Thursday, March 3, 2022

Introducing Marxism and the City In Globalization VI

Class and Class Structure (Continued)

Structured Totalities in Althusserian Overdeterminist Ontology

The conception of class and class structure introduced above alludes to a broader understanding, embodied in Althusser’s conception of ontological overdetermination, that class exists as one process among an infinity of mutually constitutive processes, which, together, define the totality of material existence (i.e. the universe of processes and substances/relationships/practices).  By concentrating on processes, this ontological framework emphasizes the centrality of transformative change to Marxian theory.  It asserts, moreover, that a seamless connection exists between all processes defining material existence.[9]  In this sense, the transformative effects of any process must be manifest as an effect on all other processes, rendering all processes, including class, loci for determination by all other processes.

            Understood in these terms, material existence, as a single structured totality in continuous transformation, is constituted by the processual transformation of all its parts, and such transformations are structured by the positionality of every process relative to every other process as loci for overdetermination.  Such an ontological imagery is holistic, in the sense that it encompasses material existence as a seamless whole, and structuralist, in the sense that the transformation of each process is completely determined by its positionality relative to other processes.[10]  On the other hand, as Althusser’s conception of ontological overdetermination will be understood in this project, the structured totality exists as a piecewise construct of processes, each with its own overdetermined trajectory in which no single process can explain the continuous transformation of the totality.  No process manifests autonomy, relative or otherwise, in relation to other processes contained by the totality.  Such a totality cannot, therefore, approximate an expressive totality of the Hegelian type (Althusser, 1970: 203-204) in which the evolution of the totality manifests the effects of a single, overpowering dynamic, amenable to relatively simple analyses through which the essence of the totality, expressed in all of its parts, can be revealed either by theory or by empirical analysis.  It should be clear, in this manner, that there can be no question of rigid determination of social processes by the economic in the last instance (Althusser, 1970: 111-113).[11]   

More importantly, the irresolvable complexity embodied in the overdetermination of each process ensures that no theory or analysis can produce objectively true accounts on any process.  This assertion of ontological overdetermination necessitates a reconsideration of criteria on the efficacy of theory beyond the criteria of objective validity.  In place of validity criteria, this conception of Marxian theory accepts, as principle, that theory and analysis can only present partial and partisan accounts on material existence.[12]  This understanding of the relationship between structured totality and theoretic processes implies that Althusserian Marxist ontology overlays two fields: the holistic, closed, determinate field of the structured totality, and the partial, open, and contingent field constructed through the theoretic articulation of processes.[13]    

Approaching theory with the greater degree of modesty compelled by this dualistic ontology, Marxian theory advances a standard of efficacy properly labeled performative, in a sense similar to that applied by Callon (2007).  That is to say, as material processes contained by the structured totality, theoretic processes actively shape their objects in reference to the perceived goals embodied in the theorist’s perspective.  Such a position concedes the role of the theorist as agent, participating in the processual transformation of material existence, and acknowledges the role of theory as a constituent process in material existence and, hence, a processual over-determinant of agency. 

            Recognizing this understanding of the performative nature of the Marxian theory of class advanced in this section in relation to the complexity of Althusser’s conception of structured totality, certain implications need to be highlighted.  First, Marxian class theory denies the centrality of the class processes as an essential cause of social reality.  In this sense, notwithstanding its grounding within a holistic and structuralist ontology, the Marxian theory of class is anti-essentialist.  Rather than asserting the ultimate centrality of class processes as an explanation for the importance of this project, the purpose for prioritizing class in a Marxist theory of cities in globalization pertains to the perceived impact such a theorization might have in performing a different reality, closer to the partisan goals of Marxian theory.  Further, in proceeding, my approach to cities in relation to class processes must also recognize the theoretic character of spatiality and spatial forms, like the city, implying that all aspects of this theorization seek to perform a reality, articulating connections between class and non-class processes to produce a complex ensemble of spatial forms defined as the city or, more concretely, the city in the present period of globalization.  As such, neither the city nor globalization can be taken for granted as realities existing prior to theoretic processes, like this one, that seek to define them in order to transform them.  Among the tasks of chapter 2 will, therefore, be defining the city and globalization in relation to this Marxian theory of class.

