Papers by Bob Cannon
Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, 2001
On the one hand, critical theory refers to a particular tradition that runs from the German ideal... more On the one hand, critical theory refers to a particular tradition that runs from the German idealist tradition of Kant, Fichte and Hegel through Marx and Lukács to the Frankfurt School of Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, Habermas and Honneth. On the other hand, critical ...
Contemporary Sociology, Nov 1, 2002
Rethinking the Normative Content of Critical Theory, 2001
In an article on Max Horkheimer entitled ‘Critical Theory and Political Economy’, Moishe Postone ... more In an article on Max Horkheimer entitled ‘Critical Theory and Political Economy’, Moishe Postone and Barbara Brick argue that: In Marx’s mature theory, the notion that labor constitutes the social world and is the source of all wealth refers to capitalist or modern society alone, and not to society in general. Moreover, his analysis does not refer to labor as it is generally and transhistorically conceived: a goal directed social activity that mediates between humans and nature, transforming material in a determinate manner. Rather Marx analyzes a peculiar role that labor purportedly plays in capitalist society alone: it mediates a new form of social interdependence… that is abstract, quasi-objective, and historically dynamic. In other words, labor in capitalism constitutes a historically specific form of social mediation that is the ultimate social ground of the basic features of modernity. (Postone and Brick 1993, pp. 247–8)
Rethinking the Normative Content of Critical Theory, 2001
Marx, Morality and Exploitation The tension between Marx's historical critique of political econo... more Marx, Morality and Exploitation The tension between Marx's historical critique of political economy and his transhistorical critique of capitalism reaches its apotheosis in his theory of exploitation. This manifests itself in the contradiction between an exchange-based and a production-based version of property rights. Looked at from the (historical) standpoint of exchange, workers receive a value equal to the value of the commodity they sell to capital. Looked at from the (transhistorical) standpoint of production, workers are paid less than the value they produce for capital. Consequently, while capitalism appears just from the standpoint of exchange, it appears unjust from the standpoint of production. At the heart of Marx's theory of exploitation lies his labour theory of value. As we have seen, Marx is concerned both to retain Ricardo's theory of value and reformulate it in accordance with production for exchange. This requires him to steer a perilous path between a transhistorical account of labour that is vulnerable to his critique of political economy and an historical one that threatens to dissolve labour into capital. In order to square that particular circle Marx offers a variety of overlapping formulations concerning the relationship between labour and value. These range from the transhistorical materialism of Ricardo to the historical hegemony of exchange-value found in Say. Natural versus social property rights Marx's decision to base his critique of capitalism on a labour theory of value was undoubtedly influenced by the work of Ricardian 67
Rethinking the Normative Content of Critical Theory, 2001
In this chapter I focus on Marx’s claim that labour’s lack of a social identity in production acc... more In this chapter I focus on Marx’s claim that labour’s lack of a social identity in production accounts for its expression in exchange as a (social) relationship between things (commodities). In section (i) I argue that labour does possess a social identity in production — the social identity of capital. I make this claim on the basis of Marx’s own account of the ‘real subsumption of labour’ beneath capital. It follows that labour cannot be the source, substance and subject of value in exchange and an alternative explanation for the sociality of exchange is called for. In section (ii) I argue that Marx is unable to sustain his characterization of use-value as a mere bearer of sociality. On the contrary, Marx concedes that use-values are socialized in exchange independently of the labour they putatively objectify. Thus, there is no need to ground the sociality of exchange in self-objectifying labour, as exchange is a social process in its own right. In section (iii) I explore an alternative account of exchange, which seeks neither to reduce it to the subjectivity of labour (a la Marx) nor to the subjectivity of consumers (a la neoclassical economics), but rather views exchange as an inter-subjective process dirempted into the ‘objectivity’ of the system, on the one hand, and the ‘subjectivity’ of its agents, on the other. This dialectical account of exchange can be found in Georg Simmel’s writings on money.
