Outline of a Marxist Commodity Theory of the
Public Sphere
John Michael Roberts
Sociology and Communications
Brunel University
Email: [email protected]
AbstractIn recent years, the public sphere, which represents a realm in civil society where people
can debate and discuss a range of issues and common concerns important to them, has
become a key area for research in the humanities and social sciences. Arguably, however,
Marxist theory has yet to advance a theoretical account of the most abstract and simple
ideological properties of the capitalist public sphere as these appear under universal
commodity relationships. The paper therefore tentatively seeks to develop such an
account. Specifically, the paper theoretically derives a peculiar public sphere under
capitalism, which is mediated between at least two commodity owners who also possess
distinctive personalities driven by desires to own commodities. The paper then explains
in more detail how the social form of this public sphere develops through other elements
of commodity relations and their contradictions.
Keywords: commodity-form; dialogue; hearer and speaker; Marxism; public sphere
1
Introduction
At least since the late 1980s the public sphere has become an important area of research
in the humanities and social sciences. At its simplest, the public sphere denotes spaces in
society where associates, friends, and strangers can debate and discuss a range of issues
and common concerns, which are important to them. Public spheres therefore help to
create and reinforce democratic mechanisms in everyday life, particularly those related to
ordinary people getting their voices heard in society. For Emirbayer and Sheller public
spheres thus represent:
open-ended flows of communication that enable socially distant interlocutors to
bridge social-network positions, formulate collective orientations, and generate
psychical ‘working alliances’, in pursuit of influence over issues of common
concern. Publics are…interstitial networks of individuals and groups acting as
citizens.1
With equal measure, the public sphere likewise represents a space of argument and
disagreement between different individuals and groups about common concerns and
issues. This being the case, and as Somers notes, the public sphere is also:
a contested participatory site in which actors with overlapping identities as legal
subjects, citizens, economic actors, and family and community members, form a
1 Emirbayer and Sheller 1998, p. 738, original emphasis.
2
public body and emerge in negotiations and contestations over political and social
life.2
Coleman and Ross identify three further broad perspectives on the public sphere. First,
there is a liberal perspective, which argues the public sphere is a homogeneous and
normative entity in which individuals leave their bias and prejudices behind them in order
to construct an agreed consensus around a matter of concern through debate and
deliberation. Second, the public sphere is regularly seen as an arena to educate people
through mass communication. Under these circumstances, the public sphere is thought to
be a place to mould people’s beliefs through mass media. Third, the public sphere is
thought by many as an opportunity to allow a multitude of voices to be heard in public
debates and promote different types of active and often conflicting forms of citizenship in
society.3
Yet, while many celebrate the public sphere, it is not however without its critics.
For instance, there have been attempts to make sense of the public sphere under a ‘new’,
digital capitalism comprised by the likes of social media. For critics, digital media enable
people to believe they are being active in society by contributing to social and political
debate on chat forums, whereas in reality the content of their contribution becomes one of
many other contents swirling around in cyberspace. For this reason, Jodi Dean argues we
live in an age where messages are now disarticulated from their ‘real context’ so that they
become instead part of a never-ending circulating stream of information through new
media outlets. Today’s public sphere therefore creates a ‘fantasy’. Through new
2 Somers 1993, p. 589.3 Coleman and Ross 2010, pp. 29-30.
3
technology, especially social media, we feel as though we are entering a socially and
politically charged public sphere, whereas on another level new media ‘functions as a
fetish covering over our impotence and helping us understand ourselves as active’.4
Without doubt, these critics make some astute observations about the fetishism
prevalent in a communicative, informational and new media public sphere. Nevertheless,
it is also true to say they underestimate how these insights are related to the more abstract
and contradictory qualities of the capitalist public sphere, preferring instead to explore
the concrete twenty-first century public sphere. This is an important point because
without understanding these abstract and simple contradictory properties it is difficult to
comprehend fully how certain inherent contradictions in the capitalist public sphere play
themselves out in concrete and everyday public spheres. This paper therefore sets itself
the task of deriving some of the main abstract and ideological themes of the capitalist
public sphere. From a Marxist perspective, the abstract and simple starting point of
analysis of capitalism is found in the commodity-form.5 As Tinker observes, ‘(t)he
importance of specifying an initial object of inquiry (the commodity) that is sufficiently
broad to encompass questions of cultural reproduction and change…is repleat in Marx’s
writings. The analysis applies to all areas of life experience that is susceptible to
commodification’.6 Given this, it is an entirely reasonable theoretical move for Marxists
to abstract the main contradictions of the capitalist public sphere from within the abstract
and simple properties of the commodity-form. Following Marx, however, it is equally
important to note that in abstracting the capitalist public sphere from within the
commodity-form, we are not presenting a description of any actual, empirical, or
4 Dean 2005, p. 62; see also Henwood 2005, p. 25; Žižek 1997, pp. 111-113 and Žižek 2008, pp. 11-125 Marx 1988, p. 1256 Tinker 2005, pp. 113-14
4
historical public sphere.7 Rather, and as the paper demonstrates, we will isolate the
simplest and fundamental contradictory determinations of the capitalist public sphere
through a logical presentation of its core categories.8
The next three sections pave the way to develop a theory of the public sphere in
commodity relationships by firstly taking to task alternative theoretical perspectives.
First, a liberal approach to the public sphere is outlined. Liberal theory tends to
conceptualise the public sphere as a realm of autonomy and freedom that exists in civil
society, which enables individuals to engage in dialogue with one another about matters
of public importance with the aim of reaching consensus. A critical advocate of this
position is Jürgen Habermas. Indeed, Habermas has produced a hugely impressive and
important range of work that seeks to construct a theoretically sophisticated and
empirically rich account of the public sphere for contemporary societies. Arguably,
though, it is also true to say the substantial amount of Habermas’s output on the public
sphere is based in a liberal account, which argues that public deliberation in civil society
requires the capitalist state to guarantee its legitimacy. The next section therefore
sketches out some of Habermas’s ideas in this respect and highlights some problems with
them from a Marxist perspective.
Following this discussion, the paper then explores a theory of the public sphere
designed to overcome some problems in Habermas’s account. This is a theory of
counterpublic spheres. Counterpublics are often portrayed as rejecting the sort of
homogeneous, consensus-building public sphere envisaged by Habermas. After all, argue
those who prefer a theory of counterpublics, Habermas assumes that everyone has similar
7 Marx 1988, p. 1028 See also Fornäs 2013, chapter 2, for an extremely clear discussion of this Marxist method.
5
identities in the public sphere, and everyone wishes to reach a consensus on matters of
disagreement. For critics, this viewpoint refuses to acknowledge that an array of voices
exist in the public sphere based on a sense of difference, not sameness or consensus.9 By
encouraging the growth of counterpublics, critics argue that oppositional and subordinate
groups can challenge such mechanisms of power in their institutional forms. For these
reasons, a theory of counterpublics has been attractive to many radical, progressive, and
Marxist activists. Nancy Fraser has become one of the most well-known advocates and
theorists of counterpublics.10 The paper thereby focuses on Fraser’s work because it
represents one of the leading accounts of counterpublics. While making many laudable
proposals, we will nevertheless see that Fraser’s main theoretical framework fails to
tackle the most abstract ideological form of the public sphere within capitalist society. As
a result, Fraser’s preferred theory of the public sphere is not robust enough to understand
the deeply embedded power relations at work in capitalism.
