Marxian economics and the critique of political economy
Moishe Postone’s critique of Marxian economics1 and his negative critique of labour are essential to the development of the critique of political economy as a critical social theory. In Time, Labour and Social Domination,2 Postone demonstrated that mid-twentieth-century Marxian economics consisted in a foreshortened ‘positive’ critique of capitalism as a mode of unequal distribution premised on an ontological understanding of labour as the source of wealth. In distinction to Marxian economics, Postone conceived of the critique of political economy as a negative critique of the historically specific capitalist form of labour. Yet the rise of interest in democratic socialism and expanded interpretations of Marx premised on reproductive labour and the state call into question the applicability of Postone’s critique of Marxian economics. These prevalent interpretations of Marx also indicate that Postone’s negative critique of the historically specific form of labour as a critical social theory was incomplete as it did not critique the state, the household and the reproductive labour of state employees and household members.
This chapter critically expounds on Postone’s critiques of Marxian economics and labour. Part One provides an overview of Postone’s critique of Marxian economics and of his interpretation of the critique of political economy as a critique of labour. Part Two builds on Postone’s critique of Marxian economics to establish that democratic socialism, Social Reproduction Theory (SRT), and the synthetic theories of Jason E. Moore and Nancy Fraser expand on the presuppositions of traditional Marxism and the categories of Marxian economics to offer a positive critique of capitalist society as a mode of distribution from an expanded standpoint of labour. We show that these approaches conceive of socialism as the realization of labour, and as a result these approaches unwittingly promote the perpetuation of capitalist society. Part Three disentangles Postone’s negative critique of labour from Postone’s positive emancipatory dynamic, and then extends Postone’s critique of labour to the state and household to develop a negative critique of capitalist society as a historically specific form of labour. The conclusion recaps the argument to demonstrate the vitality of Postone’s critique of labour for the development of critical theory.
Postone’s critiques
In Time, Labour and Social Domination, Postone develops a distinction ‘between two fundamentally different modes of critical analysis: a critique of capitalism from the standpoint of labour, on the one hand, and a critique of labour in capitalism, on the other’.3 The critique of labour in capitalism, in turn, also serves as the grounds for Postone’s critique of the analysis of capitalism that proceeds from the standpoint of labour.
Postone’s analysis of the critique of capitalism from the standpoint of labour is premised on his interpretation of the work of mid-twentieth-century Marxian economics, primarily that of its leading exponents: Maurice Dobb, Paul Sweezy and Ernest Mandel. Postone argues that according to this approach to Marxian economics, ‘Labour is the ontological ground of society’, ‘the only source of wealth’ and hence the standpoint of a ‘positive’ critique of ‘the mode of distribution.’4 In Marxian economics, capitalism is characterized by the contradictory creation of wealth by social labour, which is appropriated by the capitalist class due to their private ownership of the means of production. Yet, according to Marxian economics, this process of production and appropriation is veiled by the market where it appears that workers are fairly compensated for their labour. Consequently, according to Marxian economics:
The essential thrust of Marx’s critique [of political economy] is, accordingly, to reveal beneath the appearance of the exchange of equivalents the existence of class exploitation. The market and private ownership of the means of production are considered to be the essential capitalist relations of production, which are expressed by the categories of value and surplus value. Social domination is treated as a function of class domination which, in turn, is rooted in ‘private property in land and capital’.5
For Marxian economists, Marx’s labour theory of value is tantamount to a ‘positive’ critique of political economy from the standpoint of labour.
In distinction to Marxian economics’ critique of capitalism as a mode of distribution from the standpoint of labour, Postone conceives of the critique of political economy as a ‘negative critique’ of the historically specific form of labour. According to Postone, the historically specific form of capitalist labour consists in a unique type of social interdependence of ‘impersonal’ ‘quasi-objective’ social domination that is ‘effected by historically unique forms of social relations that are constituted by determinate forms of social practice’.6
Value and wealth are not synonymous, labour is not transhistorical, and capitalism is not a mode of exploitation and appropriation premised on private ownership. Rather, capitalist labour is historically specific and possesses twofold dimensions: private and social, abstract and concrete. Marx’s categories do not capture the unequal distribution of goods in a system of market exchange premised on private property. Rather, they are categories that critically grasp the historically specific capitalistic organization of production and distribution on the basis of the reciprocal social mediation of abstract and concrete labour. The categories of the commodity, value, surplus value, et cetera, ‘necessarily express the forms of being [Daseinsformen], the determinations of existence [Existenzbestimmungen]’ of the historically specific capitalist form of labour as a quasi-objective and abstract type of social domination. Consequently, contra traditional Marxism, ‘The abstract domination and the exploitation of labour characteristic of capitalism are grounded, ultimately, not in the appropriation of the surplus by the non-labouring classes, but in the form of labour in capitalism.’7
Following from this interpretation of the critique of political economy as a critique of capitalist labour, Postone argues that traditional interpretations of Marx, exemplified by mid-twentieth-century Marxian economics, fail to grasp the dual character of labour and its historical specificity – ultimately, Marxian economics fails to grasp capitalism. This leads to traditional Marxism’s foreshortened understanding of how capitalism might be overcome. Socialism is conceived as the ‘realization of labour’. Capitalism’s ‘unconscious’ mode of distribution – private property and the market – is replaced with the ‘conscious’ public ownership of the means of production and the public planning of distribution.8 According to Postone, such a conception of socialism unwittingly reproduces capitalism. The realization of labour in socialism may do away with private property and the market. Yet it perpetuates the capitalist organization of labour and Marx’s critical categories, and as a result perpetuates the capitalist form of labour. In Postone’s negative critique, the historically specific form of the dual character of labour – and with it capitalist production and distribution – must be abolished in order to overcome capitalism.
