What in the hell …

I’m working on reading some passages of Agamben, Benjamin, and Marx with and against each other. Here’s my notes thus far, mostly quotes.

bloß

Agamben writes that bare life “is the originary political element.” (HS 88.) Elsewhere Agamben writes that “bare life (…) is, from the perspective of the sovereign, the originary political element” (HS 90), and that “the production of bare life is the originary form of sovereignty” (83.) This change of inflection is indicative of a tension in Agamben’s work as a whole, namely the tension between the coincidence or noncoincidence of the political and sovereignty.

Bare life is political. The production of bare life is political. The production of bare life is what makes a phenomenon a political phenomenon. This is useful in reading Marx. Marx’s first volume of Capital, like all good mystery stories ends with the beginning. The beginning of capitalism is “so-called primitive accumulation,” [CITE] hereafter simply “primitive accumulation.”

Primitive accumulation is what produces the conditions under which sellers of labor power encounter buyers of labor power. This production is accomplished by the violent destruction of other avenues of meeting wants - that is, eliminating the commons via enclosure - followed by a long period of “bloody legislation” in order to eliminate vagabondage and other responses to the end of the commons. The result of this historical process is the “free and rightless proletariat.” [CITE] This process, involving legislation and extra-legislative action, is precisely a process of producing bare life and thus a political process. This means that the foundation of capitalism a political event and the categories of capitalism, rather than objective and economic in a sense removed from the political, are precisely political categories. The “political” in “political economy” must be taken literally.

That this is so means, among other things, that pronouncements of the narrowing of the gap between the political and the economic in recent times (such as those by Hardt and Negri and Jason Read) are inaccurate, for the gap was never present.

Agamben gets the term “bare life” from Walter Benjamin’s “Critique of Violence.” (HS 65.) The term in German is “blosses Leben” (the double “s” is an est-sett). This is rendered in Edmund Jephcott’s English translation of Benjamin’s essay as “mere life.” (Benjamin Selected Writings v1 p250.)

The term “free and rightless,” as in “free and rightlless proletariat,” is “vogelfreie.” Marx’s translator Ben Fowkes gives the following note at the beginning of chapter 28, one of the chapters on primitive accumulation, [INSERT AND CITE NOTE]. The vogelfreie proletariat is a figure of blosses Leben.

But what is meant by blosses Leben? There is an ambiguity between “bare,” as Daniel Heller-Roazen renders Agamben into English, and “mere,” as Jephcott renders Benjamin. Read strongly “bare” signifies life that has been stripped of all qualities but its being alive, as well as a connotation of exposure. “Mere” can be used to imply a stripping of qualities, as well as a connotation of being small, weak, or low in station, but it does not imply exposure.

Not only is the proletariat at its inception bare life - during primitive accumulation - but during its everyday existence: the proletariat is continually exposed to the threat of death, for, without a wage the proletariat is without access to the means of subsistence and thus subject to death. The condition of being proletarian as such is thus biopolitical in the senses which Agamben and Hardt and Negri give the term [CITE - POWER TO MAKE LIVE OR LET DIE]. One strength of Agamben’s perspective here is to counter Schmitt’s assertion [QUOTE, CITE] that letting die is not political, which would mean that the conditions of the proletariat and the processes which produce that condition would not be political. Using Agamben, however, these conditions and processes are political.

Vogelfreie however has a resonance absent from and superior to blosses Lebens. The bird metaphor implies a power despite the condition of being destitute, a power of flight. Fowkes’ translation as ‘free and rightless’ loses this resonance in a way which is common throughout much of marxism, taking the proletariat as primarily an object.

The argument I want to make actually aims against the concept of bare life as such, in its bareness. Bare life is not really bare, for itself. It’s bare life for the sovereign. In the same way, the proletariat is not free of all qualities and differentiations, being simply a bearer of abtract power to work. Rather, the buyers of labor power are indifferent to most of the other determinations of the proletariat and they seek to eliminate many of the determinations they are aware of (such as any involving self-organization against capital).

[BARE LIFE AS LIFE ABSTRACTED AT THE LEVEL OF THOUGHT, AS LIFE FOR SOMEONE INDIFFERENT TO ALL ITS QUALITIES BUT ITS BEING ALIVE, A LA ABSTRACT LABOR BUT *NOT* AS MATERIALLY ABSENT OF DETERMINATIONS, IE LITERALLY BARE OR MERE. THIS A STRENGTH OF “MERE” OF “BARE” AS A TRANSLATION. EXPAND ON ABSTRACTION IN MARX/MARXISM.]