These critical remarks then provide a basis to begin to develop a distinctively
Marxist approach to the public sphere. This will occur, first, by examining the pioneering
work of Alexander Negt and Oskar Kluge.11 Seeking in part to critique elements of
Habermas’s early work on the public sphere, Negt and Kluge develop a Marxist account
of the public that aims to give due weight to the dialectical struggle between bourgeois
and proletarian public spheres. However, while they make some astute observations
about this dialectical relationship it is also true to say that they tend to associate the
proletarian public sphere with concrete types of discussion whereas the bourgeois public
sphere is related to abstract types of discussion. Problematically, this theory establishes a
9 Eley 1992, p. 32110 See for example Fraser 1995.11 Negt and Kluge 1993.
6
dualistic account of the capitalist public sphere that underestimates the social mediation
of the public sphere through both abstract and concrete forms.
Having analysed these alternative perspectives, the next three main sections start
to offer up an alternative Marxist theory of the public sphere. As the public sphere is a
commodified form of life it seems reasonable to begin this alternative account with the
commodity-form in order to unravel the most abstract and simple contradictions of the
capitalist public sphere. By starting at this point, it becomes possible to unravel a peculiar
public sphere at the heart of universal commodity relationships. This public sphere is
mediated between at least two commodity owners who stand in front of one another as
apparent equals: one is a seller, the other is a buyer. At the same time, each is a unique
individual with a distinctive personality driven by desires to own specific commodities.
As a result, both must enter into dialogue about exchanging commodities with one
another. If this is the case then this commodity public sphere takes the form of a dialogue
between a seller who speaks about, and tries to provide convincing reasons, why a buyer
should accept their (i.e. the seller’s) ‘right’ to determine commodity transactions in ways
that favour the seller’s own desires. The buyer subsequently hears and listens the
dialogue put forward by the seller. What follows from this is a dialogic struggle between
a seller (speaker) and buyer (hearer) about the right of commodity exchange, which, in
turn, is grounded in fundamental contradictions within simple capitalist production. The
paper then explains in more detail how the social form of this historically specific public
sphere develops through other elements of commodity relations. In the conclusion the
paper shows how the delineation of the public sphere put forward here is similar but also
noticeably different to that put forward by agonist theorists like Chantal Mouffe.12
12 Due to lack of space, the paper does not explore the public sphere under advanced capitalism, nor does it
7
A Liberal Approach to the Public Sphere: Jürgen Habermas13
Most liberal approaches see the public sphere as being part of civil society. In this
account, civil society is that social sphere in which individuals come together on a
voluntary basis to form a common public will in and around social and political issues. In
this liberal narrative civil society is classically defined as a sphere separated from the
public body of the state. Keane sums up well this line of thinking.
Civil society…is an ideal-typical category…that both describes and envisages a
complex and dynamic ensemble of legally protected non-governmental
institutions that tend to be non-violent, self-organizing, self-reflexive, and
permanently in tension with each other and with the state institutions that ‘frame’,
constrict and enable their activities.14
On this understanding, civil society is a discrete space comprised, in part, by a number of
public spheres, which permit individuals to assert rights on behalf of particular identities
they hold and thereby help to widen the boundaries of citizenship.15 Accordingly, the
public sphere has great potential to build consensus between individuals. Important in
this respect is the role played by the state and law as public bodies whose primary
provide a Marxist account of the state and the public sphere.
13 This section does not explore the complexity of Habermas’s ideas in detail. Its main purpose, rather, is to outline a liberal approach and its limitations in a little more detail through some of Habermas’s ideas in order to provide a basis and justification to present an alternative Marxist account of the public sphere. However, I have critically explored Habermas’s ideas in more detail elsewhere (see for example Roberts 2012). At a more concrete level, I have also critically analysed the relationship between deliberative democracy and e-democracy (see Roberts 2014). 14 Keane 1998, p. 6.15 Calhoun 1995.
8
objective is to act as mediator for these various rights. But just as important as the state is
the role given over to the public sphere in ‘educating’ and ‘socialising’ individuals in the
‘proper’ skills required to take part in ‘rational’ debate in order to make a contribution to
liberal society.16
This liberal approach is noticeable in the work of Jürgen Habermas. For example,
in his first major work on the public sphere, The Structural Transformation of the Public
Sphere,17 Habermas outlines what he believes are the fundamental principles of ‘rational-
critical’ discussion about matters of public importance in society. During the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries in Western Europe a bourgeois public sphere emerged for a
short period of time that enabled a number of private (male) strangers to engage in a form
of rational debate and discussion about politics, society, and the like. According to
Habermas, this was a public sphere found in public places like coffeehouses, salons, in
cultural forms like newsletters, letter writing, newspapers and journals, and in business
organisations like the Stock Exchange, all of which entertained and fostered critical
opinions. At the same time, this period saw the emergence of an increasingly privatized
bourgeois family home environment where individuals could cultivate their own powers
of reason and sense of morality through reading and writing. Thus, the importance of the
bourgeois public sphere for Habermas is that it brought together middle-class (male)
strangers in new public spaces and encouraged the formation of critical discussion about
public matters in society. Such critical discussion was now also directed towards those
who worked in state and government structures. Overall, then, public opinion came to be
expressed through a new critical reason based on an argumentative rational discussion,
16 Wood 1995, pp. 252-25617 Habermas 1989, originally published in 1962.
9
access to information via an emerging newspaper culture, the pursuit of a set of general
norms, and the existence of equal status between discussants.
Habermas’s early work on the bourgeois public sphere has been subject to
numerous criticisms.18 Margaret Somers in particular develops some interesting critical
observations. According to Somers, Habermas’s original endeavour was to analyse the
bourgeois public sphere as a structural mediator, an ‘intermediate zone’, between the
private market place and the public world of politics, which leads to enhanced political
debate and discussion in civil society. Yet, continues Somers, a closer reading of
Structural Transformation reveals that Habermas’s account does not in fact deal with
political debate as such, but rather sets out how individuals must first be socialised ‘in
advance of their political participation’ through the capitalist economy. As a result,
socialisation is reduced to the requirements of the capitalist economy.19 For instance,
Habermas argues that the socialisation required for debate in eighteenth century Europe
was formed through the private sphere of market transaction insofar that the actions of
private individuals provided fertile grounds for public debate. Indeed, when Habermas
explores the role that the intimate sphere of the family played in the emergence of the
bourgeois public sphere he is clear that market relations were the force guiding this social
process. Somers quotes directly from Structural Transformation. ‘Although there may
have been a desire to perceive the sphere of the family circle as independent…it was…
dependent on the sphere of labour and the commodity’.20 Habermas thus seems to
relegate the bourgeois public sphere, and the socialisation required for critical discussion,
to the imperatives of the capitalist economy.18 For useful summaries see Calhoun 1992; Crossley and Roberts 2004; Goode 2005; Hill and Montag 2001; Johnson 2006.19 Somers 1995, p. 125, original emphasis. See also Bang and Esmark 200720 Habermas 1989, p. 46.
