The ancient class process is another name for productive self-employment, where the adjective productive refers to the production and self-appropriation of a surplus (in kind or in value form). Self-employment has held an almost mythic status in the history of the US and many other parts of the world. However, discussions of productive self-employment are largely absent from the neoclassical orthodoxy, various Keynesian and institutionalist insurgencies and Marxism, although it is in the Marxian literature where we find the largest body of theoretical work on ancients and self-exploitation (Gabriel 1989; 1990). Many in the Marxian world, however, frown at the use of Marx’s adjective “ancient,” as in “the ancient mode of production” and prefer other, “less provocative” terms, such as independent commodity production or peasant mode of production.
Most past conceptions of the ancient mode of production and of ancient direct producers have assumed that this unique mode of appropriating and distributing value was of only minor consequence in any given social formation and that ancient direct producers (whatever appellation is used to describe them) are relatively insignificant in shaping the economy. Why even mention the productively self-employed, much less the ancient mode of production or self-exploitation, given this widespread presumption of insignificance? After all, when ancients are mentioned, it is typically assumed, implicitly or explicitly, that self-exploiting direct producers are teleologically inferior to capitalists, just as “primitive” communism was always assumed to be teleologically inferior to the ancient mode of production and most other modes of production, including the as yet unrealized communism of Marx’s imagination. Unlike the proletariat, ancients are assumed to be only background players on the stage of history. But are ancients really just “residual elements” in the chemistry of the past, present and future? To answer we must examine the ancient mode of production.
This unique class process, where the producer of surplus is simultaneously the appropriator and first distributor of surplus on an individualized basis (creating a network of relationships where the agents are dependent for all or a portion of the ancient surplus to cover at least a portion of their livelihood) has a special place within many cultures. It is often represented in literature, where it is quite clear that self-employment is significant, at least locally. Charles Dickens, in his classic Great Expectations (1861), featured the character of Joe Gargery, an ancient blacksmith, depicted as a heroically honest, hardworking and good-hearted human being, a character constructed to evoke sympathy from the reader. The contemporary author Donna Tartt created a similarly heroic ancient direct producer in her recent Pulitzer Prize winning best-seller The Goldfinch (2013), which was an homage to Great Expectations. She created a parallel character to Joe Gargery in the guise of James “Hobie” Hobart. Hobart was an ancient furniture restorer and replica antique furniture maker whose well-deserved reputation as an honest artisan is put at risk by a self-deluded, romanticist central character, a character not unlike Dickens’ Pip. Ancients have played a key role in many other works, including some that have reproduced the meme of the ancient road to wealth, the idea of the self-exploiting direct producer pulling himself up by his bootstraps to become successful (which usually means having transitioned to a capitalist exploiting others). Chinua Achebe’s short story, “A Civil Peace” (1971), where the character Jonathan Iwegbu digs up his buried bicycle at the end of the Biafran Civil War and starts a taxi service from which he uses the proceeds to later open a bar, is one such example of this.
In the media, especially in the US, we are often bombarded with stories of the self-made man or woman, who starts as ancient direct producer/entrepreneur, risking money and expended labor-time to make a go at business. The meme ends with the formerly self-exploiting direct producer employing the labor of others and becoming fabulously famous and wealthy. This tale of ascendance is often based, albeit loosely, on some actual person. For example, there is the tale of Bill Whyte, who founded the personal products company W. S. Badger Company. Because he started as a carpenter, he suffered from cracked skin during the winter months. He decided to find a safe but effective solution to the cracked skin and developed a nontoxic natural ingredient skin balm in his kitchen one winter that soothed and eventually eliminated the cracked skin problem. Later, he sold the balm to other carpenters and craftspeople, producing the concoction late at night and delivering it in tins on weekends (Lourie and Smith, 2013). This version of the Horatio Alger story has become an important implicit (and sometimes explicit) meme in discussions of capitalism. Most of the time this occurs because no distinction is made between self-exploitation (where the ancient direct producer pushes herself to perform surplus labor in order to pay landlords, lenders or the tax man) and capitalist exploitation. In other cases, the distinction is deemed irrelevant on the assumption that successful ancients necessarily become capitalists or are permanently relegated to an insignificant place in a capitalist society.
