{"id":1341,"date":"2020-11-27T11:59:57","date_gmt":"2020-11-27T16:59:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/?p=1341"},"modified":"2023-10-22T21:41:52","modified_gmt":"2023-10-23T01:41:52","slug":"etienne-balibar-the-expropriators-are-expropriated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/etienne-balibar-the-expropriators-are-expropriated\/","title":{"rendered":"Etienne Balibar | \u201cThe Expropriators Are Expropriated\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

By \u00c9tienne Balibar<\/a><\/h2>\n

\u201cThe expropriators are expropriated\u201d: This is one of Marx\u2019s most celebrated sentences, which is to be found towards the end of the chapter on \u00ab The Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation \u00bb, Chapter 32 of section 8 of the English edition of Capital<\/em>, Volume One. It is also one of the most enigmatic. I want to comment on it as a contribution to the discussion that is prompted by our twin references, in Abolition Democracy 5\/13<\/a>, to the texts by Proudhon and Marx on the social contradictions of private property.<\/p>\n

The formula concludes a long syllogism, at the end of the development called \u201cThe historical tendency of capitalist accumulation.\u201d I only quote the final sentence in the paragraph: \u201c\u2026 The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along with, and under it. Centralization of the means of production and socialization of labour at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. This integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated.\u201d The original has: \u201cDie Expropriateurs werden expropriiert\u201d, which any German reader will immediately identify as a \u201cFremdwort,\u201d an alien word <\/em>of French origin, among several others that pepper this development, in which the dialectical form of the negation of the negation <\/em>is combined with economic, historical and juridical content. Very often this is perceived as the \u201crevolutionary conclusion\u201d of Marx\u2019s critical analysis of capitalism, but to what extent is that the case? No doubt, the \u201cdialectical\u201d idea of the expropriation of expropriators names the \u201cend\u201d of what Marx described as a violent process of transformation, which leads to a \u201csocialization\u201d of the economy albeit in a \u201cprivate\u201d form. Communism should be able to build on that result, provided it abolished private property and the corresponding power exercised upon labour. We are not surprised, therefore, that Marx immediately adds a footnote <\/em>in which a passage from the Communist Manifesto<\/em> is quoted, where the Communist revolution is announced, as the historical achievement of the Proletariat. What he seems to indicate is the following: what could appear as a prophecy, to which the bloody suppression of the 1848 Revolutions had put an irreversible end, was in fact a very realistic anticipation. Through the scientific analysis of the \u201chistorical tendency of capitalist accumulation\u201d, it now receives an irrefutable foundation.<\/p>\n

Yes indeed. But we may wonder why the \u201crevolutionary conclusion\u201d is not located at the end of the book<\/em>! It forms only the last paragraph in the penultimate chapter of the section on \u201cThe so-called Primitive Accumulation\u201d, where Marx describes the origins of capitalism in the violent expropriation of small producers, which took place in the centuries before the industrial revolution. After this chapter comes still another one, on \u201cThe Modern Theory of Colonization,\u201d which few readers really take into account. How can we explain this d\u00e9calage<\/em>, preventing the \u201cend\u201d to be located \u201cin the end place\u201d?<\/p>\n

For a long time, I thought the most convincing hypothesis was censorship<\/em>. When Capital Volume One<\/em> was published in 1867 in Germany, it needed to pass through the censor\u2019s authorization in the first place. Perhaps Marx reflected that the not so intelligent officials would look at the table of contents, plus the beginning and end of the book, would see mere erudition, a \u201cscientific\u201d treatise out of the grasp of the ordinary people, and wouldn\u2019t object. But, Marx, was hoping, real activists would find the \u201cexpropriation of expropriators\u201d in its place, and this would directly connect with their hopes and political objectives\u2026<\/p>\n

I am no longer certain that such an explanation is sufficient, because there is an intrinsic difficulty<\/em> about the \u201cconclusions\u201d of the argument in Capital<\/em> that even the \u201cdialectics\u201d of negation of the negation doesn\u2019t entirely resolve.<\/p>\n