10
In his later work, Habermas tries to overcome such reductionist problems by
providing a more robust definition of the public sphere in contemporary capitalist
societies. In Between Facts and Norms he observes:
The public sphere is a social phenomenon just as elementary as action, actor,
association or collectivity, but it eludes the conventional sociological concepts of
‘social order’. The public sphere cannot be conceived as an institution and
certainly not as an organisation. It is not even a framework of norms with
differentiated competences and roles, membership regulations and so on….The
public sphere can best be described as a network for communicating information
and points of view (i.e. opinions expressing affirmative of negative attitudes); the
streams of communication are, in the process, filtered and synthesized in such a
way that they coalesce into bundles of topically specified opinions.21
For Habermas, late-modern societies have witnessed a new civil society coming into
being. For instance, ‘non-governmental and non-economic connections and voluntary
associations that anchor the communication structures of the public sphere in the society
component of the lifeworld’ are now more prevalent throughout the global world, and
these help to establish innovative public spheres in civil society.22 Habermas also clearly
recognises that societies in the world face new complex processes that now act as a
constraint over democratic endeavours (as the recent global financial crisis testifies) and
any positive theory of democracy must take these into consideration.23
21 Habermas 1996, p. 360.22 Habermas 1996, pp. 366-36723 Habermas 1996, p. 305.
11
It is against this backdrop that Habermas looks to law as a means of bridging the
gap between private autonomy and public autonomy.24 This is the idea that complex
societies and their associated forms of democracy require some type of political
management in order to ground both public opinions and deliberative procedures within
institutions. It is for this reason that Habermas thinks that the practical and normative
basis of law is the most appropriate medium to institutionalise public opinion formation.25
Law is a particularly apt discursive and deliberative mechanism in this respect because it
is both norm-governed and action-governed. As a result, law navigates the claims of
justification and institutionalisation of public debate. In other words, the very nature of
law is to enact communicative relations with civil society through ‘opinion and will-
formation’.26
However, there are problems with this later account. It is now less clear in
Habermas’s later account whether the discursive contribution of people in ordinary
‘concrete’ public spheres will be given an adequate hearing in the public sphere. After all,
it is legal validity that mediates discourse in these circumstances and not validity evident
in concrete public spheres themselves.27 Moreover, in Habermas’s framework the state
ensures that a number of ‘basic rights’ such as ‘equal individual liberties’ are available in
civil society so that all can be included in the procedures of public deliberation.28 Yet, one
important underlying reason why the state is required to manage and regulate these rights
is because private property along capitalistic lines still operates in Habermas’s schema.
As he says, the ‘economic power’ of capital ‘will be tamed’ but not eliminated.29
24 Habermas 1996, pp. 118-119.25 Habermas 1996, p. 444.26 Habermas 1996, p. 133.27 Abizadeh 2007.28 Habermas 1996, p. 122.29 Habermas 1996, p. 263.
12
Ultimately, then, we must infer that in Habermas’s later schema we are still left with a
capitalist system in which money is the abstract measurement of every other commodity.
But as is always the case with the capitalist system, the social power of capital rests on
the assumption that money is either stored up value or a means to exploit labour. What is
subsequently less clear in Between Facts and Norms is how the social power of capitalist
exploitation will be transcended by ensuring that, for example, workers have a
democratic input into how they work that mitigates against exploitation.30 Arguably, this
is one of the main reasons that Habermas is then forced to grant the state and law ultimate
regulatory powers in civil society. For as long as capitalist exploitation remains, the state
will be required to manage the concrete, or context-bound, social divisions and class
struggles that arise from it.
For these reasons and others,31 we have to question those, like Fuchs, who argue
that Habermas presents us with a Marxist theory of the public sphere.32 But if this is the
case, then what alternatives have formed to overcome the problems in the Habermasian
public sphere? We now turn to one particular alternative, the theory of counterpublics,
and, in particular, Nancy Fraser’s account of counterpublics. In order to illustrate some
problematic issues in Fraser’s theory of the public sphere from a Marxist perspective, we
will mainly concentrate on several points she makes on the relationship between
counterpublics and economic justice.
Counterpublics: Nancy Fraser
30 Scheuerman 2002, p. 69; Smith 2006, pp. 338-9.31 See Roberts 2012.32 Fuchs 2014, p. 183.
13
In everyday life, oppositional identities form in and against dominant public discourses.
These are often easy to identify – think of the 1960s civil rights movement in the US –
but sometimes they are difficult to see as well – think of some anarchist social
movements that operate beneath the radar of publicity. These are all, however, instances
of counterpublics. In the words of Warner: ‘A counterpublic maintains at some level,
conscious or not, an awareness of its subordinate status. The cultural horizon against
which it marks itself off is not just a general or wider public but a dominant one…The
discourse that constitutes it is not merely a different or alternative idiom, but one that in
other contexts would be regarded with hostility, or with a sense of indecorousness’.33 And
their very existence also suggests that ‘common’ solutions to problems faced in society
can only be arrived at through constant dialogue between different individuals.34 And
because counterpublics encourage ‘subordinate’ voices to speak with authority, then this
approach in public sphere theory has found favour in many radical circles, including
Marxist ones.35
Nancy Fraser has become one of the most well-known and respected champions
of a theory of counterpublics. In her work during the 1990s, Fraser argues that a robust
democratic society must consider the claims, dialogue and grievances of voices
emanating from ‘subaltern counterpublics’.36 Indeed, ‘subaltern counterpublics’ help to
demonstrate several flaws in the liberal concept of the public sphere. Unlike liberal
theory, for instance, the existence of subaltern dialogue suggests that common and fixed
boundaries on topics of public interest do not exist. Such boundaries of publicness can
only be established through discourse itself whereby minority voices must have the 33 Warner 2002, pp. 423-4. See also Asen and Brouwer 2001.34 Hartley 1998; Villa 1992.35 Mitchell 2003.36 Fraser 1992 and 1995.
14
opportunity to convince others of the just nature of their argument. For Fraser, therefore,
a post-liberal conception of the public sphere has to incorporate at least three
‘counterpublic’ features. First, a post-liberal public sphere must not only bracket
inequalities between groups involved in dialogue, but it must eliminate them. Second, for
counterpublics to function fully with minimal interference then there must exist multiple
and ‘mutually contestatory’ publics rather than one single public sphere that serves all.
Third, public spheres must enable interests that are currently termed as ‘private’ – for
example issues concerned with the ‘family’ – as being allowed a hearing in the public
sphere. Only then will publics become open to the voices belonging to a wide variety of
interests and social identities.37
In her more recent writings, however, Fraser identifies a shortcoming to her
earlier theory of counterpublics. In today’s world, it is crucial that one theorises about
counterpublics in global terms, which Fraser claims is an ingredient missing in her earlier
work.38 In our transnational times, for example, Fraser says that nation-states have lost
some of their capacity to respond effectively to the public opinion of their citizens.
