Jacques Bidet

Université de Paris-X, Nanterre

Explanation and reconstruction of Marx’s Capital

For an Alterglobalisation

Conference “Marxism on the Worldstage”, Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst, November 2003

(text revised by Cornelius Crowley, but not to be published)

  I cannot make much of the “meta /structural” theory really understood in such a short time [1]. So I shall merely try to give an exoteric (and rather popular) introduction to it, in the hope of making you want to consider it. The theory is in keeping both with the Spinozist demands of materialism and with a post-Hegelian requirement of dialectics. Yet it is not immediately motivated by a philosophical concern, but by the obvious necessity for a reconstruction of the social theory underlying Marx’s Capital. So this paper is also a call for collaboration on a building site.

Meta /structural theory aims to provide a new foundation for the concepts of “modernity”,  of “class” and “multitude”, of  “structure” and “system”, of “nation-state”, of “world-system” and “world-state”, of  “capitalism” and “communism”, of “neoliberalism” and “globalisation”, and, more generally, to throw a new light on the relations between economics and law in the modern epoch. It stands as a candidate offering an alternative to other general schemes, such those proposed by J. Habermas or T. Negri. It learnt lessons from the teachings of contemporary masters such as Derrida, Bourdieu or Foucault, against all sorts of liberalism or contractualism.

A first survey

Meta/structural theory, which is an attempt to re-found Marxism on a larger frame, can be summarised by way of  three logical moments. See the attached Table: “Class structure in modern society”.

Metastructure (or presupposed structure) is what modern society presupposes: its official, public discourse. Modern society declares itself to be free and equal (based on the agreement between individuals in a “State of Law” (from the French expression “Etat de droit”), and also to be rational (bound to account for social efficiency and general welfare).

Structure is, in some sense, the “real” world.  As Marx puts it, modern society is not made only of individuals: it is based on class relations. But class relations, in modern times, as Marx showed, can only be understood,  from the standpoint of the metastructure, as the latter’s “reversal”: dominated and exploited persons are supposed and declared to be free, equal and rational.

The meta /structure is thus the dialectical relation between structure and metastructure. It implies a third term. A society based on this type of social structure presents specific historical tendencies, which form the moving context of agency. The agency (e.g. politics), in modern times, must precisely be understood in terms of this dialectical relation between structure and metastructure, within a nexus of  constantly overdetermined and changing conjunctures. Politics is (at least in a first, abstract approach) a confrontation between classes, class struggle. But this confrontation always refers to the metastructure and constantly transforms the metastructure [2]. This meta /structural scheme aims to provide an understanding  and explanation of the shifts, changes, dynamics and the contradictions in modern society.

The Marxian unipolar understanding of modernity

Marx is the inventor of such a scheme, of which he gives a powerful and coherent, but partial and unilateral account. The Marxian development of this scheme can be seen on the left part of the attached table. The right part represents the necessary complement, required, in my view, for an adequate theory of modern society.

The metastructure, by Marx, is formulated in Capital, Book 1, Section 1. It takes the form of a theory (a pure theory) of the market. The market is treated as the general law of modern society. Not merely the law of economic production and relations, but also the juridico-political law: on the market all individuals supposedly recognize each other as free, equal and rational. The market is thus the “Eden of human rights and citizen rights”. In this sense, the Marxian metastructure has two faces: an economic one and a juridico-political one. And this “bi-faciality” is a very important and interesting point in the Marxian legacy.

The structure, in Capital, is formulated in Book I, Section III. In the real world, Marx says, this pattern reverses into its contrary: into a nexus of unequal, not free, and somehow irrational relations. For, on the market, the labour force works as a commodity, which produces more value than its own value, - this is the well-known theory of the exploitation of the waged workers by capitalists. For that reason, modern society is not made up only of individuals, but also of class relationships, in the abstract of two classes, which are opposed and contradictory, and constantly reproduced by the process of production.

     Tendency [3] /agency [4].

