Capital’s Implosion-Sustaining Concept: Fetter

Leo Deng

12/5/22 (To be edited and heavily extended in the future...)

PHIL493 Marxism and Critical Theory Paper 1

In the famous line from the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels declare “what the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers,”[1] either overconfidently or passionately (or both overconfidently and passionately) asserting the utter unsustainable, self-destructive nature of capital—that the dominating exploitation, or exploitative domination, that the bourgeoisie enforce onto the proletariat will be the very reason the capitalists themselves will crumble and be annihilated as a class—by giving the proletariat the economic conditions for revolution. An idea emerges here that is the fetter, i.e., the weight that shackles the capitalist mode of production. Monopoly inflates the contradiction between the centralization of the means of production and socialization of labor that creates the “capitalist integument. This integument is burst asunder.”[2] Although this idea has inspired hundreds of millions[3] of people around the globe to revolt, we are at a time more than ever where this idea seems almost obsolete. Theorists in the Frankfurt School reject this possibly deterministic view of socialist revolution, specifically in conceptualizing society itself as an agent. Both Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno touch on this through formulation of critical theory, critique of the enlightenment, and creating a novel emancipatory direction for society. The ruthless march of capital persists because it is within an implosion-containing system. I will thus be critiquing Marx’s fetter of capital by drawing on Horkheimer and Adorno, as well as Marxist-Leninists who worked to criticize and develop the Marxist method.

Fetter, Socialist Determinism, and Historical Materialism

Marx’s theoretical trajectory is widely remembered as a transition from an emancipatory, humanist revolutionary to an amoral, analytical scientist of capital;[4] however, I will argue that the idea of the inevitable destruction of capitalism spans across Marx’s lifetime—the idea of the fetter. The word fetter appears in the Communist Manifesto in the very paragraph that describes capitalism’s relentless tendency towards overproduction through exploitation as unsustainable: “They [the productive forces] have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property.”[5] This idea also constitutes his conception of historical materialism, as well, where prior modes of production are subsequently outmoded by an internal force emerging from its contradiction, i.e., its fetter, bursting asunder.[6] These examples are fitting connections between the fetter and early Marx because the very purpose of this grand prediction of capitalism’s demise was to incite revolutionary fervor in the proletariat, but it still withstands his “transition out of humanism,” an iconic part of his revolutionary image.[7]Even in his supposedly scientific, objective magnum opus Capital: The Critique of Political Economy, the idea and diction appear notably in “Chapter 32: Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation,” a chapter that constitutes the culmination of the political Marx.[8] Thus, I treat the fetter to be a genuinely Marxist idea as the nature of an economic system to self-destruct under the very conditions it creates, so for the rest of the essay, I will refer to the fetter of capital as the phenomenon under examination.

The Obsolete Idea and Self-Sustaining Fetter

Despite all Marx’s argumentation for the truth of the fetter of capital throughout his career, the unfortunate common stance on it currently is as a mere ghost or remnant, albeit of a powerful idea with great formulations on capital, that still haunts us today, but its ultimate claim rejected. From pessimists that can only see capitalism as the end of the world to communist revolutionaries who see the fetter as too deterministic and want to put more emphasis on their willful overthrow of capitalism, the reasons for rejecting this idea truly vary. Whatever the reason, the question simply is: Why does capital still exist? Why has all capitalism’s utter contradictions and crises not caused it to implode still? Why is capital still operative, despite Marx’s arduous theorization and the analysis of the concept of capitalism?[9]

Horkheimer and Adorno implicitly reject the fetter by reconceptualizing society as an agent itself. In Horkheimer’s defining work “Traditional and Critical Theory,” he clearly introduces one of the seminal projects of critical theory—to replace traditional theory that has dominated the sciences since the enlightenment. Horkheimer critiques traditional theory for problematically presupposing itself with a notion of objectivism that perpetually restrains scientific research to logical necessity and thus, a fetishism and hyper-fixation of each respective science’s method itself. Critical theory is a solution that puts forward a real necessity in theory, so sciences are tied to their real, material applications. In lieu of this conception of critical theory, a new view of society emerges since traditional theory falls into a static view of society as the accumulated progress of human history—as a product. However, Horkheimer argues, critical theory would see society as an “active subject”[10] or agent—a bigger, individual actor—that would deem it a process rather than a product.[11], [12] An example of comprehending society as a process, but also an individual agent made up of a multitude of individual agents, is paralleling it to the human body—a clear active subject—that is made up of trillions of individual cells.[13] Furthering and cementing the idea, he rightfully recognizes “the existence of society has either been founded directly on oppression or been the blind outcome of conflicting forces, but in any event not the result of conscious spontaneity on the part of free individuals.”[14] This concretizes the comparison to the body-cell relationship because cells don’t have individual freedom in the sense that a body does, and individual humans cannot influence society in the way society “acts” (changing economic systems, altering social norms, etc.)—only the ambiguous notion of mass mobilization can.[15]

