During last night’s seminar one participant remarked that in the former Yugoslavia citizens learned Marx by hearing pithy quotes. “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” In the US, this is how many Christians learn the Bible. Learning Marx by quotes would tell us the same about Marxian social theory as learning quotes from the Bible will tell us about ancient Palestine, which is to say, nothing; or worse than nothing since it trivializes the subject. Marx is made to seem simplistic and naive. When we grow up we embrace mature social theory: Žižek or Deleuze or Derrida. And those who continue to embrace the connect-the-dots Marx?
If, however, we explore Marx the social theorist of radical historical immanence who ended up recommending not the completion, but the end of labor, we may find ourselves in possession of some truly helpful interpretive categories; helpful not in the sense that they “show us how” to make a revolution, but helpful in understanding our world. We already mentioned how Marx recommends the shortening of the working day as a way to reclaim our freedom. But since it is tucked away toward the end of volume 3 of Capital, few readers ever get there.
I am posting a reading from one reader who did get there. The French sociologist André Gorz built a whole career around this passage. His Critique of Economic Reason invited French citizens to enact legislation to make the shortened work day French law. They responded. And so Gorz – an ivory tower intellectual – generated a social revolution in France. The final legislation was so distorted as to be almost unrecognizable; it offered no real incentives to reclaim time that had previously been lost to labor. And, yet, when the efficiency police want to find an illustration of inefficiency, they almost always point to France.
So why is it so difficult to shorten the work day and reclaim for human being the time seized and colonized by abstract value? One answer comes from a source we have already read: Socrates’ Gorgias, which we read for the first seminar. According to Socrates, the hoi polloi (the many) are not equipped to grasp how and why their world is composed the way it is. “The many” therefore are specially susceptible to demagogues such as Pericles, who grant democratic rights to “the many” precisely because demagogues prove powerless in the presence of “the few” (oligarchoi). Remember, it is the 99% who demand the policies advanced by the 1%. And that is by design. Only were “the many” to enjoy sufficient leisure, security, education, and wealth; only then would they demand policies that are truly in the interests of the public. As it is, politicians (politikoi) – like Gorgias and Pericles – know that if they speak the truth to “the many,” their message will not be heard or understood. But this places politicians who want to serve the public in a bind. The public does not want its interests served. They do not understand their interests. So the question is, what shall we do?
