Is there a beyond to capital?

Constructing the non-place of capital; A Žižekian critique of HN’s Empire

Marx famously stated that the only limit to capital is capital itself. Nonetheless, the majority of leftist and radical leftist thought remains stuck between two equally impotent positions outside of Marx’s conclusion. The majority of leftist political activity remains within the limits of capitalism, implicitly accepting the ideology of Francis Fukuyama’s ‘End of History’ thesis. This approach, characterized by the work of Jeffery Sachs, the practices of United States president Barack Obama and the official benevolence of the United Nations, argues that the productivity of capitalism can be utilized for the good of humanity, whether it is dealing with the ecological crisis, ending poverty or becoming more tolerant towards the Other. In particular the language of its politico-ideological supplement, liberal democracy is used to pacify the brutality of capitalism.

The eco-capitalist narrative acknowledges the symptoms of capitalism yet maintains that they can be resolved within the limits of capitalism. In this sense, eco-capitalism is similar to Marx’s conception of the transition from capitalism to communism. Marx believed that the communist economy would be able to capture the productivity evident in capitalism, without its symptoms. Unfortunately, Marx was unable to understand that this productivity was unique to capitalism itself, and without the torque provided by profit, capitalist productivity would not occur within capitalism. By contrast, the eco-capitalists still maintain their belief in profit, what they misunderstand is that it is profit itself which is causing the problems against which they rally. Thus whilst the eco-capitalist approach can pacify many of the symptoms of global capitalism, it is unable to recognise that it is capitalism itself which is producing these symptoms.

The alternative, radical but equally impotent, leftist approach is characterized by a utopian longing for a future generated entirely outside of capitalism. This approach, increasingly popular amongst post-Frankfurt school Marxists and leftist alike rejects the possibility of action within capitalism and instead searches for solutions beyond the limits of capitalism. This possible would be feasible, if it were not for its impossibility. There is no outside to capitalism. Capital has become an all-consuming beast, subsuming all available resources and including all possible resistance. Today there is no limit to capital except for – as Marx concluded – the limits internal to capitalism itself.

For this reason Žižek has constructed capitalism as the Real, the fundamental limit to all symbolization. As with any Žižekian conclusion, however, there is a twist. Capital-as-the-Real is not the Real of the clinic, but rather what he deems the symbolic Real, the formulaic background to symbolization. This position, as with much of Žižek’s analysis of political economy, remains in the abstract. Although the political consequences of this construction as wholly evident – no action is available within capitalism, or outside of its limits – the contours of the debate remain rough.

By contrast, Micheal Hardt and Antonio Negri (HN) have produced an analysis strong on detail. This analysis, primarily constructed in Empire, but supplemented in the sequel Multitude, depicts capitalism in the same mechanic, formulaic terms, but as a specifically politically economic, rather than strictly economic, system of Empire. Specifically, HN argue that Empire produces a postmodern form of sovereignty, embedded in a system of biopolitics, in which the very reproduction of shared social life has become the main source of surplus-value for capital. Despite capital’s apparent total conquest of global affairs, HN argue that capitalism has created the germs of the future of its own destruction in what they deem the Multitude. The multitude are the hegemonic breed of immaterial labourers who actively reproduce society. The multitude reproduce themselves through knowledge, communication and cooperation. In doing so the need for capital is lost; the workers themselves have become all that is required for the reproduction of society. For the first time, HN claim, absolute democracy is possible because workers are in possession of the skills and resources required to reproduce the economy outside of capital and in a manner which is inherently democratic; communication, cooperation and the universality of language.

What HN fail to consider, however, is that the multitude itself is a capitalist creation. Not only does the multitude exist only as resistance to empire, but their productivity is operative only within capitalist conditions. Moreover, the mode of democracy envisaged by HN is little different to that operative in today’s liberal democracy. That is, the multitude and its cooperative commons exist only through an exclusion, that of class struggle and the reserve army of labour.

By contrast, Žižek claims that the seeds of the new order do lie in capitalism itself, but not in terms of its imaginary. Rather they exist through the internal failure of capitalism. In constructing this perspective, Žižek labels four antagonisms which threaten capital. The first three, ecological destruction, intellectual property and bio-genetic technology can be included within the commons and as such are subject to the same critique as that applies to HN. The fourth, the increasingly forms of exclusion (which Žižek labels the new form of apartheid), holds the key to end of capitalism and the production of an alternative form of political economy. Žižek labels this possibility the ‘Communist Hypothesis’.

Thus instead of searching for a new revolutionary subject, such as the multitude, or an outside to capitalism, Žižek has rejects this continual search, stating that we are already in possession of such a revolutionary possibility; the communist hypothesis. Or, following the Hopi tribal maxim that he quotes, ‘We are the ones we have been waiting for’.

The communist idea does not come from an idealist outside position, untouched by the vampirish claws of capital. Rather it comes as a response to the immanent contradictions of capitalism, particularly the capitalist instantiation of the impossible class relationship. As such, the communist hypothesis arrives without determinate content. Its articulation is independent of previous articulations in the name of communism. What is to be done is yet to be articulated, but does not have to come from outside of ourselves. The answer lies within the contradictions of capitalism. It is not located with a specific agent or missing ideological narrative but comes rather through our own implication – as practioners rather than believers – in the contradictions of capitalism.

For Žižek, this revolutionary potential comes from our universal implication in the contradictions of capitalism. Revolution comes not from a specific subject such as the proletariat, but because in capitalism we are all proletarians. Nonetheless, despite hinting at the shape the communist hypothesis might take, Žižek limits his analysis to the end of capitalism. Within this analysis, however, lie the seeds of a fundamentally different form of political economy. This form is based upon a comedic articulation of the communist hypothesis in what can be deemed comedic communist democracy.

Capital-as-the-Real

“...in so far as we conceive of the polito-ideological resignification in terms of the struggle for hegemony, today’s Real which sets the limit to resignification is Capital: the smooth functioning of Capital is that which remains the same, that which ‘always’ returns to its place’, in the unconstrained struggle for hegemony” (Žižek, 2000b: 223).

