the disintegration of the proletariatrsquos selfshyidentification as producers ofcapital It becomes impossible for the working class to affirm itself as such in its antagonism with capital29 This iswhy communisation can no longer be conceived as the end result of the workersrsquo revolutionary seizure of themeans of production It must be reconceived as an intransitive process an immanent movement which consists indestroying the relation through which capital reproduces labour while labour reproduces capital30 Thus Endnotes define communisation as an attempt to respond to the following question

How will the overcoming of the capitalist class relation take place given that it is impossible for the proletariatto affirm itself as a class yet we are still faced with the problem of this relation31

Their answer to this question sets out what is perhaps the most sophisticated formulation of the communisationthesis and deserves quoting at length

Communization is a movement at the level of totality through which that totality is abolished The logic of themovement that abolishes this totality necessarily differs from that which applies at the level of the concreteindividual or group it should go without saying that no individual or group can overcome the reproduction ofthe capitalist class relation through their own actions The determination of an individual act as lsquocommunizingrsquoflows only from the overall movement of which it is part not from the act itself and it would therefore bewrong to think of the revolution in terms of the sum of alreadyshycommunizing acts as if all that was needed

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 1064

was a certain accumulation of such acts to a critical point [hellip] Communization occurs only at the limit of astruggle in the rift that opens as this struggle meets its limit and is pushed beyond it [hellip] [I]n any actualsupersession of the capitalist class relation we ourselves must be overcome lsquowersquo have no lsquopositionrsquo apartfrom the capitalist class relation What we are is at the deepest level constituted by this relation and it is arupture with the reproduction of what we are that will necessarily form the horizon of our struggles [hellip] In thisperiod the lsquowersquo of revolution does not affirm itself does not identify itself positively because it cannot itcannot assert itself against the lsquotheyrsquo of capital without being confronted by the problem of its own existencendash an existence which it will be the nature of the revolution to overcome There is nothing to affirm in thecapitalist class relation no autonomy no alternative no outside no secession32

This is a remarkable passage Since the lsquowersquo is constituted by the class relation the selfshyovercoming of the lsquowersquo isthe overcoming of the relation that constitutes it This is certainly theoretically uncompromising (and admirablebecause of it) But it is also paradoxical and its paradoxical character exacerbates its status as a claim thatarticulates conceptual and social abstraction at an ontological level The paradox is the following if lsquowersquo areconstituted by the class relation that we have to supersede then the supersession of this relation is also theovercoming of the agent of the supersession and therefore the cancelling of the supersession and the reshyinstatement of the lsquowersquo Since lsquowersquo have no position apart from the class relation lsquowersquo are nothing outside of it Butthen the moment of the abolition of this relation is also that of the abolition of its abolition Can revolutionary agencyndash which is supposed to track lsquothe real movement abolishing the present state of thingsrsquo ndash really be constructed onthe basis of such an apparently disabling paradox If the answer is affirmative we need to clarify the precise sensein which Endnotesrsquo articulation of conceptual and social abstraction has an ontological purchase33 The articulation is ontological because the abstractions of capitalism are real in subsuming labour the valueshyformlogicises the social practices through which human beings reproduce themselves and capital

That which on one level is merely contingent relative to the logic of capital accumulation ndash the material andspiritual interactions betweens humans and between humans and nature ndash is itself logicised ndash ie broughtunder the logic of the capitalshyform of value ndash as a result of the subsumption of labour under capital and ofthe selfshyreproduction of the relation of reciprocal implication between capital and proletariat34

This logicisation of social reality explains why there can be a contradiction between what human beings think anddo in relating to themselves or what they think and do in reproducing capital But this logicisation by the valueshyformis not absolute it applies to human activities and practices only insofar as they constitute labour These activitiesand practices persist within the capital relation as phenomena that it has incorporated but not wholly absorbedThey are not wholly absorbed because they constitute the process through which capital absorbs labour Capitalrsquosselfshyreproduction is constituted by phenomena that it cannot reproduce even as it reproduces the labour which in

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 1164

turn reproduces it Thus capitalrsquos logicisation of reality is itself conditioned by that reality this is the bulwark againstabsolute idealism which would hypostatise capital as a wholly autonomous selfshymoving subject (a causa sui orselfshycausing being) floating free of material reality altogether

Without human relations and practices which subsist in the lsquomode of being deniedrsquo through the pervertedfetishistic form of economic categories there could be no economic categories no value no commoditiesmoney or capital This does not mean however that labour should be understood as somehow constitutiveof the entire process nor should it be understood as primary The fetishshyforms of capital are properlyunderstood and criticised as selfshymoving perverted forms of social practice35

Thus lsquocapital is nothing other than a perverted form of human social relationsrsquo36 But it is lsquohuman relations andpracticesrsquo rather than labour which generate the real abstractions of capital From the perspective of the systematicdialectic espoused by Endnotes labour is always already inscribed within the valueshyform as its lsquopositedpresuppositionrsquo37 While capital posits the labour that provides its substance (ie its presupposition) this positingitself is ultimately constituted through the extraordinarily complex set of human practices without which capitalrsquos selfshyvalorisation could not be Valuersquos subsumption of labour as lsquoposited presuppositionrsquo also presupposes somethingthat it does not posit spontaneous human activity As Endnotes themselves make clear the spontaneity invokedhere should be understood in the Kantian sense as the determination of sensation exercised by the human mind inthe act of thinking Kant attributed this spontaneity to what he called lsquopure apperceptionrsquo

In the eighteenth century when Kant described the transcendental unity of apperception ndash the fact that I amaware of myself as having my own experiences ndash he called this a spontaneous act Kant meant the oppositeof something natural A spontaneous act is one that is freely undertaken In fact the word spontaneousderives from the Latin sponte meaning lsquoof onersquos own accord freely willinglyrsquo In this sense spontaneity isnot about acting compulsively or automatically It is a matter of acting without external constraint38

Spontaneity in Kantrsquos transcendental as opposed to empirical sense is the ultimate source of human freedom Itseems plausible to suggest that Endnotes need recourse to freedom in this transcendental sense in order to staveoff the paradox of selfshyabolition by grounding the possibility of human agency in a source that is independent of theclass relation As the ultimate wellspring of human activity this transcendental (as opposed to empirical)spontaneity may be construed as what constitutes the class relation independently of the class relationrsquosconstitution of the lsquowersquo The paradox is then defused because the agent of the abolition is distinct from theabolished agent But in opposing spontaneity to compulsion Endnotes risk resuscitating a transcendentalvoluntarism in which the human will functions as a mysterious not to say supernatural unmoved moverimpervious to external determination This is the familiar and much pilloried caricature of Kant There is a better

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 1264

more dialectical reading of him which understands the freedom exercised in the spontaneity of apperception asresulting from the willrsquos embrace of an intersubjectively instituted rule rather than a wholly unshydetermined eruptionex nihilo Freedom in this sense is not simply the absence of external determination but the agentrsquos rational selfshydetermination in and through its espousal of a universally applicable rule39 In this regard nominalism can be deployed as a weapon of materialist analysis that demystifies the idealisthypostatisation of abstraction In Wilfrid Sellarsrsquo metalinguistic version of nominalism which is perhaps the mostsophisticated elaboration of the thesis yet devised reference to abstract entities is explained as material modemetalinguistic discourse about linguistic functioning while this functioning is in turn identified with patterns oflinguistic tokenings40 What is especially valuable about Sellarsrsquo analysis from a materialist viewpoint is that it treatsabstract entities as hypostatised linguistic functions It shows how conceptual form is anchored in linguistic functionand grounds linguistic function in social practice Of course Sellarsrsquo account stops short of explaining the nature ofthe linkage between linguistic function and social practice He has no theory of the latter But his work has the signalmerit of telling us what abstract entities really are This is an important step towards explaining how capitalrsquosapparently selfshymoving abstractions are in fact motored by the activities and practices of human beings The Impossible Relation But while it is one thing to reveal that the reality of abstraction is rooted in human practice it is another thing toexplain how and which practice can be deployed to release us from the grip of the abstractions to which it hassubjected us Even if one grants that the abstractions of capital are generated through human practices how arethese practices supposed to constitute a communising agency Endnotes propose an answer of sorts in anotherremarkable passage that delves deeper still in its attempt to define the relation between communist theory andcapitalist reality

Communist theory sets out not from the false position of some voluntarist subject but from the positedsupersession of the totality of forms which are implicated in the reproduction of this subject As merelyposited this supersession is necessarily abstract but it is only through this basic abstraction that theorytakes as its content the determinate forms which are to be superseded forms which stand out in theirdeterminacy precisely because their dissolution has been posited41

These lsquodeterminate formsrsquo are the real abstractions of capitalism the commodityshyform the moneyshyform the valueshyform the labourshyform the productionshyform etc The passage continues

This positing is not only a matter of methodology or some kind of necessary postulate of reason for the

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 1364

supersession of the capitalist class relation is not a mere theoretical construct

It is not a lsquomere theoretical constructrsquo but nor is it some objective or lsquogivenrsquo datum for it is something towards whichtheory orients itself rather than something it statically contemplates Thus this posited supersession is somethingthat

[R]uns ahead of thought being posited incessantly by this [capitalist class] relation itself it is its very horizonas an antagonism the real negative presence which it [communist theory] bears Communist theory isproduced by ndash and necessarily thinks within ndash this antagonistic relation it is thought of the class relation andit grasps itself as such It attempts to conceptually reconstruct the totality which is its ground in the light ofthe alreadyshyposited supersession of this totality and to draw out the supersession as it presents itself hereSince it is a relation which has no ideal lsquohomeostaticrsquo state but one which is always beyond itself with capitalfacing the problem of labour at every turn ndash even in its victories ndash the adequate thought of this relation is notof some equilibrium state or some smoothly selfshypositing totality it is of a fundamentally impossible relationsomething that is only insofar as it is ceasing to be an internally unstable antagonistic relation Communisttheory thus has no need of an external Archimedean point from which to take the measure of its object andcommunization has no need of a transcendent standpoint of lsquowithdrawalrsquo or lsquosecessionrsquo from which to launchits lsquoattackrsquo42

Endnotesrsquo various writings certainly provide an eminently plausible conceptual reconstruction of the totality which isthe ground of the class relation and hence of communist theorising And it is clear from their analyses of capitalrsquoslsquomoving contradictionrsquo how this relation is selfshyundermining lsquothe relation of exploitation corrodes its own foundationas that which is exploited ndash labourshypower ndash is tendentially expelled from the production process with thedevelopment of the productivity of social labourrsquo43 Thus the thought that is lsquoadequatersquo to the class relation (ie therelation of exploitation) is the thought of a lsquofundamentally impossible relationrsquo which is lsquoonly insofar as it is ceasingto bersquo That only the thought of an impossible relation can render theory adequate to its object is the index of the torsionthat is supposed to bind theoretical abstraction to the reality of social abstraction independently of therepresentational recourse to an objective correspondence relation (which would require lsquoan external Archimedeanpoint from which to take the measure of its objectrsquo) No doubt this impossible relation is supposed to markcommunist theoryrsquos immanence to revolutionary practice any subordination of practice to theory (or vice versa)would threaten to reintroduce the transcendence of an external Archimedean point which is to say arepresentation But it seems that what prevents communist theoryrsquos adequation to the class relation from fissioninginto a relation to this impossible relation which is to say a theoretical representation of reality and ultimately aprogram is its immediate consummation as selfshyproclaimed revolutionary activity an activity that guarantees its

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 1464

own traction upon the capitalist class relation simply by engaging in the struggle to destroy it There is a laudableconsistency here By taking the lsquoposited supersessionrsquo of the capitalist totality as its starting point communisttheorising secures its traction upon the antagonism constitutive of social reality But the danger remains that thisposited supersession of totality will substitute for its actual supersession not in spite of but precisely because itrefuses its theoretical construction Repurposing and Social Form By abjuring such construction as a representational intrusion compromising thoughtrsquos adequation to the classrelation communist theory secures its grip on the lsquoreal movementrsquo which communism is but at the risk of elidingreal movement with the movement of ideas Thus as Endnotes themselves make clear

Communization [hellip] has little positive advice to give us about particular immediate practice in the here andnow [hellip] What advice it can give is primarily negative the social forms implicated in the reproduction of thecapitalist class relation will not be instruments of the revolution since they are part of that which is to beabolished44

The question then is how are we to identify those social forms that are not implicated in the reproduction of theclass relation The distinction between compulsive labour and spontaneous practice is required not only to stave offthe paradox of selfshycancellation but also to distinguish between those activities programmed to reproduce the classrelation and those capable of interrupting this reproduction But the spontaneity whose exercise is the prerequisitefor the destruction of the class relation will also generate new abstractions together with new forms of mediationWhat is required is an understanding of social practices that would allow us to begin distinguishing betweenoppressive and emancipatory forms of mediation This is what we currently lack In the meantime must we abjure every existing instrument technique or methodenveloped by capitalist social forms No doubt it is relatively easy to identify those modes of contemporaryinformation technology whose stupefying antishysocial consequences render worthy of abolition But there are othertechnologies that are perhaps not so easily abolished Consider antivirals Every aspect of their development isimplicated in capitalist institutions and enveloped by its social forms Does this mean antivirals are intrinsicallycapitalist and hence ought to play no role in a postshycapitalist society A negative response recommends itself herewhile technological function is socially mediated and enveloped by the value form this need not be a saturatedmediation it need not exhaust the functional potentialities of the technology in question Some might retort that talkof repurposing is a distraction at best an alibi for reformism at worst because the development of antivirals (likeevery other contemporary technology) is necessarily linked to that of capitalist social relations the proliferation of