Rethinking the Normative Content of Critical Theory, 2001
Habermas’s writings comprise an important attempt to retrieve the normative content of self-const... more Habermas’s writings comprise an important attempt to retrieve the normative content of self-constitution buried beneath Marx’s notion of self-objectifying subjectivity. Unfortunately, the move from a subject-centred to an intersubjective account of self-constitution leaves labour behind. This, however, creates a tension in Habermas’s account of modernity between the democratic principles of ‘discourse ethics’ and the ‘non-normative’ structures that steer the economy. In this chapter I want to explore this tension in relation to Habermas’s instrumental analysis of labour, beginning with his ‘redemptive critique of Marxism’.1
From his earliest writings Axel Honneth has sought to widen and deepen the normative ground of cr... more From his earliest writings Axel Honneth has sought to widen and deepen the normative ground of critical theory in order to extend the remit of intersubjectivity to labour. Honneth thus rejects Habermas’s abandonment of labour to the ‘non-normative’ system in favour of reformulating workers’ struggles in normative terms. Nevertheless, Honneth’s alternative to Habermas’ communicative paradigm is restricted to the latter’s culturally bound account of moral agency. Thus in his work on ‘struggles for recognition’ Honneth largely concedes the diremption of ‘morality’ from ‘materiality’ to the detriment of the latter’s emancipatory potential. Honneth then compensates for the lack of substance that results from this bifurcated account of modernity by grounding his own version of ‘undamaged intersubjectivity’ in an underlying ‘philosophical anthropology’. To this extent, Honneth, like Marx and Habermas before him, grounds critical theory, not in the struggles of participants to redeem the no...
Capital is subtitled a critique of political economy – but Marx fails to complete this task. Inst... more Capital is subtitled a critique of political economy – but Marx fails to complete this task. Instead, he combines a radical critique of political economy - grounded in value’s capacity to valorize itself - with a scientific critique of capital(ism) - grounded in labour’s capacity to produce value, borrowed primarily from Ricardo. As such, Capital is a hybrid work - characterized by tensions, inconsistencies and contradictions, which straddles two incompatible theories of value. Although Marx details the ‘real subsumption’ of labour to capital, its success would undermine a labour theory of value. Consequently, with occasional exceptions, Marx renders labour ontologically impervious to its absorption by capital – to the point of grounding value-production in ‘isolated workers’. This safeguards the integrity of labour’s value-producing powers to the detriment of a capital-theoretic critique of political economy. Equipped with a labour theory of value, Marx repudiates a moral in favour...
Rethinking the Normative Content of Critical Theory, 2001
Without doubt Honneth’s attempt to reconnect morality and labour through the notion of struggles ... more Without doubt Honneth’s attempt to reconnect morality and labour through the notion of struggles for recognition represents a major advance over Habermas’s consensus-driven model of communicative action. Nevertheless, by restricting morality to the ‘cultural’ sphere Honneth endorses Habermas’s uncoupling of the economy from the normative content of modernity. Thus, while Honneth is to be congratulated for replacing Marx’s subject-centred account of labour with an intersubjective account, he fails to acknowledge sufficiently the ‘moral’ content of workers’ ‘material’ struggles. To rectify this I propose to view workers’ struggles as attempts to retrieve the intersubjective domain lost beneath the system’s diremption of ‘ethical life’.
Constructing Marxist Ethics, 2015
Critical Sociology, 2014
This article defends the normative legitimacy of modernity from postmodern attempts to implicate ... more This article defends the normative legitimacy of modernity from postmodern attempts to implicate modernity in oppressive social practices; Zygmunt Bauman’s Holocaust writings are an extreme example of such attempts. To discredit modernity Bauman renders the Holocaust a rational enterprise analogous to a modern factory system, dispassionately perpetrated by banal bureaucrats, such as Eichmann. Following Bauman, the identification of the Holocaust with modern mass production has become a standard trope of mainstream sociology, culminating in its identification with McDonald’s. However, this obscures the sadistic brutality of the Holocaust, the ideological zeal of perpetrators and the counter-modern norms that drove it. Although Bauman is widely considered a progressive thinker, his Holocaust writings bear the stamp of Heidegger’s regressive critique of modernity. A theory of counter-modernity not only provides a more accurate account of the Holocaust; it also restores the legitimacy of modern norms upon which a progressive critique of genocide rests.
