Deleuze & Guattari vs. Marx

In this video, I explain Deleuze and Guattari's departure(s) from Marx.

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[ilyassbouioitlan]

I love how you explain without dumbing things down

[uchromia]

Could you explain the main point of contention between Deleuze and Hegel's metaphysics?

[LilVukie]

Hey David, I know that I've commented this in a number of other places, so sorry if I am being too persistent, but I think it would be very interesting to cover the debate/disagreement between Badiou/Zizek/McGowan and D&G. It would seem like an interesting place to explore, especially if you explore the essay by Dan Smith on this issue entitled "The Inverse Side of Structure: Zizek on Deleuze and Lacan."

[CassandraForAGlobalTroy]

That grimace as you had to mention Nick Land was great.

I think D&G failed to understand their own understanding of societies of control and the ways in which societies of control can simply render lines of flight invisible if they threaten the interests of the powerful. Horkheimer and Adorno also give us the important understanding of mass culture and the ways in which the realm of the imaginary is controlled. Putting the two together allows us to understand the process by which any line of flight that challenges the territory that capital has staked out; namely, the process of rehabilitation. Art or alternative media escape the control of capital for a short time, until capital absorbs their medium and profits off of the symbolism of rebellion without its substance, thus bringing these potential paths of escape back into their preferred mass culture and rendering them harmless.

Marx isn't entirely right either, of course. His epochal moment came and the titular socialists of Europe shrugged, voted for war bonds, and then put down any uprisings in the aftermath of World War One. His model of cooptation simply wasn't good enough to understand that the leaders of the working class would simply be coopted into structures of power and would betray their supposed causes.

[schadowizationproductions]

love to hear you talk so soothingly about old/dead men's ideas. it does help me go to sleep

[LilVukie]

Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri would definitely be 2 important figures in this discussion as well as Mark Fisher. Also, I think that a few things should be clear when thinking about D&G's position:

The first is that a molar, Marxist class politics and the type of molecular revolution that D&G advocate for are not necessarily mutually exclusive. They say as much in regards to the women's movement, but it is the moment when the identity of woman/man, worker/boss, black/white, etc. become too invested in (those micro-fascisms that Foucault discusses in the preface to AO) that we should be worried. AO is a work inspired by May 68 in France. One of the main theses of the book is why people desire their own repression à la Wilhelm Reich. It also seeks to show why people abandon the revolution or get corrupted within it (I believe this is what schizoanalysis is trying to do). D&G seem to think that part of the answer lies in the illegitimate uses of the syntheses that produce fixed, rigid, global persons that we invest into (the mother, father, etc.). To apply this to class struggles, the answer from them on how to best engage in a molar politics while also maintaining fidelity to the molecular is to not invest too much into the identity you hold as worker. You must be symbolically suicidal in a sense, or perhaps more accurately, you must realize that their exists within you multiple different flows of desire that lead you to (identify with) different things, titles, objects, categories, identities, etc. How exactly do we do this effectively? The answer seems somewhat challenging, but I think that is the direction that they want to go in.

Secondly, in regards to accelerationism and Nick Land specifically, it is important to remember that schizophrenia and capital are not the same. Capital needs to reterritorialize. That is why we need to harness the schizophrenic flows that capital utilizes, but we must resist reterritorialization in the next instance. Again, it is easier said than done, but I believe that that is the direction that they are trying to point us to.

[flowtho]

It's a good video overall but misrepresents Marx and D&G a bit in some areas

Marx' conception of the future was not nearly as linear as implied in the video. He didn't believe a communist utopia was inevitable and recognized society could move towards different directions as well depending on events and conditions

D&Gs micropolitics aren't the same as individualism. Individualism abstracts the individual from context and focuses on individual thoughts and actions in a very reductive manner. Micropolitics is concerned with how people live in the world and are influenced by broader social, cultural and political contexts. It's concerned with how the way we live in the world might reproduce or challenge broader structures of oppression, norms, values etc.

Also to add to what you said in the video: D&G were very critical of the humanism in Marx. That was probably one of their biggest philosophical conflicts

[ernestozed]

I think the Marx they critizised is rather the Marx of the Marxists-Leninists. There's a certain historical optimism in Marx's early rather philosophical writings and the Manifest, but you cannot find that in his mature scientific works like Kapital. The optimism of the Marxists-Leninists depended on certain misreadings of Marx and Hegel as well.