Comparing the Effects of Alternative Class Concepts in Theorizing Cities[14]

Reflecting a differentiation within Marxian theory, writ large, the approaches to theorization of the city introduced in the previous section generally acknowledge the importance of class but advance divergent conceptions of class, reflecting, in turn, ontological differences in the prioritization of structure and agency.  These differences draw distinctions between the various aforementioned approaches to the city in Marxian theory, but they are most apparent in the approach identifying cities as milieux for the development of urban social movements.

For example, Castells, in his writings of the late 1970s and early 1980s (1977; 1978; 1983), and Katznelson (1981; 1992) prioritize the role of agency in class conflict, examining, in this regard, the importance of agency by class-defined organizations in the development and outcomes of urban social movements.  For both of these theorists, class describes a social grouping, defined in reference to property ownership or income or skill differentiation and at least potentially capable of organizing in defense of common interests.  Class analysis, therefore, concerns examination of the processes through which individuals, unified by common working class characteristics, construct organizations and act in support of class-defined goals, within or outside of commodity production processes in capitalist workplaces.  In this respect, Castells’ work published after The Urban Question seeks to identify working class-based movements contesting the conditions for collective consumption as a component in the reproduction of labor power.  Katznelson’s approach goes farther in attempting to link structural determinants of class identity through four separate levels to class-based agency in urban social movements (1986; 1992).  In both cases, at stake is the linking of structural characteristics and structurally defined “class interests” to personal, individual identification with class and activity on the behalf of class interests.  For his part, Katznelson asserts most strongly, in concurrence with other theorists writing in the Marxian tradition (e.g. Aronowitz, 1992), that the perennial absence of a revolutionary collective agent in the history of Western capitalism suggests that Marxism should assume a more modest position in assessing the revolutionary potential of the industrial working class and, further, its capacity to support the development of class conscious urban social movements.   

The characteristic determinants of individual embodiment within the working class and of working class interests in these approaches prioritizing agency appear to be objective (i.e. class in itself) while identification by individuals with these characteristics, or those of gender, ethnicity, race, nation, or any other categorization, appears to be subjective (i.e. class for itself) and individual self-identification represents an open space to be filled by class or by any other discursive source of self-identification.  The contingent nature of working class self-identification and collective organization on the behalf of working class interests, for these theorists, implies that the capacity of Marxian theory to make useful statements about agency by urban residents is strictly limited.  Castells (1983: 296-300), for his part, goes as far as to conclude that Marxism, interpreted as a body of structuralist theory on the development of the forces of production through which working class movements enjoy no liberty to demonstrate actual agency, has nothing meaningful to say about the development of urban social movements.

            For Harvey, by contrast, urban analyses remain continuously at a more abstract level in which classes, understood as representative of structurally defined roles, follow structural imperatives.  Thus, fractions of the capitalist class pursue the de-valorization of urban infrastructures as a means of reproducing the possibilities for profit through investment in the secondary circuit.  Other fractions of the capitalist class (e.g. landlords) may possess an interest in maintaining the values of older urban infrastructure, but such contradictory individual interests are resolved on the behalf of the larger class interest through the exercise of power by dominant class fractions (e.g. finance capitalists), possibly with the assistance of the state.  In this respect, Harvey does not espouse a need to link structural imperatives to individual identifications because, for purposes of his analyses, structurally defined capitalist class interests drive urban economic processes, irrespective of any conscious identification by individual capitalists of a collective capitalist class interest.  A class analysis of cities, thus, implies the articulation of an account on how capital accumulation, driven by the efforts of the capitalist class, as a whole, to ameliorate falling rates of profit in commodity production, shapes the built environments of cities.  Again, for Harvey, the characteristics of the working and capitalist classes and their respective class interests are objective, but the theorization of an open space for self-identification in reference to class interests is, in itself, irrelevant because structurally defined imperatives, particularly those of capital (i.e. the anthropomorphized embodiment of the capitalist class as a whole), prevail.  Further, in contexts where self-identification of workers with the working class and its collective interests is impeded by alternative self-identifications (i.e. identity politics), Harvey (1996) interprets such alternative self-identifications as ideological, confused, and, ultimately, irrational products of postmodern culture.