Society as process also furthers a more sociological conception of society; one where unstable capital can be moved towards a theoretical space where we can be emancipated from it. In Marx’s writings, the fetter sets capitalism up for its own demise as wealth and property is funneled up into the hands of the few (the bourgeoisie), workers are alienated from all aspects of work, and the masses can no longer afford the commodities produced (which includes basically all aspects of society under capitalism: water, food, housing—not just optional consumer commodities we think of) encapsulated in the idea of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall.[16] Thus, socialism is necessary and inevitable when workers keep society running materially and can and should seize and own the means of production, that have been centralized through monopoly, by revolution. However, Adorno and Horkheimer do not see it the same way. In “The Concept of Enlightenment,” they say, “the more complicated and precise the social, economic, and scientific apparatus with whose service the production system has long harmonized the body, the more impoverished the experiences which it can offer.”[17] Here, we see an analysis of capitalism as not just the agglomeration of finite possible products to be produced as companies (not saying that Marx posits this, but his analysis justly feels more finite than the infinitude of consumer, technology capitalism that he could have never predicted or imagined existent today) but as a constantly changing subject, i.e., a constant partitioning of the categories of production, the possibilities of what can be produced, and the possibilities of what can be invented or discovered. This is the parallel exponential increase of the complexity of capitalism’s apparatuses Adorno and Horkheimer refer to, leading to a negation of genuine experience, by diluting them, which labor-production is supposed to supply.[18] The latter sounds like a further commentary of Marx’s theory of alienation, but instead of workers feeling alienated from all aspects of work, society itself feels alienation—in other words, alienation becomes a phenomenon of society, not a feeling one gets amid community but on the contrary, an imminent feeling all people have despite moments of community.[19]

The meaningful critique provided by Adorno and Horkheimer of the fetter is the rejection of capital’s implosion by acknowledging society functioning as a process and thus, capitalism (alongside its interactions with society) having unpredictable manifestations to sustain itself, despite all conditions Marx rightfully observed. It is worthy to note that in both Frankfurt School works cited, neither Adorno nor Horkheimer provide a concrete alternative path for society’s emancipation; also, when students looked towards them during the May 1968 protests, they provided no help or response, so they have been viewed as fairly detached from praxis.[20] What they do provide is general guidance towards critical theory in integrating real necessity (interconnected with practice) in the sciences and critiquing the enlightenment thinking that society has fallen into. Bringing in another perspective that I believe is useful, which almost combines Marxism with some of these aspects of critical theory, are the Marxists usually most practiced in practice: Leninists.

Ideologically, Marxist-Leninists implicitly reject the view of the fetter, in a way, emphasizing that capitalism can provide the conditions for socialism, but not that it necessarily or inevitably leads to socialism and thus, revolutionaries have to also expedite the transition by creating the conditions for revolution, as Che Guevara said.[21] Mao Zedong formulates that “the dialectical-materialist theory of knowledge places practice in the primary position, holding that human knowledge can in no way be separated from practice,” while reiterating that Lenin said, “practice is higher than (theoretical) knowledge, for it has not only the dignity of universality, but also of immediate actuality.”[22] Thus, Marxist-Leninists emphasize conscious action to oppose potentially dangerously unproductive interpretations of the fetter, that is, just to sit and wait until the conditions are ready for revolution.[23] Since the Frankfurt School’s opposition of the fetter is tied to its proposition of a critical theory for sciences, this discussion of Marxism-Leninism can be buttressed by its pedagogical outlook—as education would be the very means to change theory anyway. Simply, “theory for theory’s sake and knowledge for knowledge’s sake that are detached from revolutionary practice are utterly useless in our society,” says Kim Il-Sung.[24] I feel as if this directly encapsulates critical theory’s goal, at least in the material impact it wants to make, by establishing a real necessity of theory’s application in practice. Not only does education always have to be predicated on its use in the revolution,[25] Kim stresses the importance of scientific engagement for “creativity and independence” in a non-dogmatic way of thinking for citizens alike.[26] Overall, Marxist-Leninists see an inextricable equality between dialectical materialism and historical materialism: they are one and in the same; emphasis on the revolutionary willpower of practice is not idealism but rather an emphatic focus on the dialectical relationship between revolutionary consciousness and historico-economic determinism.[27] Some theorists go even further like Louis Althusser in Reading Capital who attempts a structuralist revival of Marxism-Leninism, asserting that the division between theory and practice is only occurrent in bourgeois society—that theoretical practice (the concepts unified) is necessary for a truly scientific theory of knowledge in an emancipated society.[28]