Marx does not propose an a priori political praxis aiming to establish a good or a just society. What he does is to analyse the tendencies which are specific to this structural social form. The thrust of his argument is that  capitalism historically tends to develop organization and to weaken market mediations. For, as the companies become both larger and larger and less and less numerous, the market logic declines. The working class, accordingly as it grows more and more educated, more unified and organised through the process of production, becomes able and prone to establish a rational and democratic order of production. By this he means: a democratically planned economy. This commitment does not belong to an abstract moral concern. It is based on the idea that those beneath (the “proletariat”) are structurally “interpellated ” (addressed) as free, equal and rational, agents, while at the same time they are more and more able to understand they are not, and are also able to promote what this social promise expresses. Marx aims to foster an agency related to a tendency.

The problem is that this planned organization necessarily led to the establisment of a new class society, reinforced by the single party system, which was functionally tied to a fully planned economy. The question, repressed in Marxism (and, up to a certain point, still repressed to-day), is that of the interpretation of this other “pole”, the organisation. What is repressed is its status as a “pole”.

A bipolar understanding of modernity

I will briefly summarise the question as it is addressed by Marx.

There is, at least, one passage (which I like to quote) where Marx starts from a more abstract point, which can be regarded as the convenient beginning for a materialistic and dialectic theory of modern time. “At the beginning is the Word”. It is precisely, from such a beginning that Marx develops a comprehensive and highly realistic pattern: in Grundrisse, I, 28, he explains that the world is not a village: communication is not enough. The “immediate” discourse is not sufficient for the coordination of our common social life. We need “mediations”. They are two mediations, he says: the market is one,  organization is the other. The market develops in capitalism. Organization is the appropriate social form for socialism.

Clearly, Marx had identified the correct couple, but he did not use it correctly. Let us try to readress the story.

Metastructure

I made up the term “metastructure”, but, doing this, I only gave a name to a concept which was created, invented by Marx. This invention is central in his theory. My misgivings merely concern his insufficient, unipolar definition of it. For metastructure designates the relation between these two mediations, taken as its two “poles”, operating through the relation between its two “faces”. This does of course imply their supposed relation to the immediateness of discourse.

The real economy is always some combination of market and organization, these two poles being intermingled in a complex way at every level of the social machinery [5]. In this process, market and organization must be understood as concepts of the same epistemological level. That is the first point. Marx, who was the promoter of this couple, was fully conscious of that point: he described the market as an “a posteriori” equilibrium, and organization as an “a priori” equilibrium. His error was to think that modern history runs - due to its development from small factories to big corporations - from the market towards its completion or final point in organization, understood as the appropriate context for socialism. My contention is that it is possible to show that, from its very beginning, modernity, as a specific pattern, implies this constant, although unequal, bipolarity.

The second point is that the metastructural pattern of modernity implies two faces. Facing the two poles of economic rational understanding (Verstand), there are the two poles of the juridico-political reasonability (Vernunft). The market supposedly, metastructurally, implies interindividual contrac­tual­lity (the freedom of the agents). Organization supposedly implies social (central) contractuality (common agreement). Interindividual and central contractuality mutually imply one other, but at the same time are mutually antagonistic. This relation summarises and condenses all the problems of modern political philosophy (Habermas, for example, understands this bipolarity of the mediations as “subsystems”, but – and this is a failure, in my view – without developing an analysis of these mediations as factors of the modern class structure).

Clearly, the market cannot be understood as a natural “law” (as the law of economy), but only as a “rule” on which we can agree. But we can also agree on the other rule, or on some mixture of the two. The modern subject knows no “law of nature”, only “rules” he can agree with. The market is a free relation only insofar as we all can agree on it. But, conversely, the central contract must account for all the limits which it puts on interindividual contractuality, providing an account acceptable to every individual. This is what I have called the “thesis of the rule”.

This, in my view, is the complete modern metastructure, with its two poles and its two faces. This is the modern fiction, supposedly carried out by the “State of Law”, a State under the “rule of law”. The State of Law is constitutively bound to declare people free, equal and rational. And, because it is bound to perform such a declaration, metastructure does obtain some sort of real existence. The constant promise implies some achievement. But, at the same time, this declaration is a “denial” (in Freud’s sense) of reality.