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 1564

lethal viruses being a direct consequence of industrialised livestock production and globalisation45 Were it not forthese two factors the objection goes we would not be so susceptible to increasing varieties of pathogens andhuman welfare would not be mortgaged to the development of antivirals The dismantling of capitalism according tothis line of argument would radically diminish if not wholly eliminate our increasing dependence on antivirals as wellas other technological artefacts Now it is undoubtedly true that there is a direct correlation between the proliferation of lifeshythreatening viruses andthe conditions of globalised capitalist society It may also be true that dismantling the latter is the surest means oferadicating the former And there is no doubt that the redistribution of antivirals on the basis of need rather thanwealth is a more pressing political concern than speculating on their role in postshycapitalist society Nevertheless theurgency of the former does not obviate the importance of the latter The absolute or indeterminate negation ofcapitalist society and all its works would eradicate the pathologies generated by capitalism only at the cost ofcancelling the emancipatory potentials latent in technologies whose functioning is currently subordinated to capitalThe abstract negation of functional context is also the negation of emancipatory possibilities whose releasedepends upon the reshycontextualisation of function Such abstraction inshydetermines instead of determining the fusionof cognitive and practical orientation required for the realisation of communism It abolishes the capitalist present atthe cost of cancelling the postshycapitalist future locked up within it Foreclosing the future blinkered negation cannotbut wish to reshyinstate the past It becomes the longing for a previous state of things lsquoIf only we hadnrsquot domesticatedanimals and started down the road to industrialised agriculture if only we didnrsquot live in a massively interconnectedglobal societyhelliprsquo And ultimately lsquoIf only capitalism hadnrsquot happenedrsquo But Marxrsquos starting point is the acknowledgement that capitalism has happened and given this premise hisfundamental question is how can we move beyond capitalism without regressing to preshycapitalist social formationssuch as agrarian feudalism The problem of repurposing cannot be circumvented by wishing capitalism had neverhappened History suggests that there are things worse than the value form A suitably abstract conception offunction will allow for its transplantation and where necessary repurposing across social contexts It goes withoutsaying that this should only be envisaged as a consequence of overcoming the capital relation not a substitute forthis overcoming More generally determination is not constitution We have to find a way to articulate theoreticaland social abstraction that does not involve the complete or indiscriminate relinquishment of the achievements ofcapitalist modernity en bloc Conclusion The issue of the realisation of function is crucial for clarifying the relation between conceptual and real abstractionCommunisation shortshycircuits conceptual abstraction and social abstraction in an insurrectionary praxis whosefixation on totality prevents it from formulating criteria for distinguishing between progressive and regressive social

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 1064

was a certain accumulation of such acts to a critical point [hellip] Communization occurs only at the limit of astruggle in the rift that opens as this struggle meets its limit and is pushed beyond it [hellip] [I]n any actualsupersession of the capitalist class relation we ourselves must be overcome lsquowersquo have no lsquopositionrsquo apartfrom the capitalist class relation What we are is at the deepest level constituted by this relation and it is arupture with the reproduction of what we are that will necessarily form the horizon of our struggles [hellip] In thisperiod the lsquowersquo of revolution does not affirm itself does not identify itself positively because it cannot itcannot assert itself against the lsquotheyrsquo of capital without being confronted by the problem of its own existencendash an existence which it will be the nature of the revolution to overcome There is nothing to affirm in thecapitalist class relation no autonomy no alternative no outside no secession32

This is a remarkable passage Since the lsquowersquo is constituted by the class relation the selfshyovercoming of the lsquowersquo isthe overcoming of the relation that constitutes it This is certainly theoretically uncompromising (and admirablebecause of it) But it is also paradoxical and its paradoxical character exacerbates its status as a claim thatarticulates conceptual and social abstraction at an ontological level The paradox is the following if lsquowersquo areconstituted by the class relation that we have to supersede then the supersession of this relation is also theovercoming of the agent of the supersession and therefore the cancelling of the supersession and the reshyinstatement of the lsquowersquo Since lsquowersquo have no position apart from the class relation lsquowersquo are nothing outside of it Butthen the moment of the abolition of this relation is also that of the abolition of its abolition Can revolutionary agencyndash which is supposed to track lsquothe real movement abolishing the present state of thingsrsquo ndash really be constructed onthe basis of such an apparently disabling paradox If the answer is affirmative we need to clarify the precise sensein which Endnotesrsquo articulation of conceptual and social abstraction has an ontological purchase33 The articulation is ontological because the abstractions of capitalism are real in subsuming labour the valueshyformlogicises the social practices through which human beings reproduce themselves and capital

That which on one level is merely contingent relative to the logic of capital accumulation ndash the material andspiritual interactions betweens humans and between humans and nature ndash is itself logicised ndash ie broughtunder the logic of the capitalshyform of value ndash as a result of the subsumption of labour under capital and ofthe selfshyreproduction of the relation of reciprocal implication between capital and proletariat34

This logicisation of social reality explains why there can be a contradiction between what human beings think anddo in relating to themselves or what they think and do in reproducing capital But this logicisation by the valueshyformis not absolute it applies to human activities and practices only insofar as they constitute labour These activitiesand practices persist within the capital relation as phenomena that it has incorporated but not wholly absorbedThey are not wholly absorbed because they constitute the process through which capital absorbs labour Capitalrsquosselfshyreproduction is constituted by phenomena that it cannot reproduce even as it reproduces the labour which in

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 1164

turn reproduces it Thus capitalrsquos logicisation of reality is itself conditioned by that reality this is the bulwark againstabsolute idealism which would hypostatise capital as a wholly autonomous selfshymoving subject (a causa sui orselfshycausing being) floating free of material reality altogether

Without human relations and practices which subsist in the lsquomode of being deniedrsquo through the pervertedfetishistic form of economic categories there could be no economic categories no value no commoditiesmoney or capital This does not mean however that labour should be understood as somehow constitutiveof the entire process nor should it be understood as primary The fetishshyforms of capital are properlyunderstood and criticised as selfshymoving perverted forms of social practice35

Thus lsquocapital is nothing other than a perverted form of human social relationsrsquo36 But it is lsquohuman relations andpracticesrsquo rather than labour which generate the real abstractions of capital From the perspective of the systematicdialectic espoused by Endnotes labour is always already inscribed within the valueshyform as its lsquopositedpresuppositionrsquo37 While capital posits the labour that provides its substance (ie its presupposition) this positingitself is ultimately constituted through the extraordinarily complex set of human practices without which capitalrsquos selfshyvalorisation could not be Valuersquos subsumption of labour as lsquoposited presuppositionrsquo also presupposes somethingthat it does not posit spontaneous human activity As Endnotes themselves make clear the spontaneity invokedhere should be understood in the Kantian sense as the determination of sensation exercised by the human mind inthe act of thinking Kant attributed this spontaneity to what he called lsquopure apperceptionrsquo

In the eighteenth century when Kant described the transcendental unity of apperception ndash the fact that I amaware of myself as having my own experiences ndash he called this a spontaneous act Kant meant the oppositeof something natural A spontaneous act is one that is freely undertaken In fact the word spontaneousderives from the Latin sponte meaning lsquoof onersquos own accord freely willinglyrsquo In this sense spontaneity isnot about acting compulsively or automatically It is a matter of acting without external constraint38

Spontaneity in Kantrsquos transcendental as opposed to empirical sense is the ultimate source of human freedom Itseems plausible to suggest that Endnotes need recourse to freedom in this transcendental sense in order to staveoff the paradox of selfshyabolition by grounding the possibility of human agency in a source that is independent of theclass relation As the ultimate wellspring of human activity this transcendental (as opposed to empirical)spontaneity may be construed as what constitutes the class relation independently of the class relationrsquosconstitution of the lsquowersquo The paradox is then defused because the agent of the abolition is distinct from theabolished agent But in opposing spontaneity to compulsion Endnotes risk resuscitating a transcendentalvoluntarism in which the human will functions as a mysterious not to say supernatural unmoved moverimpervious to external determination This is the familiar and much pilloried caricature of Kant There is a better

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 1264

more dialectical reading of him which understands the freedom exercised in the spontaneity of apperception asresulting from the willrsquos embrace of an intersubjectively instituted rule rather than a wholly unshydetermined eruptionex nihilo Freedom in this sense is not simply the absence of external determination but the agentrsquos rational selfshydetermination in and through its espousal of a universally applicable rule39 In this regard nominalism can be deployed as a weapon of materialist analysis that demystifies the idealisthypostatisation of abstraction In Wilfrid Sellarsrsquo metalinguistic version of nominalism which is perhaps the mostsophisticated elaboration of the thesis yet devised reference to abstract entities is explained as material modemetalinguistic discourse about linguistic functioning while this functioning is in turn identified with patterns oflinguistic tokenings40 What is especially valuable about Sellarsrsquo analysis from a materialist viewpoint is that it treatsabstract entities as hypostatised linguistic functions It shows how conceptual form is anchored in linguistic functionand grounds linguistic function in social practice Of course Sellarsrsquo account stops short of explaining the nature ofthe linkage between linguistic function and social practice He has no theory of the latter But his work has the signalmerit of telling us what abstract entities really are This is an important step towards explaining how capitalrsquosapparently selfshymoving abstractions are in fact motored by the activities and practices of human beings The Impossible Relation But while it is one thing to reveal that the reality of abstraction is rooted in human practice it is another thing toexplain how and which practice can be deployed to release us from the grip of the abstractions to which it hassubjected us Even if one grants that the abstractions of capital are generated through human practices how arethese practices supposed to constitute a communising agency Endnotes propose an answer of sorts in anotherremarkable passage that delves deeper still in its attempt to define the relation between communist theory andcapitalist reality

Communist theory sets out not from the false position of some voluntarist subject but from the positedsupersession of the totality of forms which are implicated in the reproduction of this subject As merelyposited this supersession is necessarily abstract but it is only through this basic abstraction that theorytakes as its content the determinate forms which are to be superseded forms which stand out in theirdeterminacy precisely because their dissolution has been posited41

These lsquodeterminate formsrsquo are the real abstractions of capitalism the commodityshyform the moneyshyform the valueshyform the labourshyform the productionshyform etc The passage continues

This positing is not only a matter of methodology or some kind of necessary postulate of reason for the

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 1364

supersession of the capitalist class relation is not a mere theoretical construct

It is not a lsquomere theoretical constructrsquo but nor is it some objective or lsquogivenrsquo datum for it is something towards whichtheory orients itself rather than something it statically contemplates Thus this posited supersession is somethingthat

[R]uns ahead of thought being posited incessantly by this [capitalist class] relation itself it is its very horizonas an antagonism the real negative presence which it [communist theory] bears Communist theory isproduced by ndash and necessarily thinks within ndash this antagonistic relation it is thought of the class relation andit grasps itself as such It attempts to conceptually reconstruct the totality which is its ground in the light ofthe alreadyshyposited supersession of this totality and to draw out the supersession as it presents itself hereSince it is a relation which has no ideal lsquohomeostaticrsquo state but one which is always beyond itself with capitalfacing the problem of labour at every turn ndash even in its victories ndash the adequate thought of this relation is notof some equilibrium state or some smoothly selfshypositing totality it is of a fundamentally impossible relationsomething that is only insofar as it is ceasing to be an internally unstable antagonistic relation Communisttheory thus has no need of an external Archimedean point from which to take the measure of its object andcommunization has no need of a transcendent standpoint of lsquowithdrawalrsquo or lsquosecessionrsquo from which to launchits lsquoattackrsquo42

Endnotesrsquo various writings certainly provide an eminently plausible conceptual reconstruction of the totality which isthe ground of the class relation and hence of communist theorising And it is clear from their analyses of capitalrsquoslsquomoving contradictionrsquo how this relation is selfshyundermining lsquothe relation of exploitation corrodes its own foundationas that which is exploited ndash labourshypower ndash is tendentially expelled from the production process with thedevelopment of the productivity of social labourrsquo43 Thus the thought that is lsquoadequatersquo to the class relation (ie therelation of exploitation) is the thought of a lsquofundamentally impossible relationrsquo which is lsquoonly insofar as it is ceasingto bersquo That only the thought of an impossible relation can render theory adequate to its object is the index of the torsionthat is supposed to bind theoretical abstraction to the reality of social abstraction independently of therepresentational recourse to an objective correspondence relation (which would require lsquoan external Archimedeanpoint from which to take the measure of its objectrsquo) No doubt this impossible relation is supposed to markcommunist theoryrsquos immanence to revolutionary practice any subordination of practice to theory (or vice versa)would threaten to reintroduce the transcendence of an external Archimedean point which is to say arepresentation But it seems that what prevents communist theoryrsquos adequation to the class relation from fissioninginto a relation to this impossible relation which is to say a theoretical representation of reality and ultimately aprogram is its immediate consummation as selfshyproclaimed revolutionary activity an activity that guarantees its

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 1464

own traction upon the capitalist class relation simply by engaging in the struggle to destroy it There is a laudableconsistency here By taking the lsquoposited supersessionrsquo of the capitalist totality as its starting point communisttheorising secures its traction upon the antagonism constitutive of social reality But the danger remains that thisposited supersession of totality will substitute for its actual supersession not in spite of but precisely because itrefuses its theoretical construction Repurposing and Social Form By abjuring such construction as a representational intrusion compromising thoughtrsquos adequation to the classrelation communist theory secures its grip on the lsquoreal movementrsquo which communism is but at the risk of elidingreal movement with the movement of ideas Thus as Endnotes themselves make clear

