The present text originates in Clara Ramasâs doctoral thesis, completed in 2015. I had the good fortune (I say this not as a courtesy but as my genuine feeling) to be present from the beginning of the thesis in Germany. When Clara Ramas presented her proposal for the first time, I was sceptical. In Germany much had been published on the theme of fetishism in Marx, and in the first instance it wasnât clear to me if her project was offering anything new. But my concerns soon dissipated, because Clara Ramas was developing an important contribution, not just to the debate on fetishism in Marx, but also on the question of materialism in Marx. I want to use these few lines to substantiate this evaluation.
In the discussion of Marxâs Capital, there have been major changes in the last fifty years. Until well into the sixties, Capital was read above all as an analysis, based on the labour theory of value, of exploitation, of class struggle, and of the development of capitalism and its crises. That is not an erroneous reading, but it is incomplete. In the sixties and seventies there began to emerge new ways of reading Capital â with Louis Althusser, for example, in France, Mario Tronti in Italy or Hans-Georg Backhaus and Helmut Reichelt in West Germany. In East Germany too, in the seventies with the launch of the new MEGA (German edition of the Complete Works of Marx and Engels) a new way of reading Marx emerged; we can mention here, for example, Wolfgang Jahn. In all these new readings, differing among themselves, Capital was taken together with other texts which formed part of Marxâs project for a critique of political economy, like the Grundrisse, Results of the Direct Production Process or the analysis of the value-form in the first edition of Capital, which differs significantly from later editions. More attention was also given to the construction of categories, the mode of argument and the different levels of abstraction in Capital. Instead of concentrating above all on results in Capital, as was the custom until then, it was discussed as a scientific work with a complex structure of exposition. In particular, in the German debates about the Marxist critique of political economy â and therefore not just as critique of concrete economic theories, but of the science of economics as a whole â the Marxist concepts of âfetishismâ and âmystificationâ played an important part, as did the relations between Marxâs economic critique and Hegelian philosophy.
Clara Ramas, who has spent several semesters studying in Germany and speaks German very well, has a precise knowledge of these debates; her work in some sense sits within the lines of this tradition, but never becomes locked in them; in some important ways she goes beyond them. She makes a precise distinction between fetishism and mystification (see especially Chapter 2), which until now had not been at all clear in the debate. She does not limit the theme of fetishism and mystification to commodity fetishism and money, as is in fact quite common, but carries the analysis forward until arriving at the âtrinity formulaâ examined by Marx at the end of the third volume of Capital, that is, that sum of appearances that dominates the spontaneous day to day consciousness of the agents of capitalist production, both capitalists and workers, and which in the form of the âtheory of the factors of productionâ of todayâs dominant neo-classical doctrine is considered as the logical starting point of the theoretical formation of the latter. In this respect she in no way restricts herself to a limited exposition of Marxist argumentation, which would be a merit in itself, but she also analyses the Marxist treatment of fetishism and mystification, reconstructing its significance on two levels: on the one hand, in the apprehension of capitalist relations which Marx wanted to represent; on the other hand, in respect of the construction and logical structure of Marxâs critical programme. With this she goes beyond the existing results and produces a new and original contribution to the discussion of the Marxist critique of political economy. Until now, these functions of fetishism and mystification, very different from the point of view of the theoretical strategy, had never been elaborated anywhere with such clarity as in the work of Clara Ramas. On that foundation she makes clear that the Marxist analysis of fetishism is a contribution to the theory of appearance which in its turn is a constituent part of a new conception of reality. It is new not only in relation to âbourgeoisâ social science but also in terms of Marxâs intellectual development. If we consider the Communist Manifesto, its thesis that the imposition of capitalism, which swept aside the idyllic disguises of religion, honour etc, anticipating in some sense Max Weberâs âdisenchantment thesisâ, meant that social relations stood out with greater clarity, it is evident that Marxâs conception of reality changed a great deal between 1848 and 1867.
Marxâs new conception of reality was fruitful for Clara Ramas in her analysis of Marxist materialism, which she addresses in chapter VIII, the conclusion to her book. In her doctoral thesis, the topic is dealt with at greater length. By exploring more concretely the Marxist concept of materialism, Clara Ramas opens a blank page in the existing âcriticalâ readings of Marx. For some time now the philosophical conception of traditional Marxism â dialectical materialism and historical materialism â have been subject to detailed criticism. It is not just the fact that these two concepts do not appear anywhere in Marx, but that the content that they designated has been criticised as a drastic transformation of the Marxist critique into an ontology which is at root pre-Marxist. But it remained unclear what the philosophical consequences of that criticism, which in the end were destructive, would be. Was it to be a renunciation of all philosophical reflection on the Marxist project of a critique of political economy and of the analysis of capitalist reality that flows from it, or a more appropriate philosophical reflection?
In this respect Clara Ramasâs doctoral thesis represented a significant advance by starting from the analysis of fetishism and of the theory of appearance it contained, elements of a Marxist materialism that were radically different from the traditional concept of dialectical materialism. With these elements, not only did she succeed in convincingly refuting the criticism of Marx by Heidegger, but also made clear that for the critique of political economy that Marx was developing, Hegelian philosophy played a very different role from the mere assumption of a âmethodâ. In her doctoral thesis Clara Ramas rightly suggested that a reception of Hegel that starts from the possibility of these kinds of âassumptionsâ ends by losing sight of the complexity of Hegelian philosophy. There is a need for a different reading of the relation between Marxist theory and Hegelian philosophy, but also for a reading of Hegelian philosophy different than the one given in traditional Marxism; it is important to discuss Hegelian philosophy as a point of reference for Marx. For this programme, the work of Clara Ramas is an important contribution that can open new directions.
Michael Heinrich