Reading Capital Politically

by Harry Cleaver

As social movements waned in the late 70s, the study of Marx seemed to take on a life of its own. Structuralist, post-structuralist, deconstructed Marxes bloomed in journals and seminar rooms across the US and Europe. These Marxes and their interpreters struggled to interpret the world, and sometimes to interpret Marx himself, losing sight at times of his dictum that the challenge is not to interpret the world but to change it. In 1979, Harry Cleaver tossed an incendiary device called Reading Capital Politically into those seminar rooms. Through a close reading of the first chapter, he shows that Das Kapital was written for the workers, not for academics, and that we need to expand our idea of workers to include housewives, students, the unemployed, and other non-waged workers. Reading Capital Politically provides a theoretical and historical bridge between struggles in Europe in the 60s and 70s and, particularly, the Autonomia of Italy to the Zapatistas of the 90s. His introduction provides a brilliant and succinct overview of working class struggles in the century since Capital was published. Cleaver adds a new preface to the AK Press/Anti-Thesis edition.

Genres: Politics, Economics, Philosophy, Theory, Nonfiction, History, Activism

184 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

Harry Cleaver is Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Texas at Austin, where Cleaver teaches Marxism and Marxist economics. He is best known as the author of Reading Capital Politically, an autonomist reading of Karl Marx's Capital. Dr. Cleaver is currently active in the Zapatista movement in Chiapas, Mexico, and is also a contributor on the aut-op-sy email list.

Reviews

[xenia · Rating 4 out of 5]

My copy of this book has 100 pages of prefaces before chapter 1. The publisher really makes you labour to get to that theory, ahahahahaaahagdgdasgfv—

In all seriousness, this is one of the best texts on class struggle I've read. Marx wrote Capital but he never wrote Proletariat. Cleaver contends, however, that capital cannot be understood without the proletariat, for capital and the proletariat exist in a dialectic, each defined by the other in a contradictory totality, whose dual movements of the commodity form and class struggle contest social reality.

His two main arguments are that 1) economic crises are driven by class struggle, and 2) class struggle exists to free us from work. By arguing this, he seeks to distance Marx from both Western Marxism and Soviet-styled Marxism.

While Western Marxism provided the foundation for complex ideological analyses in the 70's (Stuart Hall, Laclau and Mouffe), its earlier strains were mired by German pessimism (Weber, Freud), either providing no analysis of proletarian resistance (Adorno and Horkheimer, Althusser), or externalising resistance out of class struggle altogether (Marcuse).

Soviet-styled Marxism, on the other hand, failed to rid itself of capitalist relations. While it jettisoned the content of capitalist ideology, it reproduced the form of capitalist relations, reifying labour into the penultimate purpose for existence. The proletariat, who was supposed to disappear with capital in the great sublation of opposites, was instead elevated into an ideal whose shadow remained capital through and through (we see this in the way Lenin imported Taylorism from America).

Ultimately, both Western and Soviet-styled Marxism left the worker alienated from their ownmost desires.

Yet the diverse struggles of the late 60's and 70's showed that resistance was alive and well, from student protests and wildcat strikes, to second-wave feminism and black power. Cleaver argues that classical Marxism couldn't understand such struggles because it had reified the proletariat as a factory worker, an identity historically appropriate for Marx, but inadequate for the 20th century's post-war era.

So, Cleaver returns to the commodity form, and in doing so, redefines both it and class struggle.

Many believe the commodity is an object for sale. Cleaver argues that the commodity is a relation, a way of organising society. What the commodity does is bring everyone and everything into the dominion of capital. The commodity comes to stand in for social relations. It mediates what was once an immediate relation with the world and with others. All the things once incomparable become levelled on a field of equivalency (see Baudrillard's Impossible Exchange). In other words, everything gains a price.

Class struggle then, is the rejection of commodification. A great NO! in the face of exchange. A demand for the dual destruction of use-value and exchange-value, whose contradictory relation generates the commodity form (see Bataille's Accursed Share for an exploration of useless expenditure). Cleaver ruptures the reified image of class struggle, to return it to its original conception as a motor of history.

The struggles of unwaged workers become just as proletarian as those of waged workers, for both share the demand for (not social ownership, but) life without work. Abolition of the 16 hour work day, abolition of housework, abolition of exams — these struggles demand a life no longer captured by productivity, drudgery or quantification. They are demands a labour that gives life, rather than drains it ever faster.

What's the point of productivity if it doesn't free us from work? If it creates a division between waged and unwaged workers, one dying from overwork, the other dying from destitution?

