Part Three § 3: Reading my Readers

More specifically, one of the readers says that my text is not acceptable because it “speaks of the class-founded nature of subjectivity as if subjectivity can be reduced to, or exhausted by one’s class.” Yes, that is exactly what I am saying: subjectivity can be “reduced” to class in the sense that all aspects of subjectivity can be explained by “class”—using a rigorous analysis that lays bare the various layers of mediations. (My position here—contrary to what the first reader says—is, of course, radically different from Althusser’s. Attentive readers of Althusser know, that he does not reduce subjectivity to class: his notion of “overdetermination” prevents such a “reduction.” In fact, the main “problem” with the “Althusserian perspective” is that he does not give much of a role to “class” in his active theorizing—as opposed to his “afterthoughts.” But Althusser and his texts are not the subject of my discussion here. ) Although my reader uses the term “reduction” as a code for discrediting my analysis, it should be kept in mind that without “reduction” no knowledge is possible—”theory” is an act of reducing in the sense of providing concepts that explain a multitude of observations and enable us to make connections among seemingly disparate events. The refusal to “reduce” is a political occlusion systematically used by ludic theorists in the name of open-mindedness and non-closural argument. In fact, it is a maneuver that suppresses concepts while introducing a multitude of factors into a discussion, thus rendering the discussion interminable and in so doing, bringing about a conceptual stalemate whose beneficiaries are those now in power. As long as there is a stalemate, no action can be taken. Instead, what Rorty privileges as the single most important element in social practice, namely, “conversation,” goes on. To be “reductive” is to establish priorities, to argue for one’s political agenda and not to hide behind epistemology in an (unwitting?) attempt to support the political goals of the ruling class. My reader’s observation about my view of subjectivity does not “explain” why I should not “reduce” subjectivity to class. What is the “remainder” of subjectivity if one explains it in terms of “class”? For, what is class but the fundamental division of labor? Race and gender are not distinct, self-evident entities but rather products of the specific historical arrangements of the social divisions of labor. However, the un-said of the reader’s view is that “subjectivity” is autonomous; it is not in any way an effect of such economic and social factors as class.

The argument for an autonomous, sovereign and free subjectivity that is not tied to class is, of course, an argument for the free market and the autonomous entrepreneur whose practices should in no way be regulated or tied to the social factor. Again, in the guise of epistemology (the charge that my theory of the subject is reductive), a political interest is put forth as natural. My claim that all subjectivities are class-determined and can be explained by class (through a rigorous analysis of the layers of mediations) is, at least, as viable as her/his anti-materialist and anti-class statement. Why, then, is my claim untruthful and his/hers is the embodiment of truth? The reason, as I have implied before, is not that she/he has a better “argument” (she/he has none, in fact; he/she simply states a position), but because her/his assertion (which is a cliché of postmodernism and postmarxism) supports the dominant class relations and laws of property holding.

Having privileged the subject as autonomous, the same reader quite predictably goes on to reject my views on “objectivity.” He/she believes that my notion of the “objective” derives from a “crude” neglect of the fact that “our notion of ‘the scientific’ is paradigm-dependent.” Of course our notion of “the scientific” is paradigm-dependent. The question is what determines “paradigm”? Continuing her/his ludic logic of indeterminacy she/he regards “paradigm” to be the ensemble of autonomous immanent laws of scientific discovery that are somehow beyond the reach of history. In other words, science, for the reader, is the outcome of the internal rules of scientific signification—the independent laws of the logic of scientific research—and, as such, it is not a reliable guide to the real. Science, in short, as poststructuralists and Kuhnians have stated, is self-referential: a form of textuality that refers more to its own processes of discovery and difference than to the objective world. Science does not simply reflect the world; it produces the world. Science, like all forms of writing, is a calculus of signs and, as such, does not have a reliable claim to knowledge. Its knowledge is more semiotic than objective.

To think of science as paradigm-bound and to theorize paradigms as autonomous laws of scientific discovery (“conventions” as Kuhn calls them) which have no direct relations with the world outside, locates science—following the tradition of the bourgeois philosophy of science—in the domain of the subjective. In short, by stating that science is paradigm-dependent and by positing paradigms as conventions, the reader is saying that the world presented in science is the creation of the human imagination and laws of language. However, what is fetishized as a “paradigm” (as the immanent conventions/rules/logic of scientific discovery) and ultimately used to assert the priority of signification and the subject of the sign is a formalization of the effective level of class struggle over surplus labor—or, more precisely, over the ratio of extraction of surplus labor.

Knowledge is always historical and the limits of the “objective” are not the “conventions” set by the scientific “community” or “genius” scientists but the operation of the forces and relations of production. “Mankind… inevitably sets itself only such tasks as it is able to solve, since… the problem itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution are already present or at least in the course of formation” (Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, New York: International Publishers, 1981, 21). A “paradigm,” like all superstructural phenomena, is not autonomous but is shaped by the material base: the forces of production and property relations that either further or put constraints on the development of these forces. In other words, what seems to be autonomous is, in actuality, determined by the effective level of class struggle. All sciences participate in class struggle: some provide objective knowledges to further it and others obscure it by constructing idealist forms of knowing. A paradigm, in short, is an effect of larger social and economic contestations.

