Jason
Read
Lordon,
Frédéric. Willing Slaves of
Capital: Spinoza and Marx on Desire, Verso, New
York, 2014, 224 pp.
Readers of contemporary philosophy will not be surprised to see
the name Spinoza paired with Marx in the title of a recently published book.
Ever since Louis Althusser argued in the mid-1960s that he and his cowriters of
Reading Capital
were Spinozists and not structuralists, there has been an increased inquiry
into the points of connection between Marx and Spinoza. One could even say that
what the Hegel/Marx connection was to a previous generation — animating the
writings of Adorno, Sartre, Lukács, etc. — the Marx/Spinoza connection is to a
current collection of philosophers ranging from Althusser, and the members of
his circle such as Étienne Balibar and Pierre Macherey, to Antonio Negri,
Warren Montag, and Hasana Sharp.
This shift in names also entails a fundamental change of
problems. The relationship of Hegel to Marx was always one of the anxiety of
influence: trying to contend with both the massive influence that Hegel had on
Marx as well as Marx’s attempt to critically distance himself from Hegel in
order to separate the rational kernel from the mystical shell. The
Spinoza/Hegel relation, however, is less direct: less a matter of the influence
of the latter on the former than of their point of contact around connected
problems. These problems aren’t so much the problems that defined the Spinoza
Marx knew (the debates on pantheism, Hegel’s attempt to shift the absolute from
substance to subject) than they are the debates framed by Marxist theory’s
attempt to keep up with the changes of capitalism.
To place it in classical Marxist terms, Spinoza’s thought has
provided the tools for developing a critique of the superstructure — in other
words, of ideology — and the transformations of belief and desire that
constitute subjectivity. Spinoza is a response to a question Marx poses, but
does not answer.
Althusser argued that Spinoza’s critique of anthropomorphism and
anthropocentricism in the
Appendix to Part One of the Ethics constituted the
“matrix of every possible theory of ideology.” Antonio Negri also argues that
“in the postindustrial age the Spinozian critique of representation of
capitalist power corresponds more to the truth than does the analysis of
political economy.” For Negri, Spinoza’s thought offers a representation of
power that posits a kind of self-organization: it ontologically grounds and
expands notions of living labor that gesture toward a more contemporary
capitalist society, in which work has expanded beyond the factory to encompass
the entire production of life. This turn towards the superstructure, towards
ideology and the representation of power, is perhaps not surprising: it is
easier to make connections between Spinoza’s critique of superstition and
theories of ideology than it is to connect his understanding of desires and
striving to consumption and production. As much as Spinoza offered a trenchant
critique of the religious, monarchical, and even humanist ideologies of his
time, he had little to say, at least directly, about emerging capitalism. Money
is only mentioned once in the Ethics,
where it is defined as the universal object of desire that “occupies the mind
of the multitude more than anything else.” While such a statement intersects
with critiques of greed and the transformation of desire under capitalism, it
remains partial and incidental to developing a Spinozist critique of political
economy. A Spinozist critique of ideology almost seems given; a Spinozist
ontology of power seems provocative. But a Spinozist critique of political
economy would seem to be an impossibility.
Frédéric Lordon’s Willing
Slaves of Capital: Marx and Spinoza (originally published as Capitalisme, désir et servitude: Marx
et Spinoza) continues the first of these trends while breaking with
the second. With respect to the former, Lordon is clear that the relationship
between Marx and Spinoza is a profoundly anachronistic one. It is not a matter
of discerning the subtle influences that stem from Spinoza to Marx but of using
Spinoza to make sense of a problem Marx posed. As Lordon writes, “The temporal
paradox is that, although Marx comes after Spinoza, it is Spinoza who can now
help us fill the gaps in Marx.” The gaps concern a problem Marx poses, but
never completely resolves: Why, and how, do workers return to work each day? If
labor power drives the entire capitalist economy, then what is it that
motivates individuals to continue to sell their labor power? Lordon believes
the answer can be found in Spinoza’s theory of desire, of the conatus that
constitutes an individual’s striving, and the affects that define it. In Lordon’s
approach to the Spinoza/Marx relation there are echoes of Spinoza’s fundamental
political question, “Why do the masses fight for their servitude as if it was
salvation?” coupled with Marx’s basic critique of the alienation of capitalism.
It is a question of knowing why people will continue to work for a system that
exploits them, appropriating their productive powers while granting them less
and less control.
