HM Online 2020 & Leftovers Virtual panel

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Leftovers Virtual: Reading Marx and Marxism in the age of Uprisings and Pandemics

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PLEASE NOTE YOU WILL RECEIVE AN EMAIL WITH THE LINK TO VIEW THE PANEL APPROX 1 HOUR BEFORE THE EVENT BEGINS.

Leftovers is proud to present a virtual panel, following in the theme of our well-received 2019 panel, on reading Marx and classical Marxist theory in the context of the current conjuncture. Far from a mere detached “return to Marx”, Leftovers seeks to recuperate and renovate our analysis by way of revisiting bedrock communist praxis. Among our papers are a two part engagement on Marx’s work on the Jewish question, followed by a reconceptualization of Marx’s concept of “So Called Primitive Accumulation”. Leftovers panelists all share a queer socialist-feminist reading of the Marxist tradition, focusing on a unitary analysis and avoiding class reductionism. We are all of the belief that the popular struggles of today, from the summer’s international multiracial uprising against police murder to the struggles of Indigenous people and beyond, are part and parcel of the class struggle. Thus, in propagating our readings of the Marxist tradition, we aim at a first step of providing readings relevant to the 21st century

On the Jewish Question 1: Marx vs. Hess vs. Bauer on the Jewish Question and Universality - Jordy Cummings (York University)

Of the many questions debated among the Left wing of Hegelianism, the Jewish question was emblematic. Bruno Bauer, of course, stood firm that Jewish emancipation was an oxymoron. Marx, in response stood firmly against Anti-Jewish prejudice, and for Jewish emancipation. Yet he also believed this emancipation was only partial. It was political emancipation. As well, Marx did, to a certain degree adopt the stance of Jews as Geltmensch, as bearer of finance (Traverso, Avineri). To what degree Marx was poking fun at Bauer’s argument and to what degree this was Marx’s position is debatable. Yet Marx largely drew this “figure of the Jew” from Moses Hess. Ironically, Moses Hess was later a foundational figure for Zionism, the singular philosophical influence on Theodor Herzl.

The contours of Marx’s polemics with both figures prefigures a debate still in existence within the 21st century Left Intelligentsia. This is the degree to which particularity can be represented within universality. Bauer saw particularity, in the form of his “figure of the Jew” as a fetter on a project of emancipation. A range of figures, Queer people, Black people and many others, fill this void for today’s “critical critics” harping on the same point. In turn, this “figure of the Jew” for Hess had to completely achieve particularity in order to even approach any project of universality. As with Bauer we do hear modern echoes of this, from forms of left nationalism and populism to Afropessimism.

Expanding on a paper I delivered at Historical Materialism London last year, I will engage Bauer and Hess’s positions as paradigmatic “shortcuts” that can neither be reduced to nor deduced from their historical context. The path towards emancipation is circuitous but shortcuts often turn out to be dead ends.

On the Jewish Question 2: Satirical Writing and Particular Subjects in Marx’s ‘On The Jewish Question’ - Jules Joanne Gleeson (University of Vienna)

‘Nobody who has not gone through the flames of criticism will be able to enter the new world which will soon come.’ —Bruno Bauer

Recent Marxist scholarship (Haider, 2018; Bohrer, 2019) has explored the insights available to Marxist theorisation of identity, as well as they challenges which face revolutionaries minded towards attempting one.

This talk will continue from previous talks delivered to the Leftovers: Live series (Cummings, 2019), and published re-examinations (Fine and Spencer, 2018) to consider Marx’s 1844 essay ‘On The Jewish Question’ in light of this debate. What insights can Bruno Bauer and Karl Marx’s vying positions on Jewish particularity, and the putative place of Jewish citizens in the ‘new world’ they envisioned, have on identity debates now raging in the 21t century?

As well as applying previous readings taking Marx’s style elsewhere to be satirical in nature (Sutherland, 2008), I will also consider recent popular reception in the form of Philosophy Tube’s ironic ‘cancellation’ of Karl Marx (Thorn, 2020). While in one respect the most obviously ‘historical’ of Marx’s corpus (given its assumption of a ‘Christian state’), this polemic clearly remains of lively interest to revolutionaries and shitposters of today.

The Priority of Primitive Accumulation - Marx’s Evolution Towards a Political Concept - A. Jaffe (The Juilliard School)

In this presentation I briefly reconstruct the arc of “primitive accumulation” beginning with Adam Smith’s merely logical construction in Wealth of Nations and James Stuart’s historical but socially violent construction in Inquiry into the Principles of Political Economy. I then show how Marx’s notion evolves from but also adopts an increasingly valuable distance from these prior constructions. Marx’s concept of primitive accumulation first appears in the Grundrisse, where it functions much as it did for Smith - as a logically prior accumulation. In the economic manuscripts of the early 1860s Marx’s notion of primitive accumulation transforms from this logically necessary prior stock that made distinctly capitalist accumulation possible, into a concept that describes the history of this prior accumulation. This is also the first instance in which “primitive accumulation”, referring to Smith’s far too abstract construction, is tarred with the ironic “so-called”. Finally, in Capital the social history of “so called primitive accumulation” is shown in its brutal violence, while the political economists’ merely logical accounts are likened to a religious myth - both obfuscatory and pacifying. Following the far younger Marx’s criticism of religion, we can then use “so-called primitive accumulation” as the fulcrum point to generate precise social research, justified anger at what is uncovered, and a clear politics.

Since, on this textual reconstruction, primitive accumulation is prior to the self-reproducing growth of capital, it may seem odd to think that it can offer a political lesson for today. I argue, however, that though primitive accumulation names a prior condition for the emergence of capitalism, anti-capitalists can make it a priority to politically center the long-standing and evolving social effects through which proletarianization occurred. The political lesson of “primitive accumulation” requires recognizing how the specific forms of dispossession and proletarianization, though historically past, function as sedimented layers of social violence that still inflect the specific and local forms of contemporary capitalist accumulation. The primitive accumulation through which capitalism emerged does not, in this way, need to be co-extensive with contemporary capitalism. We do not need the torturous logic of claiming the contemporaneity of a pre-history if we can simply hold that primitive accumulation formed the basis of capitalist accumulation in a way that, to this day, plays a role in determining the social relations of domination through which capital continues to accumulate.

PLEASE NOTE: All events for HM Online are free to register, however we would ask comrades who are able to please consider making a donation, which would help us enormously in covering the costs of putting of this programme of events. You can donate by selecting the 'donation' ticket type at registration.

Accessibility is important for us, and we are looking into using Live Captions, but availability will depend on our financial capacities and on your support. Thank you.

Once you have registered, a link to the live session will be emailed to you on the day of the event. For any technical queries please contact historicalmaterialism@soas.ac.uk

Please consider subscribing to the Historical Materialism journal, published by BRILL, who are currently offering a 25% discount on individual subscriptions, valid until the end of the year. To use the offer, quote the discount code 70997 when subscribing at: www.brill.com/hima

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