‘The 21^st Century will overturn many of our basic assumptions about economic life’

This opening statement by Jeffery Sachs in his seminal text, Common Wealth (2008), unwittingly reveals far more than he desires. Intending to argue that a number of alterations are required in order to make the global economy sustainable, Sachs symptomatically announces that in order to produce a truly globally sustainable economy, global capitalism cannot continue. The logical consequence of both Sachs’ work and the contradictions of global capitalism are such that anything less than radical political change will produce an environmental and political catastrophe. Either way, our assumptions about economic life will certainly be over-turned but not in the manner that Sachs intends. Amongst the economic ‘assumptions’ that Sachs believes will be evoked in this century are the end of American hegemony, the emergence of new technologies and an end to the notion of competing nation-states as a new era of global co-operation comes to dominate humanity. These changes will come on the back of enlightened reflection as capitalism, once drunk on its own excesses, peers into the mirror Sachs provides and emerges clean and triumphant. Ultimately, however, Sachs’ work is unsympathetic towards the kind of overturning of economic life that would be necessary to respond to his own problematic[1] – which he defines as the challenge of global sustainability; “protecting the environment, stabilising the world’s population, narrowing the gaps between rich and poor, and ending extreme poverty” (ibid.: 3) – he is apparently unwilling to consider his own assumptions about economic life.

Sachs is no marginal figure and his identification of the material deprivations and contradictions which currently plague humanity are the problems of today. Sachs is head of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and director of the United Nations (UN) Millennium Project, which announced the setting of 15 ‘Millennium Development Goals’ to be achieved by 2015 (United Nations, 2000). Amongst these goals are targets to “Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger”, “Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programs and reverse the loss of environmental resources” and “Have achieved by 2020 a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers” (Sachs, 2005b: xvii-xix)[2].

Sachs suggests that progress towards these goals is obstructed by four demands: human pressures on ecosystems and the climate, world population growth, extreme poverty and global problem solving processes (Sachs, 2008: 6). These problems do not exist in isolation. Increases in population and economic growth multiply global economic activity, placing unsustainable pressure upon the environment. Sustained economic growth, both from the Western world and from the developing world – primarily China and India but also Brazil and Russia – combined with continued growth of the world economy has meant that global economic production has risen by eight times between 1950-2008 (ibid.: 19). Given further economic growth and population increases, gross world product is predicted to rise by 6.3 times over the period 2005-2050 (ibid.: 23).

Mainstream economists reduce these pressures to a simple economic equation used to determine environment impact: total population (P), income per person (A) and the environmental impact per dollar of income (T), otherwise known as the level of technology. From this equation, the total impact (I) on the environment can be calculated by the equation I = P x A x T (a high T value signifying a high environment effect) (ibid.: 29). Using this equation, Sachs suggests that as the global population is predicted to rise by 40% and global income to quadruple, the impact on the environment with unchanged technology would be six times that experienced today (ibid.: 29). As a corollary, if the current human impact on the environment is unsustainable, a six fold increase would be ‘devastating’ and lead to certain environmental catastrophe.

The hegemonic Green approach to this problem is to defer to technological developments and assertions of ‘political will’. This promethean discourse holds that improvements in energy and resource efficiency, both in terms of production and consumption, will be sufficient to halt global climate change and mediate against the contradiction between economic growth and environmental degradation. Based on this assumption, one-off increases in resource efficiency produce the change required to hold off environmental collapse. Efficiency increases, however, only ever take the edge off increases in overall economic output. Sachs himself illustrates this point in regards to electricity efficiency, stating that given global economic output is predicted to rise six fold in the years to 2050, even a doubling of efficiency would lead to a tripling of electricity use (Sachs, 2008: 98).

The reliance upon technology discounts what is known as ‘Jevons paradox’. First suggested by William Stanley Jevons in relation to coal consumption in Great Britain (Jevons, 1866), the paradox suggests that increases in efficiency tend to produce an increase in the demand for the resource: as the resource becomes cheaper, consumption tends to rise. As a consequence, technological advancements do not tend to reduce environmental impact because gains in efficiency are mitigated by increases in consumption (Foster, 2000: 4). Economist John Bellamy Foster suggests improvements in automobile efficiency as an example of Jevons paradox in action. Increases in efficiency in the automobile industry in the United States in the 1970s did not reduce the amount of fuel consumed as the number of vehicles on the road doubled as driving became more affordable (ibid.: 5).

Certainly this ‘law’ only holds according to the logic of neoclassical economics; it needs to be viewed critically and does not uniformly apply. In particular, government-mandated efficiency standards tend to increase costs, thus not increasing demand and consumption, although impacting upon private profitability. Nevertheless, technology is not a total solution: it cannot be assumed that technological developments will prevent entirely mediate expansions in economic activity. Technology may expand the range of resources available but cannot do so infinitely. Moreover, technological innovation does not automatically reduce resource consumption.

Perhaps the over-riding point is that capitalism is not an efficient system for the use of resources, as it is assumed to be by its ideologues. Capitalism is not based on production to service human ‘needs’ but, rather, continuous accumulation and growth – the drive of capital is profit for the sake only of profit itself. As such, the central environmental concern in regards to capitalism should not be technology and efficiency but a reduction in the general level of production and consumption.

Conversely, because capitalism is constituted by its own self-revolution and growth, any reduction in economic output sends capital into crisis, further restricting the ‘trickle down’ to those beyond the development ladder. Thus, while the Green demand for reducing the scale of economic activity is a step in the right direction – Western levels of consumption must be reduced in order to halt global environmental collapse and allow the masses to come out of poverty – this move would be disastrous for the hungry populations of the world within the limitations imposed by capitalism. Despite the locally based poverty reduction efforts of trans-governmental agencies such as the United Nations and the World Bank, genuine resolution of poverty can only be achieved within the capitalist ‘development ladder’. That is, for the world’s poorest citizens to bring their standard of living out of extreme poverty, the wealthiest would have had to experience equally large, or larger, economic growth. For this reason, demands from Green discourse and in particular the ‘Affluenza’ movement (see Galbraith, 1958; Hamilton, 2003) to reduce levels of consumption – such as ‘buy nothing day’ – are ill-conceived.

