Mark P. Worrell

The Ghost World of Alienated Desire

When the regime of capital accumulation breaks down periodically, e.g. the current sub-prime mortgage and credit default swap fiascos, the depression of the 1930s, or the disintegration of the late Fordist system during the 1960s and 1970s, analysts tend to cast subsequent meta-responses in terms of negotiated concessions within a system of countervailing forces – capital, labor, and administrative mediation within the legal and regulative framework of the state (e.g. the various moments of the New Deal as a painful ensemble of concessions necessary for the long-term survival of capitalism). The problem with ‘negotiation’ is the underlying assumption of an equitable exchange resulting in systemic equilibrium when the resolution of the ‘labor question’ in the 1930s and 1940s, for example, was in actuality a coordinated, system-wide take-down and tranquilization of labor militancy. The state’s role, in the most basic sense, was, is and forever will be, to regulate the consumption of human time/energy while simultaneously regenerating itself, legitimating, and protecting (by force if necessary) the institutions that guarantee the future production, extraction, transformation, circulation, and accumulation of surplus. Social control, political ritual, jurisprudence, tax collection, work-safety regulations, environmental protection, education policy, war, etc: each figure into the total system of exploitation. Every segment of capitalist society, as a totality, is subsumed either directly or indirectly under the unitary logic of exploited labor power and the production and accumulation of wealth. It is little wonder that Marx describes capitalism, not metaphorically but literally, as a system of vampirism: surplus value, the crystallized remains of abstract human life, siphoned from an emaciated host kept alive but just at, or below, subsistence levels. It is unsurprising that bourgeois economists and industrial relations personnel imagine workers as nothing more than ‘human materials’ or ‘resources’ to be managed. People are not, of course, simply ‘material’, but within the capitalist mode of production the line of demarcation between constant and variable capital is not the dignity of the individual over and against lifeless instruments but the difference between Critical Sociology 35(3) 431–434

Atopia Awaits! A Critical Sociological Analysis of Marx’s Political Imaginary

Marx’s (1844) estranged labor manuscript maps processes that stultify spontaneous human relations under the division of labor in the regime of capital accumulation. For Marx, negating absolutes would put ‘Man’ back on its natural trajectory toward positive freedom. Such evacuation of mediating ‘substances’ results in either frivolity or pragmatic barbarism rather than positive freedom. Marx’s political imaginary rejected philosophical mysticism but overlooked finer points of Hegel’s dialectic that contribute to an immanent critique of Marxist political ideology. Missing from Marx’s thought is the logic of post-capitalist mediation and a trace of the subjective modalities that correspond with the objective forms of alienation. Lacking an adequate psychology, Marx did not see that he had constructed a communism that mirrored the subjective spirit of bourgeois society. We draw upon philosophical, sociological, and psychoanalytic currents to remap the genome of Marxist political philosophy with a Whitmanesque imaginary congenial to free, poetic social mediation.

The Sacred and the Profane in the General Formula for Capital: The Octagonal Structure of the Commodity and Saving Marx’s Sociological Realism from Professional Marxology

“The Sacred and the Profane in the General Formula for Capital” argues that residual materialism and ordinary realism of the kind that plagues children and “savages” has rendered Marxist critiques of the commodity and capitalism not only counterproductive but exposes a secret resentment and perverse will to power. Contemporary Marxism does not, generally, operate from a truly sociological foundation but fantasizes about revolutionary class struggle and one day placing all capital under new management. The methodological objectivity and “stereoscopic” conceptualism arrived at through a dialectical analysis, perhaps best comprehended in the chapters on the dual nature of the commodity in the first volume of Capital, is seldom used by common one-eyed Marxists. Rather, we find over and over and over, that ideological compressions and distortions, not unlike the kind found in dreamwork, are made to stand in for actual critical theory. What is required is a reexamination and reconstruction of the general formula for capital such that the objective gaze that clearly distinguishes between the sacred and the profane, the supraliminal and the infraliminal, are maintained yet superseded. If we aim to march out of the swamp of narrow exchange-value, then we need a disenchanting grasp of the ontic depth of capitalism rather than redoubling confusion with imprecise ideology that does little more than help to solidify the hegemony of an elite class over the rest of humanity.

A Faint Rattling: A Research Note on Marx’s Theory of Value

Harvey makes two notable errors: on the one hand, he misrepresents the structure of Marx’s value concept and, secondly, he misconstrues the specific, synthetic-transformative function of the exchange relation itself (note the phrase ‘passed on’ as if value may have already ‘been there’ and may even persist somehow in a post-exchange ‘afterlife’) such that value is hypostatized. Additionally, as we will see later, Harvey also misplaces the price concept as a social representation of value. The above problems are worth considering, if only briefly, because when we examine the standard interpretations of Marx we find that Harvey is far from alone in spinning this familiar yarn and the consequence of doing so is the difference between ‘social science’ and critical sociology.

Es Kommt Die Nacht: Paul Massing, the Frankfurt School, and the Question of Labor Authoritarianism during World War II

During World War II, Paul Massing, a research assistant at the Institute of Social Research (the famous ‘Frankfurt School’), helped conduct one of the most important research projects in the history of Marxist sociology. Following on the Institute’s earlier work on family and authority dynamics as well as the Weimar proletariat study, the wartime American labor anti-Semitism study resulted in a massive report that was never published. This article introduces Paul Massing, his role in the labor study, and some important findings regarding the effect of union affiliation and other key variables in regard to working-class authoritarianism.