Žižek’s assertion that global capital acts as a modality of the Real has been the source of much consternation from his critics, in particular Ernesto Laclau. Laclau’s main reproach is that in applying the Lacanian category of the Real to capitalism as a historical and political object, Žižek loses sight of the subtitles within both capital and the Real. Here, however, it is Laclau who misses the subtleties in Žižek’s argument. Capital as a modality of the Real is analogous neither to the Lacanian Real of the clinic nor the operation of the Real in ideological fantasy, although similarities do exist. Capital-as-Real is not that which cannot be signified, an inescapable trauma, although it may be experienced as such in large sections of global society. Capitalism does operate within the symbolic order and as such is subject to the same inconsistencies as any other entity. An initial analysis may suggest that Žižek is engaging a rhetorical device through which to make a point about the status of capital; capital has become the political force of our time, the point to which everything returns. Nonetheless, as is always the case with Žižek, there is some truth in appearance. Žižek is not simply using ‘Capital as Real’ for shock value; rather this assertion suggests a deeper point to which Žižek returns in his later work

Žižek's central argument is that global capital has become the determining factor in contemporary global affairs, but with a twist. Capital is not dominant in the totalitarian sense of exhausting all opposition although, both violence and systematic megalomania lie – disavowed rather than dominant – at the heart of the beast. Indeed, as I shall expand upon in regard to HN's description of the 'non-place' of capitalist sovereignty, it is difficult to even speak of capital in these terms. Capitalism is neither a form of civilisation, nor an ideology (Žižek, 2006: 181). Although in its most dominant (Western) forms capital is accompanied by its ideological supplement, democracy, democracy and capitalism are in no way necessarily entwined, as the rise of totalitarian capitalist China has displayed.

Žižek’s development of the capital as the Real has been a relatively sedate and contemporary occurrence. It was not until 1999 in the Ticklish Subject that Žižek begins to speak of Global Capital and the Real in the same terms when he states (in reference to global climate change and the El Nino effect) “This catastrophe thus gives body to the Real of our time: the thrust of Capital which ruthlessly disregards and destroys particular life-worlds, threatening the very survival of humanity”(Žižek, 1999: 4). Here though, Žižek is using the Real in a more conventional Lacanian sense; the Real as a horrific failure of the symbolic. Žižek’s initial considered conceptualisation of Capital as the Real occurred in his three-way collaboration with Judith Butler and Ernesto Laclau, Contingency, Hegemony and Universality. Here Žižek considers Capital as the background against which all symbolisations must relate, a ‘limit to resignification’ (Butler, Laclau, & Žižek, 2000: 223,319).

Žižek’s definition of Capital as a symbolic form of the Real owes to his distinction (in the foreword to the 2^nd edition of For they Know Not What They Do, written in 2002) between the triadic modalities of the Real. In response to his own criticism of his first book, The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989), that he endorsed a ‘quasi-transcendental reading of Lacan’ and the Real. That is, Žižek claims that he constructed the Real as a point of failure with the consequence that what is ethical is to except failure. Instead, Žižek wants to construct the Real not only as symbolic failure, but also as a positive point of excess. In order to do this, Žižek claims that the triadic Lacanian matrix Real-Imaginary-Symbolic is reproduced within itself. That is, we can have an Imaginary form of the Real and as well as a Symbolic form of the Imaginary. Of most interest to this argument is the Symbolic Real, which Žižek describes as ‘the Real as consistency’ (Žižek, 2002: xii).

Žižek had previously presented this argument in Contingency, Hegemony and Universality, where he describes Capital as ‘structuring in advance the very terrain on which the multitude of particular contents fight for Hegemony’(Žižek, 2000c: 320). Žižek is clear, however, to make a distinction between Capital as a limit to signification and hegemonic struggle and Capital as the positive condition that creates a background against which hegemonic struggle occurs (Žižek, 2000c: 319).This last point is vital. It is not that Capital prevents the production of non-capitalist discourse, but rather that these discourses occur on a background (if a somewhat passive one) that determines the parameters in which it operates. Therefore, it can appear that an outside to Capital exists. Clearly not all relations are capitalist relations. Rather capital is structured similarily to one of its iconic structures, the shopping mall. The ‘mall’ allows all apparent freedoms and is experienced as a site of consumptive enjoyment. One is free to move around and experiences no apparent repression, except in acting against the interests of the mall. What the mall has achieved is the subsumption of public space; the historical village centre, with all its associated public space and room for dissent, is now contained within the mall itself. In this sense one can be free within the mall – and within capitalism – only by following the rules and internalising the structures of the mall. An outside exists only to the extent that we are allowed to belief it does; you are free to choice to leave, but no one does – there is outside only in terms of the impossibility of resistance

Žižek has subsequently refined his argument, claiming that capital is the (absent) cause to which all life returns. If capital is only present as an underlying (unconscious) social code, its presence is certainly felt on the bodies of those within the system and in this manner capital has more of a presence than one could ever hope to imagine. Nor is capital absent from the collective imagination, even though the signifier ‘democracy’ is often favoured above ‘capitalism’; United States politicians are fond of stating that the collapse of financial markets will not bring with it the breakdown of democracy, as if derivatives and democracy are a necessary couplet.

Rather capital is the absent cause in relation to the fundamental definition of the Lacanian Real; the elementary structuring point which determines in its very absence, the traumatic social antagonism that cannot be conceptualised within the symbolic order. More precisely, the Real is not the disavowed point to which we have no access, but rather the very point of that distortion (Žižek, 2008: 287-288). The Lacanian cause is thus strictly absent from the signifying chain and should be distinguished between causality and structure. Here causality is the regular unravelling of the code of social practices, whereas the cause is that which intervenes in that chain (Fink, 1995: 31). A cause is thus an absent cause; absent from the chain of causality but present in its affects as it disrupts the automatic functioning of the signifying chain.

Capitalism is thus absent in the same way one can consider unconscious desire to be absent from the psyche; what is absent is the cause, which only reveals itself as an affect. The unconscious acts is structured like a language, or more specifically like a grammatical chain, with certain rules and impossibilities (Fink, 1995: 7). The unconscious functions autonomously, repeating the structure of its chain. This is the same with capitalism as the symbolic Real. Capital is ultimately repetition of a symbolic structural logic regardless of ideological context. Within the structural chain of capital, an impossibility emerges. This impossibility is best conceptualised around Bruce Fink’s distinction between the two modalities of the Real.

Fink states that the Real can be divided into the Real before language (R1) and the Real after language (r2). R1 exists only as an absence, but is given a presence by language which attempts to conceptualise its own transcendental conditions of possibility. R2 emerges as a response to the symbolisation of this impossibility; r2 occurs at the points of failure within the symbolic system. Thus, in relation to the capital-as-the-symbolic-real R1 operates as the transcendental condition of possibility for the system. That is, there is no class relationship. However, capitalism, as a form of economy, attempts to symbolise this failure, producing its own impossibility (R2), class struggle, the instantiation of the failed class relationship within the capitalist political economy and its own nodal point, surplus value or profit.