Peter Singer (2009), in his text The Life You Can Save, holds to a similar position, this time by reference to poverty rather than environmental conditions. Arguing that those who consume ‘unnecessarily’ are morally obligated to reduce this consumption and give to the absolute poor, Singer argues that a drastic reduction in consumption is necessary for the wealthy to be considering to be living ‘Good’ lives. What Singer forecloses, and we will have cause to return to the politics of this position later in this chapter and its consequences for the psyche in Chapter Four, is that a reduction in Western consumption necessarily leads to a fall in economic growth that will make the circumstances of the poorest worse off. That is, within the capitalist matrix, these reductions can only lead to further hardship for the poor.

Such a reading of the operation of the ‘market’ appears to be a decidedly neo-liberal or conservative position: that the burden of the Global West is to continue consuming in order for jobs and wealth to trickle down to the poorest inhabits of the Earth. This is certainly not the moral position that will be advocated in this thesis. Instead, we have cause to agree with Singer’s basic contention that for wealthy subjects to consume at current rates whilst so many suffer in abject poverty is morally questionable. The difference lies in the politics of such a position. Whilst Singer, and others of a charitable bent, argue that poverty can be vastly reduced by voluntary redistributions of wealth, in this thesis I shall argue that the disavowal of the political dimension of this position signals the impossibility of enacting widespread change within global capitalism. The ultimate consequence of a reduction of Western demand for consumer items is the fall in the production of these items in the Third World, a decrease which results in unemployment and further suffering for the hungry masses.

Here lies the fundamental material contradiction of capitalism. The environmental capacity of the Earth apparently cannot support the scale of development required to induce a substantial reduction in poverty, even with a significant increase in technological efficiency. Indeed, even without any efforts to reduce poverty, economic growth in the global West is unsustainable. In this regard, the 2008 World Wildlife Fund ‘Living Planet’ report suggests in 2005 the global ecological footprint (the biological capacity required for the material reproduction of society) was 30% higher than supply; the United States footprint-per-capita was four times that of that global supply. Likewise, ‘clean, green’ New Zealand’s footprint was approximately three times that which is currently sustainable, suggesting that if all the citizens of the world lived like New Zealanders – a nation apparently in immediate need of economic growth – another two planets would be required (WWF, 2008: 14-15). Clearly, these ecological footprints are not sustainable, nor can they be allowed to expand. Increasingly open battles for resources are being witnessed on a global scale and ultimately, in the competition for scarce resources, it is the rich and powerful who will win (see Klare, 2001).

This process is compounded by the exponential growth of the world’s population. The 2009 United Nations Population Report (2009b) predicts the world’s population will increase 37% to 9.2 billion by 2050, 85% of which will reside in regions currently classified as ‘less developed’. At the same time, 86% of the global population is predicted to live in these areas. These population pressures invoke the ghost of Thomas Malthus, once banished by the hope of technology. Malthus argued that population pressures on resources were the primary cause of hunger, with various ‘positive checks’ alleviating the pressure. Writing in 1798, his motive here was political; the defence of private property in the face of the French revolution and the enthusiasm for utopian projects that resonated at the time (Ross, 1998: 8). Malthus considered social welfare to be pointless as the increased demand for food would only expand the misery of the poor. Indeed, Eric Ross (ibid.: 22) quotes Malthus as stating:

a man who is born into a world already possessed, if he cannot get subsistence from his parents on whom he has just demand, and if the society do not want his labour, has no claim of right to the smallest portion of food, and, in fact, has no business to be where he is.

 Malthus considered poverty to be a natural occurrence, created because population growth was higher than food production; gains in productivity would be eroded by population growth. What Malthus did not consider, however, was increases in technological efficiency which produced more food per head of population, and restrictions on population growth primarily through improvements in contraception[3].

For many, this debate was decided by the progress made by the Green Revolution in the 1970s, in which the use of technology raised food productivity above that demanded by population growth. Yet, as the possibility of the total exploitation of global resources becomes a possibility and global population rates continue to increase, now is not a time to forget Malthus’ warning, although we may do well to reject his conservative politics. Indeed, these politics – once dismissed by the light of modernism – may also return in the case of quasi-apocalyptic collapse. Perhaps we do not have to go that far. As surplus populations develop in less fortunate areas of the world and the wealthiest nations increasingly look to obtain resources from lands other than their own – China’s purchasing of large plots of land in Africa in order to grow crops for domestic purposes is an example (Smith, 2009) – population pressure upon resources appears to be the most apparent source of misery.

It is this surplus population that is the ultimate rejoinder to the likes of Sachs. If the carrying capacity of the planet provides an external limitation to the progress of capital, then these excessive populations suggest an imminent contradiction, one that shall be at the heart of the argumentation in this thesis. It is this population, a surplus of labour, to which we now turn.

 Surplus Labour

For Marx, exploitation occurs because of the structural relationship between capital and labour, embodied in the wage-labour system. This structure can only operate under the conditions of an excessive over-supply of workers. That is, capitalism operates as a system of private property where the vast majority are not able to own the means of production and thus, without these means – without the ability and resources to materially reproduce their own conditions of living – are forced to sell their labour power[4] (Wood, 2004: 246). Indeed, the worker generally benefits more from employment than the capitalist – within capitalism, the only thing worse than being exploited is not being exploited (Robinson in Munck, 2000: 142). Where the worker risks starvation, and ultimately death, the capitalist is set to lose only a small amount of profit and can easily replace the worker (Wood, 2004: 135-136). Thus, in order for the capitalist wage-labour system to operate, an excess of workers must exist such that the threat of losing one’s job remains; without the existence of a minimum wage, wages prices are driven down by the excess of willing workers.