Communization [hellip] has little positive advice to give us about particular immediate practice in the here andnow [hellip] What advice it can give is primarily negative the social forms implicated in the reproduction of thecapitalist class relation will not be instruments of the revolution since they are part of that which is to beabolished44

The question then is how are we to identify those social forms that are not implicated in the reproduction of theclass relation The distinction between compulsive labour and spontaneous practice is required not only to stave offthe paradox of selfshycancellation but also to distinguish between those activities programmed to reproduce the classrelation and those capable of interrupting this reproduction But the spontaneity whose exercise is the prerequisitefor the destruction of the class relation will also generate new abstractions together with new forms of mediationWhat is required is an understanding of social practices that would allow us to begin distinguishing betweenoppressive and emancipatory forms of mediation This is what we currently lack In the meantime must we abjure every existing instrument technique or methodenveloped by capitalist social forms No doubt it is relatively easy to identify those modes of contemporaryinformation technology whose stupefying antishysocial consequences render worthy of abolition But there are othertechnologies that are perhaps not so easily abolished Consider antivirals Every aspect of their development isimplicated in capitalist institutions and enveloped by its social forms Does this mean antivirals are intrinsicallycapitalist and hence ought to play no role in a postshycapitalist society A negative response recommends itself herewhile technological function is socially mediated and enveloped by the value form this need not be a saturatedmediation it need not exhaust the functional potentialities of the technology in question Some might retort that talkof repurposing is a distraction at best an alibi for reformism at worst because the development of antivirals (likeevery other contemporary technology) is necessarily linked to that of capitalist social relations the proliferation of

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 1564

lethal viruses being a direct consequence of industrialised livestock production and globalisation45 Were it not forthese two factors the objection goes we would not be so susceptible to increasing varieties of pathogens andhuman welfare would not be mortgaged to the development of antivirals The dismantling of capitalism according tothis line of argument would radically diminish if not wholly eliminate our increasing dependence on antivirals as wellas other technological artefacts Now it is undoubtedly true that there is a direct correlation between the proliferation of lifeshythreatening viruses andthe conditions of globalised capitalist society It may also be true that dismantling the latter is the surest means oferadicating the former And there is no doubt that the redistribution of antivirals on the basis of need rather thanwealth is a more pressing political concern than speculating on their role in postshycapitalist society Nevertheless theurgency of the former does not obviate the importance of the latter The absolute or indeterminate negation ofcapitalist society and all its works would eradicate the pathologies generated by capitalism only at the cost ofcancelling the emancipatory potentials latent in technologies whose functioning is currently subordinated to capitalThe abstract negation of functional context is also the negation of emancipatory possibilities whose releasedepends upon the reshycontextualisation of function Such abstraction inshydetermines instead of determining the fusionof cognitive and practical orientation required for the realisation of communism It abolishes the capitalist present atthe cost of cancelling the postshycapitalist future locked up within it Foreclosing the future blinkered negation cannotbut wish to reshyinstate the past It becomes the longing for a previous state of things lsquoIf only we hadnrsquot domesticatedanimals and started down the road to industrialised agriculture if only we didnrsquot live in a massively interconnectedglobal societyhelliprsquo And ultimately lsquoIf only capitalism hadnrsquot happenedrsquo But Marxrsquos starting point is the acknowledgement that capitalism has happened and given this premise hisfundamental question is how can we move beyond capitalism without regressing to preshycapitalist social formationssuch as agrarian feudalism The problem of repurposing cannot be circumvented by wishing capitalism had neverhappened History suggests that there are things worse than the value form A suitably abstract conception offunction will allow for its transplantation and where necessary repurposing across social contexts It goes withoutsaying that this should only be envisaged as a consequence of overcoming the capital relation not a substitute forthis overcoming More generally determination is not constitution We have to find a way to articulate theoreticaland social abstraction that does not involve the complete or indiscriminate relinquishment of the achievements ofcapitalist modernity en bloc Conclusion The issue of the realisation of function is crucial for clarifying the relation between conceptual and real abstractionCommunisation shortshycircuits conceptual abstraction and social abstraction in an insurrectionary praxis whosefixation on totality prevents it from formulating criteria for distinguishing between progressive and regressive social

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 1164

turn reproduces it Thus capitalrsquos logicisation of reality is itself conditioned by that reality this is the bulwark againstabsolute idealism which would hypostatise capital as a wholly autonomous selfshymoving subject (a causa sui orselfshycausing being) floating free of material reality altogether

Without human relations and practices which subsist in the lsquomode of being deniedrsquo through the pervertedfetishistic form of economic categories there could be no economic categories no value no commoditiesmoney or capital This does not mean however that labour should be understood as somehow constitutiveof the entire process nor should it be understood as primary The fetishshyforms of capital are properlyunderstood and criticised as selfshymoving perverted forms of social practice35

Thus lsquocapital is nothing other than a perverted form of human social relationsrsquo36 But it is lsquohuman relations andpracticesrsquo rather than labour which generate the real abstractions of capital From the perspective of the systematicdialectic espoused by Endnotes labour is always already inscribed within the valueshyform as its lsquopositedpresuppositionrsquo37 While capital posits the labour that provides its substance (ie its presupposition) this positingitself is ultimately constituted through the extraordinarily complex set of human practices without which capitalrsquos selfshyvalorisation could not be Valuersquos subsumption of labour as lsquoposited presuppositionrsquo also presupposes somethingthat it does not posit spontaneous human activity As Endnotes themselves make clear the spontaneity invokedhere should be understood in the Kantian sense as the determination of sensation exercised by the human mind inthe act of thinking Kant attributed this spontaneity to what he called lsquopure apperceptionrsquo

In the eighteenth century when Kant described the transcendental unity of apperception ndash the fact that I amaware of myself as having my own experiences ndash he called this a spontaneous act Kant meant the oppositeof something natural A spontaneous act is one that is freely undertaken In fact the word spontaneousderives from the Latin sponte meaning lsquoof onersquos own accord freely willinglyrsquo In this sense spontaneity isnot about acting compulsively or automatically It is a matter of acting without external constraint38

Spontaneity in Kantrsquos transcendental as opposed to empirical sense is the ultimate source of human freedom Itseems plausible to suggest that Endnotes need recourse to freedom in this transcendental sense in order to staveoff the paradox of selfshyabolition by grounding the possibility of human agency in a source that is independent of theclass relation As the ultimate wellspring of human activity this transcendental (as opposed to empirical)spontaneity may be construed as what constitutes the class relation independently of the class relationrsquosconstitution of the lsquowersquo The paradox is then defused because the agent of the abolition is distinct from theabolished agent But in opposing spontaneity to compulsion Endnotes risk resuscitating a transcendentalvoluntarism in which the human will functions as a mysterious not to say supernatural unmoved moverimpervious to external determination This is the familiar and much pilloried caricature of Kant There is a better

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 1264

more dialectical reading of him which understands the freedom exercised in the spontaneity of apperception asresulting from the willrsquos embrace of an intersubjectively instituted rule rather than a wholly unshydetermined eruptionex nihilo Freedom in this sense is not simply the absence of external determination but the agentrsquos rational selfshydetermination in and through its espousal of a universally applicable rule39 In this regard nominalism can be deployed as a weapon of materialist analysis that demystifies the idealisthypostatisation of abstraction In Wilfrid Sellarsrsquo metalinguistic version of nominalism which is perhaps the mostsophisticated elaboration of the thesis yet devised reference to abstract entities is explained as material modemetalinguistic discourse about linguistic functioning while this functioning is in turn identified with patterns oflinguistic tokenings40 What is especially valuable about Sellarsrsquo analysis from a materialist viewpoint is that it treatsabstract entities as hypostatised linguistic functions It shows how conceptual form is anchored in linguistic functionand grounds linguistic function in social practice Of course Sellarsrsquo account stops short of explaining the nature ofthe linkage between linguistic function and social practice He has no theory of the latter But his work has the signalmerit of telling us what abstract entities really are This is an important step towards explaining how capitalrsquosapparently selfshymoving abstractions are in fact motored by the activities and practices of human beings The Impossible Relation But while it is one thing to reveal that the reality of abstraction is rooted in human practice it is another thing toexplain how and which practice can be deployed to release us from the grip of the abstractions to which it hassubjected us Even if one grants that the abstractions of capital are generated through human practices how arethese practices supposed to constitute a communising agency Endnotes propose an answer of sorts in anotherremarkable passage that delves deeper still in its attempt to define the relation between communist theory andcapitalist reality

Communist theory sets out not from the false position of some voluntarist subject but from the positedsupersession of the totality of forms which are implicated in the reproduction of this subject As merelyposited this supersession is necessarily abstract but it is only through this basic abstraction that theorytakes as its content the determinate forms which are to be superseded forms which stand out in theirdeterminacy precisely because their dissolution has been posited41

These lsquodeterminate formsrsquo are the real abstractions of capitalism the commodityshyform the moneyshyform the valueshyform the labourshyform the productionshyform etc The passage continues

This positing is not only a matter of methodology or some kind of necessary postulate of reason for the

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 1364

supersession of the capitalist class relation is not a mere theoretical construct

It is not a lsquomere theoretical constructrsquo but nor is it some objective or lsquogivenrsquo datum for it is something towards whichtheory orients itself rather than something it statically contemplates Thus this posited supersession is somethingthat

[R]uns ahead of thought being posited incessantly by this [capitalist class] relation itself it is its very horizonas an antagonism the real negative presence which it [communist theory] bears Communist theory isproduced by ndash and necessarily thinks within ndash this antagonistic relation it is thought of the class relation andit grasps itself as such It attempts to conceptually reconstruct the totality which is its ground in the light ofthe alreadyshyposited supersession of this totality and to draw out the supersession as it presents itself hereSince it is a relation which has no ideal lsquohomeostaticrsquo state but one which is always beyond itself with capitalfacing the problem of labour at every turn ndash even in its victories ndash the adequate thought of this relation is notof some equilibrium state or some smoothly selfshypositing totality it is of a fundamentally impossible relationsomething that is only insofar as it is ceasing to be an internally unstable antagonistic relation Communisttheory thus has no need of an external Archimedean point from which to take the measure of its object andcommunization has no need of a transcendent standpoint of lsquowithdrawalrsquo or lsquosecessionrsquo from which to launchits lsquoattackrsquo42

Endnotesrsquo various writings certainly provide an eminently plausible conceptual reconstruction of the totality which isthe ground of the class relation and hence of communist theorising And it is clear from their analyses of capitalrsquoslsquomoving contradictionrsquo how this relation is selfshyundermining lsquothe relation of exploitation corrodes its own foundationas that which is exploited ndash labourshypower ndash is tendentially expelled from the production process with thedevelopment of the productivity of social labourrsquo43 Thus the thought that is lsquoadequatersquo to the class relation (ie therelation of exploitation) is the thought of a lsquofundamentally impossible relationrsquo which is lsquoonly insofar as it is ceasingto bersquo That only the thought of an impossible relation can render theory adequate to its object is the index of the torsionthat is supposed to bind theoretical abstraction to the reality of social abstraction independently of therepresentational recourse to an objective correspondence relation (which would require lsquoan external Archimedeanpoint from which to take the measure of its objectrsquo) No doubt this impossible relation is supposed to markcommunist theoryrsquos immanence to revolutionary practice any subordination of practice to theory (or vice versa)would threaten to reintroduce the transcendence of an external Archimedean point which is to say arepresentation But it seems that what prevents communist theoryrsquos adequation to the class relation from fissioninginto a relation to this impossible relation which is to say a theoretical representation of reality and ultimately aprogram is its immediate consummation as selfshyproclaimed revolutionary activity an activity that guarantees its

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 1464

own traction upon the capitalist class relation simply by engaging in the struggle to destroy it There is a laudableconsistency here By taking the lsquoposited supersessionrsquo of the capitalist totality as its starting point communisttheorising secures its traction upon the antagonism constitutive of social reality But the danger remains that thisposited supersession of totality will substitute for its actual supersession not in spite of but precisely because itrefuses its theoretical construction Repurposing and Social Form By abjuring such construction as a representational intrusion compromising thoughtrsquos adequation to the classrelation communist theory secures its grip on the lsquoreal movementrsquo which communism is but at the risk of elidingreal movement with the movement of ideas Thus as Endnotes themselves make clear

Communization [hellip] has little positive advice to give us about particular immediate practice in the here andnow [hellip] What advice it can give is primarily negative the social forms implicated in the reproduction of thecapitalist class relation will not be instruments of the revolution since they are part of that which is to beabolished44

The question then is how are we to identify those social forms that are not implicated in the reproduction of theclass relation The distinction between compulsive labour and spontaneous practice is required not only to stave offthe paradox of selfshycancellation but also to distinguish between those activities programmed to reproduce the classrelation and those capable of interrupting this reproduction But the spontaneity whose exercise is the prerequisitefor the destruction of the class relation will also generate new abstractions together with new forms of mediationWhat is required is an understanding of social practices that would allow us to begin distinguishing betweenoppressive and emancipatory forms of mediation This is what we currently lack In the meantime must we abjure every existing instrument technique or methodenveloped by capitalist social forms No doubt it is relatively easy to identify those modes of contemporaryinformation technology whose stupefying antishysocial consequences render worthy of abolition But there are othertechnologies that are perhaps not so easily abolished Consider antivirals Every aspect of their development isimplicated in capitalist institutions and enveloped by its social forms Does this mean antivirals are intrinsicallycapitalist and hence ought to play no role in a postshycapitalist society A negative response recommends itself herewhile technological function is socially mediated and enveloped by the value form this need not be a saturatedmediation it need not exhaust the functional potentialities of the technology in question Some might retort that talkof repurposing is a distraction at best an alibi for reformism at worst because the development of antivirals (likeevery other contemporary technology) is necessarily linked to that of capitalist social relations the proliferation of