In this overview of Postone’s critique of Marxian economics and his critique of the historically specific form of labour, we have shown that there is a stark difference between traditional Marxism’s critique of capitalism from the standpoint of labour and Postone’s critical theory of the historically specific form of labour. The critique of capitalism from the standpoint of labour offers a ‘positive critique’ of capitalism as a mode of private distribution from the standpoint of social labour and conceives of socialism as the realization of social labour via public ownership and distribution. Postone’s critical theory of the historically specific form of labour, on the other hand, provides a negative critique of capitalism as a historically specific form of labour that possesses a dual character inclusive of its private and social, abstract and concrete dimensions that amounts to impersonal social domination. So socialism consists in the abolition of labour.
In what follows, we will argue that Postone’s critique of traditional Marxism and his critique of the historically specific form of capitalist labour are essential to the development of critical theory today. We will also show that the current broad applicability of Postone’s notion of traditional Marxism is missed if it is simply applied to contemporary Marxian economics. Moreover, Postone’s critique of labour ultimately does not amount to a negative critical theory of capitalist society. The purpose of our critique of Postone’s critique of labour is to further develop these critical aspects.
II
As the work of Richard Wolff and Stephen Resnick,9 Fred Moseley10 and David Brennen and colleagues11 demonstrates, Postone’s critique of Marxian economics is undoubtedly still relevant. Yet this critique of Marxian economics in itself is incapable of critiquing an array of prevalent criticisms of capitalism – from social democratic notions of political economy, to the new Marxist-feminist offshoot SRT, to synthetic theories of capitalism – that expand the standpoint of labour to include the domains of reproductive labour and treat the relationship between the state and the economy as central to their criticisms of capitalism as a mode of distribution.
Postone himself did not predict these developments, let alone provide a broader conception of traditional Marxism that would enable critiquing them. One of the foundational justifications for Postone’s interpretation of Marx was that traditional Marxism did not respond to the demands of the new social movements.12 It is true that Postone points to the wider significance of his critique of traditional Marxism. In particular, Postone points to the parallels between the standpoint of labour and normative social and political philosophy. In this vein, he discusses how the standpoint of labour parallels the normative critique of the state from the standpoint of civil society, while asserting that his interpretation of the critique of political economy holds that ‘the changing relationship of state to civil society, as well as the character and development of institutions in each sphere . . . can be understood only in terms of the intrinsic dynamic of capitalist society’.13 Postone indicates that, ‘[i]n this sense (and only in this non-sociologically reductive sense), the difference between the two forms of social critique’ – that is, the positive critique of the standpoint of labour and the negative critique of labour – ‘is that between a “bourgeois” critique of society, and a critique of bourgeois society’.14 Yet Postone did not develop these points. In this section we expand on Postone’s critique of Marxian economics to show how social democratic political economy, SRT and synthetic theories of capitalism offer positive critiques of capitalism as a mode of distribution from an expansive standpoint of labour – inclusive of reproductive labour that takes place in state institutions and households – that unwittingly promote the reproduction of capitalism.
Democratic Socialist Political Economy
What we call ‘democratic socialist political economy’ is prominent in heterodox economics and the new interdisciplinary project of law and political economy.15 This notion of democratic socialist political economy undergirds the ideas of democratic socialism that are now prevalent in the Anglophone world. Democratic socialist political economy includes the Ricardian interpretations of Marxian economics discussed by Postone. However, these contemporary interpretations also amalgamate Marx’s work alongside classical political economy, John Maynard Keynes, and Karl Polanyi. Elements identified in Postone’s critique of traditional Marxism are essential to democratic socialist political economy’s critique of capitalism as a mode of distribution. However, democratic socialist political economy has a broader worldview that is premised on the standpoint of labour but also includes the relationship between the economy and the state in its distinction between capitalism and socialism.