[Kevin Carson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very helpful. It foreshadows a lot of the same themes I've read in later autonomist writing by Negri and Dyer-Witheford. And it's especially good on the root sources of autonomist thought and its differences from Old Left tradition (e.g. the struggle against work vs. Old Left workerism, working class self-activity and the working class as revolutionary subject vs. Old Left emphasis on institutions like unions and parties as stand-ins for working class agency, the contested nature of the "social factory," etc.). Cleaver's Introduction is probably more valuable than the actual text. The only boring part was the discussion in Ch. V of inflation, which seems really dated.

[Paul Ataua · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a really a blast for someone like me who has often felt something was missing when reading ‘Capital’. There were times when I just felt it seemed liked the presentation of a position in a discussion between economists that was difficult to bring to real political action. There were also times when I found myself getting bogged down in Althusser’s structural re-working of Marxism that left me unable to tease out a practical response. Cleaver exposes the weakness in both approaches and puts forward a case for a political reading of ‘Capital’. Totally stimulating!

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

The single most influential book I have ever read in my life. It came at a time where I was lost in a wilderness of insane theory, bullshit historical events, and a practically dead left wing movement in the United States.

While those things still exist, Cleaver paints a clear way out. The basic genius of Marx was his ability to pinpoint that the most basic element of our interactions with each other is at the commodity exchange level - be it material or personal. Cleaver looks through the dense and sometimes boring nature of Capital and sees where the true power lies. Within each of us.

Also, the introduction to this edition is an awesome history of Marxist theoretical thought. Its worth it alone, even if you hate the theoretical points Cleaver makes.

[Chris Tempel · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best companion book to Capital I've read, this relatively short book really gets to the essential point of Marxism which is the class war and the ability for a ruling class to compel people to work by any means, while the working class fights to survive and live well. You could nitpick on some details but this book provides much clarity to all the concepts introduced in Capital and how they ought to be viewed not as a dry tract of political economy but as a weapon in the hands of workers to clarify and reiterate their practical work.

[Naoise · Rating 5 out of 5]

I cannot meaningfully come close to describing the depth and power of this work. It demands to be read. And to ignore it is to deny yourself of something beautiful and revelatory.

[Gabrielle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This, along with Harry Cleaver's Study Guide to Capital Vol 1 ( https://webspace.utexas.edu/hcleaver/... - yes, the book is just on Chapter 1, but there's a lot there!), should be considered absolutely essential companions to Marx's Capital. I wish I had found this book many, many years ago. Not only does Cleaver brilliantly explain what Marx is doing and thinking, he also shows you what Marx was getting at, where we've taken it, and what it means now.

[Băcilă Marcu · Rating 5 out of 5]

magnificent, excellent, amazing

[Jack · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book starts with an exhaustive survey of all of the various strains of Marxism that predominated at the time of its writing, in the late 70's. Cleaver painstakingly analyzes the shortcomings and insights of his contemporaries, before moving on to a cutting analysis of Capital's first chapter, one which illuminates how the class struggle factors into Marx's concepts from the very start of Capital's analysis. What is particularly illuminating is the way that Cleaver analyzes Capital in the context of the energy and inflation crises of his own time, and the manner in which he critiques the existing organizational forms of the left.

[saml · Rating 3 out of 5]

the long preface, the negative moment of the book against contrary interpretations, i thought was just fine. the positive portion made a much better case as to how worker's agency should be emphasised, with nice sections on inflation and unwaged workers. solid contribution

[Jacob · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a really excellent book. The author's goal is to present Marx's Capital as a political tool. The first chapter, or introduction, gives an overview of the political-economic and philosophical readings of Marx that have been dominant throughout Marxism. Cleaver argues that these readings do not give an adequate interpretation of Marx. Instead, they function to (unintentionally or intentionally) prop up capital. They do this by focusing on capital and asserting that capital has power. This is done through a critique of capital. Cleaver shows that instead, Capital should be read politically, as a tool to be used by the working class against capital. This, he argues, has precedent in the autonomist and situationalist movements in Italy and France during the 1960's, as well as in certain worker movements in the United States.

After this long introduction, Cleaver goes through a number of ways Capital can be read through this political lens. He goes through a methodological approach of looking at value and labour in Capital, and how these are tools used by capital in order to perpetuate the system. This includes further criticism of Marxist authors who make claims that there will be "work" or "money" in a post-capitalistic society.

[Alex · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is difficult to read, but I will return here later to distill some very important "cleavages" in Marxist theory that the author makes. I'm currently a student of his.

[Scott Neigh]

Reviewed here.

[Siân · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting idea, a little stretched and incoherent.