* Alexander Kluge and Oskar Negt, History and Obstinacy, ed. with an intro. by Devin Fore, trans. Richard Langston et al., Zone Books, New
York, 2014. 541 pp., 29.97 hb., 978 1 935408 46 8. Page references to the English edition appear in brackets in the main text.
R a d i c a l P h i l o s o p h y 1 9 0 (m a r /a p r 2 0 1 5 )
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Life itself
In so far as Negt and Kluge are successful in extracting a political economy of labour power from the
political economy of capital, a fundamental question
arises about their relation: is this inner economy
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Primitive property
In order to establish whether the idea permanent
primitive accumulation dissolves into this contradiction or not, we can look to Negt and Kluges
conception of primitive property, since this is what
they suggest is renewed as permanently as it is
accumulated.15
[Primitive property] embodies a human behavior
(whether real or imagined) toward the natural
conditions of production the ground upon which
humans toil and the community of which they
are a member as something belonging to them,
something which constitutes, as it were, only an
extension of his body.
In accordance with Adam Smith, Marx repeatedly designates this relation of original property
as a natural workshop of human characteristics.
More precisely, this relation is the notion of something of ones own (such as identity or subjectivity),
ones language, an association with a community,
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to labour that is presupposed by use is more radically excluded from measure. It is presupposed and
grasped crudely in this sense by the employment of
labours use. In this sense, the disposition to labour
is not directly subjected to the capitalist accumulation of labour power through accumulating the
value of its use. Moreover, the fact that this disposition to labour must be permanently renewed
outside the capitalist production process, enabling
it to be permanently accumulated, can be granted.
But for this to constitute primitive accumulation,
the disposition to labour must be understood as
primitive property. And this requires treating the
inner life of labour power as a primitive property,
rather than the residue left behind by primitive
accumulation.
To put it another way, Negt and Kluge concede
that labour power is not primitive property in the
strict sense, by the very fact that it has emerged as a
result of primitive accumulation. The fact that it is
irreducible to the private property is not enough to
secure labours primitive property in its means of production as an extended body. The characterization
of labour power as primitive property has something
exaggerated about it, as it was meant to carry this
sense of an extended body, while applying it to the
separated body that is disposing itself to labour. In
other words, primitive property does not seem to
recognize the separation of this body, but instead
attributes an extended body to its very separation.
Rather, primitive property conceals the extent to
which this extended body has become obstinate, projected inwards to an inalienable life and outwards
to fantasies of a life before alienation. But once we
recognize this, primitive property also becomes the
sign of this obstinate life and its fantasies.
Need
Negt and Kluge relate primitive property explicitly
to the irrepressible idea of a golden age: As a claim
staked out by humans vis--vis their present moment,
the notion of a golden age seems irrepressible. In
this respect, it makes no difference whether what
is at stake here is myth or bygone reality (82). The
perspective this offers becomes further explicit in
conjunction with the following passage on primitive
property:
One such primitive property is a need, i.e. an objective relation, not a natural drive to appropriate,
but already a reaction to alienated relations. Out
of not having such a property results the need. A
primitive property is that which in second, social
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Notes
Two-year MPhilStud
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enquiries s.sandford@kingston.ac.uk
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www.kingston.ac.uk/crmep