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 1564

lethal viruses being a direct consequence of industrialised livestock production and globalisation45 Were it not forthese two factors the objection goes we would not be so susceptible to increasing varieties of pathogens andhuman welfare would not be mortgaged to the development of antivirals The dismantling of capitalism according tothis line of argument would radically diminish if not wholly eliminate our increasing dependence on antivirals as wellas other technological artefacts Now it is undoubtedly true that there is a direct correlation between the proliferation of lifeshythreatening viruses andthe conditions of globalised capitalist society It may also be true that dismantling the latter is the surest means oferadicating the former And there is no doubt that the redistribution of antivirals on the basis of need rather thanwealth is a more pressing political concern than speculating on their role in postshycapitalist society Nevertheless theurgency of the former does not obviate the importance of the latter The absolute or indeterminate negation ofcapitalist society and all its works would eradicate the pathologies generated by capitalism only at the cost ofcancelling the emancipatory potentials latent in technologies whose functioning is currently subordinated to capitalThe abstract negation of functional context is also the negation of emancipatory possibilities whose releasedepends upon the reshycontextualisation of function Such abstraction inshydetermines instead of determining the fusionof cognitive and practical orientation required for the realisation of communism It abolishes the capitalist present atthe cost of cancelling the postshycapitalist future locked up within it Foreclosing the future blinkered negation cannotbut wish to reshyinstate the past It becomes the longing for a previous state of things lsquoIf only we hadnrsquot domesticatedanimals and started down the road to industrialised agriculture if only we didnrsquot live in a massively interconnectedglobal societyhelliprsquo And ultimately lsquoIf only capitalism hadnrsquot happenedrsquo But Marxrsquos starting point is the acknowledgement that capitalism has happened and given this premise hisfundamental question is how can we move beyond capitalism without regressing to preshycapitalist social formationssuch as agrarian feudalism The problem of repurposing cannot be circumvented by wishing capitalism had neverhappened History suggests that there are things worse than the value form A suitably abstract conception offunction will allow for its transplantation and where necessary repurposing across social contexts It goes withoutsaying that this should only be envisaged as a consequence of overcoming the capital relation not a substitute forthis overcoming More generally determination is not constitution We have to find a way to articulate theoreticaland social abstraction that does not involve the complete or indiscriminate relinquishment of the achievements ofcapitalist modernity en bloc Conclusion The issue of the realisation of function is crucial for clarifying the relation between conceptual and real abstractionCommunisation shortshycircuits conceptual abstraction and social abstraction in an insurrectionary praxis whosefixation on totality prevents it from formulating criteria for distinguishing between progressive and regressive social

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 1264

more dialectical reading of him which understands the freedom exercised in the spontaneity of apperception asresulting from the willrsquos embrace of an intersubjectively instituted rule rather than a wholly unshydetermined eruptionex nihilo Freedom in this sense is not simply the absence of external determination but the agentrsquos rational selfshydetermination in and through its espousal of a universally applicable rule39 In this regard nominalism can be deployed as a weapon of materialist analysis that demystifies the idealisthypostatisation of abstraction In Wilfrid Sellarsrsquo metalinguistic version of nominalism which is perhaps the mostsophisticated elaboration of the thesis yet devised reference to abstract entities is explained as material modemetalinguistic discourse about linguistic functioning while this functioning is in turn identified with patterns oflinguistic tokenings40 What is especially valuable about Sellarsrsquo analysis from a materialist viewpoint is that it treatsabstract entities as hypostatised linguistic functions It shows how conceptual form is anchored in linguistic functionand grounds linguistic function in social practice Of course Sellarsrsquo account stops short of explaining the nature ofthe linkage between linguistic function and social practice He has no theory of the latter But his work has the signalmerit of telling us what abstract entities really are This is an important step towards explaining how capitalrsquosapparently selfshymoving abstractions are in fact motored by the activities and practices of human beings The Impossible Relation But while it is one thing to reveal that the reality of abstraction is rooted in human practice it is another thing toexplain how and which practice can be deployed to release us from the grip of the abstractions to which it hassubjected us Even if one grants that the abstractions of capital are generated through human practices how arethese practices supposed to constitute a communising agency Endnotes propose an answer of sorts in anotherremarkable passage that delves deeper still in its attempt to define the relation between communist theory andcapitalist reality

Communist theory sets out not from the false position of some voluntarist subject but from the positedsupersession of the totality of forms which are implicated in the reproduction of this subject As merelyposited this supersession is necessarily abstract but it is only through this basic abstraction that theorytakes as its content the determinate forms which are to be superseded forms which stand out in theirdeterminacy precisely because their dissolution has been posited41

These lsquodeterminate formsrsquo are the real abstractions of capitalism the commodityshyform the moneyshyform the valueshyform the labourshyform the productionshyform etc The passage continues

This positing is not only a matter of methodology or some kind of necessary postulate of reason for the

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 1364

supersession of the capitalist class relation is not a mere theoretical construct

It is not a lsquomere theoretical constructrsquo but nor is it some objective or lsquogivenrsquo datum for it is something towards whichtheory orients itself rather than something it statically contemplates Thus this posited supersession is somethingthat

[R]uns ahead of thought being posited incessantly by this [capitalist class] relation itself it is its very horizonas an antagonism the real negative presence which it [communist theory] bears Communist theory isproduced by ndash and necessarily thinks within ndash this antagonistic relation it is thought of the class relation andit grasps itself as such It attempts to conceptually reconstruct the totality which is its ground in the light ofthe alreadyshyposited supersession of this totality and to draw out the supersession as it presents itself hereSince it is a relation which has no ideal lsquohomeostaticrsquo state but one which is always beyond itself with capitalfacing the problem of labour at every turn ndash even in its victories ndash the adequate thought of this relation is notof some equilibrium state or some smoothly selfshypositing totality it is of a fundamentally impossible relationsomething that is only insofar as it is ceasing to be an internally unstable antagonistic relation Communisttheory thus has no need of an external Archimedean point from which to take the measure of its object andcommunization has no need of a transcendent standpoint of lsquowithdrawalrsquo or lsquosecessionrsquo from which to launchits lsquoattackrsquo42

Endnotesrsquo various writings certainly provide an eminently plausible conceptual reconstruction of the totality which isthe ground of the class relation and hence of communist theorising And it is clear from their analyses of capitalrsquoslsquomoving contradictionrsquo how this relation is selfshyundermining lsquothe relation of exploitation corrodes its own foundationas that which is exploited ndash labourshypower ndash is tendentially expelled from the production process with thedevelopment of the productivity of social labourrsquo43 Thus the thought that is lsquoadequatersquo to the class relation (ie therelation of exploitation) is the thought of a lsquofundamentally impossible relationrsquo which is lsquoonly insofar as it is ceasingto bersquo That only the thought of an impossible relation can render theory adequate to its object is the index of the torsionthat is supposed to bind theoretical abstraction to the reality of social abstraction independently of therepresentational recourse to an objective correspondence relation (which would require lsquoan external Archimedeanpoint from which to take the measure of its objectrsquo) No doubt this impossible relation is supposed to markcommunist theoryrsquos immanence to revolutionary practice any subordination of practice to theory (or vice versa)would threaten to reintroduce the transcendence of an external Archimedean point which is to say arepresentation But it seems that what prevents communist theoryrsquos adequation to the class relation from fissioninginto a relation to this impossible relation which is to say a theoretical representation of reality and ultimately aprogram is its immediate consummation as selfshyproclaimed revolutionary activity an activity that guarantees its

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 1464

own traction upon the capitalist class relation simply by engaging in the struggle to destroy it There is a laudableconsistency here By taking the lsquoposited supersessionrsquo of the capitalist totality as its starting point communisttheorising secures its traction upon the antagonism constitutive of social reality But the danger remains that thisposited supersession of totality will substitute for its actual supersession not in spite of but precisely because itrefuses its theoretical construction Repurposing and Social Form By abjuring such construction as a representational intrusion compromising thoughtrsquos adequation to the classrelation communist theory secures its grip on the lsquoreal movementrsquo which communism is but at the risk of elidingreal movement with the movement of ideas Thus as Endnotes themselves make clear

Communization [hellip] has little positive advice to give us about particular immediate practice in the here andnow [hellip] What advice it can give is primarily negative the social forms implicated in the reproduction of thecapitalist class relation will not be instruments of the revolution since they are part of that which is to beabolished44

The question then is how are we to identify those social forms that are not implicated in the reproduction of theclass relation The distinction between compulsive labour and spontaneous practice is required not only to stave offthe paradox of selfshycancellation but also to distinguish between those activities programmed to reproduce the classrelation and those capable of interrupting this reproduction But the spontaneity whose exercise is the prerequisitefor the destruction of the class relation will also generate new abstractions together with new forms of mediationWhat is required is an understanding of social practices that would allow us to begin distinguishing betweenoppressive and emancipatory forms of mediation This is what we currently lack In the meantime must we abjure every existing instrument technique or methodenveloped by capitalist social forms No doubt it is relatively easy to identify those modes of contemporaryinformation technology whose stupefying antishysocial consequences render worthy of abolition But there are othertechnologies that are perhaps not so easily abolished Consider antivirals Every aspect of their development isimplicated in capitalist institutions and enveloped by its social forms Does this mean antivirals are intrinsicallycapitalist and hence ought to play no role in a postshycapitalist society A negative response recommends itself herewhile technological function is socially mediated and enveloped by the value form this need not be a saturatedmediation it need not exhaust the functional potentialities of the technology in question Some might retort that talkof repurposing is a distraction at best an alibi for reformism at worst because the development of antivirals (likeevery other contemporary technology) is necessarily linked to that of capitalist social relations the proliferation of

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 1564

lethal viruses being a direct consequence of industrialised livestock production and globalisation45 Were it not forthese two factors the objection goes we would not be so susceptible to increasing varieties of pathogens andhuman welfare would not be mortgaged to the development of antivirals The dismantling of capitalism according tothis line of argument would radically diminish if not wholly eliminate our increasing dependence on antivirals as wellas other technological artefacts Now it is undoubtedly true that there is a direct correlation between the proliferation of lifeshythreatening viruses andthe conditions of globalised capitalist society It may also be true that dismantling the latter is the surest means oferadicating the former And there is no doubt that the redistribution of antivirals on the basis of need rather thanwealth is a more pressing political concern than speculating on their role in postshycapitalist society Nevertheless theurgency of the former does not obviate the importance of the latter The absolute or indeterminate negation ofcapitalist society and all its works would eradicate the pathologies generated by capitalism only at the cost ofcancelling the emancipatory potentials latent in technologies whose functioning is currently subordinated to capitalThe abstract negation of functional context is also the negation of emancipatory possibilities whose releasedepends upon the reshycontextualisation of function Such abstraction inshydetermines instead of determining the fusionof cognitive and practical orientation required for the realisation of communism It abolishes the capitalist present atthe cost of cancelling the postshycapitalist future locked up within it Foreclosing the future blinkered negation cannotbut wish to reshyinstate the past It becomes the longing for a previous state of things lsquoIf only we hadnrsquot domesticatedanimals and started down the road to industrialised agriculture if only we didnrsquot live in a massively interconnectedglobal societyhelliprsquo And ultimately lsquoIf only capitalism hadnrsquot happenedrsquo But Marxrsquos starting point is the acknowledgement that capitalism has happened and given this premise hisfundamental question is how can we move beyond capitalism without regressing to preshycapitalist social formationssuch as agrarian feudalism The problem of repurposing cannot be circumvented by wishing capitalism had neverhappened History suggests that there are things worse than the value form A suitably abstract conception offunction will allow for its transplantation and where necessary repurposing across social contexts It goes withoutsaying that this should only be envisaged as a consequence of overcoming the capital relation not a substitute forthis overcoming More generally determination is not constitution We have to find a way to articulate theoreticaland social abstraction that does not involve the complete or indiscriminate relinquishment of the achievements ofcapitalist modernity en bloc Conclusion The issue of the realisation of function is crucial for clarifying the relation between conceptual and real abstractionCommunisation shortshycircuits conceptual abstraction and social abstraction in an insurrectionary praxis whosefixation on totality prevents it from formulating criteria for distinguishing between progressive and regressive social

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 1364

supersession of the capitalist class relation is not a mere theoretical construct

It is not a lsquomere theoretical constructrsquo but nor is it some objective or lsquogivenrsquo datum for it is something towards whichtheory orients itself rather than something it statically contemplates Thus this posited supersession is somethingthat

[R]uns ahead of thought being posited incessantly by this [capitalist class] relation itself it is its very horizonas an antagonism the real negative presence which it [communist theory] bears Communist theory isproduced by ndash and necessarily thinks within ndash this antagonistic relation it is thought of the class relation andit grasps itself as such It attempts to conceptually reconstruct the totality which is its ground in the light ofthe alreadyshyposited supersession of this totality and to draw out the supersession as it presents itself hereSince it is a relation which has no ideal lsquohomeostaticrsquo state but one which is always beyond itself with capitalfacing the problem of labour at every turn ndash even in its victories ndash the adequate thought of this relation is notof some equilibrium state or some smoothly selfshypositing totality it is of a fundamentally impossible relationsomething that is only insofar as it is ceasing to be an internally unstable antagonistic relation Communisttheory thus has no need of an external Archimedean point from which to take the measure of its object andcommunization has no need of a transcendent standpoint of lsquowithdrawalrsquo or lsquosecessionrsquo from which to launchits lsquoattackrsquo42

