bergfeld, mark, april 2013, mcnally's monsters, georgy lukacs & hegemony - can the market speak?,...

7/27/2019 Bergfeld, Mark, April 2013, McNally's monsters, Georgy Lukacs & hegemony - Can the market speak?, Berlin Revi

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Author Information: Mark Bergfeld - mdbergfeldATgmailDOTcom www.mdbergfeld.com

McNallys monsters, Georgy Lukcs and hegemony

Can the Market Speak?

Campbell Jones: Can the Market Speak?

Zero Books, London 2013.ISBN: 978-1-84694-537-3

Paperback, 81 pages, US$11.95/GBP7.99

Berlin Review of Books -- 05 April 2013

When first reading Campbell Joness Can the Market speak? I simply treated it by the

authors self-imposed standards: a philosophical enquiry into the market and the structure of

the ideas and fantasies that come with the category of the market (7). If I had finished

writing this book review before Cypriot bank heist and the run on banks it would have

probably remained at the level of summarizing the book, and making some snarky comments

on particular points I liked or didnt like.

The euphemistic Stability Levy, which would steal up to 10 per cent from peoples savings,

breathed new life into the wide-ranging critiques of the market advanced by Campbell Jones.

The question I asked myself was whether this short book could give meaning to this

European Lehman Brothers moment and the ensuing collapse of the market the following

Monday morning. In his book, Campbell Jones argues that there is a long history of

personifications of the market. Adversaries and apologists of the market alike have attributed

human characteristics to non-human entities to display the powers of capitalism.

While on the surface Joness book deals with the rhetorical device of prosopopoeia in which

a speaker communicates to the audience by speaking as another person or object, Can the

Market Speak? starts to raise far more interesting questions in the context of the Stability

Levy. Firstly, it teaches us an important lesson of how power, authority and control, in short,

hegemony, manifests itself in advanced capitalist countries. Secondly, it raises issues in

regard to Lukacss concept of reification which explains how peoples relations are

transformed by commodity-exchange. Thirdly, the title itself reflects the current balance of

forces between labour and capital in our societies.

Hegemony and the market

Every Economics, Business and Political Science student will have been taught that the

markets are rational, robust, and efficient. While the reality couldnt be further from the

truth, these tenets act as an organizing principle of the current status quo, permeate every

aspect of social life and legitimize the exploitation and destruction of humans and their

environment in the name of efficiency. By solely focussing on the personification of the

markets, Jones reveals a contradiction in capitals attempt to paint the markets as behaving

rationally: The supposed rational actors inside of the markets are guided by the invisible

hand of the market. In other words, underlying the very rationality of the market one finds

irrationality, superstition and quasi-religious metaphysical bullshit.


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Joness psychoanalytic and theological critiques ofthe prosopopoeia of the markets disclose

how hegemony manifests and legitimises itself. His psychoanalytic critique analyses power

as displaced and hidden. Rather than manifesting itself through the truncheon of a police

officer, the prosopopoiea expresses individual actors interests i.e. capitals interests. While

psychoanalytic critique remains, or once again has become, fashionable it doesnt assist us inunderstanding the real social relations that the market masks behind its veil of rationality and

efficiency, nor does it help us to analyse what happens when these so-called hidden powers

come out into the open when losses are socialised and profits are privatised .

His theological critique of the prosopopoeia of the market, on the other hand, elaborates on

what the dominance of the markets tells us about the kind of society we inhabit. In doing so,

Jones links the commonly-used phrase of having faith in the market to Foucault and the

Nietzschean notion that God is dead and has been replaced by the will of the market.

Akin to God, the market has its priests, prophets and messengers who are endowed with god-

like authority and power.

It is not necessarily clear as to why one requires these critiques to understand the function of

the personification and prosopopoeia of the market. In particular, they do not help us to

understand how these ideological constructs work to win the masses to accept and consent to

their daily misery and exploitation as I will go on to argue. This is strikingly true at a time

when power remains anything but hidden, and steps out into the open with police truncheons

beating Greek protesters and the IMF stealing Cypriots deposits. Neither can these critiques

explain how the system veils exploitative social relations at the point of production, or how

the high priests of finance that were speaking through the market could not foresee the great

financial crash of 2008.

Its reification, stupid!

