On Marxism’s Field of Operation: Badiou and the Critique of Political Economy*
In: Historical MaterialismSearch for other papers by Gavin Walker in
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Abstract
Alain Badiou’s theoretical work maintains an ambiguous relation to Marx’s critique of political economy. In seemingly refusing the Marxian analytical strategy of displacement and referral across the fields of politics and economy, Badiou is frequently seen to be lacking a rigorous theoretical grasp of capitalism itself. In turn, this is often seen as a consequence of his understanding of political subjectivity. But the origins of this ‘lack’ of analysis of the social relation called ‘capital’ in his work can also be investigated by means of a detour into the economic writings of the Union des communistes de France marxiste-léniniste, the political organisation in which Badiou played a leading rôle throughout the 1970s in particular. By excavating this theoretical work of the 1970s, we can identify more precisely the historical and political reasons behind Badiou’s ambiguous relation to Marx and specifically to Marx’s systematic grasp of the logic of capital. This excavation will consequently lead us to a reflection on the limits and openings in Badiou’s thought for the Marxian critique of political economy.
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Badiou Alain ‘Le Flux et le parti (dans les marges de L’Anti-Oedipe)’ La situation actuelle sur le front de la philosophie 1977 Paris Maspero
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Badiou Alain Théorie du sujet 1982 Paris Seuil
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Badiou Alain Peut-on penser la politique? 1985 Paris Seuil
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Badiou Alain L’être et l’événement 1988 Paris Seuil
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Badiou Alain Manifeste pour la philosophie 1989 Paris Seuil
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Badiou Alain Cadava Eduardo, Connor Peter & Nancy Jean-Luc ‘On a Finally Objectless Subject’ Who Comes after the Subject? 1991 London Routledge
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Badiou Alain Madarasz Norman Manifesto for Philosophy 1999 Albany SUNY Press
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Badiou Alain Hallward Peter ‘Politics and Philosophy: An Interview with Alain Badiou’ Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil 2001 London Verso
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Badiou Alain Bosteels Bruno & Toscano Alberto ‘Beyond Formalisation: An Interview’ Angelaki 2003a 8 2 111 136
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Badiou Alain Feltham Oliver & Clemens Justin Infinite Thought: Truth and the Return of Philosophy 2003b London Continuum
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Badiou Alain Feltham Oliver Being and Event 2005a London Continuum
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Badiou Alain Barker Jason Metapolitics 2005b London Verso
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Badiou Alain ‘After the Event: Rationality and the Politics of Invention’ Prelom: Journal for Images and Politics 2006a 8 180 194 available at: <http://www.prelomkolektiv.org/pdf/prelom08.pdf>
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Badiou Alain Logiques des mondes 2006b Paris Seuil
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Badiou Alain Corcoran Steve ‘On September 11, 2001: Philosophy and the “War on Terrorism”’ Polemics 2006c London Verso
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Badiou Alain Bosteels Bruno Theory of the Subject 2009 London Continuum
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Badiou Alain Macey David & Corcoran Steve The Communist Hypothesis 2010 London Verso
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Badiou Alain & Balmès François De l’idéologie 1976 Paris Maspero
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Badiou Alain & Critchley Simon ‘Ours is Not a Terrible Situation’ Philosophy Today 2007 51 3 357 365
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Alain Badiou & Lazarus Sylvain ‘Series Postscript for La collection Yenan’ Transformations du capitalisme 1976 Paris Maspero
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Balibar Étienne ‘Review of Alain Badiou’s Théorie du sujet and Peut-on penser la politique? ’ L’état du marxisme 1987 Paris L’Harmattan
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Bensaïd Daniel Hallward ‘Alain Badiou and the Miracle of the Event’ 2004 2004
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Bosteels Bruno ‘Post-Maoism: Badiou and Politics’ Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique 2005a 13 3 575 634
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Bosteels Bruno ‘UCFML Bibliography’ Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique 2005b 13 3 679 683
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Bosteels Bruno ‘The Speculative Left’ South Atlantic Quarterly 2005c 104 4 751 767
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Corrigan Philip, Ramsay Harvie & Sayer Derek Socialist Construction and Marxist Theory: Bolshevism and Its Critique 1978 New York Monthly Review Press
