Public Sphere and Experience by Alexander Kluge Oskar Negt & Alexander Kluge

Author:Alexander Kluge,Oskar Negt & Alexander Kluge
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Random House LLC (Publisher Services)

Chapter 4

The Individual Commodity and Collections of Commodities in the Consciousness Industry

In analyzing the media cartel,1 it is important to examine how the internal structure of a commodity is changed by the fact that it appears in a specific and coherent accumulation, which constitutes a new use-value and a new body of commodities. At the beginning of Capital, Marx speaks of the commodity as an elementary form: “The wealth of societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails appears as ‘an immense collection of commodities,’ the individual commodity appears as its elementary form.”2 This definition of the relationship between the individual commodity and the total range of commodities presupposes the existence of an anarchic form of agglomeration. In some cases, such as the media cartel, it is scarcely possible today to speak of such elementary forms as one speaks in empirical epistemology of elementary sense perceptions. Although the total range of commodities does not have the form of a unified whole, in which the elementary forms are related to one another by structural laws, the individual purchaser of a commodity is nevertheless no longer confronted by this commodity in isolation or by an accumulation of individual commodities. Rather, he is party to a complex of services and commodities structured according to the interests of profit. The simplest of these forms, which can still be understood as “an immense collection of commodities” but in no sense follows an anarchic principle, is the department store (as a real body of commodities, which confronts a customer who believes that he is buying individual commodities). As a result, perceiving a commodity always gives rise to an association with the totality of commodities, so that the whole department store is potentially a commodity that imposes itself upon the purchaser.

A process of transformation is evident here, which, acting behind the illusion that an exchange society still exists, is effectively preparing the transition to a society based on compulsory exchange. This type of society corresponds to the stage of the commodity form described above.

The most extreme exertions of capital are necessary in mediating between the advancing production interests and the needs of those working in the production apparatus who have no possibilities for self-determination. People are unable to develop a will of their own, but neither can the valorization interest assert itself against their will. This stalemate is currently the basic form of conflict between the masses and capital. For this reason, when subjects choose among individual commodities, it is consistently interpreted as a sign of activity on their part. Department stores that operate with a so-called mixed calculation provide proof of this fact. These stores offer individual goods at extremely low prices; at the same time, they price other items (often the majority) the same as or higher than those offered by competitors or small retailers. In this way the maxim to “sell a lot at high prices” can be realized without the purchaser being able to counter it with his interest to “buy a lot at low prices.

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