Historical Materialism, 2005
Postone rejects the traditional view that self-constitution is a transhistorical capacity of 'con... more Postone rejects the traditional view that self-constitution is a transhistorical capacity of 'concrete labour', in favour of viewing self-constitution as an attribute of a historically specific modality of 'abstract labour'. To this extent, Postone can be said to belong to the Rubin school, after the writings of the Russian Marxist Isaak Illich Rubin, for whom abstract labour is the source, substance and subject of valorisation under capitalism. Granted the problems that attend a transhistorical account of self-constitution, it is not however clear that Postone's historicist alternative resolves them. On the contrary, his account raises as many questions as it answers. For example, if, as Postone argues, capitalism comprises a unified system, in which the parts take their social and historical identity from the role they play in reproducing the whole, 10 why assume, then, that capitalism contracts out the valorisation process to one of its parts (abstract labour)? Why privilege a part
Capital & Class, 2003
Full bibliographic details must be given when referring to, or quoting from full items including ... more Full bibliographic details must be given when referring to, or quoting from full items including the author's name, the title of the work, publication details where relevant (place, publisher, date), pagination, and for theses or dissertations the awarding institution, the degree type awarded, and the date of the award.
Rethinking the Normative Content of Critical Theory, 2001
According to Charles Taylor (1989), the opposition between humanity’s self-determining capacities... more According to Charles Taylor (1989), the opposition between humanity’s self-determining capacities and nature’s deterministic laws characterizes modernity from the outset. An early and seminal formulation of this opposition can be found in Rene Descartes’ differentiation of res cogitans (thinking substance) from res extensia (extended substance). Having thus divided the world into ‘immaterial thoughts’ and ‘unthinking matter’ Descartes is concerned to account for how the former can obtain ‘objective’ knowledge of the latter. However, while Descartes’ cogito ergo sum provides the template for subsequent attempts to achieve self-certain knowledge, he is unable to bridge the gap between ‘thought’ and ‘being’ except by recourse to a benign divinity (Descartes 1968, p. 158).
Conference Presentations by Bob Cannon
Conference Paper, 2024
In this paper, I argue that Marx's critique of capitalism is vulnerable to his critique of 'bourg... more In this paper, I argue that Marx's critique of capitalism is vulnerable to his critique of 'bourgeois' political economy: not least, because it presumes a naturalistic conception of productiveness-centred on labour-taken from political economy. In contrast, Marx's critique of the latter presumes a historically variable social conception of productiveness, which condemns political economy for naturalizing the productiveness of capital Marx could have avoided this inconsistency by acknowledging the historically specific social reality of capital's productiveness and grounding his critique of it in a historically specific social(ist) alternative. Instead, he resorts to a naturalistic conception of labour's productive powers, which falsifies capital's self-valorizing ones. As such, Marx's mature economic writings contain two incompatible theories of value. On the one hand, a labour theory of value (LTV) grounded in labour's material and transhistorical productiveness, which forms the basis for his critique of capitalism and, on the other, a capital theory of value (CTV) grounded in capital's historically specific social productiveness, which forms the basis for his critique of political economy. I shall begin with the latter, less well-known of the two. Marx's (social and historical) critique of political economy In the Grundrisse, Marx critiques political economy for presenting production '… as encased in eternal natural laws independent of history, at which opportunity bourgeois relations are then quietly smuggled in as the inviolable natural laws on which society in the abstract is founded' (Marx 1973: 87). Above all, he critiques his economic predecessors for equating capital with produced means of production-to the point of treating early-human hunting-tools as capital (Marx 1976: 291). In opposition to which, he
Uploads
Papers by Bob Cannon
Conference Presentations by Bob Cannon