Thus class is not only the factor that is disavowed within capitalism, but the very cause of the distortion which prevents access to class. Class takes on this structural role because the economy is non-All – class is the extimate core of the economy – which makes the economy inherently political. That is, class struggle is the existence of the political in the economy. Thus the economy is not deterministic in the sense of being the point to which all social relations return, but rather – through the politically of class struggle – the very point of the distortion of class relations (Žižek, 2008: 291-292).

But why should the economy, or rather class struggle, play this role? Can we not, in the Laclauian sense, claim that any domain can take on the place of dominant distortion through the hegemonic play of signification? This point remains the fundamental point of division between Laclau and the psychoanalytic approach whereby an element determines in advance the terrain of battle. For Žižek, the status of the economy is simply the Marxist hypothesis, the wager which determines his field of interest. Just as for Freud all unconscious desire is sexual desire for Marx it is class struggle that determines the field. In both cases the reasoning is the same. Class – or sexuality – defines the terrain not because it is dominant, but because of its inherent failure. This failure – that there is neither a sexual relationship nor a class relationship – produces a structural instability in both the psyche and in shared social life to which we are forced to return (Žižek, 2008: 295).

The impossibility of class struggle within capital, which I shall return to in detail in latter in this paper, is the impossibility within the symbolic code of capital, the impossible absent cause that determines the persistent revolutionising of the code in advance. This absence, however, is not acknowledged in all but the most baldly conservative articulations of global capitalism. Under neo-liberal ideology, the capitalist system is considered far from perfect, yet is regarded as not only historically the most effective system, but also the most beneficial system possible. In its most strongly ideological narrative, this approach contends that capitalism is simply a reflection of human nature and no more perfectible. Capitalism will operate in sporadic cycles and will be unjust to some degree. This may seem complacently benign when it comes to the fluctuating price of cheese, but becomes more brutal in regards to naked ambition for limited global resources. It is one thing to justify inflation, quite another to consider the prospect of an outright Oil war between the United States and China. It is also a perspective much more likely to be backed by those on the positive side of capitalistic justice.

Instead capitalist class relationships continue, allow with the autonomous repetition of the capitalist structure, under the guise of an imaginary ideological structure. As noted, capital itself is neither an ideology nor a form of civilisation. Instead a supplement is required in order to distort the impossibility of class struggle. Much of Žižek’s theory revolves around the point; the work of ideology, disavowal and fetishism. Žižek does not, however, make a direct link between the functioning of capital as a modality of the Real and of the political system. Instead, for Žižek politics and capital appear to have an arbitrary relationship in much the same manner as they would for Ernesto Laclau; although the politics of truth around capitalism must relate to class struggles, politics itself operates independently from the conditions of possibility established by capitalism. Capitalism sets a certain limit and provides a cause, but – for Žižek – politics, ideology and our form of civilisation operate with a degree of autonomy from capital itself. That is, the political narrative established is little more than an attempt to symbolise the impossibility of class struggle and capitalism. Capitalism certainly establishes itself as the dominant player in culture, the dominant source of jouissance, but this is not necessarily so.

This perspective is rejected by HN, must notably in their seminal text Empire in which, whilst establishing much the same mechanistic tendencies to capitalism, they construct capitalism as a historical form of sovereignty. The capitalist empire is as much a matter of politics, ideology and enjoyment as much an economic structuring chain. It is to this perspective that we now turn.

Empire

Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s concept of ‘Empire’ produces a similar construction of global capitalism, without the specific reference to class struggle. Empire, not to be confused with what HN consider to be the modernist modality of ‘imperialism’, is a historical development under which capitalism has come to dominate the production and reproduction of shared social life. Although HN do not utilise a Lacanian vocabulary, Empire is confluent with Žižek’s ‘capital-as-Real’ thesis. Under Empire, capital retains the mechanistic quality proscribed to it by Žižek; HN state “the machine seems to predetermine the exercise of authority and action across the entire social space. Every movement is fixed and can seek its own designated place only within the system itself, in the hierarchical relationship accorded to it” (HN, 2000; 14).

HN, however, extend this thesis beyond the economic; the mechanistic quality of empire is not limited to the repetition of the symbolic logic of capital. Empire goes beyond this logic into the instantiation of the capitalism as a political-ideological mechanism for the reproduction of shared social life. In doing so, HN contend that the reproduction of social life has become an intimate part of the operation of capital, which, along with renewed forms of (postmodern) sovereignty, has expanded the terms of capital into what they deem Empire.

Empire includes not only the production of surplus value and class struggle (which HN place less emphasis upon, evidently because of its contemporarily abstract character) but also the political infrastructure which supports the economy. More importantly, for HN, empire is constructed upon communication and cooperation between humans, which has become the predominant feature of capital. That is, one is no longer able to make a strict distinction between politics, the economy and social life. Instead, under Empire all elements of social life and the human condition have become subsumed into the capitalist edifice, such that it no longer makes sense to talk of politics or economy. Rather we have entered an era of ‘biopolitical production', the production of social life itself, in which the economic, the political, and the cultural increasingly overlap and invest one another’ (HN, 2000; xiii). There is no politics outside of economy, nor space outside of capital. All production, whether it is material goods or social relations, is capitalist production. This new modality of production, which HN label ‘immaterial labour’, along which the changing contours of global sovereignty, led HN to designate Empire as a distinctly postmodern phenomenon.

HN are not the first theorists to suggest that postmodernism – rather than being a radical form of emancipation from identity – is just the latest form of capitalism. Fredric Jameson has[MU1] made this argument most powerfully. Previously theorists had considered capital to require the parochial discipline that characterised the industrial era. Modernity's combined and uneven entry into a postmodern era was considered to be a mortal threat to the interests of capitalism. Indeed, HN suggest the refusal of factory discipline was a central factor in the economic crisis of the 1970s. Nonetheless, as Jameson postulate, the burgeoning development of social identities that came with the birth of postmodernism became a seamless cure for the ills of overproduction, as the new identities were ideal for the development of new products and new markets. Rather than acting as a threat to capitalism, working women, racial enlightenment and sexual reform allowed the development of new and profitable markets. Postmodernism may have been experienced as liberation for those outside of the hegemony of the white man within western nations, but it has achieved little more than the commodification of cultural difference. As Žižek suggests (see Žižek, 2000a), the normative expansion provided by postmodernity should be celebrated, but we should not mistake these new social movements and identity politics as the problems of our time. Westerners may have a more diverse range of restaurants at which to eat, but for those whom experience eating as an infrequent necessary, postmodern liberation remains entirely Other.

