The goal of the radical critique of value is therefore a society beyond “abstract labor”, value, the market, the State, and the dissociation between the sexes. Naturally, the achievement of this goal poses enormous problems, because human beings have been “socialized within” these categories, and have internalized them, for centuries. That is why there is no single road that leads directly out of the existing order; instead, a process of historical mediation is required. Mediation means that it is necessary to find a new relation between immanent struggles for money, state services, etc., and social resistance against capitalist crisis management, on the one hand, and the goals of the categorical critique, on the other. It involves, in a way, the old problem of the relation between “journey and destination”, but under new conditions and with an entirely different, and more profound, modus of critique.
Here, the categorical critique also includes the perception that it is no longer a matter of simple opposition to an enemy conceived in a merely external manner (“capital”), but rather that all of us, even with regard to our most private existence, are “capital”. This means that even within the social movements, there will be contradictions that have to be resolved, not ignored. Thus, the dissociation between the sexes still exists in the social movements, too, and it must be criticized there; for example, when the onus of the crisis is, “naturally”, placed upon women and the conquests of the feminist movement are rolled back. Ideologies such as nationalism, racism and anti-semitism also permeate social contradictions and are widespread among the “humble and downtrodden” of this world, either openly or in a disguised form. The necessary critique of ideology must not retreat behind the abstract predominance of the “social question”; just as the contrasting material social situations of various groups (migrants, for example, on the one hand, and native workers who live under precarious conditions, on the other) must not be subsumed under the generality of this “social question”. To the contrary, tensions and differences must be critically endured and digested. A social movement in common does not arise as an abstract postulate, but only as a result of this confrontation.
...Commodity-producing modernity itself developed the idea that was supposed to have eliminated metaphysics. Value itself, however, constitutes a “real metaphysics”, an “empty form” that cannot be apprehended by the senses, which is transcendent in relation to social needs and qualitative contents. The superficial universalism of this form is at the same time structurally male (androcentric), and the modern subject is, originally and by virtue of his essence, a western, white, male subject. Value and its subject did not arise from an exclusively “objective” historical process, but rather, at the same time, by way of ideological affirmation and the conditioning of social consciousness. The basis of all modern theories and ideologies is the philosophy of the Enlightenment, which, as the “mother of all affirmative reflection” (even in traditional Marxism), substantially contributed to the formation of the global system of commodity production. Thus, the radical critique of value and of dissociation must also include a radical critique of Enlightenment thinking. This is not, however, a conservative anti-Enlightenment and irrational anti-modernity type of critique, but a critique of the roots of modern thought, which are entrenched in the real metaphysics of value.
The Enlightenment tradition contributed in various ways to help instill human beings with the logic of value and of dissociation. Thus, it not only helped to spread an external “discipline” for the demands of “abstract labor”, but also laid the foundations of a program for the internal “self-discipline” of individuals, which is still in effect today. At the same time, it produced that ideological fixation on circulation (in the market and among its subjects), which even today still informs a false understanding of “freedom” and “equality”, even on the left. Finally, it provided ideological support for the androcentric character of modern universalism; its philosophy is structurally “male” and conceals the dissociated moments both conceptually and theoretically. In the works of Foucault one can find abundant material and critical reflections on “disciplinary machines” that were based Enlightenment concepts. Foucault, however, stopped halfway in his critique of the Enlightenment. In his legitimate revulsion towards the mechanistic party Marxism of the sixties and seventies, he mistakenly perceived any questioning of the social form as “economism”. Thus, his critique of Enlightenment values only leads to a positive concept of the mechanisms of a contingent “production of truth”, which no longer has any relation to the logic of value and of dissociation between the sexes as a historical social formation.
Naturally, the critique of value is also a critique of the kind of everyday life that value creates. The social “real abstraction” affected, during the process of capitalist modernization, all the spheres of life, architecture, esthetics and culture and even eating habits (agrobusiness, fast food) and personal relations. The most recent global crisis is accelerating the liberation of the “abstract individual”, in whom, however, the dissociation between the sexes still prevails. Value and the universal competition associated with it penetrate even the most intimate aspects of personal life and destroy all human bonds. People are becoming more vulnerable and self-oriented; the narcissistic and hysterical social and personal character has spread throughout all social situations. The hystericization of the society of crisis does not respect the boundaries of politics, science, or groups devoted to critical theory, or even love and friendship. Personal vituperation and avoidance are everywhere replacing substantive discussions. Feelings of competition, fear of human bonds and of “commitment”, an abstract psychodynamic that is always ready for conflict in every sense of the word and anxious for personal “validation”, threaten to submerge all content and even radical critique itself. Theoretical contents themselves, and even feelings towards other people, are no more than interchangeable poker chips in the “struggle for positions”. Individuals are becoming as unpredictable as the climate and the financial markets. This socio-psychological tendency is socially conditioned and can only be done away with in the process of the social revolution, not by pedagogy, or by means of any coercive social controls, in the furnace of neo-utopian projects of the “reform of life”. It is nonetheless necessary to discover how to effectively resist this tendency of the internal crisis of the subject within social movements and groups devoted to theoretical reflection, in order to maintain the capacity for action in theoretical critique and in the practice of relations in general.
...The fetishistic character of social reproduction means that human beings do not consciously direct their own social relations and do not use their own resources and abilities by means of free agreement; to the contrary, they are subjected to a means which they have themselves produced, but which has become autonomous in relation to them. This means, which in the modern world is known as value and its outer form, money, command social reproduction as a blind self-regulation (“second nature”). The modern understanding of reason that was produced by the Enlightenment tradition is totally in thrall to this self-regulation of the means-fetish; it contains only a historically specific reason, tailored for the commodity form and destructive in its very essence. The modern irrationalism defended by the currents of bourgeois counter-Enlightenment merely constitutes the other side of the coin of this reason and is itself derived from the legacy of the Enlightenment. A categorical critique such as the critique of modern fetishism is a critique of the internal nexus between modern reason and modern irrationalism; it must lead to “another reason”, and therefore develop a “counter-reason”, against the fetishistically-constituted reason of the system of commodity production.
We are only prisoners of fetishism insofar as, under the dominant conditions, the reproduction of our entire practical life is at the mercy of the “irrational reason” of the fetish of the commodity and of capital. The blind robot of the “automatic subject” forces us to “work” for our own destruction. The rationality of the entrepreneurial economy undermines the foundations of human life by permanently “externalizing” costs, thus destroying the biosphere at an accelerating rate. In accordance with the standards of this same reason, human and material resources are de-activated, regardless of material and social needs, once they cease to satisfy the fetishist criterion of the profitability of capital. Although there is more than enough human ability, means of production and knowledge, they cannot be utilized freely, but are subject to the restrictions of the fetishist social form. The production of “abstract wealth” (Marx) leads to mass impoverishment. This process, however, is not an external clash of interests, but even the poor also work for their own impoverishment, by articulating their social and material needs exclusively in the social form of value, and therefore in the form of fetishism. This contradiction, which has already undergone successive periods of exacerbation in the periodic crises of capitalism and was later relatively overshadowed by new outbursts of capital accumulation, is acquiring an existential dimension in the global crisis of the third industrial revolution, because there will no longer be any real sustainable accumulation of capital. Either we break with the fetishism of the social form or the life of society will be “de-activated” in an increasingly more catastrophic manner.
