Capitalism and Metaphysics
Abstract
Contemporary capitalism is becoming increasingly metaphysical. The article contrasts a ‘physical’ capitalism – of the national and manufacturing age – with a ‘metaphysical capitalism’ of the global information society. It describes physical capitalism in terms of (1) extensity, (2) equivalence, (3) equilibrium and (4) the phenomenal, which stands in contrast to metaphysical capitalism’s (1) intensity, (2) inequivalence (or difference), (3) disequilibrium and (4) the noumenal. Most centrally: if use-value or the gift in pre-capitalist society is grounded in concrete inequivalence, and exchange-value in physical capitalism presumes abstract equivalence, then value in contemporary society presumes abstract inequivalence. The article argues that the predominantly physical causation of the earlier epoch is being superseded by a more metaphysical causation. This is discussed in terms of the four Aristotelian causes. Thus there is a shift in efficient cause from abstract homogenous labour to abstract heterogeneous life. Material cause changes from the commodity’s units of equivalence to consist of informational units of inequivalence. Formal cause takes place through the preservation of form as a disequilibriate system through operations of closure. These operations are at the same time information interchanges with a form’s environment. Final (and first) cause becomes the deep-structural generation of information from a compressed virtual substrate. This may have implications for method in the social and human sciences. The article illustrates this shift with a brief discussion of global finance.
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1.
1. Various versions of this article were presented at the Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana in Mexico City, at New York University's Media and Communications Department and at the University of Pittsburgh. An earlier draft has benefited from comments by Jakob Arnoldi and Ino Rossi.
2.
I would like also to thank the TCS referees for their criticisms and comments. Two referees suggested alternate titles for the piece. One was `Capitalism and Immanence'.
3.
This title is consistent with the content of what follows. But with this title it would seem as if the article was limiting itself to an account of a Negrian, and thus Deleuzian, theory of capitalism. There are very many of these accounts and another is not needed. The idea of a sort of `metaphysical capitalism' in this article does also account for and embrace (as we will see below) the Negrian position. It does so from this particular point of view — featuring abstract inequivalence and self-organization. In this sense it gives a bit of a novel perspective on this immanentist capitalism. But the article, I think, does a lot more than this. The article is suggesting that, through a notion of the metaphysical, we can begin to re-think the theory of capitalism in a way that makes sense in the global information age. So this article is first and foremost an exercise in trying to re-think the theory of capitalism. The article does not make empirical claims per se: it is an article in social theory. But it does have, I suggest, some value for understanding phenomena in contemporary society.
4.
Another, also quite perceptive, referee thought the article should be entitled `Metaphysical Capitalism'. This would make the article's theoretical claims more modest. But if metaphysics were reduced to `meta-physical', there would be no thesis to the article at all. The thesis is that the idea of metaphysics — as consistent with a number of classical authors — can help produce a theory of capitalism that is particularly attuned to contemporary social processes. If I used meta-physical it would be like using the word `immaterial'. Or post-industrial or postmodern. That is, not modern or not industrial or not physical. My concept here is not so much about what today's capitalism is not, but rather more about what it might be. Finally, the article is advisedly called `Capitalism and Metaphysics' rather than `Metaphysical Capitalism'. I don't particularly want to call today's capitalism `metaphysical capitalism'. I would rather call it something like `intensive capitalism', as distinct from an earlier primarily `extensive capitalism'. This said, I do think contemporary capitalism is very importantly metaphysical. And I try to focus on this in the article. To repeat, the article is indeed more about the theory of capitalism rather then making particular empirical claims about, for example, the contemporary economy.
5.
2. In contrast, of course, Leibniz's differential calculus is metaphysical. Thinkers such as Walter Benjamin (see Fenves, 2001) and Gilles Deleuze (1988: 131—2) have commented on this.
6.
3. A tradition of Marx's critics, from Raymond Aron, have argued against Marx's distinction of infrastructure and superstructure on the grounds that putatively superstructural scientific knowledge is part of production and hence the base itself. Marx rarely if at all said that science was part of the superstructure. But it is clear — as I argue here — that Marx developed his notion of the economic base on the model of the physical sciences. In most instances Marx understood the superstructure instead as metaphysical. In Marx's dialectic a sort of `absolute' of the physical (economic) determines the metaphysical. In Hegel it was of course a question of the determinations (Bestimmungen) of the absolute, of metaphysics or mind. I am grateful to Ino Rossi for comments on this point.
7.
4. Indeed, in natural selection, the changing physical environment selects from a mutating species. If this is successful in reproduction, i.e. in preserving its germ cells and germ cell line, then a new species emerges. But a large number of other possible species could have met the functional prerequisites for being selected. The assumptions here are of a certain interchangeability of species. Further, the species is not the individual. If the individual is monad the species is atom. The species is primarily extensive and physical. `Speciesization', or the emergence and origins of species, is different from individuation. If the species is primarily physical, the individual — we will see — is primarily metaphysical.
8.
