Anti-economics and anti-politics: on the reformulation of social emancipation after the end of "marxism" - Robert Kurz
In this 1997 essay, Robert Kurz discusses the question of the “embryonic form” of “the productive forces developing in the womb of bourgeois society” (Marx); rejecting both the “all-or-nothing” view of the extreme left that sees such a project as doomed to integration into capitalism, and the reformist concept of “dual economy” where cooperative businesses produce for the capitalist market, he advocates a process of “disconnection” from the value matrix that incorporates aspects of both the old cooperative movement and modern “microelectronic” technology while preserving a commitment to overcoming the system of commodity production and a refusal to produce for the market.
Part One
1. Politics and the Question of the Embryonic Emancipatory Form
The apotheosis of money: the structural limits of capital valorization, casino capitalism and the global financial crisis - Robert Kurz
In this 1995 essay, Robert Kurz examines “fictitious capital”, “unproductive labor”, the “tertiary sector”, “State debt”, “speculative bubbles”, “derivatives”, and “globalization” in the context of the wave of bankruptcies, crashes and bailouts of the 80s and 90s; discusses Rosa Luxemburg’s crisis theory, Keynesianism, Aglietta’s “regulation theory”, and the “neo-liberal” offensive; and predicts a “devaluation shock” that will invalidate the bloated property claims of fictitious capital in a “monetary atomic explosion” heralding “the end of the history of the mode of production based on money”.
The Apotheosis of Money: The Structural Limits of Capital Valorization, Casino Capitalism and the Global Financial Crisis – Robert Kurz
1. Real Capital and Interest-Yielding Capital
The end of politics: theses on the crisis of the regulatory system of the commodity form - Robert Kurz
In this essay first published in 1994, Robert Kurz examines the history of “politics” as the “regulatory system” of “the modern commodity production system”, from the inception of capitalism to its high point immediately after WW2—when “the last residues … of the pre-modern constitution” were eliminated and when “politics” was finally totally absorbed by “economics”—and its current crisis, heralding “the historical collapse of the system”, manifested as “the environmental crisis, the crisis of the society of labor, the crisis of the nation-state and the crisis of gender relations” in an era when democracy “is nothing but the completed subjection to the subjectless logic of money”.
The End of Politics: Theses on the Crisis of the Regulatory System of the Commodity Form – Robert Kurz
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Domination without a subject (part two) - Robert Kurz
In this concluding Part Two of his essay, Kurz examines the relationship of the ideas of Freud and Marx with respect to the concept of the “constitution of the fetish”, discusses the relation between “first nature” and “second nature” as a developmental process, and outlines the prerequisites for the quest for a tertium genus that will be the goal of the “revolution against the constitution of the fetish”, which is “identical with the supersession of the subject” as the latter has been conceived until now.
Domination without a Subject – Robert Kurz
On the Supersession of a Reductive Social Critique
Part Two
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Domination without a subject (part one) - Robert Kurz
In Part One of this 1993 essay, Robert Kurz criticizes the largely unexamined assumptions underpinning the “vulgar Marxist” use of such political concepts as power, interest and domination; discusses the development of the more nuanced understanding of these concepts expressed in theories associated with the names of Weber, Michels, Trotsky and Freud; and assesses the role played by structuralism and systems theory in the establishment of an “apologetic” theory of subjectless domination which must be replaced by a “critical and revolutionary praxis” that is no longer Marxism of a “subjective-ideological type”.
Domination without a Subject*- Robert Kurz
On the Supersession of a Reductive Social Critique
Part One
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The lost honor of labor - Robert Kurz
In this provocative and wide-ranging 1991 essay, Robert Kurz marshals Marx’s critique of the basic categories of capitalism and argues for “liberation from labor”, meaning the “‘abstract labor’ embodied in the form of value” that functions “tautologically” as a “self-referential” “end-in-itself” with destructive results for humanity (not to be confused with “human reproductive activity or with the process of metabolism with nature”); rejecting both technical regression (the “poverty of needs”) and obsolete reformism (the “Marxism of the workers movement”) he advocates “the planning and direction of the material nexus of reproduction in a directly social manner”.
The Lost Honor of Labor: Socialism of the Producers as Logical Impossibility – Robert Kurz
Part One
The Ontology of Labor
The German war economy and state socialism - Robert Kurz
In this excerpt from his book, The Collapse of Modernization (1991), Robert Kurz discusses the role played by the WWI German War Economy as a model for the catch-up modernization program implemented first by the Bolshevik regime and then completed by Stalin (defined by Preobrazhensky in 1926 as “Socialist Primitive Accumulation”), points out that this understanding of the transition to socialism was almost universally accepted at the time among all socialist and communist factions, including the most radical ones, due to a “false ontology of labor” and a “socio-technological” understanding of capital that are incompatible with Marx’s critique of the commodity form and abstract labor.
The German War Economy and State Socialism – Robert Kurz
The Sociologism of Class Struggle and the Veiling of Bourgeois Forms
Interview on The Black Book of Capitalism - Robert Kurz
Robert Kurz discusses his book, The Black Book of Capitalism, which he describes as a "radical-critical history of modernization since the 18th century", summarizes his views on "class struggle" in the context of his critique of value and labor, refers to the "dominant order" as "an accumulation of infamies" and calls for a movement "that will directly appropriate resources and bypass the detour of the market, the State, money and politics".
Interview on The Black Book of Capitalism” – Robert Kurz
An interview with Robert Kurz conducted by Dieter Heidemann (Professor of the Department of Geography at the University of Sao Paulo) and Cláudio Duarte on February 15, 2005.
DH (Dieter Heidemann): The original title of your latest book was “The Satanic Mills”; why did you change it?
Paradoxes of human rights - Robert Kurz
Analysis of the paradoxes of the concept of "human rights" under capitalism, which "objectively" defines human rights as a function of the individual's "solvency" or usefulness in capital's valorization process, and "subjectively" according to whether the individual is ideologically defined as a "friend" or an "enemy".
The fatal pressure of competition - Robert Kurz
2002 analysis of the phenomenon of school shootings, which the author claims reflect the totalitarian mass psychology of capitalism in crisis, whose perpetrators are described as "robots of capitalist competition gone haywire" in a "culture of self-destruction and self-forgetting".
The Fatal Pressure of Competition – Robert Kurz
Mad Gunmen and Suicides as Subjects of Crisis
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