Social democratic political economy has a transhistorical notion of labour as the source of all wealth. However, it differs from Marxian economics in viewing the fundamental social contradiction that typifies capitalist society as not just between social production and private appropriation premised on private property, but between the public and the private, the state and the economy, encompassing different types of norms, reason and governance. As a consequence, democratic socialist political economy opposes itself to capitalist political economy by distinguishing between the capitalist and democratic socialist ordering of modern society. In democratic socialist political economy, capitalism is viewed in terms of the public realm of the state serving the private interests of capitalists by enforcing laws and policies that lead to the unequal distribution of wealth created by labour.16
The social democratic critique of capitalism proceeds from the standpoint of labour to criticise capitalism as a mode of distribution. This positive social democratic critique demonstrates that the state facilitates the private distribution of social labour, demystifying the supposed separation between the state and the economy. Marxian, Polanyian and Keynesian categories are seen as the hidden creation of the state; these categories capture capitalist processes of unequal distribution. Socialism, in contrast, is conceived of as democratic state policy that serves the general interest of the public, fairly distributing the wealth created by labour.
Social Reproduction Theory
Social Reproduction Theory is a self-designated interdisciplinary current in contemporary Marxist feminist theory. The notable theorists in SRT – Susan Ferguson, Tithi Bhattacharya, Alan Sears and Cinzia Arruzza – have developed what they have dubbed the ‘Marxian approach to SRT’ by drawing on selective interpretations of accounts of the reproduction of labour power by Lise Vogel17 and Italian autonomism18 and integrating them into a ‘classical Marxist’ framework.19
As Ferguson puts it, ‘The Marxian School of social reproduction feminism observes that Marx did not extend his political-economic critique of capitalism to unpaid social reproductive labour.’20 Yet as the self-designation ‘classical Marxist’ suggests, SRT develops such a ‘political-economic critique’ by extending the presuppositions of the standpoint of labour to reproductive labour.21 SRT draws on and expands the traditional Marxist interpretation of the critique of political economy by including the reproductive labour of ‘life-making’ in the standpoint of labour. While SRT contends that productive labour is the transhistorical source of wealth, reproductive labour is conceived of as the transhistorical type of labour that constitutes and sustains the life that is necessary for labour to create wealth.
For SRT, the ‘life-making’ of reproductive labour – in tandem with productive labour – provides the standpoint of SRT’s ‘positive’ critique of capitalism as a mode of distribution. SRT argues that the reproductive labour of life-making makes exploitation and unequal distribution possible. According to SRT, the relationship between reproductive labour and profit is veiled by capitalist society. According to SRT, reproductive labour is either unpaid or underpaid and yet is essential to the production and reproduction of labour power, to the exploitative level of wages, and as a result to exploitation and unequal distribution. Moreover, reproductive ‘life-making’ creates and reproduces the ‘desired human qualities and capacities’22 that capital exploits, by meeting the needs that are necessary to create and sustain life. Following traditional Marxist presuppositions, SRT offers an expanded critique of capitalism as an exploitative and dominating process of distribution which is extrinsic to the form of capitalist production and reproduction itself.
SRT also expands the traditional Marxist conception of communism. Reproductive labourers are members of the proletariat because they sustain the proletariat; reproductive workers are also dominated and indirectly exploited by the capitalist class. For SRT, the contradiction between the development of the forces and relations of production immiserate reproductive labour. So, according to this perspective, the seizing of totality and communism entails seizing and unleashing the productive forces and the reproductive forces of life-making under common ownership and public planning.
Fraser and Moore’s synthetic theories
Nancy Fraser23 and Jason E. Moore’s24 synthetic theories of capitalism draw together the social democratic and social reproductive criticisms of capitalism to criticize capitalism as a mode of distribution from an expanded standpoint of labour while advocating for an expanded idea of socialism.
Fraser conceives of capitalism as an ‘institutionalized social order’ that is premised on the exploitation of labour and the unpaid expropriation of the ‘background spheres’ of reproductive labour and nature. Fraser further contends that such an institutionalized social order is facilitated by the state and is realized in profit. Yet it is ‘disavowed.’ Fraser’s ‘positive’ critique of the capitalistic institutionalized order of modern society unveils this process of exploitation and appropriation from the standpoint of productive and reproductive labour. Her ‘expanded idea of socialism’25 consists in the democratic state management of the distribution of the surplus created by productive and reproductive labour premised on the norms of each of these spheres of modern society.26
Moore in his own work and in his work with Raj Patel27 argues that capitalist profit is made possible through the ‘cheapening’ of productive and reproductive labour, money, lives and nature. Socialism consists in ‘reparation ecology’, a process premised on ‘recognition, reparation, redistribution, reimagination, and recreation’,28 in which people, activities and the environment are valued at their worth and society is democratically ruled on this basis.