Endnotesrsquo various writings certainly provide an eminently plausible conceptual reconstruction of the totality which isthe ground of the class relation and hence of communist theorising And it is clear from their analyses of capitalrsquoslsquomoving contradictionrsquo how this relation is selfshyundermining lsquothe relation of exploitation corrodes its own foundationas that which is exploited ndash labourshypower ndash is tendentially expelled from the production process with thedevelopment of the productivity of social labourrsquo43 Thus the thought that is lsquoadequatersquo to the class relation (ie therelation of exploitation) is the thought of a lsquofundamentally impossible relationrsquo which is lsquoonly insofar as it is ceasingto bersquo That only the thought of an impossible relation can render theory adequate to its object is the index of the torsionthat is supposed to bind theoretical abstraction to the reality of social abstraction independently of therepresentational recourse to an objective correspondence relation (which would require lsquoan external Archimedeanpoint from which to take the measure of its objectrsquo) No doubt this impossible relation is supposed to markcommunist theoryrsquos immanence to revolutionary practice any subordination of practice to theory (or vice versa)would threaten to reintroduce the transcendence of an external Archimedean point which is to say arepresentation But it seems that what prevents communist theoryrsquos adequation to the class relation from fissioninginto a relation to this impossible relation which is to say a theoretical representation of reality and ultimately aprogram is its immediate consummation as selfshyproclaimed revolutionary activity an activity that guarantees its

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 1464

own traction upon the capitalist class relation simply by engaging in the struggle to destroy it There is a laudableconsistency here By taking the lsquoposited supersessionrsquo of the capitalist totality as its starting point communisttheorising secures its traction upon the antagonism constitutive of social reality But the danger remains that thisposited supersession of totality will substitute for its actual supersession not in spite of but precisely because itrefuses its theoretical construction Repurposing and Social Form By abjuring such construction as a representational intrusion compromising thoughtrsquos adequation to the classrelation communist theory secures its grip on the lsquoreal movementrsquo which communism is but at the risk of elidingreal movement with the movement of ideas Thus as Endnotes themselves make clear

Communization [hellip] has little positive advice to give us about particular immediate practice in the here andnow [hellip] What advice it can give is primarily negative the social forms implicated in the reproduction of thecapitalist class relation will not be instruments of the revolution since they are part of that which is to beabolished44

The question then is how are we to identify those social forms that are not implicated in the reproduction of theclass relation The distinction between compulsive labour and spontaneous practice is required not only to stave offthe paradox of selfshycancellation but also to distinguish between those activities programmed to reproduce the classrelation and those capable of interrupting this reproduction But the spontaneity whose exercise is the prerequisitefor the destruction of the class relation will also generate new abstractions together with new forms of mediationWhat is required is an understanding of social practices that would allow us to begin distinguishing betweenoppressive and emancipatory forms of mediation This is what we currently lack In the meantime must we abjure every existing instrument technique or methodenveloped by capitalist social forms No doubt it is relatively easy to identify those modes of contemporaryinformation technology whose stupefying antishysocial consequences render worthy of abolition But there are othertechnologies that are perhaps not so easily abolished Consider antivirals Every aspect of their development isimplicated in capitalist institutions and enveloped by its social forms Does this mean antivirals are intrinsicallycapitalist and hence ought to play no role in a postshycapitalist society A negative response recommends itself herewhile technological function is socially mediated and enveloped by the value form this need not be a saturatedmediation it need not exhaust the functional potentialities of the technology in question Some might retort that talkof repurposing is a distraction at best an alibi for reformism at worst because the development of antivirals (likeevery other contemporary technology) is necessarily linked to that of capitalist social relations the proliferation of

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 1564

lethal viruses being a direct consequence of industrialised livestock production and globalisation45 Were it not forthese two factors the objection goes we would not be so susceptible to increasing varieties of pathogens andhuman welfare would not be mortgaged to the development of antivirals The dismantling of capitalism according tothis line of argument would radically diminish if not wholly eliminate our increasing dependence on antivirals as wellas other technological artefacts Now it is undoubtedly true that there is a direct correlation between the proliferation of lifeshythreatening viruses andthe conditions of globalised capitalist society It may also be true that dismantling the latter is the surest means oferadicating the former And there is no doubt that the redistribution of antivirals on the basis of need rather thanwealth is a more pressing political concern than speculating on their role in postshycapitalist society Nevertheless theurgency of the former does not obviate the importance of the latter The absolute or indeterminate negation ofcapitalist society and all its works would eradicate the pathologies generated by capitalism only at the cost ofcancelling the emancipatory potentials latent in technologies whose functioning is currently subordinated to capitalThe abstract negation of functional context is also the negation of emancipatory possibilities whose releasedepends upon the reshycontextualisation of function Such abstraction inshydetermines instead of determining the fusionof cognitive and practical orientation required for the realisation of communism It abolishes the capitalist present atthe cost of cancelling the postshycapitalist future locked up within it Foreclosing the future blinkered negation cannotbut wish to reshyinstate the past It becomes the longing for a previous state of things lsquoIf only we hadnrsquot domesticatedanimals and started down the road to industrialised agriculture if only we didnrsquot live in a massively interconnectedglobal societyhelliprsquo And ultimately lsquoIf only capitalism hadnrsquot happenedrsquo But Marxrsquos starting point is the acknowledgement that capitalism has happened and given this premise hisfundamental question is how can we move beyond capitalism without regressing to preshycapitalist social formationssuch as agrarian feudalism The problem of repurposing cannot be circumvented by wishing capitalism had neverhappened History suggests that there are things worse than the value form A suitably abstract conception offunction will allow for its transplantation and where necessary repurposing across social contexts It goes withoutsaying that this should only be envisaged as a consequence of overcoming the capital relation not a substitute forthis overcoming More generally determination is not constitution We have to find a way to articulate theoreticaland social abstraction that does not involve the complete or indiscriminate relinquishment of the achievements ofcapitalist modernity en bloc Conclusion The issue of the realisation of function is crucial for clarifying the relation between conceptual and real abstractionCommunisation shortshycircuits conceptual abstraction and social abstraction in an insurrectionary praxis whosefixation on totality prevents it from formulating criteria for distinguishing between progressive and regressive social

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 1464

own traction upon the capitalist class relation simply by engaging in the struggle to destroy it There is a laudableconsistency here By taking the lsquoposited supersessionrsquo of the capitalist totality as its starting point communisttheorising secures its traction upon the antagonism constitutive of social reality But the danger remains that thisposited supersession of totality will substitute for its actual supersession not in spite of but precisely because itrefuses its theoretical construction Repurposing and Social Form By abjuring such construction as a representational intrusion compromising thoughtrsquos adequation to the classrelation communist theory secures its grip on the lsquoreal movementrsquo which communism is but at the risk of elidingreal movement with the movement of ideas Thus as Endnotes themselves make clear

Communization [hellip] has little positive advice to give us about particular immediate practice in the here andnow [hellip] What advice it can give is primarily negative the social forms implicated in the reproduction of thecapitalist class relation will not be instruments of the revolution since they are part of that which is to beabolished44

The question then is how are we to identify those social forms that are not implicated in the reproduction of theclass relation The distinction between compulsive labour and spontaneous practice is required not only to stave offthe paradox of selfshycancellation but also to distinguish between those activities programmed to reproduce the classrelation and those capable of interrupting this reproduction But the spontaneity whose exercise is the prerequisitefor the destruction of the class relation will also generate new abstractions together with new forms of mediationWhat is required is an understanding of social practices that would allow us to begin distinguishing betweenoppressive and emancipatory forms of mediation This is what we currently lack In the meantime must we abjure every existing instrument technique or methodenveloped by capitalist social forms No doubt it is relatively easy to identify those modes of contemporaryinformation technology whose stupefying antishysocial consequences render worthy of abolition But there are othertechnologies that are perhaps not so easily abolished Consider antivirals Every aspect of their development isimplicated in capitalist institutions and enveloped by its social forms Does this mean antivirals are intrinsicallycapitalist and hence ought to play no role in a postshycapitalist society A negative response recommends itself herewhile technological function is socially mediated and enveloped by the value form this need not be a saturatedmediation it need not exhaust the functional potentialities of the technology in question Some might retort that talkof repurposing is a distraction at best an alibi for reformism at worst because the development of antivirals (likeevery other contemporary technology) is necessarily linked to that of capitalist social relations the proliferation of

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 1564

lethal viruses being a direct consequence of industrialised livestock production and globalisation45 Were it not forthese two factors the objection goes we would not be so susceptible to increasing varieties of pathogens andhuman welfare would not be mortgaged to the development of antivirals The dismantling of capitalism according tothis line of argument would radically diminish if not wholly eliminate our increasing dependence on antivirals as wellas other technological artefacts Now it is undoubtedly true that there is a direct correlation between the proliferation of lifeshythreatening viruses andthe conditions of globalised capitalist society It may also be true that dismantling the latter is the surest means oferadicating the former And there is no doubt that the redistribution of antivirals on the basis of need rather thanwealth is a more pressing political concern than speculating on their role in postshycapitalist society Nevertheless theurgency of the former does not obviate the importance of the latter The absolute or indeterminate negation ofcapitalist society and all its works would eradicate the pathologies generated by capitalism only at the cost ofcancelling the emancipatory potentials latent in technologies whose functioning is currently subordinated to capitalThe abstract negation of functional context is also the negation of emancipatory possibilities whose releasedepends upon the reshycontextualisation of function Such abstraction inshydetermines instead of determining the fusionof cognitive and practical orientation required for the realisation of communism It abolishes the capitalist present atthe cost of cancelling the postshycapitalist future locked up within it Foreclosing the future blinkered negation cannotbut wish to reshyinstate the past It becomes the longing for a previous state of things lsquoIf only we hadnrsquot domesticatedanimals and started down the road to industrialised agriculture if only we didnrsquot live in a massively interconnectedglobal societyhelliprsquo And ultimately lsquoIf only capitalism hadnrsquot happenedrsquo But Marxrsquos starting point is the acknowledgement that capitalism has happened and given this premise hisfundamental question is how can we move beyond capitalism without regressing to preshycapitalist social formationssuch as agrarian feudalism The problem of repurposing cannot be circumvented by wishing capitalism had neverhappened History suggests that there are things worse than the value form A suitably abstract conception offunction will allow for its transplantation and where necessary repurposing across social contexts It goes withoutsaying that this should only be envisaged as a consequence of overcoming the capital relation not a substitute forthis overcoming More generally determination is not constitution We have to find a way to articulate theoreticaland social abstraction that does not involve the complete or indiscriminate relinquishment of the achievements ofcapitalist modernity en bloc Conclusion The issue of the realisation of function is crucial for clarifying the relation between conceptual and real abstractionCommunisation shortshycircuits conceptual abstraction and social abstraction in an insurrectionary praxis whosefixation on totality prevents it from formulating criteria for distinguishing between progressive and regressive social

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 1564

lethal viruses being a direct consequence of industrialised livestock production and globalisation45 Were it not forthese two factors the objection goes we would not be so susceptible to increasing varieties of pathogens andhuman welfare would not be mortgaged to the development of antivirals The dismantling of capitalism according tothis line of argument would radically diminish if not wholly eliminate our increasing dependence on antivirals as wellas other technological artefacts Now it is undoubtedly true that there is a direct correlation between the proliferation of lifeshythreatening viruses andthe conditions of globalised capitalist society It may also be true that dismantling the latter is the surest means oferadicating the former And there is no doubt that the redistribution of antivirals on the basis of need rather thanwealth is a more pressing political concern than speculating on their role in postshycapitalist society Nevertheless theurgency of the former does not obviate the importance of the latter The absolute or indeterminate negation ofcapitalist society and all its works would eradicate the pathologies generated by capitalism only at the cost ofcancelling the emancipatory potentials latent in technologies whose functioning is currently subordinated to capitalThe abstract negation of functional context is also the negation of emancipatory possibilities whose releasedepends upon the reshycontextualisation of function Such abstraction inshydetermines instead of determining the fusionof cognitive and practical orientation required for the realisation of communism It abolishes the capitalist present atthe cost of cancelling the postshycapitalist future locked up within it Foreclosing the future blinkered negation cannotbut wish to reshyinstate the past It becomes the longing for a previous state of things lsquoIf only we hadnrsquot domesticatedanimals and started down the road to industrialised agriculture if only we didnrsquot live in a massively interconnectedglobal societyhelliprsquo And ultimately lsquoIf only capitalism hadnrsquot happenedrsquo But Marxrsquos starting point is the acknowledgement that capitalism has happened and given this premise hisfundamental question is how can we move beyond capitalism without regressing to preshycapitalist social formationssuch as agrarian feudalism The problem of repurposing cannot be circumvented by wishing capitalism had neverhappened History suggests that there are things worse than the value form A suitably abstract conception offunction will allow for its transplantation and where necessary repurposing across social contexts It goes withoutsaying that this should only be envisaged as a consequence of overcoming the capital relation not a substitute forthis overcoming More generally determination is not constitution We have to find a way to articulate theoreticaland social abstraction that does not involve the complete or indiscriminate relinquishment of the achievements ofcapitalist modernity en bloc Conclusion The issue of the realisation of function is crucial for clarifying the relation between conceptual and real abstractionCommunisation shortshycircuits conceptual abstraction and social abstraction in an insurrectionary praxis whosefixation on totality prevents it from formulating criteria for distinguishing between progressive and regressive social