Anyone seeking to analyze productively self-employed producers must confront this mythic status of the ancient. The decision in Gabriel (1989; 1990) to label them as participating in the ancient class process was to an extent an attempt to state at least two principles:
1 This is a much older economic process than capitalism and it is not capitalism. The ancient class process or mode of production is the basis of much of the mythology stolen to service capitalism in an attempt to try to make a cultural case for capitalism, even though they are as distinct from each other as any two other class processes. Capitalism is not slavery, feudalism, or self-employment. In fact, as Marx elaborated in the first volume of Capital, the ancient mode of production was, in part, an obstacle to the rise of capitalism and had to be weakened for capitalism to prevail (Marx 1977[1], 931). Absorbing the ancient mythology of “working for oneself” as a meme supportive of capitalism was a bonus for those working for capitalism’s rise.
2 Another reason for choosing the terminology of the ancient class process is to make more transparent the class aspects of “ancient” Greece and the interactions of these class aspects with Greek class-based democracy and markets (Gabriel 1989: 135–142). There are numerous methods for demonstrating the contradictions between this mythology of ancient Greece and democratic political processes with the reality of nineteenth century capitalism, where individual producers were hardly “free” but sold their laboring potential in “free” markets. It is important not to conflate democracy and markets with capitalism. Democracy and markets exist and shape other class processes, including the ancient class process. Thus, while the ancient mode of production blocked the expansion of capitalism into certain social sites, free markets provided conditions for the existence of both capitalist exploitation and ancient appropriation. While there are numerous instances where ancient societies had to give way to capitalism, ancient direct producers have continued to survive in the interstices of capitalist society.
Marx wrote that the struggle against social injustice could not be successful without an understanding of exploitation, and in particular of the capitalist exploitation that was dominant in England and other industrialized European nations at the time of his writings. Marx examined the conditions under which alternative forms of surplus appropriation might block or displace capitalist exploitation. Conditions of existence of the alternative forms are the unelaborated anti-conditions of existence for capitalist exploitation. They are unelaborated precisely because they serve as counterweights to elaborated concepts that together form conditions of existence of capitalist exploitation. Among these anti-conditions are to be found the conditions of existence for the theoretical construct of the ancient form of surplus appropriation and of social formations within which this ancient form of surplus appropriation prevails. Marx’s writings contain distinct references to ancient society or related concepts, such as “small producers,” “artisans,” “independendent prorietors,” “petty producers,” “individual producers,” “simple commodity producers” and “independent craftsmen.” However, Marx did not elaborate the conditions of existence of an ancient social formation, and for many years there has been much debate over the definition and significance of these producers in Marxian theory.
Using the scattered references to ancient society in Marx, Barry Hindess and Paul Q. Hirst created their conceptualization of the “ancient mode of production” (Hindess and Hirst 1975). Hindess and Hirst interpreted Marx as championing economic processes as an essential determinant of the mode of production. In addition, their theoretical construct of the “ancient mode of appropriation of surplus labor” defined as “appropriation by right of citizenship” (Hindess and Hirst 1975, 82) is based on an essentialist reading of Marx, which posits that political processes should “occupy the place of dominance in the social formation” (Hindess and Hirst 1975, 14). Hindess and Hirst conflate fundamental and distributive class processes, as well as a variety of other nonclass economic processes within their essentialized ancient mode of production. This is unfortunate, as it eliminates the potential contradictions among and between these various economic processes and other social processes, thereby obscuring the definition and significance of their essentialized “ancient mode of production” which rests at the ontological center of the ancient social formation.
The ancient fundamental class process conceptualized in this article contrasts with Hindess and Hirst’s “ancient mode of production.” The uniqueness of the ancient fundamental class process exists by virtue of the concepts of ancient necessary and surplus labor. Ancient necessary labor is that portion of the total product of the ancient producer that goes to meet his/her subsistence needs. The ancient producer will not labor if she does not retain some bundle of use-values embodying this necessary portion of her total labor for personal consumption. Her labor in excess of this is defined as ancient surplus labor (Marx 1977, vol. 1, 324–25). What makes the ancient fundamental class process so distinctive from other processes is the type of private appropriation of surplus labor that unites the production and appropriation of surplus labor on an individualized basis. This unified production and appropriation of surplus labor in a single human being constitutes self-exploitation. This coalescence of the production and appropriation of surplus labor within the ego of the individual human being exists in no other class process.