Consequences of this expanded standpoint of labour
As this overview of democratic socialist political economy, SRT and Fraser and Moore’s synthetic theories of capitalism demonstrates, Postone’s critique of Marxian economics is both fundamental and inadequate to these theories. These three contemporary approaches certainly conceive of capitalism as an unconscious mode of distribution that is criticized from the standpoint of labour. Yet the conception of labour is expanded. The object of criticism for these approaches is capitalist distribution; however, while this criticism is ostensibly directed at the market, it is ultimately directed at the state’s central role implementing capitalist distribution. Rather than simply seeing Marx’s categories as economic categories of exploitative distribution, these categories are said to be made possible by the state and reproductive labour – and even nature. For these approaches, Marx’s categories are concealed not only by the market but are also veiled by society. Following Postone, socialism is certainly conceived in these theories as the ‘conscious’ social regulation of distribution by public planning, yet socialism is grounded on this expanded conception of labour and expressed through the democratic state management of distribution.
Postone’s critique of Marxian economics focuses on the mid-twentieth-century work of Dobb, Sweezy and Mandel, but his critique of the standpoint of labour is all too relevant today. At the same time, Postone’s critique of Marxian economics is too limited. For democratic socialist political economy, SRT, and Fraser and Moore’s synthetic theories of capitalism expand on these presuppositions to develop positive theories of the mode of distribution of entirety of bourgeois society. These notions of socialism unwittingly promote the perpetuation of capitalism, transforming labour into a broad ontological principle that envisions socialism as ‘the realization’ of productive and reproductive labour by overcoming ‘its mode of distribution’ (private property and the market) and replacing it with the public ownership of the means of production and the public planning of distribution at the behest of a democratic state that distributes the proceeds of labour on the basis of extant norms.
While these contemporary approaches leave much to be desired, they still point to the shortcomings of Postone’s negative critique with respect to a negative critical theory of society. In the next section, we show the vitality of Postone’s negative critique of capitalism as a historically specific form of labour by extending Postone’s critique to the state, the household and the reproductive labour of state employees and household members.
III
The tension between Postone’s negative critique of the historically specific form of capitalist labour and Postone’s emancipatory dynamic need to be addressed. In Postone’s negative critique of labour, capitalism consists in a historically specific form of labour that needs to be abolished to achieve human emancipation. Yet this negative critique sits uneasily with Postone’s larger effort to revitalize critical theory. Postone’s attempts to revitalize critical theory mirror Habermas’s justification for formulating his own approach to critical theory: they share the contention that Adorno and Horkheimer’s critical theory is one-dimensional and lacks an emancipatory basis.29 While the emancipatory grounds Habermas and Postone developed were certainly distinct from one another, their ensuing social theories nonetheless possess striking similarities. Postone’s approach to rejuvenating critical theory consists in grasping the emancipatory potential of a pre-existing social dynamic whose further development he believed points to the emancipatory overcoming of capitalism – an approach he shares with Habermas and even the traditional Marxism that Postone criticizes.30
For traditional Marxism, the forces of production will, in the course of their development, come into contradiction with the relations of production. This contradiction will lead to the revolutionary seizure of the forces of production by the proletariat, and the realization of labour as the unfettering of the productive forces. Habermas argued that the evolution of contemporary society led to complexity and the systematic differentiation of the spheres of the economy, state and life world. The unmooring of the neutral spheres of the state and the economy had come into contradiction with the private sphere. For Habermas, the public sphere should use the state as a ‘conveyor belt’, unleashing the democratic rule of the public sphere over the state and the economy. For Postone, the development of the forces of production would lead to the displacement of labour and the diminishment of value. The development of the forces of production, the displacement of labour and the diminishment of value would serve as the emancipatory grounds for:
a growing contradiction between the sort of labour people perform under capitalism and the sort of labour they could perform if value were abolished and the productive potential developed under capitalism were reflexively used to liberate people from the sway of the alienated structures constituted by their own labour.31
Since Postone’s interpretation of this dynamic of development, displacement and diminishment does not consider relative surplus value, or countervailing state measures his interpretation of the dynamic of accumulation is called into question. The emancipatory basis of Postone’s attempt to rejuvenate critical theory is akin to a sociological model of progressive technological future-oriented social development that mirrors both the classical Marxist notion of an emancipatory crisis and Habermas’s notion of social development. It is also fetishistic and distinct from a negative critique of the historically specific form of labour. Postone’s emancipatory dynamic of development, displacement and diminishment relies on the continuing domination of the reified subject of capital and the exploitation of labour to realize emancipation, but negative critique implies an emancipatory notion of the contemporary necessity of the collective negation of the organization of the historically specific social form of capitalism in response to social domination. In what follows, we separate Postone’s negative critique of capitalist society as a historically specific critique of labour from Postone’s emancipatory dynamic.
