Historical Materialist positivism
Historical Materialists have proposed the term 'capitalocene' as an alternative to the much-disputed 'anthropocene' as the title for a period in the Earth's history. Instead of humans, capital comes to the fore as the main actor in this history. Capital, in turn, has been subjected most intensely to investigation by Karl Marx. Das Kapital and associated writings remains a ground-breaking, momentous work.
The Historical Materialist interpretation of Marx's thinking has the upper hand vis-à-vis an interpretation that roots Marx's Critique of Political Economy — especially its analysis of the value-form — in his philosophical thinking that is indebted especially to Hegel and Aristotle. The Historical Materialist interpretation, by contrast, skips uncomprehendingly and occasionally with a quick genuflection, over the value-form. It has its roots in centuries-old British empiricism that was only reinforced and consolidated by the rise of positivism in the mid-nineteenth century. The birth of sociology with Comte sounded the death knell of philosophy. Since then it seems that only positive facts count. Academics committed to Historical Materialist are almost exclusively sociologists who may also claim to be philosophers. Although talk of ontology and social ontology has emerged in the last couple of decades as en vogue, no socio-ontological interpretation of Marx's Critique of Political Economy has gained any standing among Marx-influenced social scientists. They have to make do anyway with the impoverished conception of ontology and social ontology propagated by today's mainstream philosophy that likewise suffers under the closure of the ontological difference accomplished by empiricist sociology.
All the more reason to do a 'da capo' and go back to the hour of birth of philosophy when fateful, fundamental concepts were cast in the astoundingly deep and fiery crucible of Greek thinking. They achieved their consummate articulation in Aristotle's thinking. It is these fundamental concepts that call for revision and recasting, e.g. the conception of the human being as a species of animal. It remains untouched in the debates over anthropocene, capitalocene, etc. that are generally couched in terms of 'survival of the human species'. No one interrogates who we are historically as humans; the question concerning whoness, an eminently philosophical, socio-ontological question, is never posed. Perhaps, as a first step, we should start to think of ourselves as mortals. Mortality is a determination of human being explored especially in Greek tragedy, and has an essential connection with temporality.
The interpretation of the human as a species of animal dovetails superficially with the much later, mid-19th-century casting of the human in Darwin's theory of evolution, in which the human animal is interpreted as having evolved from 'lower' species, and most recently from the primates. Evolution theory itself is a positivist, story-telling science based on positive facts established by dating (in linear, chronological time) fossils found in the geological record, on archaeological excavations and on interpretive attempts to reconstruct how these earlier kinds of near-human animals lived. There is no attempt to interrogate more deeply the being of human being itself, as Greek philosophy did, even within its casting of the human as a kind of animal. Instead, one concentrates on brain size and shared gene pools.
The Historical Materialist notion of the capitalocene is one of many positions in the ongoing debate over what to do about climate change, etc. in order to save the human species and many other species besides. Unfortunately, the entire discussion of the capitalocene, degrowth. sustainable development (goals), environmental destruction, etc. (cf. the Wikipedia articles on Capitalocene and Degrowth) is undertaken in the mould of empiricist-historical thinking, including its empirically based, hopefully predictive models, as if the concept of capital itself, toward which Marx directed his sharp mind, could be taken as read, as given, and one could speak unproblematically of capitalism (about which everyone 'knows') and argue merely over the historical periodization of capitalist development with a view to pin-pointing, for instance, when the capitalocene began and what historical events in particular (e.g. invention of the steam engine) were responsible for kicking it off, i.e. there is a controversy over causal explanation.
The neglect of a philosophical interpretation of Marx's critique (which is also a phenomenological critique of an historical cast of mind — our own modern mind), and the inherent inability of sociology to think socio-ontologically in a genuine fashion, are major impediments in the debate over degrowth to overcome the worst of capitalism. It is beset by an uncanny, complacent cluelessness about who we are and about the ontologies of fundamentally different kinds of movement that is covered up by voluminous empirical, historical studies serving as substitute.
