Marx & Occupy Wall Street

In light of the Occupy Wall Street movement that has now spread itself from the United States and into Europe, I find it important not to forget a crucial passage from Marx's Preface to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859):

In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or – this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms – with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure.

In studying such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic – in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict existing between the social forces of production and the relations of production. No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society.

Mankind thus inevitably sets itself only such tasks as it is able to solve, since closer examination will always show that the problem itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution are already present or at least in the course of formation. In broad outline, the Asiatic, ancient, feudal and modern bourgeois modes of production may be designated as epochs marking progress in the economic development of society. The bourgeois mode of production is the last antagonistic form of the social process of production – antagonistic not in the sense of individual antagonism but of an antagonism that emanates from the individuals' social conditions of existence – but the productive forces developing within bourgeois society create also the material conditions for a solution of this antagonism. The prehistory of human society accordingly closes with this social formation.

A distinction, here, is crucual -- that is, between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production (i.e. the 2008 financial crisis) and the ideological forms in which we 'become conscious' of this transformation (i.e. Occupy Wall Street). The global financial crisis was, without a doubt, a major transition within the capital relation that helped in the ever-continuing process of consolidating capital. It was the inevitable Correction of the housing market and the logical outcome of neoliberal economic policies (specifically, the repeal of the Glass-Steagel Act). Speculation and betting against bad mortgages -- in short, those perverse and amoral 'activities' of banks like Goldman Sachs and Citi, the activities Occupy Wall Street has gathered to protest -- are not 'new' for capitalism, nor are they remotely 'excessive' or 'corrupt' or anything else. Quite simply, these acts at last 'made real' what has always been the truth of capitalism: that profits are always-after-the-fact. They either will be or have been -- they never are. Yes, investment bankers 'created money out of thin air' by using mathematically complex formulas called derivatives, but in some ways this has always been true. 'One must spend money to make money', as the old saying goes, but 'making money' only occurs when someone else is spending it (in the case of derivatives, when someone else 'makes good' on their debt). If no one is there to fill the expected consumer-role, capital, as Marx says, "turns to fetters."

Occupy Wall Street is the Notion of change, but I'm not yet convinced it has developed into the proper ideological form. This is not to say that the movement is naive or wrong or any other such thing -- rather, it needs to 'catch up' to history. This is not 1968. We cannot storm the financial district and expect them to give up their capital simply because we think it is unjust. If it is a battle of right against right, they will always win because they have the force, the political and financial capital to protect themselves. While this may sound like defeatism, in fact it is the arena of possibility -- we have to beat them at their own game. We don't like capitalism. We don't like Wall Street. I agree with these sentiments. But rather than 'tossing capitalism out', which may work in less developed countries (and even then, not so easily), I think there is a possibility to move through capitalism toward something else -- to become better capitalists than the capitalists, to shift capitalism into a system in which it no longer sees itself. Perhaps, instead of demanding the end of Wall Street, we should be demanding shares. That is, what if every American citizen had shares in every American company? Would this be capitalism? Or would it be the very communism of which Marx deemed inevitable? The difference, here, is not about the means of production itself, but who owns them. Occupy Wall Street is not angry because capitalism failed -- on the contrary, capitalism has done precisely what it does best. Occupy Wall Street is angry, rather, because only 1% of the population controls the means. The trick, I think, is to take control of capitalism. This may sound paradoxical, but I'm convinced it is the only action with a chance of success given the recent material transformations of capital. After all, we cannot decide for our neighbor what color he may paint his wall -- not, unless, we own his house. And so perhaps this is what the movement should seek to become: the new landlords of Wall Street.