Liberal political discourse tends to conceive of the extreme poverty of these excess workers as being caused by their non-inclusion within capitalism. Sachs, for example, particularly in his previous work (2005a), is expressly concerned with the plight of the most materially deprived but does not consider this population to be part of global capitalism. In line with the strictly analytic philosophical logic which informs his work, Sachs argues that because wealthy Western nations have followed a market logic, the same logic will apply to all nations. Poverty is not caused by capitalism but, rather, by exclusion from capitalism. That capitalism could be responsible for both corpulent wealth and miserable poverty is not a conclusion available to Sachs, who misreads Marxism[5] to the extent that the idea of such a ‘reading’ appears far-fetched[6].

That, however, is the exactly the conclusion taken here. Following the brief Marxist analysis suggested above, poverty is considered to be intimately related to market relations. The labouring – or unwanted labouring – populations of the world are not strictly excluded from capitalism. Rather, they constitute the wage-labour system. Nonetheless, this necessary positioning cannot be acknowledged within the ideology of justice that informs the Western world: an ideology that suggests that one’s fate depends on personal effort rather than circumstance. A recognition that Western wealth is openly constituted upon the exploitation, suffering and horrifically slow and regular death of those whose labour is considered to be surplus, is too traumatic a conclusion to be reached for the delicate, if cynical, sensibilities of the post-enlightenment subject. Surplus labour thus speaks to a sense of exclusion that we shall consider to be best understood by a psychoanalytic discourse and, in particular, the Lacanian term ‘extimacy’, and Žižek’s conception of universality.

Surplus labour is thus the principle symptomatic contradiction of global capitalism. This contradiction has been kept at bay through various ideological displacements which either seek to position absolute global poverty as a contingent aberration caused by faulty application of market principles, or a local error produced by corrupt individuals or lazy governance. Mediated by charitable endeavours, the contradiction between wealth and poverty within our increasingly ‘globalised’ society has been kept from the developed mind by geographical distance.

Globally the working class has been subject to a large geographical shift, whereby 80% of what could be regarded as the Marxist Proletariat now exists outside of Western nations (Davis, 2006: 13). Western multi-nationals have moved their production operations to countries whose labour force had previously been regarded as outside of the global economy, relocating in search of reduced costs, lower wages, and more relaxed labour laws. This move has produced an ideological split within capitalism. If much has been made of the move to a different stage of capitalism, from an industrial to a post-industrial society characterised by branding, consumerism and finance capital, the working class has not disappeared – it has merely been placed outside of the hegemonic Western gaze.

It is also worth considering the current capitalist dynamic that is creating a ‘Third world’ underclass within developed western countries, particularly nations that have installed neo-liberal economic policies[7]. Such a dynamic has been explored in detail in developing countries. Here, the economies of Brazil, China and India are developing rapidly but this development is subject to substantial income inequality (Guanghua, 2008; Heshmatic, 2007). While this inequality was already stark, particularly in Brazil and India, differences are becoming more noticeable as the benefits of development accrue to only a portion of the population.

Predominately framed in terms of ‘human-rights’ violations or a failure of welfare systems and development assistance, such stark national inequality has generally been the source of both disdain and pity in the West. However, the same trend of increasing inequality can also be observed in many of the wealthiest nations. The United States is perhaps the strongest such example. Here poverty, particularly if measured in terms of health and education standards rather than consumed calories, is reaching Third World levels (see Burd-Sharps, Lewis, & Borges Martins, 2008).

The outsourcing of the working class, along with other reforms, has generated large pockets of surplus labour located in urban slums within the developing world. This development has occurred following what might be termed the second expansion of capitalism – the first being the colonisation achieved by European empires – occurred via the ‘soft’ colonisation of the Bretton Woods institutions, the IMF and the World Bank. Although established soon after the Second World War, these institutions only turned their interest to the Third world in the mid-late 1970s[8]. During this time, World Bank ‘urban lending’ increased from US$10 million in 1972 to US$2 billion in 1988 (Davis, 2006: 70). The results of these Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) have been mixed in the extreme. Some regions have experienced remarkable economic growth which has brought millions out of poverty. At the same time, however, even within these high-growth nations, inequality and suffering has become more extreme. India, for example, one of the shining lights of the SAPs, achieved 6% growth throughout the 1990s, yet the poor are experiencing arguably the worst conditions since independence, with 56 million new paupers on the streets during this time (ibid.: 171)[9].

Contrary to Sachs’ contention that it is only when agricultural surpluses are high that urban populations develop (2008:26), these urban slums are, in the terms of American urban theorist, Mike Davis, a “surplus-humanity”, built not from economic opportunity but, rather, a lack of it. The most edifying image of this excess humanity is the ‘City of the Dead’, the slum dwellers who have made their home within the tombs of Cairo. This surplus population, what Manual Castells has labelled the ‘Fourth world’ (2000: 68), has developed with the mass urbanisation of the poor. Unlike previous urbanisations, this form has been decoupled from industrialisation. Instead, in a condition in which the US Central Intelligence Agency (2002) reports that a full third of the world’s workforce was unemployed in the 1990s, a massive informal economy has developed that does not create jobs but, rather, subdivides existing opportunities (Davis, 2006: 199).

The nexus of these developments is the political dilemmas provided by illegal immigration. The central geographical centres of the Western world – Europe, North America and Australasia – are increasingly beset by difficulties associated with illegal immigration. Europe has inadvertently encouraged migration as the creation of the European Union, and in particular the admission of poorer Eastern European states, has allowed for the free movement of labour across the continent. Moreover, the development of massive urban slums along the North-Western coast line of Africa has made (illegal) immigration into Southern Europe an increasingly appealing prospect.

North America, too, faces a longstanding battle to define who has the rights to citizenship as illegal immigrants attempt to enter the ‘land of the free’ from Central America and the Caribbean. These ‘aliens’ have become an established sector of the American population, blending in with a healthy legal immigrant population. Indeed, alien labour forms the backdrop of the United States economy as it supplies domestic labour at Third World rates, allowing the US agricultural industry[10] to compete globally. Alien labour also proliferates through the low-skilled service industry.