The law of global movement
The law of global movement, i.e. the principle of endless accumulation of thingified value, is abstract, but it is no more abstract than the three simple laws of motion postulated by Newton in the seventeenth century. Since then, Newton's mathematized laws of motion have been applied in a bewildering number of areas to precalculate and control all sorts of physical motion. No one complains about the abstractness of Newton's laws. Nor does everyone have to be familiar with them, or even know about them, for them to unfold their far-reaching ramifications in the world. In tandem with the likewise simple and elegant mathematical Maxwellian laws of electromagnetism (an extension of Newton's laws to the motion of electrons), they have turned out to be immensely useful across the entire spectrum of exercising power over physical movement.
Unlike Newton's powerful laws of physical motion, the principle of endless accumulation (or valorization)
of thingified value cannot be employed to precalculate and steer the valorization
of thingified value. For it only states the principle that the advance of money-capital and its multiple transformations of value-form through its circular movement must obey if the circuit is to be successful, i.e. generate a residual surplus called net profit. Net profit remains for the capitalist enterprise or enterprises after all the costs incurred (basically wages & salaries, means of production including raw materials, interest, ground-rent) have been deducted. Thingified value itself is nothing physical, thus remaining invisible to all the physical sciences and even the social sciences, including sociology and economics. On the one hand it is astonishing that the social science of economics is lacking its foundational concept. On the other it is not astonishing at all, given the hegemony of empiricism and the positivist closure of the ontological difference. Only the various forms, or 'looks', of thingified value are visible on the surface of society, but not as such. It is the task of ontological thinking to bring these forms of appearance to light as forms of appearance of thingified value. Otherwise, value-forms such as commodity (goods & services), money, money-capital, wages, factories, blocks of land, interest, enterprises, joint-stock companies, etc. are just conceived as different things (factors of production), unimmersed in any sociating medium.
The principle of valorization plays out on the surface of society in the market-mediated competition among the many capitals and their competition with the suppliers of labour power, means of production, loan capital (finance capital) and land on many different markets. Only in this more or less bruising and brutal competition does it turn out whether an individual capital, a given capitalist industry, a national capitalist economy or even the global capitalist economy has been successful in a given circuit at actually valorizing thingified value. For individual income-earning players or certain segments of such players in a given industry or region of the Earth, the gainful game can be rotten and ruinous, with rigged rules of play. I call thingified value the Medium through which the multiple transformations of value-forms must proceed. The Medium sociates (via the surface form of contract between private property owners) all the players in the competition striving to earn their various respective sorts of characteristic income in what I call the gainful game. 'Thingified value' is my preferred translation of Marx's concept of 'verdinglichter Wert' that is usually rendered as 'reified value'. In Marxist discourse, reification has come to have a rather nebulous and equivocal meaning that I prefer to avoid. 'Valorization' names the generation of a net surplus of thingified value in the value-form called net profit (of enterprise) at the conclusion of a circuit of capital; it may be regarded as synonymous with 'accumulation'.
All of us have to earn a living one way or another, which boils down to earning income in one form or another through market competition, which in turn entails immersion in the Medium which, as such, remains invisible. All of us are therefore players in the competitive gainful game, not simply 'people' or 'subjects' who underlie the gainful game and could in some way (collectively, say, through democratic institutions) control it for our own collective ends. The converse role of earners of income is that of spenders of income, which makes consumers of all the players. The consumer is one of the essential roles, or character masks, in the gainful game required for circuits of capital to valorize; produced goods and services must be sold on (local or global) markets for capitals to realize the revenues (the 'top line') that decide whether the advanced capital has actually valorized with a positive surplus, the net profit (the 'bottom line'). The more money-capital thrown into circuits of valorization, the more is produced and the more the consumers must consume to realize revenue.
The global law of endless valorization of thingified value is an abstract, indifferent one that, in itself, pits mortals against each other in endless competition and conflict, and implements the rapacious exploitation and destruction of the Earth. The principle is also prone to calamitous crisis, when dislocations in the global circulation process occur, misjudgements are made by the investing capitalists, excessive bets are placed by greedy speculators on a 'good thing', market conditions change unexpectedly or countless other quirks and irregularities in the circular valorizing movement crop up. As a formal principle, it devours mercilessly and indifferently the material it requires: labour power (employees of all kinds) and natural resources. The mortal material of exploitation, at least, is able to offer resistance against the pressure of valorization exercised via the capitalist class, although today the Earth, too, is displaying its finite limits to endless exploitation, especially in the generation of the physical energy required to materially support the formal movement.