            A comparison of these agency oriented and structurally oriented approaches to class and that of the overdeterminist definition of class introduced in this section, again, returns, in part, to the problem of the structure-agency binary in Marxian theory.  In relation to the agency-oriented approaches to urban social movements identified above, my overdeterminist approach shares a rejection of any axiomatic linkage between objective class characteristics (class-in-itself) and subjective recognition/self-identification and organization around class interests (class-for-itself).  My approach, further, recognizes the multiplicity of cross cutting, contradictory sources of self-identification, like class, gender, race, ethnicity, adding to these sources those emanating from contradictory class-positions held simultaneously by particular individuals.  Finally, this project rejects, with the agency theorists, simple determination of human agency by essential macro-level social causes (e.g. simple determination of human agency by technological change).  Among the more structurally oriented accounts to the city, this project accepts the larger implication of Harvey’s analysis that the multiplicity of effects from social processes, including but not excluded to the effects of capital accumulation, constitute structural determinants of the agency of individuals. 

            On the other hand, this project most emphatically rejects conceptions of class as a social grouping, central to the aforementioned accounts on both sides of the agency-structure divide.  It affirms a conception of class positionality relative to the organization of surplus labor.  The reasons for this position are multifold.  First, by identifying class in reference to surplus labor, the range of conflictual relations between holders of class positions expands to encompass conflicts over both labor power compensation/rates of exploitation and surplus labor distribution to secure non-class conditions of existence.  The range of potential groupings defined in relation to shared class positionalities and the potentiality for individuals to occupy multiple, contradictory class positionalities produces an imagery irreducible theoretically to a binary conflict between unitary, aggregate working and capitalist classes. 

By contrast, in defining class as a social grouping, the agency and structurally oriented approaches engage in a constricted, yet polarizing, debate over whether the working class manifests the freedom to act as an intentional collective agent or whether its agency is rigorously determined by economic processes against which any deviations constitute irrational behavior.  The presumptive existence of classes as groups, in general, and of a working class, in particular, with a particular, defined revolutionary role against a capitalist ruling class, thus, completely determines the terms of the debate and its contradictory tensions for theorists, like Katznelson, who seek to maintain the relevance of structural determinants while likewise prioritizing the autonomy of working class agents in urban contexts to act on them.  By denying class this meaning and, consequently, denying an axiomatic revolutionary role to a presumptively existent entity called the working class, my approach means to avoid such an ontological debate by reframing the larger transformative purposes of a Marxian theory of the city around the organization of surplus labor. 

Moreover, by insisting on the epistemological performativity of Marxian class analytic interventions into the city, my approach seeks to reframe the role of theory, per se, relative to what appears to both the agency and structurally oriented theorists.  Both sets of theorists accept a realist epistemological position (Gibson-Graham, 2006A), implying that theories and empirical analyses exist in neutral separation from their objects from which they can advance objective accounts of the reality of their objects.  This identification of the role of theory and analysis, in turn, shapes the ontological approaches embodied by diverse theorists.  For the agency-oriented theorists, Marxian theory represents a tool to elucidate the capacity and/or will of the working class to engage in revolutionary struggle against capitalism in reference to objective historical/empirical evidence.  Beyond its capacity to explain the agency of collective urban working class agents as a class, Marxian theory has no other functional utility.  The centrality accorded to empirical evidence, in this regard, prompts Castells to reject the theoretic insights of Marxism with respect to urban social movements.  By contrast, structurally oriented theorists like Harvey and Jameson represent Marxian theory as an objective body of rationally constructed insights against which the actions of working class agents can be adjudged for irrational nonconformity with structurally determined working class interests.  Such a position shapes the rejection of alternative sources of gender, racial, or locality-based self-identifications by Harvey as instances of ideological postmodernism. 

In contrast to both these realist perspectives on the role of Marxian theory, my approach understands Marxian theory and class analysis, in particular, as active participants in the overdetermination of the realities it theorizes.  In this sense, class analysis neither consists of a set of hypothetical assumptions to be verified against empirical evidence for validation nor does it consist of an a priori body of universal, rationally conceived truths asserting primacy against other merely partial and subjective bodies of social knowledge.  Rather, I understand the position of Marxian theory, together with that of every body of theoretic/analytic knowledge, as intensely practical in shaping the way its object is lived and resolutely partisan in acknowledging its political character in contesting particular other theoretic understandings of its object.  Marxian theory, as a body of knowledge, thus, constitutes itself as a performative argument, oriented toward the elucidation of class and engaged in a political struggle to shape reality by shaping the way its audience understands reality.  By affirming an active and socially engaged role for theory as agency and as structural/processual over-determinant of agency (e.g. the agency of individuals occupying multiple contradictory class and non-class positions), this approach rejects the existence of the irresolvable structure-agency binary shaped by realist epistemological approaches.