Furthermore, continues Fraser, it is often the case that many cultural identities within a
specific society will not be treated as citizens of the country in question (think of how
‘asylum seekers’ are treated in many countries). Fraser thus insists that ‘all potentially
affected by political decisions…in opinion formation’ should ideally participate through
parity of participation founded on socio-economic redistribution of wealth and resources
and legal and cultural recognition of different identities.39 Moreover, all those citizens
affected by specific political decisions should be allowed a voice in the public sphere to
37 Fraser 1995, p. 295.38 Fraser 2014, p. 16.39 Fraser 2014.
15
debate them irrespective of which country they originate from. Indeed, this seems to
make sense in the global world. There are many institutions and bodies whose decisions
have an impact on different populations across the world, and those affected by these
decisions need to be involved in public debates about them irrespective of where they
live.40
Fraser supports these claims by arguing that global injustice occurs when issues
for public discussion are subject to a process of ‘misframing’. This draws our attention to
the act of setting the boundaries of a community in such a way as to ‘wrongly exclude
some people from the chance to participate at all in its authorised contests over justice’.41
Fraser argues that the remedy to misframing lies, at least partially, in creating new global
political mechanisms to represent different economic class interests and cultural
identities. Representation here refers to the political dimension of the parity of
participation. Its importance lies in establishing ‘the procedures for staging and resolving
contests in both the economic and cultural dimensions’ as well as setting out rules of
decision-making. In other words, representation not only maps out ‘who’ can make
redistribution or recognition claims but also ‘how’ these claims will be arbitrated.42
Undoubtedly, Fraser recognises the importance that social class plays in the
politics of justice as regards the redistribution of economic resources. Accordingly, she
notes that capitalist societies are based on exploitation whereby the proletariat, defined by
her as those ‘who must sell their labour-power under arrangements that authorise the
capitalist class to appropriate surplus productivity for its private benefit’,43 receive ‘an
unjustly large share of the burdens’ of production and substantially fewer rewards than 40 Fraser 2014, pp. 30-1.41 Fraser 2005, p. 76, original emphasis.42 Fraser 2005, p.75.43 Fraser 1995, p. 75.
16
those of capitalists.44 But, problematically from a Marxist perspective, Fraser then goes
on to argue that such forms of unjust exploitation are primarily a matter of unequal
distribution between workers and capitalists. By defining exploitation as being a matter
of distribution, however, Fraser constructs a theory of justice that remains within the
ambit of what might be termed as ‘Ricardian socialism’, and this weakens her
arguments.45
Named after David Ricardo’s desire to explain how value is determined by
labour-time, and how this might explain the relationship between wages, profits and rent,
Ricardian socialism came to prominence in British working-class public spheres after
1830. Radical press of the day, alongside the work of radical political economists, such as
John Francis Bray, John Gray, and Thomas Hodgskin, wrote about unjust exchange
relations associated with the ownership and control of production between labourers and
capitalists. Broadly speaking, early Ricardian socialists insisted that by controlling
production capitalists had the power to commandeer goods away from labour, making the
latter dependent upon the former. Ricardian socialists also stressed that the old system of
appropriation in the form of taxes, tithes, church rates and lawyers’ fees, which occurred
after labourers received their wages, had given way to a form of appropriation within the
production process itself. The propertied classes, a combination in those days of ‘feudal
aristocracy’ of the land with a capitalist ‘aristocracy of wealth’, had effectively driven
labourers off their land and forced them to become wage earners and rent payers. The
growing prominence of universal private property in the form of rent, interest, and profits
enabled the capitalist to become a ‘middleman’ between aristocracy and labour.46
44 Fraser 1995, p. 7645 Fraser, however, labels her position as being ‘post-socialist’.46 Hollis 1970, pp. 221-2.
17
Ricardian socialists therefore believed that value was being abstracted from the
labourer by the capitalist in the disproportionate amount in wages paid out as compared
to the profits received. The problem inherent in this exchange was thus the unfair
distribution of goods, such as the unfair distribution of wages and profits between
labourers and capitalists. Working class radical press took up the theoretical cudgels of
Ricardian socialism in their attack on the growing dominance of wage relations in British
society. The Poor Man’s Advocate, a radical newspaper published in the early 1830s, was
not alone when it announced:
The value of all commodities is the amount of human labour it has taken to
procure them...But the merchant or agent between buyer and seller, being able to
conceal the real state of the transaction, contrives with scarcely any labour to
charge...one quarter above the value which he calls profit.47
For these Ricardian socialists, the solution to ‘distributive exploitation’ therefore lay in
building institutions in society that were more ‘just’ because they would allocate
resources both equitably and fairly.
Fraser essentially supports such a solution when she argues that transformative
remedies to distributive exploitation should include ‘universalist social-welfare
programmes, steeply progressive taxation, macro-economic policies aimed at creating
full employment, a large non-market public sector, significant public and/or collective
ownership, and democratic decision-making about basic socioeconomic priorities’.48
47 Cited in Thompson 1984, p. 137, original emphasis.48 Fraser 1995, p. 85.
18
Clearly, then, one of Fraser’s preferred strategies to create fully functioning
counterpublics is to see the implementation of something akin to the sort of Keynesian
welfarism that existed in many advanced capitalist countries after 1945. But two critical
observations can be made here.
First, Keynesian welfare and demand management of the economy proved in the
end to be a constraint on capital accumulation, acting as it did to facilitate the
overaccumulation of capital and to politicise labour. While Keynesian welfare did bring
real practical benefits to many, not least the lowering of poverty and inequality in
different areas of society, capital was more than willing to adopt new exploitative
strategies when this post-1945 political-economic project went into crisis in the 1970s.
There is no reason to expect that Fraser’s chosen ‘post-socialist’ strategy would fare any
better than, or be spared the same fate as, similar Keynesian welfare policies. Indeed,
they would probably exacerbate the crisis tendencies of capitalism. A commitment to full
employment during a recession, for example, leads to inflationary pressures and so
creates more problems for capitalist accumulation.49
Second, and this is a more basic point, it is important to stress that capitalism is
not primarily defined in relation to distributive exploitation, which arises from embodied
concrete labour. This is related to the point that counterpublics are defined, in part, as
being comprised by concrete social identities, such as identities around
environmentalism, gender, race, sexuality, and so on, which all struggle for recognition
and a fair and just distribution of resources. Yet, this theoretical position brackets out of
the analytical picture the abstract power of capital to accumulate for the sake of
accumulation. Indeed, from a Marxist perspective, a theory of embodied concrete labour
49 Smith 2006.
19
does not capture the manner in which capitalism is premised upon the exploitation of
abstract labour. For Marx, such theories therefore struggle to understand fully how
different products produced by individual acts of labour for exchange come to possess
value and thereby come to be exchanged in the first place. Marx’s concern accordingly
lies not so with concrete aspects of labour, but with labour’s social attributes. These
social attributes are not associated with the individual time each labourer works to
produce a commodity. Correspondingly, for Marx, these social attributes reside in the
socially necessary labour time required to create value, which then enables commodities
to exchange with one another. Capitalism is a system in which concrete labour is
transformed into abstract labour so that exchange occurs.50
At an abstract level, then, capitalists are only interested in quantitative
calculations formed by price signals. They are not concerned with ‘unfair externalities’,
such as whether workers receive just resources. In capitalist societies, the objective
pressure to accumulate profit takes priority over social justice.51 To some degree or
another, capitalism will always negatively affect a parity of participation. Theories of
justice in counterpublics need, therefore, to move beyond an analysis of relations of
distribution so that they might create the basis to address the social processes and
properties of capital. To begin to bring this abstract power back into a theory of the
public sphere, we now turn to Marxism. We start, first, with Negt and Kluge’s pioneering
work on developing a Marxist theory of the public sphere.
A Marxist Approach to the Public Sphere: Negt and Kluge
50 See Bonefeld 2010.51 Albritton 2007, pp. 166-8
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Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge provide an early Marxist alternative to Habermas’s
theory of the public sphere. As Marxists, Negt and Kluge analyse the effect which
capitalism has in society in producing and influencing different public spheres. Their
main work, Public Sphere and Experience, begins by examining the ‘use-value’ of the
public sphere. Negt and Kluge note that, historically, the public sphere as a frame of
reference fluctuates in confusing ways. On the one hand, it denotes specific institutions
such as law enforcement, the press, public opinion, public squares, and so on. On the
other hand, the public sphere represents a broader ‘social horizon of experience’, in
which ‘everything that is actually or ostensibly relevant for all members of society is
integrated’.52 If the public sphere includes issues of concern, which potentially influences
everyone, then it implies that the public sphere is at the same a social space where
different and antagonistic opinions circulate.