Australasia, particularly Australia but also New Zealand[11], is beginning to experience its own issues with illegal migration. Australia, certainly since the Second World War, has benefited from large immigrant populations from the Mediterranean and Europe. Increasingly, however, immigrants have attempted to illegally enter Australia from South-Eastern Asia, in particular from Indonesia. Making the treacherous open ocean journey, these ‘boat people’ have created consideration political consternation in Australia as they were first tragically turned away, and then with a change of government, ushered to off-shore islands for ‘processing’ that has been of a troublingly totalitarian variety.

With the dilemmas of illegal immigration, as the Third World comes to the West, the contradictions of capitalism and surplus labour become more apparent. Add to this the cultural anxiety which comes with the obdurate presence of the Other and illegal immigration becomes the hotspot for the disavowed foundations of capitalism – surplus labour – to meet their maker. How this might occur will be the focus of the latter sections of the thesis. For now, however, it is enough to establish that capitalism requires a surplus of labour which is, however, excluded both socially and economically. This analysis suggests that material deprivation is not an innocent consequence of the capitalist empire but an intrinsic characteristic of that empire.

At this point in our introductory treatise, I have established the problem to which this thesis is directed, that of the unsustainability of the global economy and the existence of a materially subjugated surplus of labour. Moreover, I have established two limitations upon the capacity of capital to respond to this problematic. The scale of economic activity as determined by population and economic growth is causing unsustainable pressure upon the environment and produces an external limit to the expansion of capital. In terms of poverty, capital requires an excess of partially excluded labour in order to function efficiently. As such, under the reign of global capitalism, the living standards of the poorest residents of the planet cannot be meaningfully increased because of both environmental restrictions and the nature of the wage-labour system – ergo, poverty and climate change cannot be solved within capitalism. To this end surplus labour, and the economic growth which is the central cause of environmental degradation, are constitutive elements of capitalism. For this reason, any attempt to seriously respond to the challenge of global sustainability must begin to think beyond the horizon of capital. This may not be a utopian society but it does require a utopian demand for change.

Liberal capitalism is unable to conceive of either sense of utopia. Instead, pragmatic and incremental solutions to problems which are beyond partial measures are in vogue. Emblematic here is Singer’s position towards to charity: if you have money to spend on things that you do not strictly require and this money can help others in need, then you are morally obligated to do so. Such solutions may have a positive effect upon the lives of many, as would the development of infrastructure and educational capabilities in the poorer regions of the world. Undoubtedly, for the global economy to operate sustainably within the limitations of the planet, new forms of technology are required if large portions of humanity are going to rise out of the most extreme poverty. Furthermore, if change is to occur, then a radically different attitude to the right to consume and globally equality is required, as Singer advocates. We should not stop recycling because it is not the ultimate cure, although we would do well to understand the ideological side effects of this behaviour[12]. Moreover, reductions in population growth are perhaps the most straight-forward solution to this problematic. Ultimately, however, what is foreclosed by these pragmatic approaches is a consideration of the interconnectedness of politics and economy. As Eagleton suggests in this vein, today it is “hard nosed pragmatists who are the dewy-eyed dreamers, not the wild-haired leftists. They are really just sentimentalists of the status quo” (Eagleton, 2003: 180).

Nonetheless, when it comes to building a just society, change will be material, patient and pragmatic: there is no utopian wand that can renew the world in a week. The problem is not with the solutions, it is with the horizon under which they have arisen, a horizon which means these solutions cannot effect changes of the scale required. It is feasible, for instance, that malaria could be wiped out in developing nations, saving millions of lives. The tragedy, however, is that we are unlikely to be able to support these lives. The ultimate inconvenient truth is that malaria, AIDS and similar plagues upon humanity actually help to manage the global scale of the economy. Ending these diseases would only add to the already bulging surplus of humanity currently suffering on this earth. In facing up to these glum truths about the limitations of the capitalist form of political economy, it is apparent that if we are to continue to have a sense of ourselves as ‘good’ animals, then a move beyond capital is necessary[13].

Politics and the Political

In this thesis, I shall argue that what is required today is a return to history through a fundamental questioning of the horizon of global capitalism and a consideration of the political foundations of politics. This call does not arise abstractly but, rather, from the circumstances in which we find ourselves. It is largely because our current conceptions of the material contradictions facing humanity are inadequate that we simply have no way of responding adequately to the challenges of the global economy within the horizon set by that economy. It is this very impossibility of action which urges us to imagine a new world. This thesis resolves itself to consider the circumstances under which a new world might not only be imagined but that might come into being through a rehabilitation of the disavowed political dimension of global capitalism – that is, surplus labour.

The task of this thesis is not to take issue with the science of global sustainability, nor to construct more feasible policy responses. This is not a ‘How to improve the world one day at a time’ style guide. Instead, our task is to examine how, or rather what, it means to respond to the question of global sustainability under the reign of 21^st century capitalism. My response begins with a number of assumptions. The first is that problems associated with the creation of a genuinely just and reproducible global economy are real and worth responding to. Secondly, as established above, there is no possible solution within capitalism. Instead, the problems to which we respond, in particular environmental degradation and poverty, are constitutive of capitalism. On the other hand, if our response must be other than capitalism, the Left is bereft of ideas: Margaret Thatcher was right, there is no alternative. We cannot innocently reoccupy an old-style essentialism that once characterised Leftist radicalism, nor rely on either the administrative approach that characterises Leftist politics today, as typified by the now out of fashion ‘Third way’.

This thesis will bring back the proper dimension of political economy but not in the sense of any alternative empirical proposal. As such, in rejecting the pragmatism of the likes of Sachs and Singer, we have converted a practical and material problem into a theoretical one. The exigencies of natural science are replaced by the troubles of Western Marxism. What we need now is not a rush to activity, frantically attempting to save the hand that holds us down but, rather, a fundamental reconsideration of our horizon and the opportunities for radical action within it. This thesis seeks to identify a new way of thinking about these problems through a turn to theory. We do not use theory here in a sense divorced from materiality but, rather like Marx, as a political force in itself (Eagleton, 1997: 49). This diagnosis, in turn, will generate the possibilities of different responses quite opposed to those suggested by Sachs, Singer and other such thinkers. It is, in a sense, the return of the repressed of capitalism; the return of political economy.

