{"id":162,"date":"2025-11-30T13:21:50","date_gmt":"2025-11-30T13:21:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/?p=162"},"modified":"2025-11-30T13:21:50","modified_gmt":"2025-11-30T13:21:50","slug":"review-rupturing-the-dialectic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/review-rupturing-the-dialectic\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Rupturing the Dialectic"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A review of a book by Autonomist Marxist Harry Cleaver. While sympathetic to the ideas raised, the book is ultimately unconvincing on a few levels. It appeared as “Struggling Against Work & Capitalism” in Anarcho-Syndicalist Review<\/em> No. 76 (Summer 2019)<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Review: Rupturing the Dialectic<\/em><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

There is nothing worse than seeing a film labelled \u201cinspired by true events\u201d (or a TV series \u201cinspired\u201d by the stories of Philip K. Dick) for you know that any relation to actual events is purely accidental. This does not mean the film will be bad \u2013 indeed, it may be excellent (Blade Runner<\/em> springs to mind as regards Dick adaptations). It just means that when you discover the source of the \u201cinspiration\u201d you realise the film does not reflect it very much, if at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Harry Cleaver<\/a>\u2019s new book, Rupturing the Dialectic: The Struggle Against Work, Money, and Financialization <\/em>(AK Press, 2016<\/a>), is very much like that \u2013 he claims to be inspired by Marx\u2019s Labour Theory of Value but he crafts an analysis very much his own. This, I hasten to add, is no bad thing \u2013 but it gets distracting to see Marx constantly given credit for Cleaver\u2019s analysis. In this, it follows his most famous book, Reading Capital<\/strong> Politically<\/a><\/em> (AK Press, 2015), and like that work, this book inspires the same question \u2013 if Marx had meant all the various ideas and arguments which Cleaver extracts from his words then why did it need Cleaver to write his book to show it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In short, if that was what Marx \u201creally\u201d meant then he would have written all that in the first place and we would not be dependent on someone else to make it explicit. So, for Cleaver, Marx\u2019s analysis is rooted in the imposition of work by capital \u2013 or, at least, attempts by capital to impose said on the proletariat. As a result, he rejects those who suggest Marx was working in the Labour Theory of Value (LTV) tradition of the classical economics (Smith, Ricardo). That Marx took the LTV as involving a commodity having some kind of \u201ccongealed\u201d labour in it rather than the imposition of work is, I think, clear from his writings. This is particularly obvious when considering his comments and examples on the \u201ctransformation\u201d of labour-values into prices contained in volume 3 of Capital<\/em>, but it appears in elsewhere in Capital<\/em> \u2013 particularly volume 1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Simply put, if Cleaver were right then Marx would not have bothered with the so-called \u201ctransformation problem.\u201d It would have been irrelevant to show how labour-values transformed into prices, for the imposition of labour by capital is not reflected in the exchange-value of commodities denominated by labour-time. Ultimately, there is a reason why most Marxists have interpreted Marx as they have \u2013 for if Marx had meant what Cleaver says he did then he would have said so in Capital<\/em>. This does not mean that his analysis is not without merit, just that its barely counts as \u201cMarxist\u201d if, by that word, we mean consistent with Marx\u2019s expressed ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which raises another question, namely the status of Cleaver\u2019s brand of Marxism. Cleaver is America\u2019s most famous Autonomist Marxist, a branch of Marxism which primarily developed within Italian Marxist circles between the 1950s and 1970s (see Steve Wright\u2019s Storming heaven : class composition and struggle in Italian autonomist Marxism<\/em> [Pluto Press, 2017] for a good history and overview). This operaismo<\/em> (workerism) concentrated on the class struggle, a position \u2013 like the name (ouvri\u00e9risme<\/em>) \u2013 raised decades earlier by French syndicalists who saw the worker as an active agent who violates the mechanical laws capitalism by no longer playing the role allotted them by Capital, namely a commodity (see \u00c9mile Pouget\u2019s writings, particularly his classic 1904 pamphlet Direct Action<\/a><\/em>). These Marxists, like the council communists before them, rejected numerous aspects of Marx\u2019s own politics \u2013 not least parliamentarianism. So how far can you move from the postulates of a theory in the face of changing circumstances, new developments, etc. before it becomes something else? If later-day Marxists draw conclusions similar to those Marx attacked when Bakunin advocated them, does \u2013 can? \u2013 it still count as Marxism?