HN’s construction of Empire as a postmodern edifice goes beyond that identified by Jameson or Žižek. Although they acknowledge the hegemony of postmodern performance within contemporary culture, Empire follows a postmodern logic at a much deeper level, in the instantiation of sovereignty and relations of production. That is, empire is not regarded as postmodern in its expression of modernist capitalist relations, but is postmodern at its very core.

The changing nature of capitalist sovereignty is reflected in the movement from a disciplinary society to a society of control, where power is directly bio-power, internalised into the body as the whole of social life comes to be administered in what is known as the ‘panoptican affect’ (Hardt & Negri, 2000; 23-24). Instead of a single entity controlling power, sovereignty is rather constructed via the processes of capitalism. Whilst we can acknowledge an influential structure of governing organisations, including the United Nations, the Bretton Woods financial instruments, regional trade organisations and agreements and the easily forgotten nation-state itself (as well as more local forms of sovereignty within the state), the dominant form of sovereignty within Empire is what HN label ‘ether’ (HN, 2000; 346); the reproduction of shared social life (in the name of profit) by immaterial labour through cooperation and communication.

Thus, in contrast to modernist imperialism, for HN Empire is without exception; all potentially fall within its grasp. Neither has it a home, despite the apparent hegemony of the United States. Empire has no 'Rome', instead it is organised around the ‘non-place’ of Capital, a non-place that Žižek labels the Real, or, more pertinently, class struggle. Instead of the modernist form of governance – by which a transcendental entity, whether Monarchic or an elected power, acts as a sovereign guarantee for political life; postmodern sovereignty exists without an apparent governing exception. Instead the non-place of sovereignty is mediated by the seemingly seamless flow of ether; sovereignty is guaranteed only to extent that it is reproduced in our social relations; nothing exists outside of the existence of capitalist social relations which might secure the system. Instead capitalist is actively – if unknowingly – reproduced by those who participate.

Much has been celebrated about the postcolonial era and the associated decline of the nation state. Theorists have come to suggest that the decline of stable identities and power relations which result from the loss of a Hobbesian sovereign, has offered the prospect of widespread emancipation. A dark side does appear, however, in two dimensions; both within western society and in the expanded exploitation of the hungry majority, although HN do not expand upon the latter.

Postmodernity has not meant the end of global sovereignty. The Hobbesian image of the social contract may be struggling, but sovereignty itself continues. Sovereignty is no longer produced by the discipline of an external guarantee, but rather the internationalisation of power in the Foucauldian 'biopolitical' society. The image of the panoptican and biopolitical control had become part of social life well before any transition occurred beyond modernity. What is unique about postmodern sovereignty, HN argue, is that biopolitical control has become the modality of power, not the support for power.

Governmental organisations certainly exist, but their role is one of control, not guarantee; they provide the administrative support for the deployment of the institutions of the biopolitical society that is Empire. Governments have become little more than instruments for the measurement of the flows of commodities and population they are charged with administrating in the name of capital (HN, 2000; 31). Beyond the representatives of government, the institutions of our bio-political society include the vast array of monitoring devices evident in our societies, from the ubiquitous surveillance cameras, online 'research' and the more Orwellian 'anti-terrorism' acts passed in the post 9/11 world. More pertinently for HN, the biopolitics of Empire are produced and reproduced by the immaterial labour which dominates postmodern capitalism. These industries, characterised by communication and cooperation implicitly reproduce the sovereignty of Empire through the production, and control of knowledge and ideas. The imposition of this power goes by unnoticed, serving as it does at our pleasure, but for their profit.

Thus Capital within Empire is totalising; it is impossible to speak of Empire without Capital, yet at the same time Capital appears the silent partner, reproducing itself through the everyday functioning of social life. Capital is evil in the terms of Hannah Arendt, in its very banality it allows for suffering on an unimaginable scale. This is the strength of capitalism. Capitalism requires no one to believe in it. Few actively and explicitly support capitalism, although they may profess an interest in the wellbeing of its elements. Ideological arguments may occur over democracy or multi-culturalism, but no such debate is required to secure the status of global capital. Capitalism reproduces itself through our everyday practices. We do not have to believe, we simply have to do; capitalism is a distinctly ontological, rather than epistemological entity. One becomes a card-carrying capitalist by brandishing a credit card rather than a membership card. No one door-knocks to sell capitalism, only its wares.

Such is the impossibility of acting against capitalism. How does one become an anti-capitalist? Perhaps only in death. All those who walk this earth are capitalists and there is no possibility of living withdrawal whilst the system still dominants. To reproduce oneself and community is to be a capitalist. To consume, to produce, is to be a capitalist. Even those who remain most ideologically opposed (I place myself in this category) cannot help but practice. The only out is death, symbolic (such as the fantasmatic position of ‘living outside of the grid) or otherwise.

Capitalism, or rather Empire, has achieved this level of hermeneutic self-containment through what HN label ‘immaterial labour’; the deployment of the communication and cooperation are then the hegemonic forms of labour in capitalism. This transformation includes not only the most obvious example of the change, such as social networking sites These sites – most notably Facebook and MySpace – commodify human relationships by offering a free and attractive service to users who update their personal details in order to interact with their peers. This information is then stored and sold to advertisers, both for research purposes and for the benefit of more direct advertising. The business model of these sites is similar to that of newspaper – the selling of readers’ attention to advertisers – with more interaction. Here social relationships and communities are actively created and reproduced for the sole purpose of the production of profit.

More than the obvious changes, however, the move to immaterial production has affected all industries. Just as the industrial revolution transformed the farm into a factory (by imposing factory relations of production) the knowledge revolution has turned the farm into a laboratory. Here knowledge has become the key resource; whether the product is physical or intangible. Such was the folly of New Zealand’s mission at the beginning of the 21^st century to transform itself into a ‘knowledge’ economy. To many this brought on the beginnings of a national identity crisis as it was assumed that the advent of a knowledge economy would bring about the end of the nation’s traditional agricultural culture/economy. The ‘Green revolution of the 1970s also provides an example of the domination of agriculture by knowledge and immaterial labour.

The industry which embodies both these processes – that of the practicing belief of everyday capitalists and immaterial labour – is finance capitalism. Finance capitalism is the ultimate example of immaterial labour, whereby production itself does not exist; vast sums of money change hands (in 2008 the value of financial trading equalled that of the last 100 years of ‘physical’ trade) through an intangible global system of co-operation and communication. Yet that money exists not only because we believe it to exist (money being a system of trust whereby I believe that the currency which you offer me is ‘legitimate’) but because our societal practices establish this belief for us. We have no choice but to use money and in established economies only the most neurotic users would concern themselves with the acceptance of their money.