We also extend Postone’s negative critique of capitalist society as a historically specific form of labour to a critique of the state, the household and the reproductive labour of state employees and household members. Postone’s negative critique of labour does not critique these dimensions of capitalist society. However, the state, the household, and the reproductive labour of state employees and household members are implicit in Postone’s general statements that ‘[i]n constituting a self-grounding social mediation, labour constitutes a determinate sort of social whole – a totality’32 and that
the historically specific character of this labour is intrinsically related to the form of social interdependence characteristic of capitalist society. It constitutes a historically specific, quasi-objective form of social mediation that, within the framework of Marx’s analysis, serves as the ultimate social ground of modernity’s basic features.33
As Postone demonstrates in his analysis of Marx’s categories, ‘value’ refers to the capitalist organization of production, while Marx’s categories describe objective–subjective modes of being.
Hence:
within the framework of Marx’s analysis, value is a form of wealth that is not extrinsic to production or to other social “institutions” in capitalism but, rather, is intrinsic to them and shapes them; as a form of mediation, it generates a process of ongoing transformation and reconstitution.34
Postone states that civil society and the state are not separate but are ‘embedded’ and ‘transformed’ by this value-mediated ‘process of transformation and reconstitution’.35 Although Postone does not specifically apply this insight to reproductive labour, the non-separability of reproductive labour, civil society, and the state can be inferred given that much of reproductive labour is carried out by employees of the state, while other aspects of reproductive labour are carried out in households. Proletarian households do not represent a separate ‘domestic sphere’, but rather are linked to the state and economy via the value dynamic of ‘transformation and reconstitution’.
In order to sketch how the historically specific form of labour constitutes a ‘determinant’ ‘social whole’ inclusive of the state, household and reproductive labour it is necessary to begin by supplementing Postone’s account of the historically specific form of labour with an account of its genesis. While Postone points to ‘determinate social relations that constitute’ the historically specific form of labour, he does not elaborate on their genesis, nor the genesis of the other institutions in this ‘social whole’.36
Following Bonefeld,37 the historically specific social form of capitalist society was created by the violent process of primitive accumulation. The state separated people from their means of reproduction and expropriated land and wealth for the ruling class. This created the capital relation and the historically specific forms of labour and wealth. The state was transformed into the capitalist state and the private household emerged.
Now that we have outlined the ‘social ground’ of this whole, we turn to indicate how it is ‘shaped’ by a ‘historically specific, quasi-objective form of social mediation’.38 We follow Postone in holding that capitalist production does not consist in the transhistorical production of wealth that is unequally distributed due to the institutions of private property and the market. Furthermore, Marx’s categories do not capture this market-veiled unequal allocation of social wealth. Instead labour is characterized by its historically specific dual character. Value is the historically specific form of wealth. Capital shapes production and produces goods with the sole intent of valorizing value. Marx’s categories capture the necessary appearance of this historically specific form of labour in the form of value (money) and its ensuing dynamic of accumulation and reproduction as ‘determinate modes of being’ that mediate and compel concrete activity ‘generat[ing] a process of ongoing transformation and reconstitution’, in the separate yet interrelated spheres of the economy, state and household.
Since capitalists are ‘personifications of economic categories’, they are compelled to compete with other capitalists by this ‘quasi-objective’ form of social mediation (the historically specific natural laws of accumulation) to acquire profit in the form of money. Since workers are free from the means to sustain themselves and free to sell their labour power, they are compelled to compete with other proletarians to sell their labour power for money in order to sustain themselves. Since profit is incumbent upon selling commodities while maximizing surplus value, capitalists compete to increase working hours, lower wages and increase productivity. This competition between capitalists to increase productivity leads to the revolutionizing of production via supervision, a strict division of labour and an increasing reliance on machinery. This dynamic is replicated across the social division of labour as whole. The result is a blind, crisis-ridden process that produces reoccurring crises, the accumulation of wealth at one pole and misery at the other, and the ‘multiplication’ of the proletariat and the reproduction of separation on an ‘extended scale’.
The capitalist state is ‘the organized force of society’.39 Since this society is capitalist society, and not merely the capitalist organization of the distribution of the proceeds of modern society, it is a force for ‘social enslavement’40 and the object of the critique of political economy. Following Clarke41 and Bonefeld,42 the capitalist state protects property and perpetuates the propertyless, reinforcing and perpetuating the historically specific form of labour. Constitutions codify the historically specific form of labour and displace class antagonism to the representative politics of the political sphere. In the political sphere, elected officials ostensibly vie to represent the general will of the public on the basis of different social and economic policies.