Ultimately, both the Frankfurt School Critical Theorists and Marxist-Leninists reject or rethink the fetter of capitalism, i.e., capital’s tendency towards inevitable implosion. The Critical Theorists reject it in favor of a view of capitalism being a perpetuator of alienation in society and thus also, it is a perpetuator of its root cause—exploitation—doing anything in order to sustain it (think about the sheer number of occupations made in order to sustain capitalism: union-busting lawyers, lobbyists for rent-seeking businesses, etc.). Marxist-Leninists rethink the fetter as just capital’s tendency of implosion, but conditions for that implosion need to be incited by the masses and revolutionaries themselves, while also holding to the complexity of how post-Marx manifestations of capital sustains itself.[29] Nevertheless, (what is sometimes called) Neo-Marxism or the holding to a true Marxist method should be non-dogmatic, self-criticizing, and, thus, ever-evolving.[30] Whether one wants to be labeled Marxist or not, the idea of the fetter will always be present as a push towards the emancipation of all from capitalism’s oppressive forces and alienation.

Bibliography

Althusser, Louis. “From Capital to Marx’s Philosophy.” In Reading Capital: The Complete Edition. London ; New York: Verso, 2016.

Hook, Derek. “Guest Lecture: Lacanian Psychoanalysis.” Presented at the PHIL593/493 Marxism and Critical Theory, Duquesne University, December 1, 2022.

Horkheimer, Max. “Traditional and Critical Theory.” In Critical Theory: The Essential Readings, edited by David Ingram and Julia-Simon Ingram, 1st edition. New York: Paragon House, 1998.

Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor Adorno. “The Concept of the Enlightenment.” In Critical Theory: The Essential Readings, edited by David Ingram and Julia-Simon Ingram, 1st edition. New York: Paragon House, 1998.

Kim Il-Sung, Derek R. Ford, and Curry Mallot. Socialist Education in Korea. Edited by Riley Seungyoon Park and Cambria York. Iskra Books, 2022.

Leahy, Brendan, and Brett O’shea. “21st Century Marxism: Neo-Marxism and the Value of Engels,” n.d. https://revolutionaryleftradio.libsyn.com/21st-century-marxism-neo-marxism-and-the-value-of-engels.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich. Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. Rough Draft Printing, 2015.

Löwy, Michael, and Peter McLaren. The Marxism of Che Guevara: Philosophy, Economics, Revolutionary Warfare. 2nd edition. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2007.

Mao Zedong. On Practice and Contradiction. London ; New York: Verso, 2007.

Marx, Karl. “Chapter Thirty-Two: Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation.” In Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume I, First English edition., 1887. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch32.htm.

Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. Manifesto of the Communist Party, 1848. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm#007.

Stalin, Joseph. The Foundations of Leninism. Paris: Foreign Languages Press, 2020.

Swindal, James. “Class on Preface to the First Edition and Chapter 1 of Capital.” Presented at the PHIL593/493 Marxism and Critical Theory, Duquesne University, September 22, 2022.

Swindal, James. “Class on the Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation.” Presented at the PHIL593/493 Marxism and Critical Theory, Duquesne University, October 13, 2022.

Swindal, James. “Class on Traditional and Critical Theory.” Presented at the PHIL593/493 Marxism and Critical Theory, Duquesne University, October 18, 2022.