In classical sociology, physicality is often more Darwinian than Newtonian. Here we have positivism in sociology, i.e. on the model of the physical, standing in contrast to the Geisteswissenschaften, the metaphysicality of the arts and humanities, the mind-sciences. And classical, functionalist sociology has distinguished between social norms, on the one hand, and cultural values. Here we have the physicality of norms, which are indeed determinate rules that govern action through bringing particulars under universals. Then there were cultural values, connected to things like language and literature (in a canon), and above all religion, that themselves are functional prerequisites for the reproduction of society and social norms. Cultural values more interestingly had to do not with the `somatic' of the social body, but with the equivalent of germ cells, passed from generation to generation. Where norms are abstract and general and public, the germ cells that are values are passed on in private through, not the abstract and general, but the concrete and particular of the family and intimate relations. Yet there is again the primacy of the social or the physical.
9.
5. Very many authors have spoken of contemporary capitalism in terms of post-industrial, informational, immaterial, cognitive and postmodern prefixes. It is beyond the scope of this article to argue that metaphysical is a better notion than any of the above. The article just wants to make the case that the nature of contemporary capitalism, especially in regard to causation, value, etc., is in important respects metaphysical.
10.
6. For Henri Bergson such time was spatial. Extensity is first understood as spatial extension. Hence it is metric.
11.
7. Here I am drawing on Marshall McLuhan's (2001) ideas of light-on and light-through media. For McLuhan light-through media were in a very important sense metaphysical.
12.
8. The in-itself as a singular ontological structure differs widely from Aristotelian essence. Essence is at the root of formal cause. Aristotle uses essence and genus (or species) interchangeably in terms of that which causes the individual. This is not so far from the Platonic idea. It is what contemporary human sciences understand as essentialism. But when the in-itself is monadological then every in-itself differs from every other. Even if phenomena are identical, their noumena differ.
13.
9. Here the brand is a virtual, the substance that generates a whole series of forms (Lury, 2004).
14.
10. Spinoza made the distinction between the two senses of power: potentia versus potesta, in French pusissance versus pouvoir.
15.
11. One TCS referee commented that this article should not take as an assumption the validity of the labour theory of value, noting that labour was a rather poor predictor of how the value of goods was determined in earlier capitalism. This referee is referring to how wages of labour enter into the price of goods. This is true. But in this article I was looking at the labour theory of value not so much in terms of the prices of goods but in terms of the general theory of capitalism. I think the labour theory of value does some things well, other things not so well. But it is a, indeed the, cornerstone of the most thorough and comprehensive general theory of capitalism. Also I am using it with a particular end in mind here. I am looking at its central dimension of abstract equivalence in order to think about what metaphysical capitalism's abstract inequivalence might be.
16.
12. Indeed there is no reason why the 0/1 binary will stay at the centre of digitization.
17.
13. Deleuze keeps Spinoza's naturalism, losing the divine. Yet Deleuze and Negri retain Spinoza's metaphysics. Their notions of nature are metaphysical.
18.
14. This article is in broad agreement with Negrian Neo-Marxism.
19.
15. There is of course now a considerable literature on financial markets. The relatively recent and very significant re-birth of economic sociology has especially focused on finance. Here at centre stage has been Michel Callon's (1998) theory of performativity. It is difficult to include Callon when elaborating a theory of capitalism in the light of his recent statements that the only people who use the word `capitalism' are Marxists. I am not sure about this. The Economist and the Financial Times speak regularly of capitalism for example. Callon — and the large number of significant analysts influenced by his work — is especially attentive to the performativity of the theories of economists in the empirical economy. The position outlined in this article would tend to be consistent with Callon's notions, in the sense that the ideational superstructures increasingly permeate the economic base. And in this sense the latter is becoming increasingly `metaphysical'. Callon's theory — now really the dominant paradigm in economic sociology — has been an inspiration to a considerable amount of very fruitful research, especially on financial markets. I do not want to contest this — though I do think the Callonian position does overestimate the influence of economists on the economy — as distinct from the learning by doing of a host of economic agents. Therefore I would be inclined more to go along with the more on-the-ground constructionism of Harrison White (1992), or quasi-Durkheimian ideas of embedding. The present article would tend to lead us to look at a different set of research questions. Such questions would ask: to what extent, and how, has money taken on a logic of inequivalence? This is a question that could be asked both culturally and economically. To the extent that money is no longer, perhaps, just dead labour, but itself a generator of disequilibria and a force of production itself, it seems to take on more a logic of inequivalence.
20.
Finally, this article is in general agreement with books like Thrift's seminal Knowing Capitalism (2004). The ideas in this article, of intensity, inequivalence and metaphysics, would be very consonant with the theory of cognitive capitalism in Thrift and also in Lazzarato. But whereas Thrift works the borders of theory and the empirical, this article works on the border between sociology and philosophy and in doing so, it is hoped, helps to generate some insights into contemporary capitalist processes.
21.
16. No.1 is General Electric at $299bn.
22.
17. Derivatives divide into futures and options. Modern futures markets were originated at the Chicago Board of Trade in the mid 19th century, trading wheat, pork-belly and copper futures. From the 1970s, currency futures have played an important role. To own a future is to contract for future delivery at a specified price.
23.
18. Even animal monads are souls for Leibniz (1991).
24.
19. Pierre Bourdieu translated this seminal work from the 1924 German original. Its play on the symbolic and the physical and factual had a seminal influence on Bourdieu's ideas of symbolic capital and cultural capital.
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