While these policies can undoubtedly be progressive or regressive, they are nevertheless realized in bureaucracies by reproductive workers employed by the state who administer the population, reproducing individuals as bearers of the commodity labour power, thus perpetuating the capitalist social form. As Munro43 shows, state employees in state bureaucracies – ranging from education, to welfare, to health care – are not virtuous life-makers. They do not instil children with the skills and norms that are needed to produce goods that would meet human needs barring the capitalist mode of distribution. Nor do they sustain adults who already possess these skills and norms. Rather education consists in what Adorno calls ‘house training’, eradicating autonomy and critical thinking, and instilling the discipline, authority and competitiveness necessary for bearers of the commodity labour power to beat out their competitors and excel at jobs that entail a range of activities preformed by the capitalist division of labour. Welfare subjects the unemployed to a punitive bureaucracy that pays them a bare minimum to tide them over until they find new work. This reinforces the wage and ultimately capital accumulation. Health care subjects people to an administration tasked with sustaining people’s ability to sell the commodity of labour power in order to valorize value. Finally, the police promote the reproduction of the commodity of labour-power via enforcing laws that protect property and administer social individuals to act as virtuous sellers of labour power by incarcerating troublesome law breakers. Consequently, these state bureaucracies and their functionaries enact ‘reproductive life-making’ by administering the population, depoliticizing class struggle, raising and preserving individuals as bearers of the commodity of labour power. These state institutions and these activities impose market dependency, maim individuals and contribute to the reproduction of the historically specific form of labour. Expanding on Clarke,44 the general interest of society and the general will of the public is the general interest of capital.
Like the state and reproductive labourers employed by state bureaucracies, reproductive domestic labour in households is not a virtuous activity of ‘life-making’ ‘thwarted’ by the capitalist mode of distribution. Rather, ‘[p]rivate life, the zone of individuality, is absorbed by so-called social activities and thus likewise moulded by . . . the schemata of society’.45 As Munro46 shows, the household and household production are mediated by and mediate the crisis-ridden dynamic of capital accumulation and reproduction. The very existence of the household is incumbent on primitive accumulation, private property, law enforcement, wages and state provision of goods and services. Sustaining a household necessitates selling labour power for a wage and performing domestic labour that – along with commodities purchased with wages and state inputs – sustains household members’ ability to perform productive and reproductive labour. Households combine commodities purchased with wages, state goods and services, and domestic labour in shifting proportions to produce day-to-day life, contributing to the crisis-ridden process of accumulation both directly and indirectly. Households create a new generation of workers to be exploited, sustain those who are underemployed or between jobs, and sustain those unable to work, keeping down wages. By responding to the crisis-ridden process of accumulation via these activities of reproduction, households are a part of it – contributing to the reproduction of labour power and thus capitalist society as a historically specific form of labour.
Productive and reproductive labour in the state and the household are integral to reproducing the negative totality of capitalist society as a historically specific form of labour. In contrast to democratic socialist political economy, SRT, and synthetic theories of capitalism, such a society is not characterized by the capturing of the proceeds of productive and reproductive labour by capital on the basis of state policies that serve these private interests. Rather productive labour and reproductive labour of the state and the household are integral to the historically specific form of labour as a form of social mediation of the social whole that shapes and reproduces its institutions. Productive labour is realized in a crisis-ridden dynamic of abstract and concrete labour that maims and displaces a labour force that overproduces junk for the sake of profit. The reproductive bureaucracies of the state as well as the household dominate and sustain social individuals as bearers of the commodity labour power, reproducing the historically specific form of labour. In critiquing this negative form of social unity, we have expanded on Postone’s critique of labour to provide a negative critique of capitalist society, indicating how a historically specific form of labour is constitutive of a ‘quasi-objective’ form of social mediation that shapes the social whole. We have also pointed how the state, the household and the reproductive labour of state employees and household members reproduce the historically specific form of labour. Taken together these moments perpetuate the social whole. In this perspective, socialism does not consist in the realization of productive and reproductive labour and the fair distribution of its proceeds via a social democratic state, but rather their abolition.
Conclusion
Moishe Postone’s critique of Marxian economics and his negative critique of labour are essential to the development of the critique of political economy as a critical social theory. However, Postone’s critique of Marxian economics is not sufficient to critique the now-prevalent approaches of democratic socialist political economy, SRT, and the synthetic theories of capitalism that draw these approaches together. Moreover, Postone’s negative critique of labour is supplanted by an emancipatory account of progressive technological development that mirrors traditional Marxism and Habermasian critical theory. Finally, Postone’s critique of the historically specific form of labour does not critique the state, household or reproductive labour. This chapter has sought to demonstrate the vitality of Postone’s critique of Marxian economics and his negative critique of the historically specific form of labour by expanding on them in this regard.