Acknowledging, at a relatively high level of abstraction, that the understanding of Marxian theory and class analysis embodied in this project rejects the identification of class as a social grouping, the binary alternatives of structural and agency-oriented theories, and the varieties of epistemological realism accepted broadly by the theorists discussed in the previous section, with the possible exception of Lefebvre, a more concrete assertion of a unique agenda, differentiating this approach from its theoretic predecessors as a Marxist theorization of the city, remains to be advanced in the concluding section of this chapter.    


[9] This assertion of a seamless connectedness between processes conflicts, in part, with Massey’s (2005:40-42) reading of Althusser’s critique of Hegelian totality and, in particular, the capacity to isolate “essential sections” in the Hegelian conception of time (Althusser and Balibar, 2009: 105).  Massey’s purpose is to demonstrate how Althusser’s critique facilitates, to some degree, a politics of space, relative to historical time, by asserting the relative autonomy and historical development of levels within a Marxian totality, implying heterogeneous ontological development of processes across space.  Massey contrasts this with the closed systems of structuralist synchrony and the Hegelian essential cross-section.  In contrast to Massey’s reading, my interpretation of overdetermination precludes both the relative autonomy of structural levels and the ontological openness of the totality while emphasizing, on the other hand, the decentered, irreducibly complex nature of the structured totality.
[10] Following Althusser (1976: 126-131), the intention in labeling theorization of a Marxist structured totality as “structuralist” is not to confer on Marxian theory any claim to analyze the formal trajectory of processes. On the contrary, Marxist ontology presupposes the existence of a totality within which every process exists in contradictory relation to every other process and that Marxism “affirms the primacy of contradiction over the process” (Ibid, 1976: 130).  The complexity implied by overdetermined contradiction makes any pure theoretic structuralism, defined in reference to objective formal analyses of processual relations, impossible.  The critical issue that separates Althusserian Marxism from structuralisms is, thus, the relationship between a holistic ontological background and the necessarily anti-essentialist theoretic argumentation that approaches it.     
[11] In this respect, this project accepts the critique of Althusser’s conception of structure “articulated in dominance” offered by Resnick and Wolff (1987: 93-94) arguing that Althusser failed to definitively break with the economic determinism implied by determination “in the last instance.”  The conception of ontological overdetermination employed in this project conforms more closely to Resnick and Wolff’s revision of Althusserian Marxist ontology to incorporate a more thoroughly anti-essentialist meaning.    
[12] By implication, the epistemological standpoint of Marxist theory is relativist in the sense that theory embodies a particular, overdetermined perspective on its object and engages in struggle against alternative theoretic perspectives in order to effect the reality that it theorizes (Resnick and Wolff, 1987: 33-37).
[13] This assertion of a dualistic ontology constitutes an attempt to come to terms with the particular relationship of overdeterminist ontology and epistemology.  Overdetermination, in this interpretation, precludes the existence of an outside to material existence (i.e. processes existing outside mutually constitutive relations), implying ontological closure/holism.  The irreducible complexity of totality implies, however, that theoretic processes produce constitutive outsides (Laclau, 1997), through which processual overdeterminants elude theoretic integration.  The anti-essentialism of Marxian ontology arises, thus, from its theorization of a totality characterized by overdetermination and its incapacity to achieve closure in theoretic examination of the processual parts of totality.   
[14] This subsection addresses arguments about class and the city also directly addressed by Tajbakhsh (2001), relative to Harvey, Castells, and Katznelson, in a manner that references the overdetermination of the social identity of individuals (2001: 169).  Acknowledging the relevance of this account, I want to emphasize that my approach and, in particular, my prioritization of class as process and, hence, my conclusions are at variance with Tajbakhsh’s position.   

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