The subterranean principle, however, has a shiny, appealing façade called individual freedom that most find irresistible, especially when their lives are materially comfortable and they have sufficient income to support a satisfying level of consumption. This deceptive appeal is exploited to the hilt by all those (unknowingly) upholding the principle of valorization, i.e. by those who knowingly support the so-called 'free' market economy of capitalism. They will literally stop at nothing to maintain the status quo. It seems to be a universal law for conservative political parties to tout deceptive slogans in which they proclaim their solemn commitment to 'freedom'. In view of the hidden rule of the valorization principle, freedom amounts first of all to the freedom of movement of thingified value seeking augmentation.
Stepping away from the gainful game?
How could we individualized mortals ever escape the pull of the law of endless valorization that entices with the promises of individualized freedoms? For, an essential feature of the Medium is that it dissociates, or sets free, mortals into competitive individuals, whilst associating them again only via the Medium. We are confronted with the questions i) whether we could ever, or ever want to, strip off our character-mask roles as players in the gainful game and ii) whether there could be, or already is, an alternative medium of sociation.
Re i): This would involve becoming aware of our roles as income-earners and consumers in the gainful game. Through such reflection it is also possible to gain a distance from the gainful game rather than identifying with it unquestioningly. Is a lifetime playing the gainful game existentially fulfilling?
Re ii): The question concerning an alternative medium of sociation is related in essence to whether there could be, or already is, an alternative kind of sociating movement of our lives. Under the rule of the law of valorization, our lives are constrained to move in ways compatible, subterraneanly, with the never-ending circulation of globally valorizing thingified value. For millions of people, especially those earning a livelihood in so-called 'developing countries', this constraint means nothing other than having to live in abject poverty. Even millions earning a comfortable income through employment are not blind to an existential barrenness of the gainful game. We mortals sociate with each other, i.e. we live together sharing a world, in a kind of movement sui generis I call interplay whose countless variations in modes of play offer an existential richness not available in the gainful game. It is incalculable. So long as the law of valorization holds sway, this sociating interplay is constrained to play out in the Medium with its circular movement of endless accumulation of thingified value. In itself, however, sociating interplay is essentially a movement of mutual estimation between and among the players.
The interplay is at core one of mutual estimation of each other's powers and abilities. This interplay can be fair or ugly depending upon appreciative or depreciative mutual estimation of who each of us is. As such, it is a power play among whos, benign or malign. Freed from the Medium, this mutually estimative interplay is not sullied from the start by meaner aspirations for gaining one of the many forms of thingified value. Unsullied interplay is often mutually beneficial and can even be mutually caring, a for-each-other rather than an against-each-other, as it mostly is in the competitive gainful game that is prone to descending into cut-throat ruthlessness. The interplay can also be bewilderingly complex and unpredictable, but this is no impediment as long as there is no need to master it from above, nor even measure it. In any case, this kind of sociating movement defies precalculation, defies the will to power over it. The prime concern has to be whether the sociating interplay is fair or ugly, and this becomes the domain of justice: to adjudicate and enforce the free and fair interplay among those living together is a given civil society.
The question then becomes whether it is at all possible and feasible for us to leave, or at least gain a distance from, the gainful game. This includes inventing and cultivating ways of making a livelihood together whilst avoiding immersion in the Medium as far as possible. We have to start with ourselves, asking who we are and as who we could cast ourselves, apart from merely filling character mask roles in the gainful game. The all-pervasive blindness vis-á-vis the invisible Medium of thingified sociation needs to be overcome. Otherwise the wood cannot be seen for the confusing multiplicity of empiricist-scientific trees. In view of ignorance of the global law of movement, there is no guide to see what is needed to weaken its ruinous grip on us. Instead we are misguided by those whose job it is to know better into ways of thinking and practices that do not even tendentially challenge the Medium's inexorable growth.
Further reading: An Invisible Global Social Value TT&S Vol. 5 no. 2, 2024.
Social Ontology of Whoness De Gruyter, Berlin 2018.
On Human Temporality: Recasting Whoness Da Capo De Gruyter, Berlin 2024.
Critique of Competitive Freedom and the Bourgeois-Democratic State: Outline of a Form-Analytic Extension of Marx's Uncompleted System Kurasje, Copenhagen 1984, reprinted 2015.