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So Cleaver\u2019s \u201cMarxist\u201d perspective reflects many anarchist\/syndicalist ideas, indeed the most important aspect of Autonomist Marxism is the centrality of direct<\/em> class struggle in the workings of the system. This is a welcome change from those who write as if capitalism were simply a machine, independent of human will or influence. Even the best (libertarian) Marxist writers, like Paul Mattick<\/a>, expressed this vision of capital driven by its \u201claws\u201d to collapse with class struggle only playing a role in reaction<\/em> to events it cannot and does not influence. That this is the dominant perspective in almost all Marxist circles is no coincidence given Marx\u2019s writings, even if many pay lip-service to denouncing the \u201cmechanistic\u201d Marxism of the Second International (council communist Anton Pannekoek being a notable exception in actually<\/em> challenging it in his 1934 article \u201cThe theory of the collapse of capitalism\u201d<\/a> [Capital and Class<\/em>, Spring 1977]).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As such, his analysis is to be welcomed and reminds us of the importance of looking at and fighting on the class terrain. However, a key problem with the book is that he is too optimistic \u2013 everything seems to be driven by working class rebellion and so the proletariat seems all powerful. This flies in the face of the serious defeats we have suffered under neo-liberalism for decades. Indeed, reading his account of the defining power of the working class within capitalism makes you wonder what needs to happen before his optimism is dented, before he admits a defeat has occurred.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While a needed counter to the all too common \u201cproletariat as victim\u201d narrative on the left (reinforcing the capitalist narrative of \u201cyou can change nothing, so don\u2019t even think about it\u201d) , it simply goes too far in the opposite direction. It could be counter-productive to real organising as a perspective inspired by this could easily conclude that revolution was always immanent so little was needed to be done (indeed, organising may be counter-productive as it could get in the way, like the bureaucracy of mainstream trade unions do). From my experiences as a worker, union rep and anarchist activist, this is hard to accept. Yes, we resist \u2013 but all too often these days this is atomised, individualistic, below-the-radar because people lack the confidence and structures to take open, collective action. When limited collective action is taken via trade unions, many cross the picket lines (even union members!) and it is unlikely, to say the least, that this is because they are disgusted at the reformist and bureaucratic nature of the current unions\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, Cleaver is right to say the capitalist class is constantly planning to increase its power and profits, but he paints this as being always in response to an ever-rebellious working class. Likewise, there seems to be no room for ignorance, incompetence, idiocy or ideological dead-ends on the part of the ruling class \u2013 nor hubris or delusions. All play their part, just like developments which do<\/em> flow from the workings of the system itself. For example, the Monetarist experiments<\/a> in the early 1980s in Britain and America and the mass unemployment it massively increased undoubtedly helped to tame a rebellious working class, but we should not suggest it went exactly as planned or expected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In short, objective and<\/em> subjective factors<\/a> are at play. Cleaver tends to downplay or ignore the former while concentrating on the latter. This means that he is right to stress that crisis can occur due to working class strength \u2013 that of the 1960s and 1970s which saw social-democratic Keynesianism come off the rails is an obvious example and one which clearly influences his analysis. He is wrong not to suggest that crisis can occur due to working class weakness \u2013 as shown by the 2008 financial crisis and its extremely slow path to \u201crecovery.\u201d But, then, working class weakness seems excluded by definition from his analysis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To conclude, Cleaver\u2019s book is well-worth reading as it emphasises the role of the working class in the workings of the system, even if marred by excessive optimism. He may build upon Marx\u2019s analysis (I\u2019ll leave the Marxists to fight over that<\/a>), but we must remember that it is his own ideas rather than Marx\u2019s which fill the bulk of the book. As an autonomist, he would be better served expressing his autonomy from Marx and being less modest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A review of a book by Autonomist Marxist Harry Cleaver. While sympathetic to the ideas raised, the book is ultimately unconvincing on a few levels. It appeared as “Struggling Against Work & Capitalism” in Anarcho-Syndicalist Review No. 76 (Summer 2019)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,19,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-marxism","category-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":163,"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162\/revisions\/163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}