We first demonstrated that democratic socialist political economy, SRT, and Fraser and Moore’s synthetic theories of capitalism extend Marxian economics’ critique of capitalism as a mode of distribution by conceiving of productive and reproductive labour as the transhistorical source of life and wealth that is unequally distributed because the state acts in the private interests of capitalists. These approaches expand upon Marxian economics’ interpretations of Marx’s economic categories as categories of distribution that are veiled by the market, arguing that unpaid reproductive labour (and even nature) are ultimately represented in profit. For these approaches, this process is veiled by what Fraser calls the disavowal of institutionalized order of capitalist society. The expanded idea of socialism envisioned in these approaches is conceived as the ‘realization’ of this extended notion of labour via the democratic social state’s public management of distribution.
We then turned to illustrate the importance of Postone’s negative critique of capitalism as a historically specific form of labour for the critique of political economy as a critical social theory. Expanding on Postone’s definition of labour as a structuring form of social mediation, we showed that the critique of labour can be extended to encompass the negative dynamic unity of the economy, state and household, and thus how capitalist society is constituted and reproduced by the historically specific unity of productive and reproductive labour.
This chapter indicates the centrality of Postone’s critique of Marxian economics and his critique of labour to the further development of the critique of political economy as a critical social theory. In the first place, we have demonstrated how democratic socialist political economy, SRT, and Fraser and Moore’s synthetic theories of capitalism extend Marxian economics, offering a critique of capitalism as a mode of distribution from an expanded standpoint of labour that unwittingly promotes the perpetuation of capitalism rather than its abolition. In the second place, we have demonstrated that the negative critique of labour also entails the negation of the historically specific institutions and types of reproductive labour that reinforce and reproduce it. Postone’s insights can be used to further develop the critique of political economy as a critical social theory by showing that it is necessary to negate not only productive labour but also the state, the household and the reproductive labour of state employees and household members.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Edward Henry for invaluable research assistance.
Notes
1 Following Postone, ‘Marxian economics’ is used here as a general term, rather than as a name for the specific interpretation of Marx by Richard Wolff, Stephen Resnick, and their followers.
2 Moishe Postone, Time, Labour, and Social Domination (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
3 Postone, Time, Labour, 5.
4 Ibid., 60.
5 Ibid., 52–3.
6 Ibid., 3.
7 Ibid., 161.
8 ‘The difference between socialism and capitalism, then, aside from whether private ownership of the means of production exists, is understood essentially as a matter of whether labour is recognized as that which constitutes and regulates society – and is consciously dealt with as such – or whether social regulation occurs nonconsciously. In socialism, then, the ontological principle of society appears openly, whereas in capitalism it is hidden.’ Postone, Time, Labour, 60–1.
9 Richard D. Wolff and Stephen A. Resnick, Contending Economic Theories (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2012).
10 Fred Moseley, Money and Totality: A Macro-Monetary Interpretation of Marx’s Logic in Capital and the End of the ‘Transformation Problem’ (Leiden: Brill, 2017).
11 David Brennan, David Kirstjanson-Gural, Catherine P. Mulder and Erik K. Olson (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Marxian Economics (London: Routledge, 2017).
12 See Postone, Time, Labour, 14.
13 Ibid., 278.
14 Ibid., 64.
15 The contours of this discourse is established in a number of recent textbooks (Sam Bowles, Frank Roosevelt, Richard Edwards and Mehrene Larudee, Understanding Capitalism, 4th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), Ira Katznelson, Mark Kesselman and Alan Draper, The Politics of Power, 7th ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 2013); theoretical works (Robert Skidelsky, Money and Government (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018), James Crotty, Keynes Against Capitalism (London: Routledge, 2019), Bhaskar Sunkara, The Socialist Manifesto (New York: Basic Books, 2020); journals and periodicals such as Jacobin, Tribune, Catalyst, Law and Political Economy; and policy proposals such as the Green New Deal and Jobs Guarantee.
16 Feminist economics emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s as a branch of progressive/democratic socialist economics that aims to overturn male bias in the discipline of economics and argues that women’s contributions to the capitalist economy through gendered labour – unpaid or underpaid – are not sufficiently recognized by economists, governments, and society. Feminist economics argues for the recognition of this gendered labour via proposals such as alternative measures of national output that include household production and on the basis of categories such as ‘care work’. Lately, in light of the success of SRT, feminist economics has moved to assimilate and co-opt Marxian categories such as ‘social reproduction’. Feminist economics broadens the domain of democratic socialist political economy’s standpoint of labour, but the precise boundaries between feminist economics and SRT have recently become blurred. For that reason, we have refrained from discussing it in detail here.
17 Lise Vogel, Marxism and the Oppression of Women: Toward a Unitary Theory (Leiden: Koninklijke Brill, [1983] 2013).
18 Mariarosa Dalla Costa and Selma James, The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community (Bristol: Falling Wall Press, 1975); Silvia Federici, Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle (Oakland: PM Press, 2012).