Structure

Marx showed how this “metastructural” pattern turns into its “structural” contrary, how this fiction only emerges in a context in which it has always already turned into its contrary: modern society is the society in which you only can exploit, dominate, people, while telling them there are free, equal, rational.

More precisely, Marx showed how the market is a factor of class. But organisation leads to the same sort of result: those at the top of the hierarchy have the monopoly of social “competence” or “qualification”. “Competence” has the weberian or Foucaldian double meaning: an articulation of special knowledge and special power.This competence is not necessarily a real knowledge, but is rather the “arbitrary” cultural language proper to a hierarchical power (see Bourdieu). But it receives a social guarantee from certain social “titles”. Not from titles of property, but from titles of competence (see Bourdieu again). In this sense, “competence”, as well as property, is a social power. Competence reproduces itself not only through the institutions of family and school, but primarily by way of the industrial and administrative processes, which reproduce hierarchical institutions. In this theoretical context, Bourdieu defines a “cultural capital”, the reproduction of which is analogous to the reproduction of “economic capital” (for Marx). The process is achieved not only as a transfer to heirs, to children, but as the reproduction of a hierarchical system, more exactly, Bourdieu says, as a set of class relations.

Therefore, in modern society, the dominant class comprises two poles. One founded on the economic capital, the other on cultural and organizational capital. Shareholders and bosses versus managers and high ranking civil servants (see the table). The dominated class is not structured in such “poles”, but rather in three “fractions”, according to whether the domination is more based :

- on market relations : see farmers, craftsmen, shopkeepers and so on,

- on organizational relations: state (or public) employees and so on,

- on some mixture of the two: private employees (“working class”, in the traditional language).

Thus the class State, the capitalist State as “structural State”, is understood as a class relationship, a relation of hegemony, mainly enforced by way of cultural, “symbolic” (as Bourdieu says) violence.

But this State, as the modern State, cannot not declare itself to be a “State of Law” ( State supposedly ruled by law): it is under an obligation to promise rational efficiency, freedom and equality, equally for all. And, as it cannot give what it promises, modernity is in some sense a constant provocation to revolution.

Tendency and agency

So, in modern times, it is this dialectical relationship between metastructure and structure which governs politics, as a struggle between capitalism and socialism within the context of the Nation-State, where “State” must be understood both as metastructural State (supposed State of Law) and as class (or structural) State: as the dialectical relation between both of them, the two “moments” of the State.

This class confrontation does not proceed simply between two classes, but actually between the three “positions”. For the dominant class comprises two complementary and antagonistic poles, which in general will be reflected in two political parties, which will habitually alternate in government. See Republicans versus Democrats, Right-wing versus Social-democrats.

More precisely, the positions are two strategic “positions” of dominance (though not necessarily corresponding to a party: you can have several parties around a position, or a party may be split in terms of these two positions; most of time however, one party is more less devoted to one position). One position is the property position, based on the market, while the other is the “competence” position, based on organization. So “politics from above” (the politics of the ruling class) is specifically complex. The property position must honour the civil servants. The competence power must give credit to and recognise the claims of shareholders. Each pole aims to control the field of the other, tending to play on the ground of the other. So they copy each other, they constantly steal each other recipes and slogans. They are both complementary and antagonistic, because they represent different logics of power, and different social bases for these logics.

“Politics from beneath” (of the exploited class) develops a corresponding complexity. Of course, those beneath need a politics of union among their different fractions (peasants and other “independent” / working class / public employees). But they also need a politics of alliance with the competence pole. And that is the decisive point in the “politics from beneath”. For, as a matter of fact, the logic of organization gives more opportunities to those beneath: it is a logic of public explanation, of establishing goals and means publicly and “a priori”, a logic of public space, of a possible confrontation of different views, a logic of public project. The two “factors of class” are not exactly equivalent, nor are the two poles of class domination equivalent.

