Neocapitalism According to Michel Clouscard

by Aymeric Monville, Philippe Gendrault (Translator)

In this short chapbook-style text, Aymeric Monville provides organizers and students with a concise and insightful overview of the work of a major French Michel Clouscard. Unfortunately, Clouscard's writings have been, for the most part, completely unknown in the Anglosphere. Due to a series of factors, some of which Clouscard himself deftly diagnosed, the global theory industry has promoted anti-communist French theory-as well as forms of Marxism opposed to actually existing socialism-at the expense of thinkers like Clouscard and Monville. This is a direct consequence of U.S. cultural and intellectual imperialism, which has been the driving force behind the phenomenon known as French Theory . As Monville is a major intellectual, editor, and activist in his own right, this newtranslation has the advantage of spotlighting the research of two major Francophone Marxists. Moreover, Monville is in many ways the ideal guide to Clouscard's expansive body of writings, which he has worked through assiduously. Although there are many major insights to be found in them, Clouscard's writings are often more suggestive and provocative than demonstrative and pedagogical. Monville's framing and presentation of his work thereby brings clarity and precision to his project. For the first time in the English language, Iskra Books is happy to make available Aymeric Monville's foundational essay on Clouscard, Neocapitalism According to Michel Clouscard , translated by Philip Gendrault, and with a foreword by acclaimed theorist Gabriel Rockhill.

Genres: Theory

92 pages, Paperback

Published July 8, 2023

Reviews

[Brumaire Bodbyl-Mast · Rating 4 out of 5]

A brief pamphlet which attempts to summarize some of the more important ideas and conceptualizations from French Marxist Michel Clouscard. The foreword by Rockhill is incredibly well done, utilizing his knowledge on various “French Theory” theologians to make his condemnations, both of their ideas (though little critique of particulates their corpuses is seen throughout the work, much of it focuses more so on intelligence and governmental ties, though it is clear that Rockhill, Monville and Clouscard all have extensive knowledge of these philosophers.) The main thesis of the work, both in Rockhill’s foreword and in Monville’s essay on Clouscard itself largely regards the postwar period in France and the development of a consumer class, rather than a consumer society, as many of Clouscard’s contemporaries argued- largely based around the difference in the amount produced vs amount consumed. Monville is a little less comprehensible than Rockhill at points and part of this may just be a victim of translation, which is for the most part excellent. The critique of postwar and contemporary liberal ideology largely centers around the abandonment of materialist and Marxist analysis of relationship to production, as embodied by many of the French Theorists, perhaps chief amongst them Foucault, who chose to focus on power instead of property. Monville and Rockhill do point to the exploitation and “recolonization” of the Second and Third World by the IMF and world bank as an example of postwar fascism, and the various “left neitzchean” philosophes and theorists helped to embolden this effort by making overly abstract critiques and focusing their critique on “AES” states. There is a lack of discussion of issues of empire though, despite their supposed difference from other marxists being the continued, but not totalized focus on the third world as Monville and Rockhill largely limit their discussion to inter-core dynamics on both macro and micro levels.

[graceofgod · Rating 2 out of 5]

lol

[níng · Rating 5 out of 5]

Free France !!! LOL