Inasmuch as the prophets of high finance couldnt foresee the 2008 financial crash , Jones

cannot grasp the ideological problems of capitalism without an analysis of the fundamental

structure of capitalist society. In History and Class Consciousness [HCC], Georg Lukacs

argues that commodity exchange increasingly penetrates all aspects and expressions of life

and reshapes them in a reified manner. In his own words, it is the universal structuring

principle [HCC, 85] beneath a mystifying veil of reification [HCC, 86]. What does this

mean for Joness work?

The high priests of finance are trapped by the confines of bourgeois thought and the very

logic of the system which forces them to act in certain ways beyond their self-proclaimed

ethics or values. Their sooth-saying is nothing but a mere reflection of the need for capital

accumulation. Lukacs argues that both workers and capitalists exhibit an ever-increasing

lack of will [HCC, 89]. Power might manifest itself through these modern -day soothsayers

but it doesnt tell you the whole story of the structure of ideas that comes with the market.

Further, Jones analyses how human relationships are transformed by commodity-exchange

permeating all aspects of society. His analysis remains limited in its achievements yet raisespertinent questions. The mysterious nature of the commodity means that relations between


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people take on the character of a thing, acquiring what Lukacs calls phantom objectivitity,

concealing every trace of its fundamental nature [HCC, 83]. In other words, commodity

relations and the hegemony of the market dehumanise and turn all human functions into a

commodity itself totally opposed to peoples own personalities. By applying this analysis we

come to understand that Jones mistakes the effect for its cause. The personification of themarket and self-objectification ofhumans are the effect of the systems guiding principle of

commodity-exchange. To be more concise, the personification of the market is a symptom of

a society ruled by commodity-exchange and the accumulation of capital.

In such a society the consumer as the subject replaces the worker. By accepting this as a fait

accompli Jones cannot answer the question where counter-hegemonic power could manifest

itself, namely, at the point of production which contains within it in concentrated form the

whole structure of capitalist society [HCC, 90].

Can zombies learn to speak?

Critics of capitalism and the market have always evoked images of monsters, zombies and

vampires to describe the dehumanising effects of the system. While Karl Marx labelled

capitalism vampire-like, Rolling Stone journalist Matt Taibbi called Goldman Sachs giant

vampire squids. The Canadian Marxist David McNally even published a dense 300-pager

called Monsters of the Market: Zombies, Vampires and Global Capitalism. Drawing on

popular films and culture McNally observes that zombies have no speech. This is important

in regard to Joness book.

In Shelleys Frankensteins Monster, the monster learns how to read revolutionary books and

also learns how to speak. In a more recent zombie movies The People under the Stairs,

the zombies have had their tongues cut out by a rich property developer and never learn to to

speakeven at the point where they rebel. This film sums up precisely what Campbell Jones

argues when he says that capitalism renders the vast majority of people voiceless. But it also

can tell us something more fundamental about the current balance of forces between capital

and labour.

Despite global mass movements challenging the dominance of the market zombies still

havent learnt to speak. This is true on two accounts: Firstly, even the most radical thinkers of

our day and age remain trapped within the confines of the market. Whether they advocatemarket socialism such as Seth Ackerman in Jacobin magazine or simply blame the actors

inside of the market giant vampire squids and fat cats they fail to blame the system as

a whole. Much of todays anti-capitalist critique seeks cosmetic changes to a dehumanising

system instead of aiming to construct alternative institutions and parties which go beyond the

market and at the same time advocate its destruction.

This is crucial given the weakness of trade unions and social democratic parties in

challenging the market. Traditional social democracy has silenced workers by speaking on

their behalf in parliament. Even those trade unions fighting austerity measures in their


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respective countries are mediating between labour and capital. A minor but quite telling tactic

of these unions has been to give out vuvuzelas, whistles and other gimmicks to their members

so to drown out rank-and-file members far more radical demands in a racket of distorted

noises. In many ways, these examples chime with Campbell Jones conclusion that the

zombies remain voiceless yet those hiding behind the markets cant hide any longer.

In conclusion, Campbell Jones work raises a number of pertinent questions in regard to

concepts such as hegemony, reification and the balance of forces between labour and capital.

His book might not have all the answers to those questions but it can allow the kind of

discussions which might arrive at them. Having had our tongues cut out by property

developers and the priests of high finance, we will need books like Can the Market Speak?

that believe in zombies ability to speak.

bergfeld, mark, april 2013, mcnally's monsters, georgy lukacs & hegemony - can the market speak?,...

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