Financial capital is itself a postmodern industry. Financial capital, although always operative in some form, established its dominance in the 1970s[MU2] . The 1970s saw the advent of two vital and interlinked trends, over-production and the decoupling of the dollar from the gold standard. The crisis of over-production, combined with the oil shocks early in the decade, led a mass of surplus looking for an investment home. Some of this surplus was redirected into newly established 3^rd world markets, but the core of the problem remained. It solution was the development of the financial industry. Key to this move was Richard Nixon’s move to break to the US Dollar from the gold standard (HN, 2000; 266). The move to floating currencies was followed, in various speeds, by the majority of nations. This development was of historical significance, removing the guarantee of the ‘general equivalence’ of money. Instead, in a definitively postmodern manoeuvre, money no longer exists, there are only currencies. Such a move is part of a historical development; money has moved from being an element of value itself, to being supported by an item of supposed value (the gold standard) to its current state as a purely virtual occurrence, given a presence only because we believe.

The significance of the removal of money as a universal general equivalent, to be replaced by currencies as particular embodiments of equivalency cannot be underestimated. In itself this is a particular postmodern development. Postmodernism is characterised by a lack of stability caused by the disappearance of meta-narratives of anchoring points that would provide a guarantee for the social order. These universal points acted as a ‘general equivalent’ against which other elements would relate. By contrast postmodernity is characterised by a flatness – there is no universal element would maintains order – broken up by difference; each particular element operates in differentiation relation to another particular element. Thus the financial industry has become a postmodern, or perhaps even feminine, order.

The breakdown of general equivalency has resulted in the financial industry, along with an increasingly complex variety of financial ‘products’ being based upon the trading of currencies, rather than products. Indeed, physical commodities are no longer the basis of much trade. Certainly the growth in physical trade, production and consumption continues, as the climate crisis reveals. Nonetheless, increasingly commodities are traded simply as a holder of currencies, particularly through mathematical ‘derivative’ trading. The era of a general equivalence which establishes value is over; the symbolic formula of capitalism has entered postmodernism and there is nothing that can contain it other than itself and its own spiralling and self-destructive tendencies[C3] . As of 2009, we are seeing these self-destructive tendencies in action as the credit ‘bubble’ has burst, most of all because people have lost their faith in money. To a certain degree actors have come to realise that money does not exist and have withdrawn their confidence from the system. For this reason the main task of the Obama administration – obstinately to hand over unthinkable amounts of US currency – is to restore confidence in the value of money.

HN’s conception of Empire is largely an extension of the Žižekian thesis (although neither Žižek nor HN write in response to each other). Empire maintains the same systematic qualities that make radical action, both within and outside of capitalism, impossible. What Empire adds to Žižek’s work is the construction of the current instantiation of class or power relations within capitalism. Or, more accurately, the operation of these relations in ideology and the political realm. If Žižek has constructed capital as a mode of the symbolic Real (with more emphasis given to the first term than has otherwise been given) than Empire captures the capitalist relationship between the symbolic and the imaginary. Empire is a historical construction of the power relations, ideological narratives and reproduction of social life within the boundaries set by the logic of capital, as established by Žižek.

Nonetheless, Empire cannot be simply added as a supplement to Žižek’s work. Although much of HN’s argumentation is confluent with the Žižekian thesis, there are two notable points of differentiation; the status and hope provided by the multitude. For HN the multitude are the germs of the future produced within capitalism. Conversely, whilst the multitude are a possible point of resistance against capitalism – any agent involved in the encapsulation of the commons holds a radical potential – they remain a resistant group particular to capitalism. Moreover, rather than provide the hope for what HN label ‘absolute democracy’, the multitude have more in common with contemporary liberal democracy; both are based upon the exclusion of surplus labour. Rather the immaterial labour of the multitude, it is the universality enabled by the unwanted horde of today’s political economy that provides the only hope for a radically different future. It is to the multitude that we now turn.

The Multitude

The advent of immaterial production has, however, been both a boom and a crisis for capital. In most circumstances, the system has been able to revolutionise itself to make these crisis into sources of profit, but the move to immaterial production has created difficulties that have yet to be fully integrated. There are two significant problems, the changing nature of private property and the increased significance of the worker in the production process.

Increasingly, the knowledge economy – based upon knowledge, communication and cooperation as intangible resources – has struggled to fit into the capitalist mode of private property. Although immaterial labour dominates production, the transition from industrial production has not been seamless. Corporations continue to struggle to effectively commodify and profit from intangible sources of production. Private property is proving inadequate of the task of immaterial production, as corporations are finding it more and more difficult to privatise and generate profit models from immaterial elements of human cooperation and natural life.

Digital technology has proved one of the more difficult areas in which to impose property ‘rights’. Significantly, digital technology has nullified the role of scarcity in the market, as digital commodities can be reproduced at almost no cost. Privatisation becomes increasingly difficult when lay-users can easily replicate the product. For this reason, in order to profit from these technologies, much effort is put into restricting access to the product. Hence large industries, most significantly in the entertainment industry, but also print media, are struggling to match up their profit models with the new forms of technology.

As both Žižek and HN suggest, the latter more giving it more significance than the former, the apparent failure of private property to respond adequately to immaterial production provides a notable point of traction for communist thought. Under Empire cooperation has become inherent to labour in a way that it never has previously. In this sense labour power moves from variable capital (a force activated by capital itself) to capital itself; knowledge has become the key means of production. For HN, however, the move subversive potential lies with what they label the ‘Multitude’. HN contend that;

“Today, productivity, wealth and the creation of social surpluses take the form of cooperative interactivity through linguistic, communicational and affective networks. In the expression of its own creative energies, immaterial labour thus seems to provide the potential for a kind of spontaneous and elementary communism” (HN, 2000; 294).

If knowledge is the most important means of production, then for the first time the seeds of a new order lie with the workers themselves. Workers no longer need capital to reproduce shared social life; the workers are already doing so in their everyday movements. Capital loses its organising function and becomes purely parasitic (Žižek, 2008; 351). The material reproduction of society occurs in the workplace already in the forms of communication, cooperative and affective labour produced by the multitude. Rather than workers being solely operators of fixed capital, deploying the resources provided for work, the immaterial labourer is now a source of capital in itself; knowledge. The worker is thus a unit of variable capital and no longer requires specific sources of capital in order to reproduce itself.