Returning to Marxism

Today, a restoration of the dimension of history is required to de-naturalise capitalism and its political supplement, liberal democracy. Despite the increasingly apparent material contractions of global capitalism, as well as the breakdown of scarcity through the digitalisation of intellectual private property and the destabilising of existing forms of political authority, the political Left remains impotent. At best, it offers a softening of the injustices of capitalism. If ‘What is to be done?’ was the proto-typical Leftist question, at least for those able to bear the presence of Lenin (see Žižek, 2002b), today those who cannot bear such a presence appear to be reduced to asking ‘How can we help?’

The 20^th century witnessed, first, the theoretical defeat of Marxism, as capitalism continued to flourish, and then its political fall as many actually-existing socialist movements collapsed at the end of the century. This defeat saw the development of a hegemonic movement that focused on culture and language, rather than the economy, seeking at first to expand Marxism’s explanatory appeal but ending up with the dismissal of the idea of emancipation entirely.

In its normative idiom, Marxism expresses a concern for the dispossessed and wretched of this earth. Moreover, it provides a critical explanation of the cause of this suffering beyond mere aberration, meta-physical theism, or personal failings. For this reason, in responding to the plight of those whose labour power is structurally excluded and to the need for an environmentally sustainable form of economy, it is to Marxist discourse that I turn. Marxism, however, as a political cause well divorced from Marx himself[14], has largely been defeated as a political movement. Moreover, Marxist thought has been threatened and over-run by an ontology which suggests that language – the system of signifiers – mediates our access to ‘reality’. Indeed, this reality comes to be constituted in language itself such that the status of the ‘referent’ outside of language becomes a point of debate.

Beyond mere academic quibbling, this move has had overwhelming consequences for Marxism and politics in regards to the social conditions of the dispossessed. If language is differentially referential – it is not tied to an anchor which would fix meaning in some transcendental sense – then the range of possible explanations of our social world change. No longer can we rely upon descriptions of political performance which depend upon essentialist or deterministic readings of causality, at least in the same innocent sense in which they were once deployed. If the determinism evident in the historical materialist conception of the predestined progress of the mode of production is no longer valid, it has been unclear what would take its place both in regards to the description of the economy and the prescription of what would follow (including both the mode of transition from capitalism and the form of society to follow).

Moreover, as global capitalism spread, becoming the unremarked upon background of all social life, totalising expressions became unnecessary as capital filled the (disavowed) place of meta-physical determinism. In a world in which the catch-cry of rebellious youth remains ‘whatever’, the only essentialism required is the assumed solidity of that which appears to exist. For those who cannot find certainty in this ignorance, it is religion rather than political essentialism that often provides the necessary suture. Moreover, if morality is not held absolutely, then the door to relativity is ominously held open. Without a transcendental signifier that provided the basis for normativity, there has appeared to be little reason for anything other than an nihilistic ethics of contingency or a position of administrative accommodation. Western Marxism has became a search for an alternative foundation or a reading of foundationalism that took into account the ontological primacy of the signifier[15]. With this turn, however, came postmodernity and an eventual celebration of the very ethical contingency the cultural rethinking of Marxism had sought to avoid.

The problem of Marxism, as Australian social theorist Matthew Sharpe (2004: 11) suggests, involves an interaction between a prescriptive and descriptive element. Western Marxism, apropos critical theory, has been largely formulated as an attempt to understand both the continuation and expansion of global capitalism and the failure of states that had been orientated by reference to Marxism. In this sense, Western Marxism turned to culture and readings of culture that were being inspired by the turn to language within social theory. In doing so, however, Sharpe suggests that the Critical-Western reading of Marxism has devolved into ‘total critique’ by which Marxism has come to understand capitalism in such a way that any possibility for action is dismissed (ibid.: 12). As part of this process, the political, and prescriptive element of Marxism has been largely abandoned. Without a political home to return to, ‘Marxism after the signifier’ has become decidedly impotent, offering little more than a continual critique of capitalism with only an assumed sense of ethics and politics. If Marxism opposes capitalism on behalf of the worker, without the transcendental anchor provided by historical materialism, both the ethical basis upon which it does so and the political formation which would serve its demands, are unclear.

In response to the disappointments of Marxism the Left has been split – in terms of academia, of politics and ideology – between either the quest for a non-political economy which relies upon administrated devices which are assumed to be neutral (Sachs being the primary embodiment of this position) or a withdrawal from the field of the productive economy altogether, as has been characterised by theoretical concerns with postmodernity. At best, this latter form of political thought remains within the realm of politics as is the case in some of the more critical forms of late modernity. At worst, the withdrawal from the economy leads only to an uncritical form of cultural studies that refuses to come to any evaluative stance on matters of political economy, least it be accused of being universalist in its aspirations. Postmodernity may display a sense of ethics but it is far divorced from the feeble demands of the hungry. It is as if, without Marxism, politics and economy can no longer be held together at the same time; as if there exists an impossible element whose absent presence prevents a fusion[16].

If the Left is to begin to respond to the task of reacting to the contradictions of the global economy then it must begin to return to the question of economy and Marxism. It cannot return innocently, however. Past alternative essentialist attempts to grasp the ‘Truth’ that were based around a utopian fantasy – communist, socialist, and fascist – have resulted in deplorable exclusionary violence in the name of political purity; a violence arguably worse than that experienced today in global capitalism.