The competence (organizational) power is not a thing you can appropriate or monopolise at the same point, as completely as economic power. See Michel Foucault: when you exercise what he calls “discipline” on somebody, you also transfer discipline on to him. And he becomes as able as you are. That is the reason why the typical politics from below is the articulation of union between the three fractions of the exploited class and of alliance with the competence pole.

A interpretation of the so-called “end of socialism”

Let us consider what is traditionally called the “labour movement” (the historical communist, socialist movement). Here “labour” appears to be a name given for something else, typically an articulation of union and alliance. The problem is that, under certain circumstances, the competence pole turns out to prevail on the class “of the beneath”. See how the USSR, where collectivism (fully planned economy) generated the government of the competence pole, ruling as a “single pole class” (thus producing discipline in the particular form of a dictatorship). But we can also point to Western Europe where, in quite a different context, a somewhat comparable process arose, more or less symbolised by the alliance between Social Democrat and Communist parties [6]. The break of alliance (in the turmoil of the “globalisation”) between the “competent” ones and those beneath generated a terrible crisis, under different forms, in most countries where “socialism” had formerly held strong positions. And now the question arises: “what is socialism ?”. As long as capitalism exists, socialism implies a class struggle against the class system. It aims not to completely abolish market and organization, but to neutralise them as class factors, as producing and reproducing classes. And the market is here in the first line.

An interpretation of neoliberalism: the World System and the World State in gestation

The attached table does not outline a complete theory of modern society, but only of the Nation-State class structure in modern time. But capitalism is not only a specific class structure, with its specific structural dynamics (the “tendencies” which Marx studied, the development through different “stages”, such as taylorism, fordism, post-fordism). It is also, since its very beginnings, in the European Middle Ages, a world system. Within every Nation-State, the articulation between market and organization works as the class structure, while presupposing an (at least proclaimed) common will, which exploited and dominated people can always refer to. Between nations, by contrast, there are market relations, but not coupled with an organization supposedly subjected the common will. Here market relations are coupled with dependence relations between centres and peripheries. In this sense, imperialism is not the supreme stage of capitalism, as Lenin put it; rather it is constitutive of its concrete and geographical dimension, its world dimension, since its beginning. Fernand Braudel, the founder of the French School of Annales, made this it clear. And the Third-World theorists, since the sixties (I. Wallerstein, S. Amin, etc.) have introduced this idea into Marxism.

However - although imperialism, with the dictatorship of financial capital on peripheral societies, under the “imperial” hegemony of the USA, is the main feature of the present world - a new State form is emerging today, on a global scale, in the “development of productive forces” (to use the classical language of Marxism). And this form tends to reproduce the Nation-State as a World State, as the global State. New institutions arise, which are not only inter-national (despite the names), but which are also global institutions. They do not announce the universal “market republic”, the “law without State”, as neo-liberalism proclaims. They announce a single, unified class society on a world scale, the gestation of a global State which repeats all the previously existing class contradictions, but with the necessary (and highly problematic) reference to a universal common will. Ultimodernity. Neo-liberalism is the anti-republican, antidemocratic guise of the World State.

In the language of Mao, we could say that the “main contradiction” is the correlation /contradiction between the World System and the World State. The contradiction goes against the functional relation existing between them. Imperialism - I mean the centre of the World System - can manipulate these institutions. It finds a perverse support in the World State (in gestation), as in the only possible universal legitimate legal instance. But at the same time, the logic of the modern State reappears into a final and supreme revival, supposing the emergence of a common will on a global scale. And clearly, although it presents itself in a highly reactionary and dominative guise, the World State implies not only some sort of global government but also a global “public space” (in Habermas’s sense) [7].

The time of the World State is still very far away. But we have all heard of those stars which, though they have already died out, still emit light which we can receive. Here, the new star, the World State, is not yet born. We are however already under its influence. Not surprisingly, world citizens are now emerging. We can recall Seattle, Porto Alegre, and so on. What is involved is a global civic movement, not only an international, but a global movement, that is demanding another sort of globalisation, a world ruled by common democratic institutions.

