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One The Use and Disadvantage of Prehistory for Life Marx’s “Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations” and the Constitution of the Subject of Labor In every moment of the development of the capitalist mode of production, capital has always proposed the form of cooperation. This form had to be functional with the form of exploitation when it did not actually inhere within it. It was only on this basis that labor became productive. Likewise, in the period of primitive accumulation, when capital enveloped and constricted pre-existent labor forms to its own valorization, it was capital which posed the form of cooperation—and this consisted in the emptying of the pre-constituted connections of the traditional laboring subjects. —Antonio Negri, Twenty Theses on Marx P R I M I T I V E A C C U M U L A T I O N It is a matter of common knowledge that Karl Marx presents the difference between his analysis and all previous (bourgeois) understandings of political economy as a historical versus an ahistorical conception of capitalism. What is considerably less certain is how Marx, or those who came after him, understood this disparity; that is, What are its theoretical grounds and what were or could be its effects in the realm of philosophy, historical understanding, and political practice ? There have been many interpretations of this difference; in this day and age this difference is often represented as either an incorrect prophecy (capitalism will collapse) or a contribution to a vague and inconsequential awareness of history 19 (something, some economy existed before capitalism). If it is possible today to propose another thought of the distinction between Marx and political economy, or to attempt to reanimate the question, problem, and lines of investigation from behind this accepted bit of academic common sense, I would suggest that for Marx this difference, the difference history makes, has entirely different grounds, and different effects, than mere prophesy, transforming what is understood by society , materiality, power, and subjectivity. To begin to grasp this difference it is necessary to pose the question of what is at stake in what Marx called the “mode of production.” The mode of production, specifically the capitalist mode of production, was the name that Marx gave his particular object, and it is from this object that Marx proposes an understanding of history, politics, and the possibility of political practice. Furthermore, it is through a definition of this particular “theoretical object” that Marx develops a critique of the objects of idealist philosophy and bourgeois political economy, objects conventionally known as “society” and the “economy.”1 This critique is most overtly aimed at the political motivations at work in the manner in which the bourgeoisie understood its object (it almost goes without saying that the bourgeoisie had an interest in understanding capitalism as eternal) or what is commonly referred to as “ideology critique” in its most banal and basic sense. However, Marx’s criticism goes beyond the simple investigation of political interest to indicate the unexamined presuppositions of the objects of bourgeois economics and philosophy. One such presupposition was the understanding of human nature that silently supported the theoretical space of classical bourgeois political economy. “Human nature” here is intended in a broad sense to include not only the particular philosophical anthropology that provides classical political economy with its alibis and justifications but also the more practical problem of the place of human desires, motivations, and beliefs (or subjectivity) in history: their conditions, limitations, and effects. Marx’s critique of the conceptions of human nature and subjectivity supporting bourgeois political economy, as well as his development, albeit partial and often incomplete, of a radically different thought of the historicity and materiality of subjectivity, are perhaps nowhere more forcefully developed than in the points where Marx presents his account of the formation of the capitalist mode of production and its radical difference from all prior modes of production. I am referring here to the final chapters of the first volume of Capital and the notebooks entitled “Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations” in the Grundrisse and suggesting that these texts be read as something more than elements of a world history or speculative anthropology; that is, as contributions to an understanding of the materiality of social relations and subjectivity and, ultimately, despite appearances, to an understanding of the capitalist mode of production itself. This intersection of historical formation and contemporary existence is underscored continually throughout Marx’s critique of so-called primitive accumulation [sogenannte ursprünglichen...

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