Nonetheless, as Žižek has come to argue, the disavowal of violence is part of the rejection of radical politics itself (Žižek, 2008b). We are no longer willing to get our hands dirty he suggests, refusing to acknowledge that political change itself is a form of violence. Emblematic of this failure is the sanitised protests of the ‘Red Shirts’ in Thailand during 2010. Protesting outside the office of the Prime Minister, the Red Shirts organised themselves to ‘donate’ blood in medical tents before tipping this blood on the steps of the building (Powell, 2010). Such an act was supposed to symbolise the protestors willingness to spill their own blood but inadvertently represents our apparently shared unwillingness to engage in political violence today. Whether the spontaneous spilling of blood would have been beneficial to their particular cause is a moot point – their protest instead stands as an example of political practice today.

As a reaction to the failure of Marxism, the Left has become dominated by a re-reading of Marxism which has sought both to avoid these excesses and restore its explanatory insights in light of the persistence of capitalism. It is in this context that the turn to culture and eventually the question of language has occurred. This integration of Marxism and continental philosophy has led to some interesting theoretical reflections but also to a poverty of politics. Most particularly, it has changed our understanding of what it means to do politics. The move has turned upon a philosophical reflection upon the ‘politics of the political’(see Daly, 2009) rather than any direct intervention on the streets. This loss has come through a turn to culture, rather than the economy, as an explanatory force. Ultimately, it has led to the primacy of the signifier and the postmodern turn. What began as an innocent attempt to rethink Marxism and ended up with the politics of Warhol has meant that both the essentialism of the Marxist class narrative, along with its offer of emancipation, have come to be no longer viable. Lessons were learned but the focus on the particularity of cultural expression is embarrassingly inappropriate in an era of the ‘Star Wars’ defence system, mass famine, and apparent allure of Rodeo drive.

The wilting of the Marxist influence has left capitalism as the only viable form, and interpretation, of political economy. As a consequence of critique of the essentialist leanings of traditional Marxism, the Left has withdrawn from the economic altogether as if the only way one could conceive of economic analysis was through an essentialist lens. Moreover, without the political essentialism that characterised the Marxist project, the idea of Left emancipatory politics has become homeless. Those who still cling to such a mode of analysis ideal appear as either sad veterans unable to keep up with the times or idealistic lunatics.

Although not articulated in these terms, a number of theorists have attempted, against the grain of postmodern plurality, to reconsider the prospects of universality and Truth in relation to Marxism after the turn to language. The most seminal of these attempts stems from Ernesto Laclau, initially in conjunction with Chantal Mouffe. In their breakthrough text Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (1985), Laclau and Mouffe attempt to re-read Marxism and socialism ‘beyond the positivity of the social’ and the turn to language. Here all links to essentialism are dropped – except the primacy of language – as Marxism becomes little more than an interpretative tradition. Nonetheless, by returning to the question of universality in response to the particularism of cultural identity politics, Laclau and Mouffe’s work remains a decisive theoretical event.

This new, post-Marxist, horizon has come at a cost, however, as the materialist politics of class struggle were dropped in favour of the contingency of hegemony and the battle to hold the empty place of the democratic signifier. Whilst Laclau and Mouffe’s work proved to be a significant advance over previous forms of Marxism because of their restoration of the concept of universality[17], it also banished both the question of materialism and class struggle in favour of contingency and democracy. Whilst the title of the text suggested a revival of socialism, it was democracy that held the transcendental position for Laclau and Mouffe[18].

This thesis builds on the same question as that which troubled Laclau and Mouffe: the prospects for Marxism after the turn to language. In a sense[19], this thesis attempts to rework Laclau and Mouffe’s project in light of the material contradictions of capitalism. Here, in responding to the economic problematic mapped out thus far, the thesis has cause to diverge from Laclau and Mouffe’s project in a number of important respects.

First, it turns to psychoanalysis as an explanatory device, arguing that Laclau’s discourse theory does not adequately explain the fixity of language. By reference to psychoanalysis – embodying the discursive turn as being an effect of symbolic castration rather than of differential contingency – and, in particular, the categories of jouissance and the Real, we are better positioned to understand the appeal of capitalism and character of the difficulties associated with bringing about a fatal disruption to its operation. Moreover, I seek to return to the matter of political economy and the question of class struggle. This turn is entirely situated by the positioning of the thesis as a response to contradictions in the global economy; in order to contend with these issues, we must consider the nature of exploitation and the structure of the economy.

The return to materialism and to class struggle in Marxism is informed by Žižek’s reading of psychoanalysis, rather than Laclau. This response – as will evolve from my construction of Žižek’s work throughout the project – is not prescriptive but, rather, challenges our conception of the liberal politics that might be considered to be an adequate response to the challenge of global sustainability. What is required is a restoration of the critical and emancipatory edge of Marxist theory, along with a rethinking of the notion of universality. It is psychoanalysis which has been able to get closest to achieving this task, particularly when psychoanalysis is viewed through a Žižekian lens.

Adopting Žižek’s work in critique of global capitalism and the discourse of the Millennium Goals has not been a straightforward decision. Žižek embodies many of the difficulties associated with both Marxism and postmodernity. That said, salient in this regard is his avoidance of the positivism associated with the likes of Sachs, and his refusal to implicitly accept the horizon provided by capitalism and liberal democracy is highly productive for my purposes. Instead, at a time in which humanity is plagued by horrific problems to which capitalism has but limited responses, Žižek asks that we risk a withdrawal from activity into a theoretical rethinking of our horizon. In this sense, his work appears to fit in the same category as those readings of Western Marxism which have sought to reengage the descriptive dimension of Marxism without reference to a prescriptive politics. Indeed, this is the central critique of Žižek’s work – that he produces a reading of capitalism and politics which, although intriguing, leads to a political deadlock and ultimate conservatism (Robinson & Tormey, 2005: 102).

Whilst this criticism has a certain validity – Žižek offers nothing like a restored sense of normativity or party politics that would revive the saliency of Marxist politics – his work rethinks the entirely of what it means to practice Marxist politics in the 21^st Century. Not only does Žižek’s reject both past Leftist essentialist positions and the contemporary ethics of contingency associated with the likes of Derrida and Laclau but he refuses to posit any substantive alternative. Although his critics argue that Žižek is thereby not far divorced from conservativism – acknowledging the irretractability of the symptoms of capital with positing any alternative – Žižek comes to argue that the shape of his (radical) politics is an historically appropriate response to the deadlock that characterises global capitalism. 