The Social Ontology of Capitalism: An Introduction

This book emerged from the 2015 Symposium for New Directions in Critical Social Theory at Iowa State University, May 11–12. The original idea for the Symposium was proposed at an April 2007 meeting of the Midwest Sociological Society in Chicago and was put into motion the next year as a biennial gathering of a handful of sociologists, Germanists, and philosophers in Ames, Iowa, with the goal of surveying the state of critical social theory in hopes of establishing vectors for future interdisciplinary research. As of June 2016, the Symposium has grown into a larger and more formally structured workshop incorporating several days of sessions devoted to the reinvention of critical social theory and critical sociology. Revised and thematically integrated papers from the 2014 meeting were published in 2016 as Capitalism’s Future: Alienation, Emancipation and Critique, edited by Daniel Krier and Mark P. Worrell, as Volume 85 of the Studies in Critical Social Sciences (Brill). The present volume is dedicated to an exploration of the ontology of capitalist society.

The Social Psychology of Authority

The belief in the inevitability of proletarian revolution came undone in the aftermath of the First World War and set into motion currents of thought and practice that crystallized into what gets identified as “critical theory.” Where orthodoxy held that the workers of the world were destined to overthrow their oppressors, the war dispelled this myth and revealed that nationalism, racism, and charisma trumped progressive social and political movements. The famous Frankfurt School was decisive in mining the various strains of critique from the classical tradition and synthesizing them with elements of contemporary thought, especially from psychoanalysis. One of the most fruitful lines of inquiry centered on the sadomasochistic character and its manifestation in the domains of politics and society. Authoritarianism and the authoritarian personality are still vitally important problems at the heart of the critical theory project. This chapter maps out the development of the theory of authoritarianism, where it succeeded, and where it failed, and points the way for fresh analyses of authoritarianism in the era of imperialism and totalitarianism.

Alienation and ReificationSayersSean, Marx and Alienation: Essays on Hegelian Themes, Palgrave Macmillan: New York, 2011; 195 pp.: ISBN 978 0230276543,

Can sociology use another book on alienation? Considering the centrality and importance of the concept to critical sociology, one can never have too many contributions and Marx and Alienation is an outstanding addition to the field; indeed, it is the best volume I’ve seen in dealing with such a slippery idea in such a concise, clear, and penetrating fashion. In nine chapters (and one appendix) Marx and Alienation explores the concept of alienation itself, the place of alienation in the thought of Hegel and Marx, and timeless sociological themes such as individuality, labor, freedom, and the division of labor. Two chapters also deal with property relations and communism. That so much of substance is covered in so few pages, without feeling compressed, is an impressive feat. Perhaps the best entrée into this book is the universal theme of objectification: humans engage in self-duplication (p. 34) in the domain of creative effort and ultimately humanize the world (pp. 17–25) as they strive, unceasingly, to overcome the contradictions of their own creations (p. 25). Rather than a pessimistic view that insists on the futility of freedom in the modern world, where, at best, people are socialized to want to do what they were going to be forced to do anyway, the emancipatory potential of Hegel’s thought, as it evolved over time in Marx’s writings, is mapped out and provides readers with lines of thought that might lead life beyond for-profit schemes into a world of rational needs satisfaction. We see that, unlike simple animals that take what they can get (p. 36) in their immediate relation to nature (p. 67), humanity, with its being-for-self (p. 68), is engaged in a productive odyssey from the earliest days of hunting and gathering, to agriculture, craft manufacturing, and, beginning in the 18th century, large-scale industry where the tool-using person of previous regimes is transformed into an instrument controlled by machines (pp. 37–9). The contemporary shift in large sectors of western productivity toward ‘symbolic labor’ has confounded the imaginations of many. Sayers effectively neutralizes the errors found in Hardt, Negri, Habermas, and Arendt who cannot think straight on the nature of labor that, apparently, produces nothing concrete. We find, here, and in 562651 CRS0010.1177/0896920514562651Critical Sociology other2014

80.00 (hbk)DahmsHarry F, The Vitality of Critical Theory: Current Perspectives in Social Theory, Vol. 28, Emerald: Bingley, 2011; 352 pp.: ISBN 978 0857247971, £75.95 (hbk)

Brueggemann’s Rich, Free, and Miserable provides a concise and fairly comprehensive examination of the consequences of unregulated markets on the moral life of America. The focus here is not on the poor or working poor and neither is it on the economic and social elite; rather, the focus is on what Brueggemann refers to as the middle classes enjoying a high degree of relative autonomy but who also systematically make poor choices pertaining to individual and collective well-being. I think most hard-bitten Marxists will find Rich, Free, and Miserable unsatisfying to a certain degree. Brueggemann is no radical calling for the overthrow of capitalism; his conception of class is alloyed with petit bourgeois notions of status, and there are a couple of moments when the author comes off like a pipe-smoking Fred MacMurray praising the virtues of church attendance. However, while this may not appeal to orthodoxy I think the book’s thrust is in line with today’s post-ideological students and is actually much more realistic than the standard fare offered up by ideological puritans who demand everything and risk nothing. Both the left and the right are wide of the mark when it comes to contemporary social problems. The right preaches the paradox of market freedoms and demonizes poor character, bad choices, and immorality while the left reduces all problems to the existence of capital at the expense of culture and values (norms). I think Brueggemann is sensible in assuming that capitalism is not going away any time soon, that markets and rationalization are here to stay, and that most unhappy folks would take a satisfying, meaningful, and fairly-compensated job over the nebulous uncertainties of a postcapitalist utopia. It is this pragmatism that drives Rich, Free, and Miserable. It is divided into eight chapters and, after the introduction, assesses the terrain of the debate, offers a good historical mapping of significant changes in US history, and examines the rise of market hegemony where foundational institutions (church, unions, media, education, and state) have become muzzled, outgunned, corporatized, and overgrown without providing for the common interests of the citizenry. The fifth chapter on economic life analyzes the imbalance of production, distribution, and consumption where a now-standard litany of pathologies are marched out: fear of failure, wage stagnation,