Thus, while ‘from one perspective Empire stands clearly over the multitude and subject’s it to the rule of its overarching machine, as a new Leviathan. At the same time, however, from the perspective of social productivity and creativity, from what we have been calling the ontological perspective, the hierarchy is reversed. The multitude is the real productive force of our social world, whereas empire is a mere apparatus of capture that lives only off the vitality of the multitude’ (HN, 2000; 62).

Therefore, for HN, the multitude is the inherent form of resistance produced within capital. There may not be an outside within Empire which provides a nodal point for the subversion of capital, rather this point is produced by capitalism itself; capital provides the seeds of its own destruction. If postmodern production is immaterial, than the most important means of production lies with the bodies and the minds of the workers. Capital is no longer machinery and tools, but is increasingly immaterial in itself. As Žižek comments “It was Marx who emphasised how material production is always also the (re)production of the social relations within which it occurred; with today’s capitalism, however, the production of social relations is the immediate end/goal of production” (2006; 262).

The role of the multitude - and here HN return to old-fashioned Marxism – is to become conscious of their position as both subject and object of history and come to determine the world themselves, to break free of capital and realise the ‘absolute’ democracy that they are already in the process of creating. The multitude are in the paradoxical position of both holding an inherent potential for resistance to the system yet being the point of subversion of that resistance. It is the reproduction of knowledge and social relations by the multitude which holds the potential for radical action, yet at the same time the ideological narrative of capital – itself reproduced by the multitude, though in the implicit name of Empire – prevents the realisation of that radical potential. Knowledge maybe power, but within Empire it is immanently contained within that power.

The most pertinent point of this perspective is that it is difficult to determine the enemy within the enemy because of the sovereignty of ether and the ‘non-place’ of power within Empire. Ironically, given the shared communicative mechanisms which define the multitude, the problem they experience is a lack of clear language, both in identifying the enemy and articulating the future (HN, 2000; 210). Developing a common language against the multitude is to a large degree the task for the multitude, as in our society, constructed by the media images, the media have a monopolic grasp over the ontology of the masses (2000; 322). Once this can be established, and the multitude become conscious of their dominating status, all that is required is locating and knocking off the nominal head. Communism and absolute democracy appear upon us, all that is to be done is to realise our fate.

Yet, is this approach not, however, as Žižek suggests, confluent with the ultimate capitalist fantasy of frictionless capitalism, capitalism without governance, simply organising itself through the invisible hand of the market? (2006; 263). The democracy of the multitude and frictionless capital are sadly entwined because the both required the same propeller for sovereign-less development; the capitalist form of the appropriation of surplus-value. Here surplus-value takes the same structural position as the Lacanian objet a; both the condition of possibility and impossibility of the system. Objet a, like surplus-value, is the contradiction of system which drives it onward. For Žižek then, the democracy inherent in immaterial labour and the multitude occurs only because of the capitalist form. Without this form, the multitude would not be driven to interact. It is not a matter of simply maintaining the capitalist form without owners, this would only serve to either reproduce the contradictions would allow for the form of surplus-value (and it is these contradictions – class struggle, climate change and the hungry – against which we should rally) or the form of surplus-value itself would collapse without the imposition of objet a by the corporate structure.

In this sense the Multitude cannot be considered to be a group in themselves, rather they arise only as a point of resistance to capitalism. Such a group may be interesting in terms of a theory of revolution, but has little in relation to a theory of a new mode of the material reproduction of shared social life. Like Marx, HN’s mistake is to conclude that capitalist productivity is possible if the contradiction which drives that productivity – class relations – is removed. This is, as Žižek suggests, Lacan’s central critique of Marx, whereby Lacan identifies a homology between surplus-value and surplus-enjoyment, suggesting that both rely upon dialectic between lack and excess.

Moreover, while HN’s multitude can be regarded as a specifically capitalist grouping, the biggest failure of HN’s work is the immateriality of their construction of capitalism, the very feature which allows for the development of the multitude. What HN miss is that the absolute democracy that they believe can be developed from within Empire is based upon the same exclusion which constitutes liberal democracy; that of the reserve army of labour. There is no reason to suggest that a communism reconstruction of immaterial labour would include the currently excluded populations of the world any more than is currently the case.

Symptomatic of such a failure is HN definition of the proletariat, which is so wide as to diffuse the real difference within this category, particularly in terms of suffering. Here HN state ‘ we understand proletariat as a broad category that includes all those whose labour is directly or indirectly exploited by and subjected to capitalist norms of production and reproduction’ (HN, 2000; 52). To compare the wealth of a professional sportsman and the poverty of a third-world farmer – both equally subsumed into capitalist exploitation – is to lose sight of the contours of exploitation and suffering. Moreover, it is to lose the reason why we oppose capital at all; the necessary suffering it imposes. For HN, ‘exploitation occurs, but it increasingly hard, perhaps impossible to designate a place of exploitation – the non-place of exploitation – exploitation can no longer be localised and quantified – instead they are universal qualities’ (HN, 2000; 209). Consequently, although exploitation and domination are still experienced concretely, on the flesh of the multitude, they are nonetheless amorphous in such a way that it seems there is no place left to hide’ (2000; 211). One can no longer exploit the worker, only cooperation amongst workers (Žižek, 2008; 356). Yet this construction of the proletarian and its exploitation is vital for HN’s conception of resistance to Empire; the multitude.

What HN miss is the split between the two, parallax sides of capitalism. One the one hand are the postmodern corporations, characterised by HN’s immaterial labour. On the other side - generally the other side of the world - is the remaining material labour, a capitalist historical tribute to industrial era production and suffering. There is no hope of the two coming together; material production is not becoming anymore immaterial. For this reason HN are incorrect to assert that capital is purely parasitic; it has an organising function, bringing these two sides together (Žižek, 2008; 359).

Class struggle and the excluded

It is the excluded underside of Empire that HN and Negri do not focus on. Yes, the 'multitude' may be actively reproducing society through communication, but it is the reserve army of labour built up in the majority world which is truly supporting capitalism. These workers are outside of the multitude, even in their status as proletarian. HN claim that Empire has extended exploitation to the point where all of the multitude, from call centre workers in India to marketing executives in California are deemed to be proletarian. It seems that the geographical dislocation of the working class has meant that both everyone and no-one are part of the proletariat. That is, except for the part with no part; the world's urban poor. In these massive urban slums – slums in which all of the world three billion strong population increase is predicted to occur – unemployment has reached meaningless levels, in some places reaching 80[MU4] %; employment being a marginal exception. This disparate grouping, which might otherwise be labelled the lumpenproletariat, are the new brand of entrepreneur, a neo-liberal dream in a Hobbesian nightmare. These enterprising business-workers sell whatever they can to survive, whether it be knick-knacks or their bodies. Their inadvertent subversion of intellectual property in the huge market for inauthentic designer merchandise may be an example of multitudian anti-capitalism, but there is nothing liberating about the circumstances of their lifestyle.