Look up in German:
Marx - “Between equal rights force decides”
remark by Marx (Engles?) on force as an economic power

Benjamin on force (gewalt) as guaranteeing power more than property: property is bound up with power. [Contra Reznick/Wolff/Gibson-Graham *qute, cite*]

“power [Macht], more than the most extravagant gain in property, is what is guaranteed by all lawmaking violence [rechtsetzenden Gewalt].”

“Where frontiers,” Grenzen, in the sense of borders, “are decided, the adversary (…) is accorded rights,” rights which are “in a demonically ambiguous way, “equal” rights (…) the same ambiguity to which Anatole France refers satirically when he says, “Poor and rich are equally forbidden to spend the night under the bridges.” (…) [I]n the beginning all right [Recht] was the prerogative of kings or nobles - in short, of the mighty; and (…) it will remain so as along as it exists. For from the point of view of violence [Gewalt], which alone can guarantee law [Recht], there is no equality but at the most equally great violence.”
(SW 249, Gesammelte Schriften Band II 1, p198)

Marx writes in chapter 31 of Capital, in the section on primitive accumulation:

“The different moments of primitive accumulation (…) depend in part on brute force” and furthermore “they all employ the power of the state”. “Force is the midwife of every old society which is pregnant with a new one. It is itself an economic power.” (C 915-916.) Primitive accumulation’s reliance on force means that the capitalism only begins via the exertion of force, and political force rather than so-called objective forces.

Marx writes in ch10 of Capital, on the working day, “The capitalist maintains his rights as a purchaser when he tries to make the working day as long as possible, (…) and the worker maintains his right as a seller when he wishes to reduce the working day.” This leads to “an antinomy, of right against right, both equally bearing the seal of the law of exchange. Between equal right, force decides.” (C 344.) Thus the length of the working day is established by class conflict.

Agamben:
“Foucault (…) never dwelt on the exemplary places of modern biopolitics: the concentration camp and the structure of the great totalitarian states of the twentieth century.” (HS 4.)

“[T]he production of a biopolitical body is the original activity of sovereign power.” (Original qua originary, in the same sense of primitive accumulation as original or originary accumulation!) “[B]iopolitics is at least as old as the sovereign exception.” (HS 6.) Biopolitics defined as politics which calls life into question (HS page eight), politics where “what is at stake is life” (Agamben quoting Foucault, p7 in Means Without End.)

“Western politics first constitutes itself through an exclusion (which is simultaneously an inclusion) of bare life.” (HS 7.)

“poverty and exclusion are not only economic and social concepts but also eminently political categories.” (MWOE 33)

“The economism and “socialism” that seem to dominate modern politics actually have a political, or, rather, a biopolitical meaning.” (MWOE 33)

“The economically functioning society possesses sufficient means to neutralize nonviolently, in a “peaceful” fashion, those economic competitors who are inferior, unsuccessful, or mere “perturbers.” Concretely speaking, this implies that the competitor will be left to starve if he does not voluntarily accommodate himself.” (COTP 48.) Schmitt’s scare quotes should also be put around “nonviolently” and “voluntarily accommodate.” This is precisely what Marx refers to when he writes of the silent compulsion of the market. [FIND, QUOTE, CITE]

“domination (…) based upon pure economics” is “a terrible deception if, by remaining nonpolitical, it thereby evades political responsibility and visibility.” (COTP 77)

“When the exploited (…) defend themselves (…) they cannot do so by economic means” (COTP 77) for any attempt to escape “from the effects of such “peaceful” methods is considered (…) as extra-economic power” (COTP 78) and “the possessor of economic power would consider every attempt to change its power position by extra-economic means as violence and crime.” (COTP 77) [CHECK THE GERMAN FOR ‘VIOLENCE’ HERE.] Schmitt equivocates, sometimes sounding as if the economic is really nonpolitical, other times as if it’s merely ostensibly - and thus politically, as a politically motivated depoliticalization [CITE AND LOOK UP IN GERMAN] - nonpolitical.

Capitalism arises in and via exceptional circumstances, and maintains itself through and via exceptional circumstances. Historically speaking, capitalism is an instantiation of sovereignty/biopolitics, not vice versa no matter how much the latter today operate via channels which are called the former.

[DEFINE BARE LIFE, LOOK UP QUOTES ON THIS]