Against this background, I propose to formulate the following two questions :

(A) : how are we to understand and explain the process of exposition (Darstellung) of the theory of modern society, as it is outlined in Capital ?

 (B) : how are we to remodel this account, in order to formulate an adequate theory ?

A.                   Explanation of the process of exposition of Capital

In Capital, the theory of modern society[8] is built on two major cleavages (splits), presented in Book I. The first of these is the cleavage between the metastructure, presented in Section I, and the structure, presented in Section III: the fundamental difficulty of this problem (and its crucial interest) lies in the question of the passage from one to the other (Section II). The second cleavage is the cleavage between structure and tendencies : Section IV gives the concept of this passage, which organizes the entire Book I.

In my analysis, I argue against both the positivist (whether economist, analytical or neokantian) and the dialecticist interpretations, not to mention logico-historical interpretations. I distinguish the “dialecticist” interpretations, which propose an a priori re-translation of Capital in terms of the conceptuality of Hegel’s Logic (where Marx does finds many tools for the construction of his theory, but often in an experimental and provisional way), and the “dialectic” interpretation, an approach organised in terms of “the special dialectic of the special object”, without however relinquishing the Hegelian legacy.

I will only mention some points which I think it is important to understand.

I share with many others the opinion that the object of Section I is the logic of the market in general, considered as the most abstract form of capital. And that the object of Chapter 1 is market production in general. What is at stake here is not merely « circulation », still less « simple circulation » : I hold to this opinion against the “Frankfurter” interpretation of « real abstraction » and « value form ». Chapter 2 takes us from the theory of the structure (understood in its most general sense, according to which “metastructure” is a structure) to the theory of agents and of the relations among them, and, in consequentce, to the question of law. It is here that we come up against the the difficult metastructural problem of the relation between “bourgeois law” and “modern natural law” (the problem is, indeed, an interesting one, if we remember that, in the Gotha Critique, Marx writes that socialism is governed by the same law as capitalism. Chapter 3, dealing with market circulation in general, deals not only with money, but with the State as well: with a “metastructural” State, a State-before-classes. Clearly, what we are here faced with constitutes a problem for the Marxist tradition, which knows only a class-State.

The object of Section II is the passage from the logic of the market to the logic of capital: from interindividual relations to class relations. Therefore the point at issue is not the passage from (simple) circulation to (capitalist) production, as some dialecticists believe; nor is it the passage from simple to more complex relations, as the analytic interpreters put it. The problem which is posed is notably that of the relation between « wage freedom », the freedom of the wage worker (exploited as a “free” man, Section II) and « market freedom » (as defined in Section I). More generally, this “passage” raises the -still relevant- question of the difference and the relation between market production and capitalist production. For, what the exposition (Darstellung) develops as a sequence (as the passage from one moment to another) is nothing else than the architechtonic conditions of a social structure.

The object of Section III is capitalist production in general, taken as a fact of class structure. Its current relevance will only be recognised if the current relevance of the Marxian theory of value is also understood (against the regulationists, T. Negri, etc.). But the exposition does not culminate in a problematic of “extortion”, as vulgar or economicist Marxism puts it. Nor does it culminate in the category of “alienation”, a concept which is too anthropocentric to provide an indication of the scope of the disaster.

Section IV works out the articulation between structure and tendencies+agencies. Tenden­cies belong to structures, as we have already seen. Agency is always to be taken as referring to strategy in the context of tendencies, which it cannot master (overcome). Therefore, Marx had no good reason for projecting the end of capitalism as a victory of rational and reasonable agency, after extinction and abolition of the market. Non-market production is not only a not-something: it is something positive, it is primarily an organised production, where organi­sa­tion carries its own (class, etc.) tendencies. We cannot consider the Marxian “prospective” (Marx’s post-market prognostic) as being of secondary importance, because it operates as a constitutive feature of his theory from its very logical beginning. We have to find another “end”, other objectives for anti-capitalist agency. It means we have to re-address the catego­ries of the model by going back to the very beginning, in order to proceed from the beginning.