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Corrigan Philip, Ramsay Harvie & Sayer Derek For Mao: Essays in Historical Materialism 1979 Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press
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Groupe Yenan-économie Cahiers Yenan Marxisme-léninisme et révisionnisme face à la crise économique 1976a Volume 2 Paris Maspero
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Groupe Yenan-économie Cahiers Yenan Transformations du capitalisme: L’accumulation du capital en France depuis 1950; L’organisation capitaliste du travail; Impérialisme, tiers monde, guerre mondiale 1976b Volume 3 Paris Maspero
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Hallward Peter Badiou: A Subject to Truth 2003 Minneapolis University of Minnesota Press
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Hallward Peter Hallward ‘Consequences of Abstraction’ 2004
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Hallward Peter Think Again: Alain Badiou and the Future of Philosophy 2004 London Continuum
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Howard Michael Charles & John Edward King A History of Marxian Economics: Volume 2, 1929–1960 1992 Princeton Princeton University Press
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Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, Collected Works 1964 [1917] Volume 22 Moscow Progress Publishers
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Lenin Vladimir Ilyich ‘Yeshcho raz o profsoyuzakh’ Polnoe sobranie sochinenii 1965a [1921] Volume 42 Moscow Gosudarstvennoe izdatelstvo politicheskoi literatury
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Lenin Vladimir Ilyich ‘Once Again on the Trade Unions, the Current Situation, and the Mistakes of Trotsky and Bukharin’ Collected Works of V.I. Lenin 1965b [1921] Volume 32 Fourth English Edition Moscow Foreign Languages Publishing House
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Mandel Ernest De Bres Joris Late Capitalism 1978 London Verso
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Marx Karl Das Kapital, Band 3 Marx-Engels-Werke 1962a [1894] Volume 25 Berlin Dietz Verlag
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Marx Karl Kritik des Gothaer Programms Marx-Engels-Werke 1962b [1890–1] Volume 19 Berlin Dietz Verlag <http://www.marxists.org/deutsch/archiv/marx-engels/1875/kritik/randglos.htm>
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Marx Karl Economic Manuscripts of 1857–1858 [Grundrisse] Collected Works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels 1987 Volume 29 Moscow Progress Publishers
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Marx Karl Critique of the Gotha Programme Collected Works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels 1989 [1890–1] Volume 24 Moscow Progress Publishers
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Marx Karl Capital, Volume 3 Collected Works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels 1998 [1894] Volume 37 New York International Publishers
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Picciotto Sol ‘The Battles at Talbot-Poissy: Workers’ Divisions and Capital Restructuring’ Capital and Class 1984 8 2 5 17
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Toscano Alberto ‘From the State to the World? Badiou and Anti-Capitalism’ Communication and Cognition 2003 36 3–4 199 224
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Toscano Alberto ‘Marx Expatriated’ Prelom: Journal for Images and Politics 2006 8 153 169 <http://www.prelomkolektiv.org/pdf/prelom08.pdf>
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Uno Kôzô Uno Kôzô chosakushû 1973 Volume 10 Tokyo Iwanami Shoten
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Walker Gavin Yutaka Nagahara Yutaka Nagahara ‘Shihon no puroretariateki reido: Gaibu no seijiteki butsurigaku [Capital’s Proletarian Degree Zero: The Political Physics of the Outside]’ Seiji keizaigaku no seiji tetsugakuteki fukken: Riron no rironteki ‘rinkai-gaibu’ ni mukete [Political-Philosophical Resurrections of Political Economy: Towards the Theoretical ‘Limit-Outside’ of Theory] 2011a Tokyo Hôsei University Press
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Walker Gavin ‘The Dignity of Communism: Badiou’s Communist Hypothesis’ Socialism & Democracy 2011b 25 3 130 139
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Žižek Slavoj The Parallax View 2006 Cambridge, MA. MIT Press
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1.
Badiou and Critchley 2007, p. 363.
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2.
Uno 1973, p. 9.
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3.
Badiou 1985, p. 112. The Talbot factory at Poissy went on an extended strike in December 1983, a strike distinguished by the large presence of immigrant, particularly Arab, workers in the factory. Talbot-Poissy also contained a ‘local’ of the Confédération des syndicats libres (CSL), a pseudo-union formed by management to eliminate worker-autonomy in bargaining. Thus Talbot expressed an entire network of problems: the rôle of the state and immigration (the racialisation of the labour-management relation), the rôle played by ‘official’ unionism in enabling the exploitation of labour by management, and the bind for worker-politics that this complicity between the unions, management, and state-racism created. For an extensive discussion of Talbot-Poissy, see Picciotto 1984.