The existence of self-exploitation presumes certain social and natural conditions. The need to secure these conditions of existence presents the ancient producer/appropriator with a problem of allocating her labor-time in order to produce enough surplus to secure the conditions of existence of the ancient fundamental class process. This may necessitate a distribution of the ancient surplus to a variety of social agents who will provide these conditions of existence. This distribution of ancient surplus is called the ancient distributive class process. The term “distributive class process” is synonymous with the term “subsumed class process.” The adjective “distributive” is more descriptive of the relationship whereby surplus value is apportioned to various social agents (See Gibson-Graham and O’Neill 2001 and Gabriel 2006 for examples of the distributive class process). The ancient distributive class process is composed of two positions: the position of the first distributor of ancient surplus labor and the position of receiver of this distributed ancient surplus labor. The latter position may be held by a variety of social agents, including the individual holding the ancient fundamental class position. On the other hand, the ancient producer/appropriator may serve only as distributor of already appropriated surplus labor. In any case, the ancient producer/appropriator must hold at least this one position in the distributive class process. Since she is the first receiver of her ancient surplus labor, it follows that she must be the first distributor of that appropriated surplus labor.
The ancient, as first distributor of her appropriated surplus labor, must then apportion this surplus labor among the potential distributive class recipients in order to secure the conditions for continuation of self-exploitation. On this point the demands upon the ancient as distributor of the surplus may directly conflict with the impulses of the ancient as performer or the ancient as appropriator of surplus labor. For instance, the ancient may wish to allocate her appropriated surplus labor in ways that conflict with the demands of the distributive class agents receiving the surplus. Nevertheless, the demands of the distributive class agents must be satisfied if the conditions for further self-exploitation are to be met. These contradictory impulses must be resolved within the ancient class process in order for the process to continue.
This conceptualization of the ancient class process represents an anti-essentialist interpretation of the ancient mode of surplus labor appropriation and formation of ancient society, based on the concepts and critical reading of Marx forged into a unified theoretical framework by Stephen A. Resnick, Richard D. Wolff, and other members of the school of Marxian thought they founded (Resnick and Wolff 1987a; 1987b).1 This school of Marxian thought, distinguished in part by a theoretical vocabulary borrowed and modified from the French philosopher Louis Althusser, is influenced by the concept of overdetermination.
Freud used the concept “overdetermination” in his analysis of dreams to refer to the way in which the content of dreams was not simplistically determined by a finite set of life-events but was instead the product of the totality or gestalt of life experiences, including the state of mind of the dreamer at the moment of revealing the dream. Thus, in the interpretation (or reading) of an individual’s dreams, the meaning is always partially understood and necessarily open to further interpretation (Freud 1950). Louis Althusser borrowed and then transformed this term in order to construct an understanding of his reading of Marx, in particular as a means of producing an understanding of Marx’s radical epistemological and ontological break from essentialist discourse (Althusser 1970, 87–128).2
Overdetermination implies that no aspect of reality is insignificant in the shaping of any other aspect of reality. The dialectic of overdetermination is the dialectic of ceaseless change, of the constant pushes and pulls of the unique influences that come together to constitute each and every aspect of reality.3 These unique influences create contradictions. The significance of this to the ancient class process is the way in which it can be combined with other class processes, both exploitative and non-exploitative. An ancient who also hires workers and appropriates a surplus from those wage laborers participates simultaneously in the ancient and capitalist class processes. The ancient may also within the same enterprise engage in self-exploitation and receive distributive class payments from a capitalist enterprise. In both of these cases, the ancient has a complex position within more than one class process, resulting in what Levin (2014) calls class structural hybridity. Levin understands the need to theorize complexity in the various class processes (slave, feudal, ancient, capitalist and communist) and the way in which these distinct class processes shape each other, the larger society and the path forward, including transition from one type of society to another. A failure to recognize this complex role of the ancient in capitalist and other societies makes it less likely that we can understand transition.
Thus, the presence of the ancient fundamental class process within any given social formation implies the existence of unique contradictions associated with the interaction of this fundamental class process and other social and natural processes. The contradictions bred in this interaction propel the social formation in question down a uniquely overdetermined path of change.