B.                   A reconstruction of Capital

I propose a more comprehensive pattern, in which the metastructure is considered as a figure with two « poles” and two “faces”, in the sense I have given to these terms. I believe that this approach provides the relevant foundation for the reconstruction of the whole edifice of Capital, for a reconsideration of all its constituent concepts, of both the main classical problems and also the controversies within the Marxist tradition. Here I can only give a brief indication as to the contents of this (by now almost fully achieved program.

On Section I.

Let us first consider the beginning, with its two poles: market and organisation. This implies that we start jointly with market production (as Marx does) and with non-market (i.e. public) production, which, in the modern form of society, constitutes a social form whose logical status is as primary as that of market production, but which is not however governed by the category of « value ». We can guess the difficulty of this problem. It is a problem which economists (notably keynesian-marxist ones) tend to solve inadequately by way of the addition of the productions of the two spheres (private and public), having first proceeded with their homogenization, in terms of monetary value. In reality, another sort of production logic is in operation here, which is different from the logic of the market. For that reason, it is a logic which cannot accommodate the category of value (as Marx put it: the economists tend to consider only quantities and to neglect the “form”). We can here, for example, refer to Foucault, who shows that, as early as the “classical Age”, significant public services (hospitals, schools) were produced in an « organisational » form, and that manufacture is both a market and organisational entity [9]. Actually, what is to be conceived at the beginning is not the addition of two possible alternative forms of division of labour, but their mutual embedding : in other words, the “metastructural firm” (and, as we shall see, in the same sense, the metastructural State).

The second task facing us is to readdress the Marxian approach of the two « faces » (i.e. the approach to concepts which are both economic and juridico-politic concepts, or which belong both to the rational and to the reasonable instance, Verstand and Vernunft) in this bi-polar context. Bi-polarity is the relevant context for bi-faciality, because it is only within this bi-polar context that the “thesis of the rule” can be formulated.

We can now address a number of classical topics in a new light. Fetichism now shows itself to be a fact of organisation as well as a fact of market. The same holds for money, which is related to the State, understood as the supreme organisational form, as well as to commodity. We should thus draw all the relevant conclusions from the presence of State at this abstract metastructural level. The question is one which is already strongly attested in Marx, within the limits following from his unipolar consideration of the market (which is, furthermore, mainly, though not exclusively, envisaged in terms of its rational face). What is at stake here is the question of the “State of Law” (a State supposedly under the rule of law), understood as a metastructural State. By this is meant the necessarily dialectical consideration of such a concept of State, and of law in general.

On Section II

Marx failed in his various attempts to put forward a moment in his logical exposition (hoarding, trade, etc.) through which one could pass dialectically from “money”, i.e. from market, to capital. In Capital, he had to make do with a passage by mere anticipation (and not by dialectics), from the market « form », C1-M-C2, to the (ideological) « formula » of capital, M-C-M’. He thus allowed himself the possibility of criticizing this formula, with the help of concepts worked out in Section I. He thus arrives at the theoretical moment of capital. But he achieves this through didactics and not through dialectics. The fact that he solves the contradiction only by way of the recourse to preceding (and primary) concepts shows that the same result can be directly achieved by starting from those concepts, without the help of the “anticipation” M-C-M’. This, possibly concomitant, beginning for the market and for the wage relation follows from the fact that “market freedom” and “wage freedom” cannot be respectively “substantialized” (substantified); They cannot be considered as different sorts of freedom, nor can they be separated from the freedom to act in common (see the “law of rule”). At the beginning, there lies the presupposition of a common freedom, which, insofar as it is indeterminate, consists in the reasonable co-implication and in the mutual rational co-embedding of the interindividual and the central form of contractuality. As a matter of fact, the “wage freedom” that is postulated is not one which ever existed without the more or less concomitant existence (without the conquest) of other freedoms, without a certain overall central hold, without the background of some sort of supposed common disposition, both declared et denied, of the social order, a disposition supposedly constitutive of this social order. In the series of equivalent formulas of the « metastructural declaration » which are mentioned in Capital − facio ut facias, do ut des, facio ut des, do ut facias −, we find nothing that is specifically related to the market, nothing that excludes the consideration of the social centre or whole.