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 1664

forms Perhaps the real import of the accelerationism defended by Srnicek and Williams is as an intervention intothe politics of abstraction46 They argue that the representation of abstraction is not only unavoidable butnecessary in order to mount an epistemic and political challenge to capitalism But the fact that such representationis necessary does not guarantee that it is possible to align epistemic and political acceleration or more basicallythat it will be possible to align theoretical explanation with emancipatory activity Doing so requires the socialrealisation of cognition which is what communisationrsquos focus on totality acknowledges even if it arguably prevents itfrom achieving it Without a theory of the totality that articulates explanatory rationality with emancipatory causalityit becomes difficult to understand the conditions under which epistemic practices might be realised This is arguablyaccelerationismrsquos chief lacuna What is required is an account of the link between the conceptual and the social atthe level of practice which is to say an account of the way in which cognitive function supervenes on socialpractices This is what neither accelerationism nor communisation currently provide Note This text was developed from a presentation given at Accelerationism A symposium on tendencies in capitalismBerlin 14 December 2013 wwwxlrtorg The author would like to thank Anthony Iles for his valuable criticalfeedback on an earlier draft of this essay Ray Brassier teaches philosophy at the American University of Beirut Recent publications include lsquoThatWhich is Not Philosophy as Entwinement of Truth and Negativityrsquo in Stasis No1 2013 NominalismNaturalism and Materialism Sellarsrsquo Critical Ontologyrsquo in Contemporary Philosophical Naturalism and itsImplications B Bashour and H Muller (eds) London and New York Routledge 2013 lsquoThe Reality ofAbstractionrsquo in Laruelle and NonshyPhilosophy JMullarkey and AP Smith (eds) Edinburgh University Press2012 lsquoLived Experience and the Myth of the Givenrsquo Filozofski Vestnik Vol XXXII No 3 2011 Footnotes

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 1764

1 The term lsquoaccelerationismrsquo was coined by Benjamin Noys in his book The Persistence of the Negative (EdinburghUniversity Press 2010) See especially pp5shy8

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 1864

2 Marx and Engels The German Ideology in The MarxshyEngels Reader 2nd Edition Ed Robert C Tucker WWNorton and Company p162

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 1964

3 This is Kantrsquos formulation in lsquoWhat is Enlightenmentrsquo (1784) and one which I believe is concretised rather thanjettisoned by Marx through Hegel Humanityrsquos emancipation from superhuman authority whether natural or divineis the condition of human freedom which Kant also calls lsquoautonomyrsquo Autonomy should not to be confused withindependence one can be autonomous yet still dependent The lsquohumanityrsquo affirmed here is characterised by itscapacity for selfshytransformation not its biological attributes Rationality understood as a social practice is central tothis capacity for selfshytransformation To say that rational beings should not recognise any nonshyrational authority(because the latter would be a force not an authority) does not mean that rational beings should ignore or disregardeverything nonshyrational Rational animals ignore their animality at their peril

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 2064

4 See Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams Accelerate Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politicshttpsyntheticedificewordpresscom20140204accelerateshymanifestoshyforshyanshyaccelerationistshypolitics I am alsodrawing on two as yet unpublished texts Nick Srnicek lsquoAccelerationism Epistemic Economic Politicalrsquo (2013) andAlex Williams lsquoThe Politics of Abstractionrsquo (2013)

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 1864

2 Marx and Engels The German Ideology in The MarxshyEngels Reader 2nd Edition Ed Robert C Tucker WWNorton and Company p162

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 1964

3 This is Kantrsquos formulation in lsquoWhat is Enlightenmentrsquo (1784) and one which I believe is concretised rather thanjettisoned by Marx through Hegel Humanityrsquos emancipation from superhuman authority whether natural or divineis the condition of human freedom which Kant also calls lsquoautonomyrsquo Autonomy should not to be confused withindependence one can be autonomous yet still dependent The lsquohumanityrsquo affirmed here is characterised by itscapacity for selfshytransformation not its biological attributes Rationality understood as a social practice is central tothis capacity for selfshytransformation To say that rational beings should not recognise any nonshyrational authority(because the latter would be a force not an authority) does not mean that rational beings should ignore or disregardeverything nonshyrational Rational animals ignore their animality at their peril

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 2064

4 See Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams Accelerate Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politicshttpsyntheticedificewordpresscom20140204accelerateshymanifestoshyforshyanshyaccelerationistshypolitics I am alsodrawing on two as yet unpublished texts Nick Srnicek lsquoAccelerationism Epistemic Economic Politicalrsquo (2013) andAlex Williams lsquoThe Politics of Abstractionrsquo (2013)

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 1964

3 This is Kantrsquos formulation in lsquoWhat is Enlightenmentrsquo (1784) and one which I believe is concretised rather thanjettisoned by Marx through Hegel Humanityrsquos emancipation from superhuman authority whether natural or divineis the condition of human freedom which Kant also calls lsquoautonomyrsquo Autonomy should not to be confused withindependence one can be autonomous yet still dependent The lsquohumanityrsquo affirmed here is characterised by itscapacity for selfshytransformation not its biological attributes Rationality understood as a social practice is central tothis capacity for selfshytransformation To say that rational beings should not recognise any nonshyrational authority(because the latter would be a force not an authority) does not mean that rational beings should ignore or disregardeverything nonshyrational Rational animals ignore their animality at their peril

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 2064

4 See Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams Accelerate Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politicshttpsyntheticedificewordpresscom20140204accelerateshymanifestoshyforshyanshyaccelerationistshypolitics I am alsodrawing on two as yet unpublished texts Nick Srnicek lsquoAccelerationism Epistemic Economic Politicalrsquo (2013) andAlex Williams lsquoThe Politics of Abstractionrsquo (2013)

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 2064

4 See Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams Accelerate Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politicshttpsyntheticedificewordpresscom20140204accelerateshymanifestoshyforshyanshyaccelerationistshypolitics I am alsodrawing on two as yet unpublished texts Nick Srnicek lsquoAccelerationism Epistemic Economic Politicalrsquo (2013) andAlex Williams lsquoThe Politics of Abstractionrsquo (2013)

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 2164

5 AntishyOedipus contains the locus classicus of accelerationism lsquoBut which is the revolutionary path Is there one ndashTo withdraw from the world market as Samir Amin advises Third World Countries to do in a curious revival of thefascist ldquoeconomic solutionrdquo Or might it be to go in the opposite direction To go further still that is in themovement of the market of decoding and deterritorialisation For perhaps the flows are not yet deterritorialisedenough not decoded enough from the viewpoint of a theory and practice of a highly schizophrenic character Notto withdraw from the process but to go further to ldquoaccelerate the processrdquo as Nietzsche put it in this matter thetruth is that we havenrsquot seen anything yetrsquo Gilles Deleuze and Feacutelix Guattari AntishyOedipus London Athlonepp239shy40

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 2264

6 Alfred SohnshyRethel Intellectual and Manual Labour a Critique of Epistemology Atlantic Highlands New JerseyHumanities Press 1977) For an illuminating discussion of SohnshyRethelrsquos contemporary relevance see AlbertoToscano lsquoThe Culture of Abstractionrsquo in Theory Culture and Society 25(4) 2008 pp57shy75 and lsquoThe Open Secret ofReal Abstractionrsquo in Rethinking Marxism 20(2) 2008 pp273shy287

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 2364

7 Unless of course one insists that abstraction per se is bad a move whose debilitating consequences for thoughthardly need spelling out

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 2464

8 Gilles Deleuze and Feacutelix Guattari LrsquoantishyOedipe Paris Minuit 1972 JeanshyFranccedilois Lyotard Des dispositifspulsionels Paris Union Geacuteneacuterale DrsquoEacuteditions 1973 and Eacuteconomie libidinale Paris Minuit 1974 Jean Baudrillard Lemirroir de la production Tournai Casterman 1973 LrsquoEacutechange symbolique et la mort (Paris Gallimard 1976) TheEnglish edition of Camattersquos The Wandering of Humanity Detroit Black amp Red 1975 comprises two texts originallypublished (in French) in the journal Invariance in 1973

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 2564

9 Camatte uses the German word Gemeinwesen which can be translated as lsquocommunityrsquo or lsquocommonwealthrsquo andseems to intend a contrast between (human) community and (capitalist) society or Gesellschaft This distinctionoriginates in the work of the German sociologist Ferdinand Toumlnnies (1855shy1936) See his Gemeinschaft undGesellschaft (Leipzig Fuess Verlag 1887) translated by Charles Price Loomis as Community and Society (EastLansing Michigan State University Press 1957) The distinction was also taken up by Max Weber in Economy andSociety (1921) translated and edited by Guenter Roth and Claus Wittich University of California Press 1978

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 2664

10 Endnotes lsquoCrisis in the Class Relationrsquo in Endnotes II Misery and the Value Formhttpendnotesorgukenendnotesshycrisisshyinshytheshyc

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 2264

6 Alfred SohnshyRethel Intellectual and Manual Labour a Critique of Epistemology Atlantic Highlands New JerseyHumanities Press 1977) For an illuminating discussion of SohnshyRethelrsquos contemporary relevance see AlbertoToscano lsquoThe Culture of Abstractionrsquo in Theory Culture and Society 25(4) 2008 pp57shy75 and lsquoThe Open Secret ofReal Abstractionrsquo in Rethinking Marxism 20(2) 2008 pp273shy287

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 2364

7 Unless of course one insists that abstraction per se is bad a move whose debilitating consequences for thoughthardly need spelling out

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 2464

8 Gilles Deleuze and Feacutelix Guattari LrsquoantishyOedipe Paris Minuit 1972 JeanshyFranccedilois Lyotard Des dispositifspulsionels Paris Union Geacuteneacuterale DrsquoEacuteditions 1973 and Eacuteconomie libidinale Paris Minuit 1974 Jean Baudrillard Lemirroir de la production Tournai Casterman 1973 LrsquoEacutechange symbolique et la mort (Paris Gallimard 1976) TheEnglish edition of Camattersquos The Wandering of Humanity Detroit Black amp Red 1975 comprises two texts originallypublished (in French) in the journal Invariance in 1973

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 2564

9 Camatte uses the German word Gemeinwesen which can be translated as lsquocommunityrsquo or lsquocommonwealthrsquo andseems to intend a contrast between (human) community and (capitalist) society or Gesellschaft This distinctionoriginates in the work of the German sociologist Ferdinand Toumlnnies (1855shy1936) See his Gemeinschaft undGesellschaft (Leipzig Fuess Verlag 1887) translated by Charles Price Loomis as Community and Society (EastLansing Michigan State University Press 1957) The distinction was also taken up by Max Weber in Economy andSociety (1921) translated and edited by Guenter Roth and Claus Wittich University of California Press 1978

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 2664

10 Endnotes lsquoCrisis in the Class Relationrsquo in Endnotes II Misery and the Value Formhttpendnotesorgukenendnotesshycrisisshyinshytheshyc

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 2364

7 Unless of course one insists that abstraction per se is bad a move whose debilitating consequences for thoughthardly need spelling out

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 2464

8 Gilles Deleuze and Feacutelix Guattari LrsquoantishyOedipe Paris Minuit 1972 JeanshyFranccedilois Lyotard Des dispositifspulsionels Paris Union Geacuteneacuterale DrsquoEacuteditions 1973 and Eacuteconomie libidinale Paris Minuit 1974 Jean Baudrillard Lemirroir de la production Tournai Casterman 1973 LrsquoEacutechange symbolique et la mort (Paris Gallimard 1976) TheEnglish edition of Camattersquos The Wandering of Humanity Detroit Black amp Red 1975 comprises two texts originallypublished (in French) in the journal Invariance in 1973

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 2564

9 Camatte uses the German word Gemeinwesen which can be translated as lsquocommunityrsquo or lsquocommonwealthrsquo andseems to intend a contrast between (human) community and (capitalist) society or Gesellschaft This distinctionoriginates in the work of the German sociologist Ferdinand Toumlnnies (1855shy1936) See his Gemeinschaft undGesellschaft (Leipzig Fuess Verlag 1887) translated by Charles Price Loomis as Community and Society (EastLansing Michigan State University Press 1957) The distinction was also taken up by Max Weber in Economy andSociety (1921) translated and edited by Guenter Roth and Claus Wittich University of California Press 1978

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 2664

10 Endnotes lsquoCrisis in the Class Relationrsquo in Endnotes II Misery and the Value Formhttpendnotesorgukenendnotesshycrisisshyinshytheshyc

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 2464

8 Gilles Deleuze and Feacutelix Guattari LrsquoantishyOedipe Paris Minuit 1972 JeanshyFranccedilois Lyotard Des dispositifspulsionels Paris Union Geacuteneacuterale DrsquoEacuteditions 1973 and Eacuteconomie libidinale Paris Minuit 1974 Jean Baudrillard Lemirroir de la production Tournai Casterman 1973 LrsquoEacutechange symbolique et la mort (Paris Gallimard 1976) TheEnglish edition of Camattersquos The Wandering of Humanity Detroit Black amp Red 1975 comprises two texts originallypublished (in French) in the journal Invariance in 1973

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 2564

9 Camatte uses the German word Gemeinwesen which can be translated as lsquocommunityrsquo or lsquocommonwealthrsquo andseems to intend a contrast between (human) community and (capitalist) society or Gesellschaft This distinctionoriginates in the work of the German sociologist Ferdinand Toumlnnies (1855shy1936) See his Gemeinschaft undGesellschaft (Leipzig Fuess Verlag 1887) translated by Charles Price Loomis as Community and Society (EastLansing Michigan State University Press 1957) The distinction was also taken up by Max Weber in Economy andSociety (1921) translated and edited by Guenter Roth and Claus Wittich University of California Press 1978