Marx often used teleological language to describe the presence of anti-conditions of the existence of capitalist exploitation, often referring to such conditions as “pre-capitalist.”4 This is both unfortunate and misleading in Marx’s analysis of the conditions of existence and anti-conditions of existence of capitalist exploitation. Marx and Marxist theorists have expressed in their theoretical work an interest in the diachronic relationship between social formations (or class societies), otherwise known as the temporal/historical relationship of these social formations one to the other. This has led to Hegelian conceptions of history as a coherent and orderly progression of distinct class societies with a beginning point and an endpoint. In other words, by referring to the process of self-appropriation and distribution of surplus as “pre-capitalist,” not only is the process seen as something belonging to a past, a past devoid of capitalism, but also a process not co-existing with capitalism.
The costs of such a conception of human history are great. It severely restricts the kinds of questions asked about the constitution and path of change of determinant social formations, whether in the temporal past, present or future. Rather, it is much more useful to reconceptualize the periodization of history along class lines as an overdetermined product wherein no necessary path of transition from one type of social formation to another is posited. The complexity of the social formation, as understood in the term overdetermination, implies that every constituent process must have its own effects upon the historical movement of the social formation. No social or natural processes are conceived of as insignificant. History is in part influenced by struggles over class, but it cannot be reduced to an underdetermined outcome of such struggles.5
Possibly the greatest amount of theoretical labor expended on making sense of the diachronic relationship between social formations is the long-running debate over the transition from feudalism to capitalism. This debate is influenced by a desire of Marxist theorists to understand how a transition out of capitalism might be possible. Two of the key figures in this debate, and indeed major influences upon Marxian theory in general, have been Maurice Dobb (1978) and Paul Sweezy (1970).
Dobb and Sweezy both suggest the presence of self-exploitation during the period of transition from feudalism to capitalism as they refer to “independent handicraft production,” [Dobb 1978, 7] “pre-capitalist petty mode of production,” [ibid., 19] and “pre-capitalist commodity production.” [Sweezy, in Sweezy et al 1978, 50 n. 22] Each of these appellations suggests that the direct producer engages in the private individualized appropriation of his own surplus labor, i.e. self-exploitation. However, each of these terms is beset by the underlying epistemological and ontological restrictions of both Dobb’s and Sweezy’s theoretical framework. For example, while Marx’s use of the term “pre-capitalist” within the context of constructing an understanding of the transition into capitalism represents a sort of Hegelian hiccup, it did not represent any underlying and consistent teleological view of human history. The case with Dobb and Sweezy is quite different. For them, the term “pre-capitalist” implies an empiricist6 and teleological7 conception of those societies upon which the adjective “pre-capitalist” is appended. These societies are conceptualized as having occurred prior to the historical development of capitalism. Significantly, this conception also contains a notion of such societies as historically backwards from the standpoint of human development (i.e. closer to some vision of human primitive origins and further from some vision of advanced communism) vis-à-vis capitalism.8
In other words, Dobb and Sweezy, as well as other Marxist theorists, conceive of a general path of historical development (which need not be unilinear) in which capitalism is placed towards the more “progressive” pole and societies labeled “pre-capitalist” are situated in the rear of historical evolution. Furthermore, the transition from one determinate class society to another is viewed as the underdetermined product of certain specified conditions wherein the seeds of the new society were sown in the ground of its antecedent society.9 Dobb and Sweezy share an economic determinist understanding of the principal forces governing this transition, although they vigorously disagree about which essential economic aspect is the key or central determinant.
The consequences of Sweezy’s and Dobb’s teleological and essentialist conceptions of self-exploitation go beyond the way they conceive of the transition. In particular, it imposes additional limitations upon the analysis of capitalist social formations. Even if it is accepted that self-exploitation occurs within capitalist society, it is viewed as hardly of any consequence in social analysis. However, many analyses contest this proposition. Steinmetz and Wright (1989) argue that self-employment has been prevalent and critical in the social formation of the US. In particular, they cite that in a 1980s US survey of adults in the workforce nearly 32% came from families in which the head of the household was self-employed most of the time and that 46% came from households in which the head of household had been self-employed at least part of the time. In an analysis of the modern trucking industry in the US, Fried and Wolff (1994) show that the ancient class process was prevalent in the 1930s, but through political, social and economic processes, it was undermined and curtailed by the transition to capitalism in that industry, only to be dominated by ancients again beginning in the 1970s when political, social and economic processes once again changed in favor of the ancient class process in the trucking transport industry. Rio (2005) similarly shows a class transition in the US household domestic service sector that was dominated by feudal and slave class processes in the early history of this country and gradually changed to be primarily dominated by ancients during the post WWII period.
