Negativity and Revolution by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Book Network Int'l Limited trading as NBN International (NBNi)

All science would be superfluous if the outward appearance of things and the essence of things directly coincided. (Marx 1966: 817)

Nor do essence and appearance coincide directly, or belong to distinct realities. As Marx (1981: 265) put it in an earlier work, the “separation between in-itself and for-itself, the substance of the subject, is abstract mysticism.” In contrast, then, to the traditional acceptance that social theory is either a theory of structures or of social action (Vanberg 1975), the conceptualisation of things amounts to a process of deciphering their essence. But the essence of things can only be human practice in the mode of the object. Better: in the “mode of being denied” (see Gunn 1992). Essence must appear. If it does not, then it is not essence; conversely, appearance must be the appearance of essence or it is nothing. There is only one reality – a reality of disunion, contradiction, fissures and antagonism; and thus a reality where subject and object are inverted in a topsy-turvy way (see Backhaus 2005). The distinction between essence and appearance exists within the things by means of an irreconcilable, antagonistic, restless unity. Disunity subsists against itself in the form of unity. Disunity in the form of unity entails coercion as the condition of unity – a coerced and coercive unity. The bourgeois relations of abstract equality render difference commensurable in the form of an abstract identity where everything is indifferent to its social content as mere variations of exchange relations. Abstract identity is indifferent to human distinctiveness; it is an identity of death (see Adorno 1973). Difference exists in the form of unity; that is, difference is coerced to appear indifferent to itself in the form of value – “the actual mask of death” (Adorno 1975: 60). Disunity in the form of unity entails a social reality that is not reconciled with itself and whose concept is not at peace with itself. For this reality to be conceived conceptually, antagonism has to be a moment of the concept itself – a concept torn by contradiction and in antagonistic battle. It is within the concept, in its internality and immanence, that the non-coincidence of essence and appearance exists in the form of unity. This non-coincidence strains the concept, forcing it to operate against itself.

Essence and appearance thus form an “inner connexion” (Marx 1983: 28) of an antagonistic kind. “Already the simple forms of exchange-value and of money latently contain the opposition between labour and capital” (Marx 1973: 248). Antagonism is, however, not only a relationship of battle; it is also a relationship of mutual dependency, of social unity. Thus, the concept of reality is divided within itself: mutual dependency exists qua antagonism, and unity exists qua disunity. Its content is suppressed in its forms. These deny their substance and yet contain within themselves what they deny, that is, the antagonistic struggle that threatens to force reality apart, beyond itself. And yet the concept is not one of antagonism but of unity. It is as

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