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4.
Hallward 2003, p. 237.
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5.
Badiou 2005b, p. 100. This exact same passage, although appearing in a somewhat different essay, is also translated with slightly different wording by Oliver Feltham and Justin Clemens in Badiou 2003b, p. 73.
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6.
Badiou 2001, p. 106.
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7.
Badiou 2001, p. 105.
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8.
Badiou 2006b, p. 31.
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9.
Badiou 2006b, p. 32.
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10.
Badiou 2010, pp. 99–100.
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11.
Balibar 1987, p. 155.
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12.
Badiou 2010, p. 260. Badiou’s recent discussions of ‘the communist hypothesis’ remain in this ambiguous relation to the Marxist theoretical tradition, but contain many points of critical importance for us today. For a discussion of these points, see Walker 2011b.
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13.
Marx 1962b; Marx 1989, p. 88.
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14.
Hallward 2003, pp. 279, 284.
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15.
Žižek 2006, pp. 327–8.
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16.
Badiou 1985, p. 52.
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17.
Bosteels 2005a, p. 581; also see Bosteels 2005a, p. 619.
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18.
Hallward 2004, p. 16.
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21.
See Badiou and Lazarus 1976.
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23.
Badiou and Balmès 1976, p. 70.
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24.
See Marx 1998, in particular pp. 209–58 and pp. 336–607.
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27.
On stamocap-theory, see Howard and King 1992, pp. 75–127, as well as Mandel 1978, pp. 513–22. It is plainly obvious that Mandel’s political line is radically different from that of the UCFML, but on the question of stamocap-theory the critiques developed by many Trotskyist and Maoist organisations can be said to converge. Badiou, for example, describes the ideological formation of the postwar USSR as emphasising an ‘abstract working class’ but characterised by ‘a concrete bourgeois dictatorship’ (Badiou and Balmès 1976, p. 75, n. 33), a description that could easily be shared in the Trotskyist tradition (leaving aside entirely the complex question of particular organisationally specific analyses of the nature of the USSR after Lenin, i.e., the ‘new bureaucracy’ vs. ‘state-capitalist’ vs. ‘degenerated worker’s state’-arguments, ‘social imperialism’ and so forth).
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28.
See Lenin 1964, especially pp. 240–6 and pp. 260–5.
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29.
Groupe Yenan-économie 1976a, p. 58.
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30.
Groupe Yenan-économie 1976a, p. 59.
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31.
Groupe Yenan-économie 1976a, p. 64.
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32.
Groupe Yenan-économie 1976a, p. 67.
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33.
Groupe Yenan-économie 1976a, pp. 69–70.
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34.
Groupe Yenan-économie 1976a, p. 70.
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35.
Groupe Yenan-économie 1976a, p. 74.
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37.
Mandel 1978, p. 513.
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38.
Groupe Yenan-économie 1976a, p. 80.
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39.
Badiou 1985, p. 45.
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40.
Groupe Yenan-économie 1976a, pp. 83–4.
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41.
Mandel 1978, p. 515.
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42.
Mandel 1978, p. 521.
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43.
Groupe Yenan-économie 1976a, p. 98.
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44.
Groupe Yenan-économie 1976b, p. 5.
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45.
Groupe Yenan-économie 1976b, pp. 5–6.
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46.
Groupe Yenan-économie 1976b, pp. 6–7.
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47.
Groupe Yenan-économie 1976b, p. 37.
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48.
Groupe Yenan-économie 1976b, p. 68.
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49.
Groupe Yenan-économie 1976b, pp. 104–5.
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50.
Groupe Yenan-économie 1976b, pp. 176–7.
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51.
Groupe Yenan-économie 1976b, p. 186.
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52.
Groupe Yenan-économie 1976b, p. 182.
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53.
Groupe Yenan-économie 1976b, p. 183.
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54.
Groupe Yenan-économie 1976b, p. 188.
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56.
Groupe Yenan-économie 1976b, p. 189; emphasis mine. Note here that this separation is considered the defining mark of ‘revisionism’.
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57.
Groupe Yenan-économie 1976b, p. 191.
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58.
Groupe Yenan-économie 1976b, p. 174.
