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

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short essay re the theory of Michel Clouscard, who is otherwise virtually undiscoverable in English

Clouscard writes about the myth of a consumer society, supported by the 1948 Marshall Plan, when America injected huge amounts of money into Western Europe with the primary aim of dissolving communist sympathy in favour of the firm entrenchment of American propaganda.

So-called consumer societies revolve around consumerism for the sake of it, desire trumping need, a dreamy ideal of workers being able to consume more than they can produce. This ideal, while impossible, has become central to the widespread conflation of consumption and capitalism. Rather than equality being the primary ideal, a perfect society seems to be that in which one can find anything that they could ever want to buy.(Think : comparative images of choice in food stores in socialist Cuba vs America, supposed to denote the former as a sort of repressive hellscape)

In order to consume far more than you produce, it is necessary that others are consuming far less. And so 'consumer society' creates two classes (those who consume more than they produce, and the other way around). There is also a huge difference in the objects of consumption of the working class as opposed to the petit-bourgeois; the working class usually strictly consumes in order to maintain current levels of production (so, to reproduce themselves- very little more than basic necessities of life).
'poverty driving a car is still poverty'- more widespread consumption of transport, food and housing for a wider distribution of labour to pluck from cannot be equated to 'freedom' -

There is also a brief introduction by Gabriel Rockhill, reiterating his perspective on the French theory industry and its ties to American anticommunism.

[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