The urban proletarian of the 3^rd world are the excluded from HN's image of Empire and the word of biopolitics. Indeed they are the exception that allows the whole to function; the concrete universal. In this sense, we do not live in a postmodern world, at least in terms of sovereignty. Rather, the place of exceptionality has changed. It is no longer the king or the government who guarantee the order, but rather an excluded exception, below, rather than above, the symbolic order. If postmodernity is characterised by a flatness distinguished only by relations of difference between elements, then capitalism and Empire do not fit into this category.

The issue of sovereignty and exceptionality is vital to this debate. Yahya Madra and Ceren Ozsecluk (MO) consider capitalism to be based around an exception, that of the Board of Directors[MU5] . Under this construction the Board are the exception because they are they are the only grouping within the organisation who receive a slice of surplus without having contributed to the production of surplus. A number of corrections need to be made to this point. Firstly, MO remain trapped within an industrialised schema by which to be productive is to produce materially. Whilst this thesis remains committed to a materialist construction of capitalism, HN are correct in asserting the (qualitative) hegemony of immaterial production. In this case, the Board of Directors, in producing knowledge and control are as much involved in production as any element of the capitalist organisation. Rather, a more effective target would be the (silent) shareholders, those who contribute only the conditions of possibility for the organisation (fixed capital), yet received a shared of the surplus.

This appears a feasible conclusion, yet it misses the core point. Neither the Board of Directors, nor are the shareholders are in any way excluded from capitalism, either in terms of ideological construction or receiving surplus labour. Instead those actually excluded from capitalism are the reserve army of labour. Not only are they excluded from the reception of surplus, but they are excluded from the ideological construction of capitalism. Not in terms of their existence, but rather they role within the capitalist system. The exclusion of these (non)workers is not specific to any actor or grouping. Exploitation remains in the abstract, only operational as the condition of possibility for the functioning of the system they inhabit. For the excluded, however, there is nothing abstract about their suffering. They ensure that exploitation is experienced concretely; in pathetic defiance to HN’s concept of immaterial labour and abstract cooperation-exploitation, their exploitation is purely of the body, not any aspect of cooperation or community. More accurately their exploitation and suffering comes from the very division from community and cooperation. The excluded are truly the necessary and constitutive exception which must be excluded for the continued functioning of the system, and so it is with capital and its reserve army of labour. The excluded, therefore, constitute the capitalist form of the class relationship. It is the exclusion of these masses which allows for the capitalist form of the production and distribution of surplus value.

Capitalism’s reliance upon its own exception has led MO to argue that what is required is form of political economy based upon the Lacanian logic of the feminine. Here, in a manner broadly similar to postmodernism as well as HN’s construction of Empire and the Multitude, the feminine is without exception; the feminine system is exceptional only to itself. In contrast to the masculine logic of exception, whereby an exceptional element is excluded in order to constitute an otherwise impossible set, the feminine set cannot exclude any element from its porous borders. That is, there is nothing that cannot be included within the set; likewise nothing that can be excluded from the set. The non-exclusive feminine set can never say what it is; the feminine set can never seal itself off or define its identity against another set. In Lacanian parlance, the feminine does not exist.

The non-exclusivity of the feminine universal has led MO to argue that feminine logic should be the model for a new modality of political economy in terms of the ‘impossible’ class relationship. Class is assumed to be impossible because ‘class’ cannot constitute itself fully; there is no meta-narrative which can guarantee the distribution of surplus (labour). Thus just as Lacan concluded that ‘there is no sexual relationship’ because there is no possible perfect sexual unity between the sexes, MO and Žižek (although taking a slightly different path) claim that there is no class relationship. Class struggle is always constituted around its own impossibility. Hence, any system of political economy is always split by the impossibility of class struggle. Class struggle becomes the absent cause in the symbolic formula of capital; it is the point around which capitalism fails, yet also the point which provides for its impetus.

Nonetheless, although it is easy to conclude that the lack of class relationship means that class relationships do not exist, they do, but they are always lacking. Class relationships certainly exist within capitalism – the exceptionality previously discussed being an example of those relationships – but they are disavowed within an ideological matrix in which history itself is dead. HN’s construction of Empire is just another narrative attempting to heal the wound of class struggle. Under Empire and immaterial labour class struggle is not fundamentally altered, the struggle is just expressed in different terms.

Feminine class relationships acknowledge both the presence and impossibility of class relationships and struggle. On the surface, they appear to be an inviting, if abstract, concept. Feminine class relationships are without exception, and thus, argue MO, without exploitation. Although they do not explore the issue in detail, the implication is that the instantiation of feminine class relationships (based upon a feminine logic of enjoyment) would greatly improve the circumstances of the hungry by including them within both the production and consumption of surplus. Likewise, the implicit assumption is that a feminine economy would not require the spiralling growth of capitalism and would thus avoid, or subdue, the threat of ecological collapse.

Capitalism, however, has already proven itself capable of integrating the feminine, as can be seen in the financial industry and postmodern culture. What it cannot integrate, however, is its own failure; the excluded. Such a trans-fantasmatic integration of the excluded into political economy could only force a new order into being, a new order that we can provisionally label comedic communist democracy. In order to follow this hope we must continue to believe in the possibility of action against capitalism. As I have illustrated, however, this action cannot come from outside of capital (which does not exist) nor from within the limitations of the system. Moreover, although capitalism does produce the ‘germs of the future’ in the dialectics of its own impossibility, HN’s conception of the multitude still does not institute the full dimension of universality operative in class struggle. It is only this dimension, this concrete universality, which is revealed in the presence of the excluded in the face of global capital which institutes the possibility of universality. In order to access this radical possibility, however, Žižek suggests that we require more than the critique of the existing. Rather we need to hold onto the possibility of something beyond capital, a possibility Žižek labels the communist hypothesis.

The Communist Hypothesis

The communist hypothesis is neither an ideal, a semblance or a presence to come in the deconstructive sense, nor has it any necessary relation to previous communist instantiations which focused on either property or the state. Rather it is the task of dedicated anti-capitalists and the focus of this thesis to consider the manner in which it must be articulated in today’s conditions.