In research on developing countries and those that have gone through “post-Communist” transition, there is a growing consensus that self-employment has been a critical component in the maintenance of the modern economy by actually enhancing capitalist accumulation through linkages with capitalist firms. Self-employed producers have provided these firms with the capacity to reduce labor costs, avoid government regulations, and respond quickly to shifts in the demand for goods and services. At the same time, ancient direct producers have been able to accumulate a sizable surplus in many of these economies allowing them to thrive and not be swept away by the capitalist class structure (Hanley 2000).
Self-employment or the ancient fundamental and distributive class process has often been conceived, in teleological fashion, as simply a precursor to the growth of capitalist exploitation or as a sort of “residual” class phenomenon existing in the interstices of societies dominated by other “more fundamental” methods of appropriating the fruit of surplus labor. This article explains why such teleological and essentialist conceptions of ancient producers obscure and ignore the social consequences of self-appropriation including the dynamic influence the ancient fundamental class process has upon all other aspects of society, as well as the similarly dynamic influence of these other aspects upon the existence and reproduction or non-existence of self-exploitation.
1 The earlier of these two works, Economics: Marxian versus Neoclassical, contrasts this particular version of Marxian theory to neoclassical theory.
2 Resnick and Wolff further transformed the Althusserian concept of overdetermination as part of their reading of Marx and their production of new knowledge about the effect of class upon other social and natural processes and vice versa.
3 Marx referred to the constitution of a social formation as the culmination of the unique interaction of more social and natural conditions than could ever be named or identified. This means that any given social formation is overdetermined by all the conditions that have influenced it up to the present moment:
… these different forms of the commune … depend partly on the natural inclination of the tribe, and partly on the economic conditions in which it relates as proprietor to the land and soil in reality, i.e. in which it appropriates its fruits through labour, and the latter will itself depend on climate, physical make-up of the land and soil, the physical determined mode of its exploitation, the relation with hostile tribes or neighbor tribes, and the modifications which migrations, historic experiences, etc. introduce.
(Marx 1973, 486)
4 See Marx, Grundisse, as reprinted in David McLellan (1977, 371), where Marx refers to “the obstacles created by the relationships and means of pre-capitalist production.”
5 For a further discussion along these lines, see Resnick and Wolff 1987b, pp. 122–4.
6 Sweezy outlines an empiricist methodology in the following manner: “to formulate hypotheses about what is essential, to work these hypotheses through, and to check the conclusions against the data of experience” (Sweezy 1970, 13). Dobb delineates his empiricist ontological position (in which a dichotomy between the thinking process and “actuality” is explicitly stated) when he proposes a simple test of the utility of a theory. According to Dobb, this utility depends upon “whether a given structure of assumptions and definitions affords an abstract model which is sufficiently representative of actuality to be serviceable….” (Dobb 1978, vii). Thus, both Sweezy and Dobb defend their theoretical arguments by an appeal to a set of given, autonomous facts.
7 This teleology is both intersystemic, as well as intrasystemic, in the sense that it refers to the positing of a predictable internal process of evolution within any given society, as well as a predictable process of transition from one form of society to another. As Sweezy writes:
Social systems, like individuals, go through a life cycle and pass from the scene when ‘from forms of development of the forces of production’ they ‘turn into their fetters.’ The process of social change, however, is not purely mechanical; it is rather the product of human action, but action which is definitely limited by the kind of society in which it has its roots.
(Sweezy 1970, 20)
8 In a sense, they are conceived of as ways of life that history has passed by on the road to advanced communism, and are consequently considered to be of lesser importance to social analysis. Their usefulness being restricted primarily to historical analysis of past transitions that have led to the emergence of capitalist society.