In taking this position, Žižek’s commitment to Lacanian theory defines his politics. Psychoanalysis, first through Freud and then Lacan, has been a major influence in the turn to culture and language which has redefined Marxism and the Left. In doing so, it has come to represent the difficulties with this turn; whilst the Lacanian interpretation of Marxism has reinvented the meaning of epistemological validity within that field, no further sense of politics has developed.

In an associated manner psychoanalytic discussion has been animated by discussion around the collective ethics and/or politics (Bellamy, 1993, Daly, 1999, Glynos, 2001b, Homer, 1996, Robinson and Tormey, 2005, 2006, Stavrakakis, 1999, 2007, Zupančič, 2000). Whilst these discussions have led to several philosophical advances in politics, or what British political theorist Glyn Daly (2009) calls the ‘politics of the political’, no stable political frontier has emerged. Moreover, Žižek’s Lacanian reading of the political rejects any possibility of advancing a Lacanian ideal of shared social life; such an ideal stands in contradistinction to Lacan’s own work on ethics.

Instead, what Žižek’s work offers – through a combination of Lacan, Marx, and German Idealism – is a critical consideration of the political within 21^st century capitalism. Nonetheless, Žižek’s work does not lend itself to a singular approach. Instead it produces a number of strategic alternatives. It does so in relation to a singular conception of ontology based around the operation of the Lacanian Real. It is these alternatives that are the ultimate subject of this thesis, as I come to consider the possibility of a radical Leftist response to the contradictions of the global economy from within Žižek’s work.

Yet, although there are no readily apparent substantive modes of political that stem from Žižek’s work, this does not mean his work is impotent or conservative. Instead, through a strategic approach which seeks to unveil the disavowed foundations of global capitalism – most notably surplus labour – and hold this point in tension with the ideology which excludes it, Žižek’s approach suggests a possible approach to disrupting the progress of capitalism. This disruption is not merely critical or negative, although it does not seek to produce an alternative horizon for shared social life. Instead, by reference to the inherent impossibilities within global capitalism itself, the question of a utopian imaginary – in particular around what Žižek’s calls the ‘communist hypothesis’ – is rejuvenated. The utopia of the communist hypothesis is not a fantasmatic utopia but, rather, the utopian urge that occurs when we are forced to reimagine a new way of being, as has been suggested by literary theorist, Fredric Jameson (2005, 2009). That is, if capitalism is unable to integrate surplus labour within its horizon, nor reduce the scale of economic activity, our response should not be to formally construct new modes of being but, rather, to insist on the embodied presence of this impossibility in order to force open space for a reinvention of shared social life.

The question of this thesis, therefore, can be represented as being; ‘After the turn to language, in what way can Marxist theory respond to the material deprivations and contradictions which are symptomatic of global capitalism?’ In responding to this question, I shall primarily consider the work of Žižek as a post-Marxist, discussing the role of psychoanalysis in the political through an understanding of Lacanian ethics and its translation in political practice. Psychoanalysis shall be analysed as a form of politics, giving consideration to the possibilities of Leftist political practice in the 21^st century.

Ultimately, this thesis presents Žižek’s work as a response to the contradictions of global capitalism. In response to the pragmatism of the likes of Sachs, of Laclau’s post-Marxism, and of critics who have argued that Žižek’s unwillingness or inability to reimagine shared social life outside of capitalism makes his work conservative, I argue that Žižek provides a particularly effective form of politics at this point in history. These politics are formed by a dialectical strategic approach which insists upon the intrusion of the disavowed foundations of global capitalism, as well as a utopian energy for change embodied by the communist hypothesis. This reading of Žižek’s work may not satisfy his critics but it may just provide the most hope for the future and the hungry of this world.

The Shape of Things to Come

This task begins with a reconsideration of the losses and gains in Marxism ‘after the signifier’. In Chapter Two I argue that the move which began with a consideration of culture as a supplement to the determinism of Marx’s conception of the economy has ended with a brand of postmodernity which has lost its critical and emancipatory drive. The critique of essentialism and the universality of the grand narrative has been necessary but has robbed Marxism of its ability to respond to the contradictions of the global economy. Conversely, towards the end of the 20^th century, new thinking emerged around the prospect of an anti-foundationalist politics which was not reduced to the particular. Most prominently, Ernesto Laclau (in initial association with Chantal Mouffe) produced a re-reading of Marxism through the lens of discourse theory. Laclau’s post-Marxism has become a hegemonic point of analysis, in particular around his conception of radical democracy. Yet, whilst Laclau has been able to productively respond to the problem of Marxist essentialism after the turn to language, this has come at the cost of materialism and of class struggle as the kernel of the economy.

In Chapter Three, I will consider how these elements might be restored through a discussion of the foundations of Lacanian psychoanalysis; the dialectics of lack and excess in terms of the Real and jouissance. The purpose of this chapter is to consider the manner in which Lacanian psychoanalysis has produced a response to the turn to language and the challenge of postmodernity. It ends with a discussion of the confluence between psychoanalysis and Marxism in the homology Lacan identified between surplus-jouissance and surplus-value. Such a homology reveals how Lacanian theory constructs the inadequacies of the traditional Marxist approach to politics yet is unable to produce a politics of its own.

Following the overt rejection of Marxist essentialism, in Chapter Four I examine psychoanalytic approaches to politics. This exploration begins with a critique of psychoanalysis and ethics, from Freud’s Civilisation and its Discontents through to the changes in Lacan’s conception of an ethical approach. Through this journey, which includes a discussion of Slovenian philosopher Alenka Zupančič’s re-reading of the Kantian categorical imperative, I come to suggest that psychoanalytic ethics falls prey to many of the dilemmas of the practice of postmodern political practice, offering little hope for the hungry and in apparent contradiction with the positivist vision of Marxist communism.