A symptomatic reading, as Althusser would say, is necessary here. I alluded to the strange accumulation of \u201cFrench\u201d wording, more or less \u201cGermanized,\u201d in the surrounding paragraphs. In these passages, we may read the insistence and continuity of egalitarian and \u00a0\u201cproto-communist\u201d movements during the French Revolution, particularly the \u201cBabouvistes\u201d and \u201cEnrag\u00e9s\u201d who thunder against \u201cexpropriateurs,\u201d \u201cexploiteurs,\u201d \u201cusurpateurs,\u201d and \u201caccapareurs.\u201d Marx, who had wanted to write a history of the Convention nationale<\/em>, had received this tradition through direct and indirect sources. The quotation<\/em> from the Manifesto<\/em> becomes clearer: even without using the word, it brings with it the idea of a \u201crevolutionary dictatorship,\u201d a politics of salut public<\/em> that counteracts historical violence with another one of opposite intention. This marks at the same time a continuity<\/em> from the \u201cradical\u201d tendencies of the past \u201cbourgeois\u201d revolution to the future \u201cproletarian\u201d revolution, and a progress<\/em> to be accomplished<\/em> by the latter: in the meantime, the capitalist development will have transformed a utopian objective into historical necessity, reflecting the \u201ccentralization\u201d of the means of production imposed by capital.<\/p>\n

I believe that this first layer of interpretation is rather indisputable. But there is also a religious element that belongs to the treasure of eschatological hopes of liberation, periodically reactivated by movements retrieving the tradition of Jewish and Christian Messianism. The formula is in fact reminiscent of the Book of Isaiah: \u201cAnd the people shall take them, and bring them to their place: and the house of Israel shall possess them in the land of the\u00a0Lord\u00a0for servants and handmaids: and they shall take them captives, whose captives they were; and they shall rule over their oppressors.<\/em>\u201d Messianism of course is frequent in Marx, especially when it is a question of the revolutionary mission of the Proletariat, a radically dispossessed class whose rebellion will put an end not only to capitalism but to every historical form of a class domination.<\/p>\n

This reading pushes the idea of \u201chistorical tendency\u201d to an apocalyptic end. But it is not the only possible one, far from, since it has a reformist double<\/em>, more precisely an evolutionist double<\/em>, in which the forms of capitalist expropriation appear not only as negative preparations, <\/em>but virtual instruments<\/em> of association<\/em>.\u00a0 We discover this possibility in a development which, in a sense, is a twin deduction of the \u201cexpropriation of expropriators\u201d, but makes a completely different use of the dialectical transformation of private property. The passage from Capital <\/em>Volume III, chapter 27 on \u201cThe Role of Credit in Capitalist Production\u201d has acquired a special interest these days, because of its link to the analysis of \u201cfinancialization of capital.\u201d Here is an excerpt from the relevant passage:<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the abolition of the capitalist mode of production within the capitalist mode of production itself, and hence a self-abolishing contradiction, which presents itself prima facie as a mere point of transition to a new form of production (\u2026) Expropriation now extends from the immediate producers to the small and medium capitalists themselves. Expropriation is the starting-point of the capitalist mode of production, whose goal is to carry it through to completion, and even in the last instance to expropriate all individuals from the means of production (\u2026) Capitalist joint-stock companies as much as cooperative factories should be viewed as transition forms from the capitalist mode of production to the associated one, simply that in the one case the opposition is abolished in a negative way, and in the other in a positive way.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I gave a longer quotation because this is less well-known than the passage in Volume One. It was never considered a \u201cconclusion,\u201d at most a side remark. But the formulas are almost identical on crucial points. We find the same hybrid French-German terminology of \u201cexpropriation,\u201d to which is added \u201cassociation,\u201d one of the classical names of communism in Marx, directly inherited from \u201cutopian socialism,\u201d and the same problematic of the \u201cdialectical reversal\u201d which expresses the overcoming of capitalism as consequence of its own internal contradictions. Above all we find the same idea that the essence of revolutionary change is a conversion of expropriation<\/em> into appropriation<\/em> by the individuals of their own means of existence and their productive capacity, which had been \u201cestranged\u201d from them. However there are two essential differences: first, by invoking the financial mechanisms of banking and credit, Marx goes much further in looking into the very institutions of capitalism for a \u201cprefiguration\u201d of communism forms \u201cwithin the capitalist mode of production\u201d; and second, the strategy of communism appears here as the horizon of a combination or \u201creconciliation\u201d of two heterogeneous<\/em> historical inventions, which could be considered an overcoming of \u201cprivate property,\u201d albeit for opposite reasons: socialization through money<\/em>, and socialization through labour<\/em>, as it were. Summarizing all this, we see that the overcoming of capitalism depends on the emergence of a \u201cforce\u201d that can join the opposites<\/em>: what is furthest from the classless society (the financial institutions), and what comes closest to making it alive in the present (the worker\u2019s cooperatives). This is a variant of the \u201cexpropriation of expropriators\u201d that becomes today very relevant, not only because it forms an alternative to the messianic discourse, but because it finds echoes in current socialist projects. Still, we must concede that the \u201copposite forms\u201d that Marx wanted to unite remain, most of the time, separated terms. The idea of cooperatives (or the analogous idea of the \u201cnew commons\u201d) is very much alive. But the idea of using the financial structures of capitalism in a \u201crevolutionary\u201d way is also popular: when big pension funds started to play a decisive role in the development of hedge funds, <\/em>it was proposed by some socialist theorists to \u201credeem\u201d capitalism through pension funds whose owners would be the workers themselves, or their unions; more recently, we see Post-Marxist analysts of \u201cliquidity\u201d invent strategies for citizens to \u201ctake power\u201d within the financial speculative operations. This is a minor mode with respect to the great revolutionary tradition, but still a way of interpreting the dialectical scheme of transformation invented by Marx.<\/p>\n