Lastly, it must be pointed out that Section II is devoid of any object. As we shall see, a fundamentally different approach is required, if the dialectical reversal of the metastructure into the structure is to be understood. But before coming to that point, we have to return to Section I in order to clarify the ontological status of the metastructure. I shall here merely allude to a few topics that are to be explained in greater detail. (1) In Section I, Marx seems to be describing something abstract, but which-is-effectively-existing: the market. Actually, if we leave aside the structural fact that capital, as “the real world”, is in effect the reversal of this metastructural form), what is described here is-effectively-existing-only-insofar as the other form, the organisation, does not actually prevail. (2) According to its specific indeterminateness, the metastructure is- declared in the “metastructural declaration”, which involves a continuum stretching from the market relation, which harmonises this quartet around the formula do ut des, up to the organizational relation, its antagonistic pole, which relates to the formula facio ut facias. (3) As a declaration, the metastructure is-a-fiction. But it is not simply fictitious. For responding to the terms of this declaration, class struggle does exist, and does produce some results. To this extent, a “State of Law” (under the rule of law) does exist. (4) But the metastructure is-not-the-foundation, it is not the base of modern society: it is only the reference, a reference which is only given insofar as it reverts into class relations. (5) As declared, the metastructure is-as-a-reference. But it is split into a declaration of “that ought to be” (to be recognised as free, equal, rational people) and, as such, is a reference for the class struggle, and a declaration of “that is” (already achieved) and, as such, is a reference for domination. (6) The metastructure is-a-denial of the existing disorder, and at the same time it is a declaration of an imminent order. (7) It is-what-we-necessarily-come-back-to, with constantly new contentions, generated by agency within tendencies and circumstances. Hermeneutical circularity, to be understood materialistically. The Spectre comes again and again, promising, threatening, demanding, deriding, foretelling, “interpellating” (doing so, in many ways, as the Aristotelian being does).

On Section III

The aim of Section III is to produce the concept of the dialectical meta /structural reversal: the reversal of the metastructure into structure. For the metastructure is only posited in the structure: within class relations. The market, insofar as it is postulated as free, only emerges in a specific historical context where capitalist property (the legitimacy of which is referred to a freely consented agreement on market principles) is recognised by law as being intangible, and effectively reproduces itself as class factor. The same rules hold for the demands of a common freely organized power : the latter exists historically only in concrete conditions where competences have always already been distributed, and where they are effectively working in the process of their reproduction as class factors. Modernity does not exist before these two ancient mediations - market and organisation - (which had achieved a large scale existence long before modern times), have become interwoven in a unique bipolar and bifacial pattern; a pattern claiming to be the overall rational-reasonable principle of the entire social order: a claim which is the condition of modern class relations.

We can see now why the dominant class is split into two cooperative and antagonistic “poles”, and that the exploited class is split into three “fractions”. We should add that the perspective of exploitation, based on the concept of class, is a misleading one, unless we add to it the problematics of abstraction - promoted by the Frankfurter School - requiring the concept of multitude: the logic of capitalism, as a logic directed toward profit and abstract wealth, involves contradictions which are not specifically turned against the “workers”, nor against the “producers”, but which operate against the whole of society, or, to be more precise, against those beneath, against the “multitude” which is the inventor of the concrete richness of culture, of its concrete needs and desires, of everyday life.

This abstract scheme of the modern class structure, which implies some (even miserable) sort of Nation-State, has its imperialist complement in the World-System, and its potential supreme revival in World-State in gestation. The global whole is to be understood as a contradictory, perverse and dynamic co-embedding of all those social forms. More explanation would have been necessary to show how this set of concepts outline our ultimodernity. I merely tried to suggest they belong to those required if we are to study the questions which this conference has put on its agenda: globalisation and alter­globalisation.

CLASS STRUCTURE IN MODERN SOCIETY

A. STRUCTURES

Section II : Transformation of market into capitalism                                           ↕

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B. WORLD-SYSTEM   C. WORLD-STATE IN GESTATION