The public sphere is therefore a central mechanism for organising human
experience. Within capitalism, this takes the guise of mediation between the changing
form of capitalist production, on the one hand, and the cultural organisation of
experience, on the other. Having been rapidly assimilated to capitalist production, the
bourgeois public sphere can no longer provide a grounding for an emancipatory politics.
This function must now go to the proletarian public sphere, which exists in opposition to
the bourgeois public sphere. Whereas the latter seeks to organise experience according to
the abstract logic of capital, the former proletarian public sphere organises the
fragmented experiences of the proletariat around a class consciousness. The dynamic and
revolutionary nature of capitalism therefore unleashes a ‘cultural revolution’ in human
consciousness. Increasing socialisation of life by capital engenders new and ground-
52 Negt and Kluge 1993, p. 2
21
breaking forms of experience that takes shape in the proletarian public sphere.
Fundamental for this conceptualisation is Negt and Kluge’s term, ‘the block of
real life’. Employed by both capital and the proletariat, the block of real life delineates
that realm of psychic experience, which generates new desires, fantasies and social needs.
Existing alongside exploitation, the block of real life can nevertheless provide resources
to resist exploitation. For example, popular culture encapsulates desires of alternative
ways of living, which can then be used to struggle against capital. At the same time,
secondary exploitation, for example in the form of new public spheres of mass
communication, can act in the interests of capital in trying to infiltrate the very basis of
the block of real life.53
Without doubt, Negt and Kluge’s work represents a significant advance in a
critical understanding of the public sphere. In particular, it highlights the complex
interweaving of capitalist production with the bourgeois public sphere, the proletarian
public sphere and new explorations of popular human experience. Many social theorists
have also recognised the importance of this particular rethinking of the public sphere.
Indeed, Negt and Kluge’s delineation of the proletarian public sphere has demonstrated
for others the importance of mapping out popular experiences in concrete counterpublics,
such as those found in social movements.54 But it is also at this point that Negt and Kluge
reproduce some of the problems already noted with everyday counterpublics. For
instance, Negt and Kluge’s opening remarks make it clear that their analysis will separate
the use-value of the public sphere from its historical constitution. This leads them to
define the public sphere primarily as a means for social interaction and social mediation
53 Negt and Kluge 1993, p. 22.54 Barrett 2012; Downey and Fenton 2003.
22
at a rather concrete and general level of theoretical abstraction. Effectively, then, they
remain silent about the historical structuring of the public sphere through distinctive
social relations and thereby do not give enough theoretical attention to sketching out
some of the main traits of the capitalist form of the public sphere.
This problem manifests itself most tellingly when Negt and Kluge claim that
human experience is constituted through subjective alienated experiences in the
proletarian public sphere, while the bourgeois public sphere is said to reproduce abstract
forms of life in society. On this point, Negt and Kluge can be reproached for developing a
dualist social theory of the public sphere, which is problematic from a Marxist viewpoint.
Proletarian public spheres are said to emerge from concrete experiences, while bourgeois
public spheres emerge from mechanisms that are more abstract. ‘The worker’s real
struggle is waged between his abstract, general bourgeois characteristics and his concrete,
specific, proletarian ones’.55 Unsurprisingly, then, this dualist viewpoint is reproduced in
how Negt and Kluge explore use-value and value in the public sphere. For example,
‘social wealth’ is not described by reference to the contradictory unity of use-value and
value but by reference to use-value only. The result is an examination of subjective
factors of production; factors such as awareness, co-operation, freedom, sociality,
universal needs, and human sensuality.56 These are all categories of ‘social need’, which
can then be translated into the proletarian public sphere. However, this analysis does not
probe the capitalist social form of ‘social needs’ in enough detail because use-value has
been separated from value.
Alienation provides an illustration of the issues at stake here. Negt and Kluge
55 Negt and Kluge 1993, p. 60.56 Negt and Kluge 1993, pp. 82-84.
23
assert that the fragmented subjective experience of the modern factory creates an
alienated existence in concrete proletarian public spheres. ‘The machinery, which
confronts the worker only in fragments, takes on the form of a mystified objectivity
precisely because it is not perceived as a totality’.57 In this respect, Negt and Kluge
interpret alienation through a humanist prism via real individuals in their concrete
workplaces. Yet, this reproduces an account of alienation as a technical ‘commodification
process’ in which modern machinery increasingly fragments human experience in the
marketplace. Alienated labour is thus believed to be one instance of a wider process of
commodified reification through the externalisation of fragmentation bestowed on
humanity by technology.
Negt and Kluge thereby share a debt to Max Weber, rather than to Marx, on this
issue. Weber insisted that modernity witnesses an increasing rationalisation of the world
through instrumental bureaucratic tasks, which unintentionally create a fragmented world
that exists externally over individual action. For Marx, alienation clearly differs in some
important respects to this account. Everyday life, Marx suggests, does not only become
more fragmented, reified, and rationalised because of new technological machines in the
workplace. Rather, capitalism creates a number of contradictory social forms that are
irrational from their birth. Marx insists that the historical and irrational peculiarity of
capitalism lies in the fact that labour becomes value for others. This occurs through the
necessity that goods need to possess exchange-value if they are to be traded with other
goods. Exchange-value is formed by labour that assumes an ‘abstract’ identity because it
is measured through the average socially necessary labour time taken to produce
57 Negt and Kluge 1993, p. 29.
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commodities.58 In other words, labour only receives validation in capitalism to the extent
that it is ‘socially recognised within a division of labour; labour whose social character
has been abstracted from the activity of the labourer to confront the labourer as the
property of a thing; labour whose human qualities have been reduced to a single quality
of duration; dehumanised, homogeneous, in short alienated labour’.59 Reification and
rationalisation needs to be explored as subjective expression of an irrational objective
process, and not, as Negt and Kluge tend to do, by separating both into separate social
realms.
What a Marxist approach therefore requires is an alternative starting point for
exploring the historical peculiarities of the capitalist public sphere. These peculiarities
cannot be arrived at in the first instance by arguing that concrete experiences in the
proletarian public sphere are separate from ‘objective’ traits found in the bourgeois public
sphere. It follows that we need, first, to grasp the capitalist public sphere in its most
abstract and simplest form. Just as Marx began to dissect capitalism at an abstract and
simple level by exploring the main contradictory determinants of the commodity-form,60
so is it the case that when studying the capitalist public sphere we need to theoretically
dissect its main contradictory determinants as these internally arise through the
commodity-form. The next chapter starts to present this alternative Marxist account.