Now I am aware that the reader\/listener, hoping a resolution of the dilemmas, leading to the good interpretation<\/em>Marx\u2019s \u00ab\u00a0conclusions\u00a0\u00bb in Capital<\/em>, is very unsatisfied. What to conclude? In my opinion this all means that Capital<\/em> is unfinished in a positive way<\/em>: it is an \u201copen work,\u201d that problematizes<\/em> different theoretical and practical issues. What we observe is that Marx never ceased to bifurcate<\/em> in the interpretation of the \u201ctendencies\u201d of capitalism and the political outcomes that they anticipated. \u00a0These bifurcations are more or less completely explored, but they correspond to real tendencies<\/em>, which are more or less actualized, depending on conditions, countertendencies, and the historical transformations themselves. Today\u2019s capitalism is more than ever subjected to the \u201clogic\u201d of endless accumulation, whose concept was derived by Marx from the critique of political economy. But capitalism\u2019s institutions have considerably changed, particularly because it has been globalized <\/em>and financialized<\/em>, thus radically modifying the mechanism of crises, and even it was able to draw a benefit from socialist experiences<\/em> for its own modernization. This capitalism that in a sense is \u201cpost-historical,\u201d may look unsurpassable and invincible, because it has dissolved the forms and classical representations of the class struggle around which such themes as \u201cexpropriation of expropriators\u201d were build and which served to imagine a revolutionary social transformation. This doesn\u2019t mean that it is stable or peaceful. Rather, it is ultra-violent, involving organically endemic wars, brutal segregations of humans divided into educated and non-educated, sedentary and migrant, efficient and non-adapted, useful and disposable humans, in other terms a generalized \u201cHobbesian\u201d competition among individuals and peoples. For us, the great question is how to define and construct the possible bifurcations, the immanent alternatives in this capitalism. And we are called to do so in the conditions of catastrophes \u2013 <\/em>environmental and sanitary \u2013 of which Marx had no idea, or that he tended to marginalize, which reinforce the eschatological resonances of every \u201crevolutionary\u201d discourse.<\/p>\n

Note<\/h1>\n

This is an abridged version of my paper presented at the International Conference: Marx\u2019s\u00a0Capital\u00a0<\/i>after 150 years: Critique and Alternative to Capitalism, May 24-26, 2017, York University, Toronto, ON Canada (now published in\u00a0Marx’s Capital after 150 Years. Critique and Alternative to Capitalism<\/i>, edited by\u00a0Marcello Musto<\/span><\/a><\/span>,\u00a0<\/i>2019 by Routledge). A previous version of this text was also published in the collective volume (in German): Matthias Greffrath (hsg.),\u00a0Das Kapital: Politische \u00d6konomie im 21. Jahrhundert<\/i>, Verlag Kunstmann Berlin 2017.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By \u00c9tienne Balibar \u201cThe expropriators are expropriated\u201d: This is one of Marx\u2019s most celebrated sentences, which is to be found towards the end of the chapter on \u00ab The Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation \u00bb, Chapter 32 of section 8… Continue Reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1641,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[52428],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts-5-13"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1641"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1341\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}