[1] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, 1848, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm#007. [2] Karl Marx, “Chapter Thirty-Two: Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation,” in Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume I, First English edition, 1887, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch32.htm. [3] Mao Zedong in his Collected Works alone describes hundreds of millions in applications of his concepts of people’s war and the mass line, so I am referring to the mostly Marxist-Leninist revolutions in the last two centuries from Russia to China to Vietnam to Cuba, and so on… [4] James Swindal, “Class on Preface to the First Edition and Chapter 1 of Capital” (PHIL593/493 Marxism and Critical Theory, Duquesne University, September 22, 2022). [5] Marx and Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party. My italics – L.D. [6]“The feudal relations of property became no longer compatible with the already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder.” Marx and Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party. This specific language still shows up in chapter 32 of Capital in “fetter” and “burst asunder.” [7] For example, authors like Michael Lowy posit Marx’s early humanism as notably revolutionary. In Marxism of Che Guevara, Lowy argues that Che combined early Marx’s humanistic elements with Marxism-Leninism. [8] James Swindal, “Class on the Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation” (PHIL593/493 Marxism and Critical Theory, Duquesne University, October 13, 2022). [9] Swindal, “Class on the Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation.” [10] Max Horkheimer, “Traditional and Critical Theory,” in Critical Theory: The Essential Readings, ed. David Ingram and Julia-Simon Ingram, 1st edition (New York: Paragon House, 1998), 242. [11] Horkheimer, “Traditional and Critical Theory.” [12] James Swindal, “Class on Traditional and Critical Theory” (PHIL593/493 Marxism and Critical Theory, Duquesne University, October 18, 2022). [13] Comparison example made by PhD student Jasmin Makhlouf in: Swindal, “Class on Traditional and Critical Theory.” [14] Horkheimer, “Traditional and Critical Theory,” 243. – My italics L. D. [15] This also reminds me of the idea of the big Other in Lacanian psychoanalysis. It is a third, preeminent “other” that is always present in any dialogue to affirm speech acts such as the idea of God or America. These big Others or Master Signifiers can be seen as the symbols or checkpoints of societal change that show society as a process or agent. Derek Hook, “Guest Lecture: Lacanian Psychoanalysis” (PHIL593/493 Marxism and Critical Theory, Duquesne University, December 1, 2022). [16] See Marx’s Chapter 13 of Capital, Volume III. [17] Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, “The Concept of the Enlightenment,” in Critical Theory: The Essential Readings, ed. David Ingram and Julia-Simon Ingram, 1st edition (New York: Paragon House, 1998), 54. [18] Here I am referring to the Marxist conception of labor being the starting point of meaning in human life. [19] Such a phenomenon has been touched on by many theorists from Frankfurt School theorists to Jean Baudrillard’s System of Objects and Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle to modern explanations of alienated society like Frederic Jameson’s Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism and Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism. [20] Swindal, “Class on Traditional and Critical Theory.” [21] Michael Löwy and Peter McLaren, The Marxism of Che Guevara: Philosophy, Economics, Revolutionary Warfare, 2nd edition (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2007). [22] Mao Zedong, On Practice and Contradiction (London ; New York: Verso, 2007), 54. On the same page of the book the Lenin quote comes from: “Conspectus of Hegel’s The Science of Logic.” [23] This is dangerous, for example, because people like Che had to also fend off colonialist and imperialist violent intervention. So, in practice, one cannot wait for conditions to occur especially if oppressive states can take that time to seize control. [24] Kim Il-Sung, Derek R. Ford, and Curry Mallot, Socialist Education in Korea, ed. Riley Seungyoon Park and Cambria York (Iskra Books, 2022), 16 (foreword), 73 (original text: “Theses on Socialist Education”). [25] Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries usually refer to the period of socialist transition and socialism as “the revolution,” too, noting that social antagonisms and contradictions still very much exist as remnants of capitalism or superstructural issues. [26] Kim Il-Sung, Ford, and Mallot, Socialist Education in Korea, 18-42. [27] Löwy and McLaren, The Marxism of Che Guevara. [28] Louis Althusser, “From Capital to Marx’s Philosophy,” in Reading Capital: The Complete Edition (London ; New York: Verso, 2016). [29] I am here thinking of Lenin’s theory of imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism where the contradictions between labor and capital, between the financial groups and imperialist powers, and between “civilized” (imperialist) nations and millions of the colonial and dependent peoples of the world are extended to its extreme limit to create “finance capital,” the merging between bank and industrial capital. Joseph Stalin, The Foundations of Leninism (Paris: Foreign Languages Press, 2020). Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (Rough Draft Printing, 2015). [30] Brendan Leahy and Brett O’shea, “21st Century Marxism: Neo-Marxism and the Value of Engels,” October 23rd, 2017, https://revolutionaryleftradio.libsyn.com/21st-century-marxism-neo-marxism-and-the-value-of-engels.