[bdrillard]

Readings of D&G as feeding a hyper-individualist politics and somehow backdoor endorsing capitalism as being generative of creative potential have always struck me as peculiar, in a, "Did we read the same book?" moment. Not saying David is promoting that as "the" reading, though he rightly calls it out as one that widely circulates. Andrew Culp I think does a good job in 'Dark Deleuze' arguing that this reading is an institutional capture of D&G, a reterritorialization, but one that has obviously not been sufficient in the wings of a D&G that's much more corrosive to capital. I don't think it's a surprise we've ended up with so many toothless readings of D&G from the academy or the arts because of the working constraints on what can be published and widely disseminated through the greased channels of capital.

I think other people in these comments are doing a more rounded defense of D&G in general, so I'll try to generate a different line ;)

On the topic of hyper-individualism, imagine as a thought experiment a D&G reading of Paolo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, which has been on the reading list of every relational organizer among labor and tenants that I admire. Although Freire gets an overt Hegelian air from Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, the book like process philosophy and affect theory in the way it argues: 0. the role of an organizer is not "teaching" or "telling" it's facilitating local and personal investigation (intensifying group consciousness as a byproduct); 1. knowledge of a problem is generated by those closest to it, and this always starts on the level of the local and particular (this may yield the generation of novel concepts); 2. plans of action are generated and enacted by the same people. There's really nothing "individual" about it, or certainly not that doesn't melt down later. D&G's theory of desire and of change offers a much richer reading of Freire, which emphasizes/intensifies the ethics and generativity of group relations far better I'd argue than a Hegelian or Hegel-Lacanian tradition.

[xspartanx]

Im on Nick Land's side. The acceleration of capitalism will eventually destroy the state and not itself.

[clumsydad]

camera videos are cool, good idea again !

[kazz]

This is the greatest thing I've ever seen.

[genathing]

When I was reading Deleuze in college—and maybe because 9-11 was pretty recent and we were protesting the subsequent wars—I pictured the Islamic resistance to Western empiricism as being inherently rhizomatic: Many separate cells, some spontaneously generated, loosely connected, etc. I think Hardt and Negri had mentioned similar interpretations?

[MarcEtMichele]

Isn't some of their critiques of Marx already addressed in Lenin's analysis of imperialism? I was hoping for some more differences

[theplacebeyondspacetime]

I didn't read this in Marx directly, but Marx is supposed to have pointed out that bits of previous modes of production carry on within the next, i.e. the family, the church, patriarchy, etc.

[comradethatmetalguy]

I'm in a middle ground between Marx and Deleuze and Guattari's positions. I think there are relevant points in both positions.

[CharlieBabbitt]

Marx because you can read his work.

But seriously, what D&G(and your presentation) leave out is the INTERNATIONAL working class movement. "Workers of the world unite" right?
What good are micro changes if they are stuck in one country?
There's no way to debate this subject without understanding that a popular world political movement that understands that it's CLASS extends beyond borders is necessary to make any change on any level. Or else our efforts will just be captured by capitalism (which I don't find to be very smart because it could never get beyond Marx - like, what were D&G smoking lol?).
China is a socialist country. Criticise it all you want, but it could never rise this high with capitalists running it. Europe, Russia, Japan, Africa have all failed at this. And now everyone is calling Beijing to get help.
The proof is in the pudding.

So who's side am I on? The world's side.

[clumsydad]

D&G vs Marx ... some pretty heavy hitters ! What's your opinion on Bernard Stiegler and Bruno Latour and the importance of their work? Probably too early to tell, but I just discovered Stiegler due to my interest in Heideggerian thinking regarding the realm of technology/techne' enveloping our lives and systems. peace/ty

[exlauslegale]

What stands out as difference (with a "c") in the Deleuze & Guattari vs. Marx relation is this class vs. group dynamic, which is further complicated by the "group-subject" vs. "subjugated group " distinction, which is itself "metastable"...

But Žižek, clearly on the side of the class (the molar), refuses to participate in any local (communal) decision making, and prefers to stay home and read theory.

[SahiranBeatz]

I didn't really understand why psychoanalysis is mentioned among the family, state or religion