19 Cinzia Aruzza, ‘Functionalist, Determinist, Reductionist: Social Reproduction Feminism and Its Critics’, Science & Society 80, no. 1 (2016): 9–30; Tithi Bhattacharya, ‘How Not to Skip Class: Social Reproduction of Labour and the Global Working Class’, in Social Reproduction Theory: Remapping Class, Recentering Oppression, edited by Tithi Bhattacharya (London: Pluto Press), 68–93; Susan Ferguson, ‘Building on the Strengths of the Socialist Feminist Tradition’, Critical Sociology 25, no. 1 (1999): 1–15; Alan Sears, ‘Body Politics: The Social Reproduction of Sexualities’, in Social Reproduction Theory: Remapping Class, Recentering Oppression, edited by Tithi Bhattacharya (London: Pluto Press), 171–91.
20 Susan Ferguson, Women and Work: Feminism, Labour, and Social Reproduction (London: Pluto Press, 2019), 126.
21 Kirstin Munro, ‘“Social Reproduction Theory,” Social Reproduction, and Household Production’, Science & Society 83, no. 4 (2019): 451–68.
22 Silvia Federici, Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle (Oakland: PM Press, 2012), 99; cited in Ferguson, Women and Work, 130.
23 Nancy Fraser and Rahel Jaeggi, Capitalism: A Conversation in Critical Theory (Cambridge: Polity, 2018).
24 Jason E Moore, Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital (London: Verso, 2015).
25 Nancy Fraser, ‘What Should Socialism Mean in the Twenty-First Century?’ Socialist Register (2020): 1–13.
26 Chris O’Kane, ‘Critical Theory and the Critique of Capitalism: An Immanent Critique of Nancy Fraser’s “Systematic” “Crisis-Critique” of Capitalism as an “Institutionalized Social Order”’, Science & Society 85, no. 2 (2021): 207–35.
27 Jason E Moore and Raj Patel, A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2017).
28 Ibid., 207.
29 See Jürgen Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 1 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1985), particularly chapter 4 339–403; Jürgen Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 2 (Oxford and Cambridge: Polity, 1992), particularly chapter VI, pp. 113–99 and chapter VIII, 301–405; and Jürgen Habermas, ‘Excursus on the Obsolescence of the Production Paradigm and the Entwinement of Myth and Enlightenment: Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno’, in Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures, edited by Jürgen Habermas (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1985).
30 As Werner Bonefeld has pointed out, Postone’s reconstruction of the critique of political economy does not discuss primitive accumulation as the process that constitutes the historically specific form of labour. See Werner Bonefeld, Critical Theory and the Critique of Political Economy: On Subversion and Negative Reason (London: Bloomsbury, 2014). In a 2016 interview, Postone himself acknowledges his reconstruction of the critique of political economy did not reach chapter 25 of Capital vol. 1. Indeed, Postone does not reconstruct Part Seven of Capital vol. 1, where Marx discusses accumulation and reproduction. This means not only does Postone fail to account for the creation of social form and social categories in capital, but also does not link his emancipatory dynamic to accumulation and reproduction. Martin Thomas, ‘Moishe Postone Interview: “Work, Time, and the Working Class”’, Worker’s Liberty (29 June 2016). Retrieved 29 July 2021, from https://www.workersliberty.org/story/2017-07-26/work-time-and-working-class.
31 Given the focus of the chapter, we leave aside a discussion of the veracity of Postone’s account of this emancipatory dynamic, but feel inclined to point out that relative surplus value calls the anachronism of value into question. Recent studies that show how automation has led to deskilling and the erosion of conditions of work rather than redundancy call Postone’s labour displacement into question. See for example: Aaron Benanav, Automation and the Future of Work (London: Verso, 2020); Jason E. Smith, Smart Machines and Service Work (London: Reaktion Books, 2020).
32 Postone, Time, Labour, 151.
33 Ibid., 5.
34 Ibid., 397.
35 Ibid., 58.
36 Ibid., 397.
37 Bonefeld, Critical Theory.
38 Postone, Time, Labour, 5.
39 Karl Marx, 1976. Capital: Volume I, translated by Ben Fowkes (London: Penguin Books, [1867]1976), 915.
40 Karl Marx, The Civil War in France. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/civil_war_france.pdf, ([1871] 2010), 23.
41 Simon Clarke, Keynesianism, Monetarism, and the Crisis of the State (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 1988).
42 Bonefeld, Critical Theory.
43 Kirstin Munro, ‘Unproductive Workers and State Repression’, Review of Radical Political Economics 53, no. 4 (2021).
44 See Clarke, Keynesianism.
45 Theodor W. Adorno, Philosophical Elements of a Theory of Society (Cambridge: Polity, [1964] 2019), 64.
46 Munro, ‘Social Reproduction Theory’.