Commodities, Dialogue, and Right
Capitalism, as Marx famously observes, first appears as an ‘immense collection of
58 Marx 1988, p. 130.59 Clarke 1991, p. 101, original emphasis.60 Marx 1988, p. 90.
25
commodities’.61 In its most basic form, then, capitalism is a collective
ensemble of distinctive events of commodity exchange between a
seller and a buyer. If one event of commodity exchange breakdowns,
this will not necessarily be detrimental to capitalism, yet if the collective
activity of commodity exchange does not occur then capitalism will eventually grind to a
halt.62 This ‘silent compulsion of economic relations’63 imposes itself across capitalist
society and transforms the public sphere. After all, the relationship between two ‘equal’
participants in an act of commodity exchange – a seller and a buyer – is also established
through dialogue grounded in words that obtain ‘entire fullness’ of meaning in the sense
that dialogue between both seller and buyer is not dictated by explicit state coercion, as is
apparent for example in feudalism. Under capitalism, individuals therefore gain a new
sense of autonomy to express themselves freely at events of exchange. Indeed, the now
boundless manner in which dialogue can be communicated under continual events of
commodity exchange frees up a single word to convey, ‘its content/sense aspect (the
word as concept) as well as its palpable-expressive aspect (the word as image) and its
emotional-volitional aspect (the intonation of the word)’64 between both a seller and
buyer of a commodity. Therefore, the word-as-event, or ‘utterance’, is premised on words
being equally and non-coercively answerable to both seller and buyer during particular
events of commodity exchange.
Sure enough, there is no such thing as complete freedom of speech. At a
minimum level, there will always be constraints of ‘a certain typical kind of expression’
61 Marx 1988, p. 125.62 Brown 2007, p. 509.63 Marx 1988, p. 899.64 Bakhtin 1993, p. 31.
26
in how people engage in dialogue with one another, such as particular social
conventions.65 At the same time, the ceaseless nature of commodity exchange implies that
no act of exchange is the same as another. There is no necessity, for example, that the
exchange of goods will be successful at a particular event and so a degree of contingency
surrounds every act of commodity exchange. For Bakhtin, an event is subsequently a
moment of indecisiveness, a moment in which new potentialities present themselves, and
a moment where such potentialities can create new ways in which an event of commodity
exchange is spoken about between a seller and a buyer.66 Such events are therefore highly
intense performances. What can be added to this point is that part of this intensity relates
to a dialogic struggle in the capitalist public sphere over the individual right to exchange
commodities. But why is this so?
Adorno observes that generalised commodity relationships give individuals a
feeling that they have the freedom to pursue their own ends seemingly unimpeded by
certain social constraints. ‘In this sense, freedom coincides with the principle of
individuation’.67 At the same time, continues Adorno, value relations impose a certain
dominance on individuals so that ‘what produced freedom will recoil into unfreedom’.68
Value relations embed a contractual association in commodity relationships that, under
advanced capitalism, eventually comes to be embodied and formalised in law. This at
first implicit contractual association forces the right to exchange goods on each
individual through the very nature of commodity relations themselves. After all, simple
commodity production is based on two individual owners of private property who must
65 Bakhtin 1986, p. 87. See also Bakhtin 1981, p. 312; Voloshinov 1973, p. 20. 66 Bakhtin 1990, p. 118.67 Adorno 1990, pp. 261-2.68 Adorno 1990, p. 262.
27
recognise one another as possessing the right to exchange goods.69 If each person does
not recognise the right of others to possess and exchange goods then of course no
exchange can take place.
Importantly, the ‘right’ to be included in commodity relationships is not a
subjective ‘right’, nor is it a sense of entitlement so beloved by liberal theory. Instead, it
is a ‘Right’ that constructs ‘objective conditions to which our subjective will must
conform’.70 Commodity relationships bestow a formal equivalence and sense of equality
on each person. Yet, at the same time, these relations forbid ‘the admission of anything
that eludes their closed circle…’71 In a certain sense, therefore, to be included in
commodity relationships suggests there is a comprehensive and abstract ethical and moral
‘Right’ to be included in exchange relationships, which in turn appears ‘naturally’
through exchange and contractual relations themselves.72 While commodity owners must
recognise one another as right-bearers, they do so unconsciously because the recognition
of Right is inscribed in the very basis of commodity exchange. However, the equal Right
to which each participant is (contractually) bound together during commodity exchange
is also mediated through a historically specific form of coercion. Universal commodity
relationships are relationships between atomistic and separate individuals who will resort
to ‘self-help’ and various forceful measures in order to regulate the procedures of
exchange in their favour.73 What appear to be consensual relationships between
commodity owners are on closer inspection actually mediated through the coercive form
69 Marx 1988, p. 178.70 Franco 1999, p. 173.71 Adorno 1990, p. 309.72 Hegel 2000, §33A.73 Pashukanis 1983, p. 118.
28
of Right. But how do these developments shape the commodity public sphere under
capitalism? We now address this question.
Personalities and Struggles in the Commodity Public Sphere
The objective character of Right, as embodied in the commodity-form, forces each
commodity owner to recognise the other as an agent, or subject, of Right. Consequently,
Right is an objective form that gives rise to a distinctive mode of subjectivity, ‘in order to
provide the basis upon which transactions take place’.74 That is to say, commodity
relations establish a universal form of subjectivity in society, which cover all events and
all individuals in society. For instance, capitalism presupposes that individuals are
property owners before they enter a market, and this further implies there is no barrier in
theory to the amount of property an individual can own. ‘In this sense the subjectivity of
the individual as a person with the legal capacity to own property is universal’.75
Right also forces a subjective personality onto individuals. Indeed, the
individualism and subjectivity encouraged by commodity relationships opens up a space
for each person to possess a personality based on drives, needs, tastes, and so on.76 This
relationship between a subjective personality and commodity exchange is itself founded
on a split, which occurs under capitalism, between a person and ‘things’. A person must
take possession of a ‘thing’, or object, and sell it in a market.77 A person, or seller,
therefore transforms a thing into a desirable object to be sold to another person, or buyer.
74 Kay and Mott 1984, p. 264.75 Kay and Mott 1982, p. 4.76 Hegel 2000, §45.77 Kay and Mott 1982, p. 3.
29
As such, a seller spends time investing some of their own personality into the object
possessed so that it becomes a commodity for exchange with a buyer.
Yet, if it is the case that a commodity also embodies aspects of a personality, it
follows that one person can now possess another person’s personality by obtaining a
commodity. This subsequently establishes a relationship between recognition and the
public sphere through coercion and power because struggles for dominance between two
personalities – a seller and a buyer – now erupt at an event of commodity exchange.
Remember, there is a necessity to gain recognition of one’s Right from another
personality. In other words, one must gain the recognition from another of the Right to
own and sell one’s commodity in the marketplace. This is based on the constraint placed
on a seller to demonstrate the use-value of an object to a buyer. A seller has to show that
their time invested in making a commodity into a use-value proves to be attractive to a
buyer. Still, there is also a necessity placed on a seller not to recognise the specific
concrete rights and personality of the buyer because the rights and personality of the
buyer are simply forms of (abstract) property embodied in an object of exchange, which a
seller must possess. A seller is therefore not interested in the subjective identity of a
buyer. A seller is, rather, interested primarily in selling their commodity for money.
In respect to the public sphere, these observations show us that one’s ‘personality’
come to be embodied in contractual relationships mediated by how Right is ideologically
positioned in dialogue between a seller who speaks about their object to a buyer who
hears what the seller has to say. In other words, dialogue between the ‘personalities’ of a
seller and buyer is facilitated through the all-encompassing nature of Right, along with
contractual relationships of private property, during events of commodity exchange.78
78 Hegel 2000, §71R.
30
Right subsequently acts as a type of ‘inverted’ public dialogue between these commodity
owners at events of exchange. Concrete dialogue and utterances become ‘alien’ to those
who use them it in the sense that they are abstracted away from the real contradictions
and inversions inherent in actual events of commodity exchange.79 Objectified in a
contractual relationship, individuals thus lose some control in how they creatively discuss
their concrete rights. Dialogue between both seller and buyer does not however involve a
discussion of the alienated and contradictory nature of commodity relationships, but
instead stays at the level of objectified contractual relationships.