Thus the communist hypothesis cannot be a transcendental idea. Rather it arises as the only radical response to the contradictions of global capital. Western Marxism, beginning with the Frankfurt school, has become increasingly critical towards the Hegelian-Marxist notion of determinate negation, by which any new form of society emerges from the contradictions immanent to the current order. Instead, Marxism and other forms of Radical Leftism have adopted a utopia longing for an order which is wholly Other; an order which develops from an unmediated outside.

Žižek’s notion of the communist hypothesis is strictly opposed to any notion of an outside to capitalism. Rather Žižek rehabilitates the Hegelian determinate negation in his theory of universality. Under this theory the concrete universal – that which is excluded from the ‘private’ order, yet exceeds its boundaries and remains immanent to the totality – stands directly for universality through determinate negation. Thus the communist hypothesis comes as a response to the immanent contradictions of capitalism, not from a mythically unspoiled outside.

Žižek argues that these contradictions are embodied in four antagonisms which threaten capitalism; the possibility of ecological collapse, the contradictions between immaterial labour, intellectual property and private property, the development of new scientific technologies which are changing the nature of life in its barest form and the new forms of exclusion, which Žižek labels new forms of apartheid. This exclusion is most notable in the rapidly expanding slums of the third world, but increasingly an underclass is developing within the western world itself. In the US this population is increasingly visible, even though the US underclass is increasingly located in the military or the overcrowded prison system. This group acts as reserve or surplus labour, the existence of which maintains the status of labour as a commodity and the capitalistic class relations. The radical potential of this group is not their poverty as such – horrific as it is – but rather the walls and divisions used to exclude them from the rest of society.

Communism, in the face of these antagonisms, operates as the only alternative in response to the apparent subsumption of the symptoms of capital in the context of Francis Fukuyama’s ‘End of History’ thesis. This thesis has becomes so maligned it is passé to do so, yet it continues to dominate socio-political performance. The communist hypothesis does not emerge from outside of this history, but rather upon the basis of the exclusion around which capital is founded. Under Žižek’s construction of the four dominant symptoms of capitalism, there is one symptom that defines the group; poverty, or rather the exclusion of those in poverty. The other three contradictions have been able to be included within the limits of capitalism. Environmentalism, despite the apparent radical possibility of a chaotic breech of nature, has become sustainable development. The contradictions of private property have become a legal challenge and bio-genetics has developed into an ethical, or even scientific, struggle. For Žižek these three elements are part of the battle for the commons.

Here Žižek follows HN in suggesting that the commons – particularly in the postmodern articulation of the commons in immaterial labour and knowledge – are increasingly being enclosed and privatised. In relation to these specific antagonisms, environmentalism equates to the commons of external nature, intellectual property to the commons of culture and bio-technology to the commons of internal nature. Whilst this enclosure and exploitation of what is common to all evokes the necessary use of communism, it is only the fourth symptom, that of exclusion, which adds the dimension of universality and the consequent possibility of communist ‘democracy’.

For Žižek, universality and democracy are intimately intertwined, abet with a characteristic twist. The excluded stand for universality preciously because they are excluded; they are the part with no part, the element whose exclusion constitutes the order. Žižek labels this contradiction the instantiation of the impossibility of class struggle. That exclusion of the unruly masses with no official place in the private capitalist order – in relation to the order which produces the exclusion – gives place to the universality of Empire. The universal is not the failed attempt of any given set to constitute itself, but rather the set and its failure constitute the domain of universality.

Žižek links this form of universality to democracy in the Greek sense to signify the intrusion of the excluded into the socio-political space. Here Greek democracy contrasts strongly with Western-style liberal democracy. Liberal democracy seeks to include, but only that which is already symbolised within the current order. That is, liberal democracy is already formed on the basis of the exclusion of class struggle, the main instantiation of which is the masses of urban slums that act as the reserve army of labour for capitalism. By contrast, the Grecian form of democracy is based upon the inclusion of this group – the part with no part in the established order – into the demos. Such a move cannot be established by the demos themselves but rather must come from the internal destabilisation of the order. Thus democracy is universal in the sense that it includes that which is outside of itself, yet necessary for its own constitution.

Thus what is vital for both universality and democracy is not exclusion per se, but rather the interaction or gap between the excluded and the established order. The universal may be embodied by the excluded, but universality occurs through the inclusion of the excluded element. Žižek labels this approach a parallax view, where two incommensurable positions are held together. Thus, in Žižek’s communist democracy there is no specific revolutionary agent. Rather the revolutionary potential occurs in the short circuit between the order and its exclusion. The figure of the excluded confronts us – in its universal status – with the truth of its own position. Such a parallax juxtaposition –whereby both (incommensurable) sides are held together in the same frame – makes communist democracy a comedic system in more than just an ironic sense, following Zupancic’s logic of comedy/love, to which I shall soon turn my attention[SB6] .

Butler, J., Laclau, E., & Žižek, S. (2000). Contingency, Hegemony, Universality. Verso: London.

Fink, B. (1995). The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Žižek, S. (1999). The Ticklish Subject. Verso: London.

Žižek, S. (2000a). Class Struggle or Postmodernism? Yes, Please! In J. Butler, E. Laclau & S. Žižek (Eds.), Contingency, Hegemony, Universality; Contemporary Dialogues on the Left (pp. 90-135). London: Verso.

Žižek, S. (2000b). Da Capo senza Fine. In J. Butler, E. Laclau & S. Žižek (Eds.), Contingency, Hegemony, Univerisality; Contemporary Dialogues of the Left. London: Verso

Žižek, S. (2000c). Holding the Place. In J. Butler, E. Laclau & S. Žižek (Eds.), Contingency, Hegemony, Universality. London: Verso.

Žižek, S. (2002). For They Know Not What They Do (2nd ed.). London: Verso.

Žižek, S. (2006). The Parallax View. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

Žižek, S. (2008). In Defense of Lost Causes. London: Verso.

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[MU1]Reference

[MU2]Reference and expand from text - vital section in regards to finance capital and money/currency and the end of general equivalence as a guarantee. Perhaps reference back to Harvey. Explain the link between postmodernity and the lack of a general equivalent

[C3]Has the formula of capitalism altered, or was the postmodern tendency always evident?

[MU4]Reference to Davis from previous work

[MU5]Reference

[SB6]I need to expand upon finance capital, the feminine, the relationship between class struggle and the excluded and how the 2^nd Zizekian perspective builds on the first; in particular how class struggle relates to capital as the Real. Thus far the argument follows a symbolic (real), imaginary, real structure and I need to reflect on the relationship between the latter and the former