Like Marxism, however, psychoanalysis cannot simply be dismissed. In Chapter Five I further examine the possibilities of psychoanalytic practice through a discussion of the relationship between (psychoanalytic) ethics and politics. This chapter moves through the work of Greek political theorist Yannis Stavrakakis on radical democracy, rejecting it on the basis that it is not only a mis-reading of Lacanian theory but also over-privileges democracy and ethics. Ultimately psychoanalytic politics in this form does not provide a cogent response to capitalism because it does not consider the shape of the economy itself.

This is the task set in Chapter Six. Here, I posit that capitalism operates as a form of meta-hegemony, determining in advance the political battles against which Laclau’s notion of hegemony is set. Because of this dominance, any possible political activity within the horizon of capitalism can only reproduce that horizon. For this reason, a political response to the contradictions of global capitalism should not posit an alternative mode of production but instead reveal the impossibilities within the current mode. Through a discussion of the ‘impossibility of class struggle’, and the alternatives posited by both Yahya Madra and Ceren Özselcuk, and Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, I come to suggest that it is the extimate presence of surplus labour which holds the key to disrupting capitalism and producing undetermined political spaces.

In Chapter Seven I consider the various political positions that have emerged through Žižek’s work. These are presented not in terms of chronological development but, rather, as a number of strategic positions each of which has the potential to destabilise existing ideological formations. Critically considering each of these strategies in terms of their capacities to offer a response to the challenge of surplus labour – including ‘the act’, ‘subtractive politics’ and the ‘practice of concrete universality’ – I suggest that it is the practice of concrete universality which proves the most fertile. This strategy – as part of Žižek’s re-reading of universality – is best able to identify and mobilise the disavowed foundation around which global capitalism is founded. Most notably, it is able to restore the dimension of the political and class struggle.

The practice of concrete universality, however, remains a negative position, one that is limited to critique. Chapter Eight expands upon such a strategy by reference to Žižek’s recent reference to Alain Badiou’s notion of a ‘communist hypothesis’(see Badiou, 2008) , along with the utopian demand inherent in this reference. Proceeding through Jameson’s reading of utopia, Žižek’s notion of the communist hypothesis, combined with the practice of concrete universality in class struggle, appears the most productive in the face of the dominance of capitalism. Most importantly it appears to be a feasible and industrious response to the pressing contradictions of the global economy. The question remains, however, of the shape of the future and the relationship between Marxism and political approaches which take reference from the negative ontology which stems from the turn to language.

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[1] This thesis does not go into detail in regards to the structure of a capitalist economy that would be considered sustainable – its purpose is to reveal the unsustainability of capital.

[2] Unsurprisingly, little progress has been made towards these goals (see United Nations, 2009a)

[3] We can note that Malthus work – and much of that of his time – does not fit under the normative impulse that constitutes this thesis; that we should be concerned with the plight of the hungry.

[4] As British literary theorist Terry Eagleton (2003: 42) reminds us, the pre-Marxist conception of the proletariat was those who were too poor to own property so served the state by way of producing children to add to the labour force; the proletariat are “those who have nothing to give but their bodies”. 

[5]To quote Sachs; ‘Note that the focus on technological improvements is starkly different from the failed Marxist notion that the rich are rich because they successfully exploit the poor. If the rich get rich only because the poor get exploited, then world income would be roughly constant, and all of the economic action would be about the distribution of a given level of economic output. That, indeed, is what Marx had in mind” (2008: 206).

[6] Indeed, Sachs appears entirely reluctant to evoke Marx’s name. He describes Charles Dickens and Friedrich Engels as having best represented the harshness of the first century of industrialisation (Sachs, 2008: 4).

[7] Neo-liberalism has often become the target of otherwise anti-capitalist critique. Certainly, other, more socially democratic forms of capitalism, may domestically mediate more effectively against some of the more damaging elements of capitalism. In terms of global issues, however, such as poverty or climate change, there is little difference between modalities of capitalism.

[8] At the same time, the ‘Green Revolution’ brought technological advances to the third world. Whilst this was ideologically conceived as a means of creating more food, the ultimate result was the creation of a global food system, situating food as a global commodity and securing a food supply for the United States (Ross, 1998:139).

[9] Moreover, the ultimate effects of what the IMF called ‘the great recession’ upon these developing nations are still to be processed

[10] Substantive government subsidies also supplement the supply of cheap labour.

[11] New Zealand, in particular in its largest city of Auckland, has the biggest Polynesian population in the world. This population developed from government policy in the 1950s which strongly encouraged the importation of cheap Pacific Island labour to supplement New Zealand’s almost fully employed workforce. When the economy started to struggle, however, their labour was no longer in supply and a larger underclass began to develop. This underclass remains today although Polynesian culture is well integrated within mainstream urban society.

[12] We might, for example, conceive recycling as the ultimate capitalist fantasty, an attempt to reintegrate its own remainder.

[13] What remains unclear is the kind of mode of production which would not reproduce these difficulties. We shall respond to this omission throughout the thesis.

[14]This is not to suggest that there is a ‘pure’ Marx that we might be able to return to.

[15] As we shall expand upon in the following chapter, the relationship between Marxism and normativity is a difficult one. Whilst Marx held to a deterministic sense of history which assured a communist future, he regarded morality to be little more than an element of the ruling ideology. Nonetheless, subsequent applications of Marxism have held to a more morally absolute interpretation of communism.

[16] As we shall see later, Žižek labels this impossibility ‘class struggle’.

[17] Laclau and Mouffe read the universal not as an a priori essentialism but, rather, an empty placeholder to be held by any number of competing particular elements in the battle for hegemony. The universal is thus necessary but impossible. This debate shall be taken in significant detail in Chapter Two.

[18] As we shall consider in Chapter Four, Laclau himself has diverged from radical democracy in his most recent work, in favour of populism.

[19] Although with a severe sense of humility in regards to the differing scale of the projects.