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 2664

10 Endnotes lsquoCrisis in the Class Relationrsquo in Endnotes II Misery and the Value Formhttpendnotesorgukenendnotesshycrisisshyinshytheshyc

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 2564

9 Camatte uses the German word Gemeinwesen which can be translated as lsquocommunityrsquo or lsquocommonwealthrsquo andseems to intend a contrast between (human) community and (capitalist) society or Gesellschaft This distinctionoriginates in the work of the German sociologist Ferdinand Toumlnnies (1855shy1936) See his Gemeinschaft undGesellschaft (Leipzig Fuess Verlag 1887) translated by Charles Price Loomis as Community and Society (EastLansing Michigan State University Press 1957) The distinction was also taken up by Max Weber in Economy andSociety (1921) translated and edited by Guenter Roth and Claus Wittich University of California Press 1978

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 2664

10 Endnotes lsquoCrisis in the Class Relationrsquo in Endnotes II Misery and the Value Formhttpendnotesorgukenendnotesshycrisisshyinshytheshyc

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 2664

10 Endnotes lsquoCrisis in the Class Relationrsquo in Endnotes II Misery and the Value Formhttpendnotesorgukenendnotesshycrisisshyinshytheshyc

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 2764

11 Endnotes lsquoWhat Are We to Dorsquo in Communization and its Discontents edited by Benjamin Noys New YorkMinor Compositions 2011 p31

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 2864

12 Traditionally particulars are ultimate subjects of predication uninstantiable and spatiotemporal whereasuniversals are predicated multiply instantiable and hence nonshyspatiotemporal

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 2964

13 I elaborate on this point in lsquoLived Experience and the Myth of the Givenrsquo Filozofski Vestnik Vol XXXII No 32011

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3064

14 Camatte opcit 1975 p22

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3164

15 Ibid p23

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3264

16 Ibid p23

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3364

17 Ibid p24

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3464

18 Ibid p24

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3564

19 Ibid pp6shy7

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3664

20 Ibid p36

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3764

21 For a discussion of the contemporary relevance of the idea of lsquogeneric humanityrsquo see Nina Power lsquoBadiou andFeuerbach What is Generic Humanityrsquo Subject Matters A Journal of Communication and the Self Vol 2 no 12005

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3864

22 Endnotes lsquoThe History of Subsumptionrsquo in Endnotes II Misery and the Value Formhttpendnotesorgukenendnotesshytheshyhistoryshyofshy

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 2864

12 Traditionally particulars are ultimate subjects of predication uninstantiable and spatiotemporal whereasuniversals are predicated multiply instantiable and hence nonshyspatiotemporal

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 2964

13 I elaborate on this point in lsquoLived Experience and the Myth of the Givenrsquo Filozofski Vestnik Vol XXXII No 32011

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3064

14 Camatte opcit 1975 p22

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3164

15 Ibid p23

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3264

16 Ibid p23

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3364

17 Ibid p24

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3464

18 Ibid p24

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3564

19 Ibid pp6shy7

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3664

20 Ibid p36

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3764

21 For a discussion of the contemporary relevance of the idea of lsquogeneric humanityrsquo see Nina Power lsquoBadiou andFeuerbach What is Generic Humanityrsquo Subject Matters A Journal of Communication and the Self Vol 2 no 12005

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3864

22 Endnotes lsquoThe History of Subsumptionrsquo in Endnotes II Misery and the Value Formhttpendnotesorgukenendnotesshytheshyhistoryshyofshy

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 2964

13 I elaborate on this point in lsquoLived Experience and the Myth of the Givenrsquo Filozofski Vestnik Vol XXXII No 32011

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3064

14 Camatte opcit 1975 p22

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3164

15 Ibid p23

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3264

16 Ibid p23

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3364

17 Ibid p24

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3464

18 Ibid p24

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3564

19 Ibid pp6shy7

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3664

20 Ibid p36

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3764

21 For a discussion of the contemporary relevance of the idea of lsquogeneric humanityrsquo see Nina Power lsquoBadiou andFeuerbach What is Generic Humanityrsquo Subject Matters A Journal of Communication and the Self Vol 2 no 12005

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3864

22 Endnotes lsquoThe History of Subsumptionrsquo in Endnotes II Misery and the Value Formhttpendnotesorgukenendnotesshytheshyhistoryshyofshy

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3064

14 Camatte opcit 1975 p22

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3164

15 Ibid p23

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3264

16 Ibid p23

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3364

17 Ibid p24

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3464

18 Ibid p24

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3564

19 Ibid pp6shy7

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3664

20 Ibid p36

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3764

21 For a discussion of the contemporary relevance of the idea of lsquogeneric humanityrsquo see Nina Power lsquoBadiou andFeuerbach What is Generic Humanityrsquo Subject Matters A Journal of Communication and the Self Vol 2 no 12005

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3864

22 Endnotes lsquoThe History of Subsumptionrsquo in Endnotes II Misery and the Value Formhttpendnotesorgukenendnotesshytheshyhistoryshyofshy

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3164

15 Ibid p23

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3264

16 Ibid p23

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3364

17 Ibid p24

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3464

18 Ibid p24

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3564

19 Ibid pp6shy7

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3664

20 Ibid p36

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3764

21 For a discussion of the contemporary relevance of the idea of lsquogeneric humanityrsquo see Nina Power lsquoBadiou andFeuerbach What is Generic Humanityrsquo Subject Matters A Journal of Communication and the Self Vol 2 no 12005

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3864

22 Endnotes lsquoThe History of Subsumptionrsquo in Endnotes II Misery and the Value Formhttpendnotesorgukenendnotesshytheshyhistoryshyofshy

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3264

16 Ibid p23

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3364

17 Ibid p24

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3464

18 Ibid p24

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3564

19 Ibid pp6shy7

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3664

20 Ibid p36

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3764

21 For a discussion of the contemporary relevance of the idea of lsquogeneric humanityrsquo see Nina Power lsquoBadiou andFeuerbach What is Generic Humanityrsquo Subject Matters A Journal of Communication and the Self Vol 2 no 12005

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3864

22 Endnotes lsquoThe History of Subsumptionrsquo in Endnotes II Misery and the Value Formhttpendnotesorgukenendnotesshytheshyhistoryshyofshy

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3364

17 Ibid p24

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3464

18 Ibid p24

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3564

19 Ibid pp6shy7

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3664

20 Ibid p36

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3764

21 For a discussion of the contemporary relevance of the idea of lsquogeneric humanityrsquo see Nina Power lsquoBadiou andFeuerbach What is Generic Humanityrsquo Subject Matters A Journal of Communication and the Self Vol 2 no 12005

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3864

22 Endnotes lsquoThe History of Subsumptionrsquo in Endnotes II Misery and the Value Formhttpendnotesorgukenendnotesshytheshyhistoryshyofshy

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3464

18 Ibid p24

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3564

19 Ibid pp6shy7

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3664

20 Ibid p36

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3764

21 For a discussion of the contemporary relevance of the idea of lsquogeneric humanityrsquo see Nina Power lsquoBadiou andFeuerbach What is Generic Humanityrsquo Subject Matters A Journal of Communication and the Self Vol 2 no 12005

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3864

22 Endnotes lsquoThe History of Subsumptionrsquo in Endnotes II Misery and the Value Formhttpendnotesorgukenendnotesshytheshyhistoryshyofshy

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3564

19 Ibid pp6shy7

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3664

20 Ibid p36

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3764

21 For a discussion of the contemporary relevance of the idea of lsquogeneric humanityrsquo see Nina Power lsquoBadiou andFeuerbach What is Generic Humanityrsquo Subject Matters A Journal of Communication and the Self Vol 2 no 12005

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3864

22 Endnotes lsquoThe History of Subsumptionrsquo in Endnotes II Misery and the Value Formhttpendnotesorgukenendnotesshytheshyhistoryshyofshy

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3664

20 Ibid p36

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3764

21 For a discussion of the contemporary relevance of the idea of lsquogeneric humanityrsquo see Nina Power lsquoBadiou andFeuerbach What is Generic Humanityrsquo Subject Matters A Journal of Communication and the Self Vol 2 no 12005

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3864

22 Endnotes lsquoThe History of Subsumptionrsquo in Endnotes II Misery and the Value Formhttpendnotesorgukenendnotesshytheshyhistoryshyofshy

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3764

21 For a discussion of the contemporary relevance of the idea of lsquogeneric humanityrsquo see Nina Power lsquoBadiou andFeuerbach What is Generic Humanityrsquo Subject Matters A Journal of Communication and the Self Vol 2 no 12005

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3864

22 Endnotes lsquoThe History of Subsumptionrsquo in Endnotes II Misery and the Value Formhttpendnotesorgukenendnotesshytheshyhistoryshyofshy

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3864

22 Endnotes lsquoThe History of Subsumptionrsquo in Endnotes II Misery and the Value Formhttpendnotesorgukenendnotesshytheshyhistoryshyofshy

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 3964

23 Endnotes lsquoCommunisation and ValueshyForm Theoryrsquo in Endnotes II Misery and the Value Formhttpendnotesorgukenendnotesshycommunisationshya

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 4064

24 Ibid This is a reference to Camattersquos This World We Must Leave and Other Essays ed Alex Trotter (BrooklynAutonomedia 1995)

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 4164

25 Endnotes ibid

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 4264

26 Endnotes lsquoWhat Are We to Dorsquo in Communization and its Discontents opcit p33

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 4364

27 Endnotes lsquoThe Moving Contradictionrsquo in Endnotes II Misery and the Value Formhttpendnotesorgukenendnotesshytheshymovingshycont

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 4164

25 Endnotes ibid

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 4264

26 Endnotes lsquoWhat Are We to Dorsquo in Communization and its Discontents opcit p33

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 4364

27 Endnotes lsquoThe Moving Contradictionrsquo in Endnotes II Misery and the Value Formhttpendnotesorgukenendnotesshytheshymovingshycont

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26 Endnotes lsquoWhat Are We to Dorsquo in Communization and its Discontents opcit p33

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27 Endnotes lsquoThe Moving Contradictionrsquo in Endnotes II Misery and the Value Formhttpendnotesorgukenendnotesshytheshymovingshycont

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27 Endnotes lsquoThe Moving Contradictionrsquo in Endnotes II Misery and the Value Formhttpendnotesorgukenendnotesshytheshymovingshycont

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httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 4464

28 Endnotes lsquoCrisis in the Class Relationrsquo in Endnotes II Misery and the Value Formhttpendnotesorgukenendnotesshycrisisshyinshytheshyc

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29 lsquoAs that part of the global population diminishes whose reproduction is mediated through the exchange ofproductive labour for the wage the wage form as the key mediation in social reproduction may appear increasinglytenuous With these shifting conditions the horizon of the class relation and the struggles in which this horizonpresents itself must inevitably change In this context the old projects of a programmatic workersrsquo movementbecome obsolete their world was one of an expanding industrial workforce in which the wage appeared as thefundamental link in the chain of social reproduction at the centre of the double moulinet where capital andproletariat meet and in which a certain mutuality of wage demands ndash an lsquoif you want this of me I demand this ofyoursquo ndash could dominate the horizon of class struggle But with the growth of surplus populations this very mutuality isput into question and the wage form is thereby decentred as a locus of contestation Tendentially the proletariatdoes not confront capital at the centre of the double moulinet but relates to it as an increasingly external forcewhilst capital runs into its own problems of valorisationrsquo Endnotes lsquoCrisis in the Class Relationrsquo in Endnotes IIMisery and the Value Form httpendnotesorgukenendnotesshycrisisshyinshytheshyc

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30 For a critical discussion of the lsquointransitivityrsquo of communisation see Alberto Toscano lsquoNow and Neverrsquo inCommunization and its Discontents opcit pp85shy101

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31 Endnotes lsquoWhat Are We to Dorsquo in Communization and its Discontents opcit 2011 p29

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32 Ibid p31

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33 The claim that contradiction is obviously an ontological category and that we have known this since Hegel isproblematic because it assumes that Hegel is a metaphysician who believes in real contradictions a claim thatmuch recent Hegel scholarship has been at pains to challenge It is propositions (or judgements) that contradict oneanother not things Since contradiction is an intrashyconceptual relation the thesis of real contradictions seems tocommit one to the sort of metaphysical idealism which insists that reality has propositional form This is anassumption materialists should not be prepared to accept The more plausible materialist construal of Hegelrsquos claimis that contradictions are true not that they are constitutive of lsquorealityrsquo whatever that might mean This is an ongoingcontroversy but the seminal text is Robert Pippinrsquos Hegelrsquos Idealism Cambridge Cambridge University Press1989 Pippinrsquos reading has been vigorously contested but it has undeniably reinvigorated Hegel scholarship bychallenging traditional metaphysical interpretations of lsquoabsolute idealismrsquo Robert Brandomrsquos interpretation of Hegelalso rebuts the metaphysical reading see A Spirit of Trust A Semantic Reading of Hegelrsquos Phenomenologyavailable at httpwwwpittedu~brandomspirit_of_trusthtml

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31 Endnotes lsquoWhat Are We to Dorsquo in Communization and its Discontents opcit 2011 p29