At the core of class struggle is, of course, the question of the exchange of labor power for wages—which is the mechanism through which the extraction of surplus value (exploitation) is naturalized as if two equal, free agents in the free market, freely participate in a contract to exchange wages for labor power. Wages, however, constitute merely a fraction of the value of labor power. Capital is thus the accumulation of the unpaid labor which is realized when labor power is put to use by capitalists. A paradigm is a response to the objective and effective level of class struggle: it is a continuation of class struggle on the level of philosophy/science and a struggle over the ratio of exploitation. This ratio is an objective social fact. In their discoveries, sciences either recognize this objectivity of exploitation (historical materialism) or deny it and propose forms of intelligibility that naturalize the social relations of production (forms of holding private property) in the interest of the ruling classes. The question then is not that “objectivity” is not available to us because science is self-referential (paradigm-dependent) instead of representational but rather because of the social and political character of the occlusions. Objective knowledge is possible: its occlusion is the outcome of class relations and is not ontological. To say, as poststructuralists have said, that all forms of science are operations of signs is to confuse the conditions of knowing in class society with knowing as such. The inaccessibility of the “objective” is, in short, a historical condition brought about by the laws of motion of capital.

What is at stake in discussions on science is the possibility of an objective world that exists outside the memories and mental processes of the bourgeois subject. Objectivity, then, is the objectivity of class struggle, which puts limits on the desires of the subject. It cannot be obscured by simply rejecting my insistence on objectivity as “positivist.” “Positivism” is a naturalization of the world as it is: a denial of the change and transformation that comes about by class struggle. Positivism is an assertion of the truth of “is-ness”: the reality of the actually existing. The discourses of my readers are, in fact, “positivist” in their reification of the dominant truth (which they ahistorically call “new thinking”) and in their denial of history and change. My view that there is an “objective” social reality is based on the logic of exchange in capitalist society: the objective reality that capital is congealed surplus labor and all other forms of social and cultural life (scientific practice, subjectivity, theory, pedagogy, desire…) are determined by this unsurpassable materialist objectivity. My question for the readers is: What evidence is there that the paradigm that binds science is anything other than the class struggle brought about by the laws of motion of capital? The history of science (take the case of Galileo, for instance) supports my view that science is an effect of class struggle and, in turn, has an effect on class struggle. Galileo’s progressive science furthered the forces of production and provided a new set of social relations—social relations that questioned the dominant rules of private property and thus questioned the legitimacy of the power of the (feudal) ruling class.

My readers are so excited about postmodern theory that, instead of reading my text, they have simply noticed, with shock, the absence of any allegiance in my texts to the writings of their master theorists. Their excitement has clouded their sense of history since they seem to think that the views of postmodern theory on questions of the subject, desire, foundation… are “new”! The texts of postmodern theory, I must point out, are over thirty years old now, and by their own very logic (that one should be up-to-date), they are out-of-date! It is my readers who are unaware of the Post-“New Thinking”! They do not seem to be familiar with post-poststructuralism. There is nothing more outdated than the avant-garde of yesterday!

Yesterday’s avant-garde, however, is now established in the ludic academy as a new common sense and one sign of its hegemony is the way in which the second reader echoes the views of the first reader on questions of science and objectivity. In fact, the second reader repeats, almost verbatim, the individualist “insights” of the first reader on the question of the impossibility of objectivity. This is all the more interesting in that these are the very readers who claim subjectivity is an “excess” unexplainable by class. Yet their own texts shows otherwise: as petit-bourgeois academics, whose job is to provide theories that justify and naturalize the interests of the ruling class, they all say the same thing. Their class position—the position they (unintentionally) defend—dictates the “uniqueness” of their subjectivity! However, the irreducible uniqueness of the subject evaporates in the commonality of the class interests they end up supporting.

These repeated attacks on objectivity, science, and social totality, however, lead me to a different question. Why are these readers so unanimously opposed to objectivity and to the availability of any knowledge of the social totality? Why is it so difficult for liberal academics to accept the existence of a world independent of their own thoughts and desires? As Lenin argues, the fact that the world is mediated by our ideas, thoughts and desires, does not mean that the world is made of thoughts, ideas and desires. The fact that we understand the world though language does not mean that it is constituted by language. It is true that in class societies the objective is obscured, but this is a historical and not an ontological condition. The objective is suppressed and proclaimed to be ontologically unavailable for a definite purpose: obscuring the objective and, consequently, positing the world as an effect of our language/ thought/ desire occludes the ratio of exploitation and thus secures the interests of the ruling class. The argument against objectivity is a political one even though it is presented as a philosophical one. If one is able to represent the world as the effect of language or desire, it follows that the reality of such a world is the subjective reality of desire and the differential workings of language. It is thus an aleatory reality: autonomous and unbound by economic practices. Such a non-objective world is a contingent one beyond the laws of history—it is a free-floating world in which no intervention will lead to “progress.” All social totalities are, therefore, considered opaque and subject to the laws of desire and also, like language and desire, to slippage, self-division and uncertainty. In a world posited as the effect of paradigms and desires, exploitation is not an objective phenomenon. It is rather a differential trope, and like all tropes, it slips along the chain of signification; it is not available in any reliable way. If exploitation is not an “objective” fact but merely a language-effect, a trope, a representation-effect, then no intervention is possible since anything which is substituted for it is also subject to the laws of language and misrepresentation. The notion that there is no objective truth and all arguments for truth are “positivist” is an ideological alibi: it represents economic objectivity as a textual uncertainty, and in so doing, protects those who benefit from the asymmetrical distribution of economic resources. If the social totality is not objectively available, if it is not transparent, it is because of the mystifications of ideology that represent the economic interests of the owners of the means of production as eternal, timeless, ethical and moral “values.”