9 As Dobb writes: “Important elements of each new society, although not necessarily the complete embryo of it, are contained within the womb of the old ...” (Dobb 1978, 11). And in a more detailed elaboration of the necessary movement of social change and transition: “If it be right to maintain that the conception of socio-economic systems, marking distinct stages in historical development, is not merely a matter of convenience but an obligation … then this must be because there is a quality in historical situations which both makes for homogeneity of pattern at any given time and renders periods of transition, when there is an even balance of discrete elements, inherently unstable. It must be because society is so constituted that conflict and interaction of its leading elements, rather than the simple growth of some single element, form the principal agency of movement and change, at least so far as major transformations are concerned. If such be the case, once development has reached a certain level and the various elements which constitute that society are poised in a certain way, events are likely to move with unusual rapidity, not merely in the sense of quantitative growth, but in the sense of a change of balance of the constituent elements, resulting in the appearance of novel compositions and more or less abrupt changes in the texture of society. To use a topical analogy: it is as though at certain levels of development something like a chain-reaction is set in motion.” (Dobb 1978, 12–13). Emphasis added.
Achebe, C. 1971. “Civil Peace.” In The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction, 4th ed., A. Charters, ed. Boston, MA: Bedford Books of St. Martin’s Press.
Althusser, L. 1970. For Marx. Trans. by Ben Brewster. New York: Random House.
Dickens, C. 1861. Great Expectations. London: Chapman and Hall.
Dobb, M. 1978. Studies in the Development of Capitalism. New York: International Publishers.
Freud, S. 1950. The Interpretation of Dreams. Trans. A. A. Brill. New York: Modern Library.
Fried, G. F. and R. D. Wolff. 1994. Modern Ancients: Self-Employed Truckers.” Rethinking Marxism 7(4): 103–115.
Gabriel, S. 2006. Chinese Capitalism and the Modernist Vision. London and New York: Routledge.
Gabriel, S. 1989. “Ancients: A Marxian Theory of Self-Exploitation.” Ph.D. dissertation. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts-Amherst.
Gabriel, S. 1990. “Ancients: A Marxian Theory of Self-Exploitation.” Rethinking Marxism 3(1): 85–106.
Gibson-Graham, J.K. and P. O’Neill. 2001. “Exploring a New Class Politics of the Enterprise.” In Re/Presenting Class: Essays in Postmodern Marxism, J.K. Gibson-Graham, S. A. Resnick, and R. D. Wolff, eds. Durham: Duke University Press.
Hanley, E. 2000. “Self-employment in Post-communist Eastern Europe: A Refuge From Poverty or Road to Riches?” Communist and Post-Communist Studies 33: 379–402.
Hindess, B. and P. Q. Hirst. 1975. Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Hindess, B. and P. Q. Hirst. 1977. Mode of Production and Social Formation. New Jersey: Humanities Press.
Levin, K. M. 2014. “Class Hybrids: From Medieval Europe to Silicon Valley.” Rethinking Marxism 26(1): 95–112.
Lourie, B. and R. Smith. 2013. Toxin Toxout. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
McLelland, D. 1977. Karl Marx: Selected Writings. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Marx, K. 1973. Grundisse. Trans. by M. Nicolaus. New York: Vintage.
Marx, K. 1977. Capital, 3 volumes. New York: Vintage.
Resnick, S. A. and R. D. Wolff. 1987a. Economics: Marxian Versus Neoclassical. Baltimore: John Hopkins Press.
Resnick, S. A. and R. D. Wolff. 1987b. Knowledge and Class: A Marxian Critique of Political Economy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Resnick, S. A. and R. D. Wolff. 2006. New Departures in Marxian Theory. New York: Routledge.
Rio, C.. 2005. “‘On the Move’: African-American Women’s Paid Domestic Labor and the Class Transition to Independent Commodity Production.” Rethinking Marxism 17(4): 489–510.
Steinmetz, G. and E. O. Wright. 1989. “The Fall and Rise of the Petty Bourgeoisie: Changing Patterns of Self-Employment in the Postwar United States.” American Journal of Sociology 94(5): 973–1018.
Sweezy, P. M. 1970. The Theory of Capitalist Development. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Sweezy, P., M. Dobb, C. Hill, G. Lefebvre, K. Takahashi, G. Procacci, J. Merrington and E. Hobsbawm, eds. 1978. The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism. London: Verso.
Tartt, D. 2013. The Goldfinch. New York: Little, Brown and Company.