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32 Ibid p31

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33 The claim that contradiction is obviously an ontological category and that we have known this since Hegel isproblematic because it assumes that Hegel is a metaphysician who believes in real contradictions a claim thatmuch recent Hegel scholarship has been at pains to challenge It is propositions (or judgements) that contradict oneanother not things Since contradiction is an intrashyconceptual relation the thesis of real contradictions seems tocommit one to the sort of metaphysical idealism which insists that reality has propositional form This is anassumption materialists should not be prepared to accept The more plausible materialist construal of Hegelrsquos claimis that contradictions are true not that they are constitutive of lsquorealityrsquo whatever that might mean This is an ongoingcontroversy but the seminal text is Robert Pippinrsquos Hegelrsquos Idealism Cambridge Cambridge University Press1989 Pippinrsquos reading has been vigorously contested but it has undeniably reinvigorated Hegel scholarship bychallenging traditional metaphysical interpretations of lsquoabsolute idealismrsquo Robert Brandomrsquos interpretation of Hegelalso rebuts the metaphysical reading see A Spirit of Trust A Semantic Reading of Hegelrsquos Phenomenologyavailable at httpwwwpittedu~brandomspirit_of_trusthtml

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httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 4864

32 Ibid p31

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33 The claim that contradiction is obviously an ontological category and that we have known this since Hegel isproblematic because it assumes that Hegel is a metaphysician who believes in real contradictions a claim thatmuch recent Hegel scholarship has been at pains to challenge It is propositions (or judgements) that contradict oneanother not things Since contradiction is an intrashyconceptual relation the thesis of real contradictions seems tocommit one to the sort of metaphysical idealism which insists that reality has propositional form This is anassumption materialists should not be prepared to accept The more plausible materialist construal of Hegelrsquos claimis that contradictions are true not that they are constitutive of lsquorealityrsquo whatever that might mean This is an ongoingcontroversy but the seminal text is Robert Pippinrsquos Hegelrsquos Idealism Cambridge Cambridge University Press1989 Pippinrsquos reading has been vigorously contested but it has undeniably reinvigorated Hegel scholarship bychallenging traditional metaphysical interpretations of lsquoabsolute idealismrsquo Robert Brandomrsquos interpretation of Hegelalso rebuts the metaphysical reading see A Spirit of Trust A Semantic Reading of Hegelrsquos Phenomenologyavailable at httpwwwpittedu~brandomspirit_of_trusthtml

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 4964

33 The claim that contradiction is obviously an ontological category and that we have known this since Hegel isproblematic because it assumes that Hegel is a metaphysician who believes in real contradictions a claim thatmuch recent Hegel scholarship has been at pains to challenge It is propositions (or judgements) that contradict oneanother not things Since contradiction is an intrashyconceptual relation the thesis of real contradictions seems tocommit one to the sort of metaphysical idealism which insists that reality has propositional form This is anassumption materialists should not be prepared to accept The more plausible materialist construal of Hegelrsquos claimis that contradictions are true not that they are constitutive of lsquorealityrsquo whatever that might mean This is an ongoingcontroversy but the seminal text is Robert Pippinrsquos Hegelrsquos Idealism Cambridge Cambridge University Press1989 Pippinrsquos reading has been vigorously contested but it has undeniably reinvigorated Hegel scholarship bychallenging traditional metaphysical interpretations of lsquoabsolute idealismrsquo Robert Brandomrsquos interpretation of Hegelalso rebuts the metaphysical reading see A Spirit of Trust A Semantic Reading of Hegelrsquos Phenomenologyavailable at httpwwwpittedu~brandomspirit_of_trusthtml

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 5064

34 Endnotes lsquoThe Moving Contradictionrsquo in Endnotes II Misery and the Value Formhttpendnotesorgukenendnotesshytheshymovingshycont

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

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35 Ibid

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36 Ibid

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httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 5364

37 Ibid See also Endnotes lsquoCommunisation and Value Form Theoryrsquo in Endnotes II Misery and the Value Formhttpendnotesorgukenendnotesshycommunisationshya

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httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 5264

36 Ibid

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 5364

37 Ibid See also Endnotes lsquoCommunisation and Value Form Theoryrsquo in Endnotes II Misery and the Value Formhttpendnotesorgukenendnotesshycommunisationshya

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httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 5364

37 Ibid See also Endnotes lsquoCommunisation and Value Form Theoryrsquo in Endnotes II Misery and the Value Formhttpendnotesorgukenendnotesshycommunisationshya

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38 Endnotes lsquoSpontaneity Mediation Rupturersquo in Endnotes III Gender Race Class and Other Misfortuneshttpendnotesorgukenendnotesshyspontaneityshymed

39 Thus rather than opposing spontaneity to compulsion and freedom to necessity it is dialectically preferable tounderstand spontaneity as the willrsquos compulsion in and by a rule rather than as the refusal of compulsion by anobscurely sovereign unshydeterminable will Transcendental spontaneity is rational selfshydetermination as theinternalisation of conceptual constraint In this sense spontaneity is thinking and it is thinking as a kind of doingrather than as contemplation ndash which is the source of the human activities and practices that constitute theabstractions of capital

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40 I give a more detailed account of the ontological consequences of Sellarsrsquo metalinguistic nominalism inlsquoNominalism Naturalism and Materialism Sellarsrsquo Critical Ontologyrsquo in Contemporary Philosophical Naturalism andits Implications edited by Bana Bashour and Hans Muller London and New York Routledge 2013

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41 Ibid p34

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42 Ibid p34

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43 Endnotes lsquoThe Moving Contradictionrsquo in Endnotes II Misery and the Value Formhttpendnotesorgukenendnotesshytheshymovingshycont

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 5664

41 Ibid p34

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httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 5764

42 Ibid p34

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httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 5864

43 Endnotes lsquoThe Moving Contradictionrsquo in Endnotes II Misery and the Value Formhttpendnotesorgukenendnotesshytheshymovingshycont

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 5764

42 Ibid p34

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43 Endnotes lsquoThe Moving Contradictionrsquo in Endnotes II Misery and the Value Formhttpendnotesorgukenendnotesshytheshymovingshycont

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 5864

43 Endnotes lsquoThe Moving Contradictionrsquo in Endnotes II Misery and the Value Formhttpendnotesorgukenendnotesshytheshymovingshycont

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 5964

44 Ibid p28

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45 I owe this objection to Benjamin Noys

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httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 6164

46 As well as being the title of an unpublished paper by Alex Williams this is also the title of a paper by MatteoPasquinelli (httpwwwonlineopenorgcolumnstheshypoliticsshyofshy) and of Alberto Toscanorsquos contribution to The Ideaof Communism volume (Verso 2010)

8 Comments Mute magazine Login1

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Join the discussionhellip

bull Reply bull

Michael Rectenwald bull 2 years agoBrilliant Thanks much for this essay Id like to talk to you about it if possible I am particularly interested in reshypurposing and think that any notion that the technologies developed under capitalism are capitalist all the way downinvolves an essentialist metaphysics

6

bull Reply bull

Guest bull 2 years agogt Michael Rectenwald

Its remarkable that people continue to insist on mishearing the argument that Endnotes and the authors theypublish have made with regard to technology Has anyone said that technologies developed under capitalismare capitalist all the way down Has anyone written suggested that we must abjure every existinginstrument technique or method enveloped by capitalist social forms No Clearly there is some desperateneed to construct strawmen to avoid actually arguing the points in question Lets hope the Endnotesresponse to Krul puts this kind of stuff to rest

2

Michael Rectenwald bull 2 years agogt Guest

Who said anything about Endnotes other than the author of the article But I would submit that indeedits made clear by especially Jasper Bernes that the technologies of logistics cannot be taken overas such because the very fiber of the technologies is capitalist as such How else to interpret thispassage

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552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 6064

45 I owe this objection to Benjamin Noys

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 6164

46 As well as being the title of an unpublished paper by Alex Williams this is also the title of a paper by MatteoPasquinelli (httpwwwonlineopenorgcolumnstheshypoliticsshyofshy) and of Alberto Toscanorsquos contribution to The Ideaof Communism volume (Verso 2010)

8 Comments Mute magazine Login1

Share⤤ Sort by Best

Join the discussionhellip

bull Reply bull

Michael Rectenwald bull 2 years agoBrilliant Thanks much for this essay Id like to talk to you about it if possible I am particularly interested in reshypurposing and think that any notion that the technologies developed under capitalism are capitalist all the way downinvolves an essentialist metaphysics

6

bull Reply bull

Guest bull 2 years agogt Michael Rectenwald

Its remarkable that people continue to insist on mishearing the argument that Endnotes and the authors theypublish have made with regard to technology Has anyone said that technologies developed under capitalismare capitalist all the way down Has anyone written suggested that we must abjure every existinginstrument technique or method enveloped by capitalist social forms No Clearly there is some desperateneed to construct strawmen to avoid actually arguing the points in question Lets hope the Endnotesresponse to Krul puts this kind of stuff to rest

2

Michael Rectenwald bull 2 years agogt Guest

Who said anything about Endnotes other than the author of the article But I would submit that indeedits made clear by especially Jasper Bernes that the technologies of logistics cannot be taken overas such because the very fiber of the technologies is capitalist as such How else to interpret thispassage

Recommend

Share rsaquo

Share rsaquo

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 6164

46 As well as being the title of an unpublished paper by Alex Williams this is also the title of a paper by MatteoPasquinelli (httpwwwonlineopenorgcolumnstheshypoliticsshyofshy) and of Alberto Toscanorsquos contribution to The Ideaof Communism volume (Verso 2010)

8 Comments Mute magazine Login1

Share⤤ Sort by Best

Join the discussionhellip

bull Reply bull

Michael Rectenwald bull 2 years agoBrilliant Thanks much for this essay Id like to talk to you about it if possible I am particularly interested in reshypurposing and think that any notion that the technologies developed under capitalism are capitalist all the way downinvolves an essentialist metaphysics

6

bull Reply bull

Guest bull 2 years agogt Michael Rectenwald

Its remarkable that people continue to insist on mishearing the argument that Endnotes and the authors theypublish have made with regard to technology Has anyone said that technologies developed under capitalismare capitalist all the way down Has anyone written suggested that we must abjure every existinginstrument technique or method enveloped by capitalist social forms No Clearly there is some desperateneed to construct strawmen to avoid actually arguing the points in question Lets hope the Endnotesresponse to Krul puts this kind of stuff to rest

2

Michael Rectenwald bull 2 years agogt Guest

Who said anything about Endnotes other than the author of the article But I would submit that indeedits made clear by especially Jasper Bernes that the technologies of logistics cannot be taken overas such because the very fiber of the technologies is capitalist as such How else to interpret thispassage

Recommend

Share rsaquo

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552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

httpwwwmetamuteorgeditorialarticleswanderingshyabstraction 6264

bull Reply bull

Most workers today cannot say as workers of old could (and often did) It is we who built this world Itis we to whom this world belongs The restructuring of the mode of production and the subordination ofproduction to the conditions of circulation therefore forecloses the classical horizon of proletarianantagonism seizure of the means of production for the purposes of a workershymanaged society Onecannot imagine seizing that which one cannot visualise and inside of which onersquos place remains uncertain

He then goes on to argue against the reconfiguration thesis of reshypurposing explicitly rejecting the reshypurposing of technologies for socialism Perhaps in your haste to be dismissive and superior youmight turn to the text youre claiming others are misreading You seem to be missing somethingTheres no mention of social reproduction (Goldner) in Endnotes

Guest bull 2 years ago

see more

gt Michael Rectenwald

Ive read it Jasper Bernes argument is about a very specific set of capitalist technologies andargues that because of a historical conjuncture they cant be repurposed He writes Thefixed capital of the contemporary production regime is designed for extraction of maximumsurplus value each component part is engineered for insertion into this global systemtherefore the presence of communist potentials as unintended features mdashldquoaffordancesrdquo asthey are sometimes called mdash of contemporary technology needs to be argued for not assumedas a matter of course Its quite clear that hes saying there are some technologies that can beturned to other uses and some that cant Most critics of this piece and others want tomisconstrue the argument as a rejection of all technology probably because its easier todismiss that way Otherwise theyd have to actually consider the reasons he lays out for arejection of the usefulness of logistics That sentence also has a footnote (quoted in theEndnotes response to Krul Marxist theories of technology often diverge along two paths eachof which can be traced to the works of Marx The dominant view holds that capitalisttechnologies are fundamentally progressive first because they reduce necessary labour timeand thereby potentially free humans from the necessity of labouring and second becauseindustrialisation effects a fundamental lsquosocialisationrsquo of production obliterating the hierarchiesthat once pertained to particular crafts (eg eg Marx Grundrisse [MECW 29] 90shy92 [Nicolaustrans]) In this Orthodox account communism is latent within the socialised cooperative

Share rsaquo

552016 Wandering Abstraction | Mute

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bull Reply bull

see more

2

bull Reply bull

Michael Rectenwald bull 2 years agogt Guest

I did not suggest that either Bernes or Endnotes more broadly reject all technology I referredspecifically to the technology of logisitcs shy which however he seems to suggest hasmetastasized throughout the realm of production I dont see this sort of parsing of technologiesand evaluation of each on the basis of their affordances Bernes is not nearly as cogent as youseem to suggest that he is here

bull Reply bull

Guest bull 2 years agogt Michael Rectenwald

You said any conception that technologies developed under capitalism are capitalist all theway down is essentialist metaphysics But clearly as you can see no one says this

1

bull Reply bull

Michael Rectenwald bull 2 years agogt Guest

I didnt ascribe that view to Endnotes

bull Reply bull

silver fox bull a year agoalways the same fifty or so hotwords used by ghost dancers of a dead socialist narrative Dazed by the fog of bllshit accelerationists merely bumb into each other at an increasingly faster rate Admityou guys actually hate thehuman body and its propensity to consume as a means of survival Fking hilarious

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