One way to theoretically express the alienated nature of this public sphere is to
suggest that a struggle arises about which ‘voice’ and ‘accent’ will predominate over the
representation of the Right to exchange goods. This struggle occurs between a seller who
becomes a speaker-personality and the buyer who becomes a hearer-personality. Right
thus becomes a device to mediate the flow of dialogue between both speaker and hearer
at specific commodity events.80 A speaker-personality takes the active role in this
relationship by endeavouring to ensure that Right reflects their own utterances and the
dominance of their personality over that of the hearer-personality. In other words, the
speaker-personality seeks to guarantee that events of commodity exchange are predefined
in a manner favourable to their own desires and needs to ensure that Right will no longer
be open to a dialogic challenge by the hearer-personality. It follows that the hearer-
personality assumes a passive role in this relationship whereby their personality will only
be recognised in Right by how the speaker-personality dialogically represents Right.
79 Voloshinov 1973,p. 79; see also McNally 2001, pp. 111-112.80 See Bakhtin and Medvedev 1978.
31
At an abstract level, then, a speaker-personality will try to imbue Right with a
single vision, tone, and monologue favourable to themselves. They do this by inverting
the ‘heteroglossic’ potential of a hearer-personality’s dialogue. Heteroglossia is the
moment when a person begins to question publicly the manner in which the world is
contradictory, inverted, and ideologically justifies particular interests over those of the
majority.81 Through monologic dialogue, a speaker-personality must therefore suppress
this critical heteroglossic potential of a hearer’s dialogue about Right.82 But how exactly
does the speaker maintain this monologic vision83 over Right?
The Fetish of Cultivated Dialogue in the Commodity Public Sphere
Marx introduces his account of fetishism in volume one of Capital to describe the
mystifying power of the commodity. According to Marx, the fetishism of commodities
lies precisely in the way in which commodity relationships ‘invert’ social relations in
society.84 People produce and give value to commodities and yet at an everyday level
commodities stand before us as ‘objective’ products, which seem to conjure up value by
themselves. Cars, TVs, fridges, and so on, all appear to create their own value in society
without the need for labour. Indeed, this fetishism is strengthened by the immediate
sensuous qualities that cultural goods seem to possess, which again appear to have no
relationship to value relations.85
In an analogous way, Right acts as a fetish for dialogue at events of commodity
exchange. A hearer might very well believe that the Right to engage in exchange
81 See Bakhtin 1981, p. 291.82 Bakhtin 1984, p. 91.83 See Bakhtin 1990.84 Marx 1988, pp. 164-5.85 Adorno 2001, pp. 38-9. See also
32
relations is also a sign for them to discuss their concrete everyday rights during this
event. What the hearer misrecognises, however, is that Right is not simply a transparent
sign for the equal exchange of utterances between a hearer-personality and a speaker-
personality. On balance, it is the speaker-personality, not the hearer-personality, who
seeks out opportunities to ‘re-accent’ Right to favour its own utterances. This occurs
when a speaker-personality manages to transform Right ‘into the carrier of an
independently valid idea’,86 which a hearer accepts even if, in reality, this ‘independently
valid idea’ actually supports the desires and utterances of the speaker-personality. In this
respect, the speaker-personality aims to be the ‘author’ of Right. This occurs when the
speaker-personality manages to translate Right into an abstract, transcendental and non-
historical ‘Idea’. This ‘Idea’ about ‘Right’ then acts as a mediator between the concrete
rights and the lived experience of both personalities, and thus appears to be independent
of both personalities.87 In truth, of course, Right has already been ‘accented’ to favour the
desires and utterances of the speaker-personality. That is to say, Right is translated into ‘a
true signifying idea’ because ‘it gravitates toward some impersonal, systematically
monologic context; in other words, it gravitates toward the systematically monologic
worldview of the author himself’.88
On a practical level, these developments take place through the separation of
intellectual labour from manual labour. The commodity public sphere transforms a
certain form of thinking into an elevated realm at some distance from more ‘earthly’
labouring activity.89 Descartes, for example, is justly identified as first great thinker who
sought to systematically establish ‘the identity of an “I” reduced to pure thought with an 86 Bakhtin 1984, p. 79.87 Bakhtin and Medvedev 1978, p. 7. See also Deleuze 1994, p. 127; Žižek 1997, pp. 100-5.88 Bakhtin 1984, p. 79. See also Bakhtin 1981, p. 342.89 See Bourdieu 1984; Poulantzas 2000.
33
outer world reduced to pure reason’.90 For Descartes, thinking is therefore a separate
corporeal substance of clarity to the body. Descartes thus paved the way for successive
generations of liberal philosophers to explore ‘thought’ as an independent realm from
other social spheres. ‘Thought’ came to be viewed in liberal theory as a sphere of culture,
enlightenment and rationality that could, and can, be accessed through the ‘correct’ type
of education. For Adorno, capitalism undoubtedly nurtures the growth of a critical and
independent mode of thought.91 Unlike liberal theorists, though, Adorno places this mode
of thought with the rise of a ‘thoughtless rationality’, which perpetuates the ideological
notion that everyone has equal access to rationality even if ‘rationality’ actually
reproduces social divisions in society through the broad division between intellectual
labour and manual labour.92
These latter negative qualities of this peculiarly bourgeois form of ‘thought’ can
be further observed in its serious and scholarly form. Inextricably tied to various accounts
of ‘rationality’, the bourgeois mode of thought compares itself to what it sees as the
irrational and intense passions of a labouring body unable to control its emotions. For the
bourgeoisie, passion is thereby often thought to be an intense animalistic expression,
particularly associated with the ‘great unwashed’ of labour, which overtakes one’s bodily
emotions leading to a loss of rational self-control.93 To be rational through the bourgeois
mode of thought is thus to overcome these labouring animalistic passions and to regain
self-control over one’s ability to engage in reasoned public arguments. Being ‘rational’
therefore equips one with the ‘proper’, ‘cultivated’, and ‘educated’ skills to make an
‘impartial’ judgement about issues of, say, justice. If one falls prey to bodily passions 90 Hadden 1994, p. 137.91 Adorno 1990, p. 172.92 See also Cook 2004, chapter 3.93 Hall 2005, pp. 12-13.
34
then such impartial judgement is clouded by egoistical considerations, bias towards what
one cherishes, and impulsive partisanship.94
As a moment of this bourgeois sense of cultivation, monologic utterances of a
speaker-personality portray the heteroglossic utterances of the hearer-personality as being
highly emotional, impulsive, and uneducated ways of speaking about the transcendental
idea of Right. A personality zone of humiliation, personified with, for example, a lack of
education and rationality, is accordingly fashioned by monologic utterances and targeted
towards the hearer-personality. Humiliation is centred on a feeling of being deficient and
inferior at something, and that this deficiency and/or inferiority is seen as such by others
and thus gains public confirmation.95 Those who feel humiliation will often try to hide
their perceived deficiency and/or inferiority because they also feel a sense of shame,
which, in part, is expressed through a perceived failure to live up to commitments and
values shared by others.96 In this instance, a hearer-personality is made to feel they cannot
engage in cultivated and educated public dialogue about Right, and this brings a sense of
humiliation and shame on them.97
Humiliation is also important because it produces a serious and sombre zone for
the speaker-personality to sit in judgement about the ‘vulgar’ utterances of the hearer-
personality. By humiliating the hearer’s very personality, it can then be shown that only
the speaker-personality has the individual cultivation, seriousness, standing and character
to speak seriously about the abstract idea ‘Right’. Indeed, it is through the reputation of
the speaker-personality to employ a ‘better argument’, or better ‘intellect’, when speaking
94 Hall 2005, p. 24.95 Sayer 2005, p. 161.96 Sayer 2005, p. 152.97 For a historical example of class struggles over the bourgeois aesthetic in relation to the public sphere and politics in eighteenth and early nineteenth century public space in London, see Roberts 2004.