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59.
Groupe Yenan-économie 1976b, p. 195.
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60.
Groupe Yenan-économie 1976b, pp. 198–9.
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61.
Groupe Yenan-économie 1976b, p. 207.
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62.
Badiou and Lazarus 1976.
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63.
Badiou 1985, p. 54.
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64.
Badiou 2005a, p. 324; Badiou 1988, pp. 368–9; translation modified, my italics. Curiously, Oliver Feltham leaves out of his English translation what I consider a crucial terminological distinction. In this passage, Badiou argues that, despite an awareness of the fact that the ‘worker’ constitutes a pure multiple, the term was still subsumed under a particular determination. Here, he states in parentheses ‘(et, paradoxe, le savoir marxiste lui-même, ou marxien).’ Feltham leaves out this ‘ou marxien’, producing a moment in which Badiou seems to be making a point only about Marxism (as a defeated political trajectory sutured to its own historicity), and not the Marxian body of work. But I think his point is more general, and his specific use of the two terms indicates that Badiou understands that the crisis of Marxism cannot be averted by simply appealing to a purified Marxian moment as yet unachieved.
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65.
Hallward 2003, p. 284.
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66.
Badiou 1985, pp. 67–8.
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67.
Toscano 2003, p. 12.
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68.
Badiou 1982, p. 48.
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69.
Balibar 1987, p. 155. Without expanding this point here for reasons of space, let me merely note that this identification of Badiou’s work with Fichte is extremely important and ought to be developed.
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70.
Badiou 1977, p. 39. Let me note that I do not find this particular type of argument, which Badiou is fond of attributing to Deleuze and an entire set of thinkers, very convincing; its violently reductive reading strategy obscures the question of the engagement with the Marxist tradition in both thinkers, or indeed how the Marxist theoretical standpoint allows us to mediate the positions taken by both. But for the purposes of the present essay, I am only concerned with how Badiou tends to connect this split with the question of political economy by schematising certain rhetorical chains that operate in the background of his texts: Deleuze = Negri = regal univocity in the guise of the pseudo-transgressiveness of the multiple = celebration of capital’s deterritorialising effect = economy; Badiou = multiplicity as simply banal order of being = subjective break with the situation = politics. This schematism itself is highly problematic and does not clarify anything, in my view.
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71.
Badiou 2003a, pp. 125–6.
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72.
Badiou 2006a, p. 191.
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74.
Bosteels 2005c, p. 765.
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75.
Badiou 1999, p. 58.
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76.
Hallward 2004, pp. 18–19.
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77.
Badiou 1989, p. 37; Badiou 1999, p. 57.
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78.
Badiou 1989, p. 37; Badiou 1999, p. 56. I attempt to read this ‘semblance’ as nothing other than the form of labour-power, the sole ‘possession’ of ‘the masses’ (that is nevertheless strictly speaking absent) in an in-depth cross-reading of Marx, Badiou, and Uno Kôzô in Walker 2011a.
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79.
Badiou 1977, p. 32. This point, which clearly references Hegel, recurs in Badiou’s discussions of the dialectic in Theory of the Subject (Badiou 1982 and 2009).
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On Marxism’s Field of Operation: Badiou and the Critique of Political Economy*
In: Historical MaterialismSearch for other papers by Gavin Walker in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Abstract
Alain Badiou’s theoretical work maintains an ambiguous relation to Marx’s critique of political economy. In seemingly refusing the Marxian analytical strategy of displacement and referral across the fields of politics and economy, Badiou is frequently seen to be lacking a rigorous theoretical grasp of capitalism itself. In turn, this is often seen as a consequence of his understanding of political subjectivity. But the origins of this ‘lack’ of analysis of the social relation called ‘capital’ in his work can also be investigated by means of a detour into the economic writings of the Union des communistes de France marxiste-léniniste, the political organisation in which Badiou played a leading rôle throughout the 1970s in particular. By excavating this theoretical work of the 1970s, we can identify more precisely the historical and political reasons behind Badiou’s ambiguous relation to Marx and specifically to Marx’s systematic grasp of the logic of capital. This excavation will consequently lead us to a reflection on the limits and openings in Badiou’s thought for the Marxian critique of political economy.
| All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 1014 | 177 | 7 |
| Full Text Views | 181 | 11 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 95 | 23 | 0 |