35
about the abstract Idea of Right that the humiliation of the hearer-personality’s utterances
is maintained. Reputation is thus ‘organically connected to a past that is felt to be
hierarchically higher…It is given...in lofty spheres, not those of familiar contact’.98 This
being so, the utterances of the hearer-personality are translated into monologic utterances
through the expressive reputable dialogue of the speaker-personality. It is in this sense
that Right serves to order and regulate heteroglossic labouring passions through zones of
cultivation and education about what is thought to be ‘rational’ discussion in the public
sphere.
Conclusion
In the vast majority of cases, social theorists view the modern public sphere as a place for
debate and discussion in society, or, more critically, as an arena in civil society where
certain forms of power can be transcended so that inclusive debate and discussion can
proceed unhindered by social divisions. This paper has put forward an alternative
argument about the capitalist public sphere. It has been concerned to abstract
theoretically the simplest capitalist form of the public sphere, which want for a better
term might be called the commodity public sphere. By starting from this theoretical point
the paper has shown that, at this most fundamental level in capitalist social relations, the
public sphere is not structured by inclusion but rather by a necessary contradictory
struggle between a speaker-personality and a hearer-personality. At the level of simple
commodity production, it is therefore possible to provide the following summary. The
form of the public sphere in a commodity producing society, namely what kind of social
relation it is, is mediated through an inverted contradictory relationship between the
98 Bakhtin 1981, p. 342. See also Bakhtin 1990, pp. 65-6.
36
speaker-personality and the hearer-personality. The content of the public sphere in a
commodity producing society, namely, what the social relation is about, is mediated
through the speaker-personality’s ability to maintain a surplus vision about the meaning
of Right through monologic utterances against the hearer-personality’s heteroglossic
utterances.99 The ideology of this social relation is established by a series of inversions.
First, the alienated nature of Right (the specific disempowering of subjective practice
through the objectification of personalities in Right) is masked through the ascendancy of
monologic dialogue about Right associated with the speaker-personality. Second, this
inversion is then accompanied by another inversion based on the enlightened and
educated reputation of monologic dialogue to speak about Right.100
As this summary suggests, one important part of this public sphere is the fact that
it is mediated through irreconcilable forces and interests. In many respects, this viewpoint
is similar to that put forward by agonist theorists. Mouffe for instance argues that politics
is premised on an ‘us’ and ‘them’ distinction in which one’s social and political identity
is constructed through difference against somebody else or another group.101 The
‘creation of an identity always implies the establishment of difference’.102 This being the
case, politics always involves antagonism and conflict between competing and different
hegemonic projects. More precisely, politics is structured through adversaries who
welcome a clash of legitimate opinions and democratic political positions. In other words,
agonism celebrates pluralism and ‘conflictual consensus’ over deliberative consensus.103
99 See Larrain 1983, pp. 158.100 See Larrain 1983, p. 125.101 Mouffe 2005; 2013.102 Mouffe 2013, p. 5.103 Mouffe, 2005, p. 30; Mouffe 2013, pp. 8-9. See also Laclau and Mouffe 1990, p. 105.
37
Certainly, the theory of agonism manages to highlight some shortcomings of other
theories of the public sphere, such as a Habermasian deliberative theory. However, it is
not without its own problems. To begin with, the agonistic model is still reliant on an
ideal space of agreement between adversaries. Consider this quote from Mouffe. ‘What
liberal democratic requires is that the others are not seen as enemies to be destroyed, but
as adversaries whose ideas might be fought, even fiercely, but whose right to defend
those ideas is not to be questioned’.104 Mouffe seems to suggest that while adversaries are
in conflict with one another they still nevertheless ‘see themselves as belonging to the
same political association, as sharing a common symbolic space within which the conflict
takes place’.105 Through these agonistic spaces, people can discuss issues passionately
because conflicts between adversaries are encouraged even if unceasing antagonism is
discarded. Clearly, though, this viewpoint has affinities with the sort of liberal position
Mouffe wishes to reject. It retains the classic liberal ideal that civil society is a realm of
rational dialogue between different individuals. Mouffe therefore rejects the possibility of
a revolutionary break from the existing liberal democratic institutions.106 Agonist
theorists therefore share with liberal theorists the belief that different opinions can be
reconciled in capitalist society. Like liberal theorists, for example, agonists contend that
real social relations of antagonism between different social forces in society need to be
‘tamed’ through a ‘common symbolic space’.107
Mouffe’s viewpoint is, then, noticeably different to that put forward in this paper.
We have seen that the capitalist public sphere in its most abstract commodity-form is
mediated through some essential and necessary contradictions that will always disrupt the 104 Mouffe 2013, p. 7.105 Mouffe 2005, p. 20.106 Mouffe 2005, p. 53.107 Mouffe 2005, pp. 20-1.
38
functioning of concrete public spheres. In other words, ‘antagonism’ can never be fully
tamed by agonistic politics. Capitalism is not merely founded on conflict between
observable people engaged in debate with one another in civil society, but is also founded
on a number of necessary structural contradictions. These contradictions can certainly be
regulated and suspended for a period of time, but they will inevitably assert themselves
once again at other times. Most obviously, for instance, the capital-labour relationship is
an essential and necessary contradiction of capitalism insofar that it can never be
extinguished as long as capitalism remains active as a system. Mouffe therefore makes
some extremely important critical points against liberal theory but she also replicates
some of its faults. For this reason alone, it is perhaps unsurprising that Habermasians and
deliberative theorists can claim that many of Mouffe’s ideas are in fact in keeping with
their own.108
In saying this, the paper has not sought to develop these insights in respect to
advanced capitalism where one would find explicit class-based public spheres in the
guise of the bourgeois and proletarian public spheres. However, this more developed
form of the public is already contained within the commodity public sphere as outlined
above. After all, a generalised commodity-producing society in which labour has been
separated from the means of production. Yet, as Marx also observes, the generalisation of
commodity exchange across society as a whole presupposes ‘that the labourer himself
comes forward merely as a seller of commodities, and thus as a free wage-labourer, so
that labour appears in general as wage-labour’.109 But this also requires that ‘the owner of
the means of production and subsistence finds the free worker available, on the market, as
108 See for example Knops 2007.109 Marx 1977, p. 879.
39
the seller of his own labour-power’.110 Free wage labour is thereby constituted through its
separation from the means of production, which is also the precondition and continuous
result of generalised commodity production.111 It is for this reason that individual
commodity owners who privately own objects to exchange with others represent the
appearance of the separation of labour from the means of production.112 The basis is
therefore established to derive the social form of the public sphere under advanced
capitalism.
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