Date: Sun, 11 Jul 1999 18:40:46 -0400
From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: Bourdieu and Reformism


kent strock wrote:

>This is preposterous and again unfair.  He spent many years as 
>reading and writing as a Marxist and NeoMarxist. Because he doesn't 
>share your reading of Marx or goes off on another trajectory is NO 
>reason to say he DOESN'T understand capital at all.  The logic and 
>mode of knowledge he produces no longer follows the rationalism that 
>you hold so dearly, but that doesn't mean he doesn't give us 
>something!

Let me get very explicit. In that essay I cited (at 
<http://www.ctheory.com/e31-global_debt.html>), Baudrillard wrote:

"The disappearance of the referential universe is a brand new phenomenon.
When one looks at the billboard on Broadway, with its flying figures, one
has the impression that the debt takes off to reach the stratosphere. This
is simply the figure in light years of a galaxy that vanishes in the
cosmos. The speed of liberation of the debt is just like one of earth's
satellites. That's exactly what it is: the debt circulates on its own
orbit, with its own trajectory made up of capital, which, from now on, is
free of any economic contingency and moves about in a parallel universe
(the acceleration of capital has exonerated money of its involvements with
the everyday universe of production, value and utility). It is not even an
orbital universe: it is rather ex-orbital, ex-centered, ex-centric, with
only a very faint probability that, one day, it might rejoin ours. That's
why no debt will ever be paid. At most, it can be bought over at a bargain
price to later be placed back on a debt market (public debt, national debt,
global debt) where it will have become a currency of exchange. Since there
is no likely settlement date, the debt has an incalculable [inestimable]
value. As long as it hangs like that over our heads with no reference
whatsoever, it also serves as our only guarantee against time. Unlike the
countdown which signifies the end of time, an indefinitely deferred debt is
the guarantee that even time is inexhaustible... And we really need a
virtual time insurance since our future is about to dissipate in real time."

This is just nonsense. While it may look like "capital" floats free 
of any economic contingency, the fact is that the people who own and 
trade bonds exercise a very profound influence over real political 
and economic life. Deficit anxiety has been used to promote austerity 
- real cuts in real budgets that have affected real lives - in the 
U.S. and Western Europe. Foreign creditors of Third World countries 
have used their holdings as political levers to force the total 
transformation of their national economies and international trade 
relationships. People who borrow money spend it and transform 
relations of production and consumption. Financial markets are deeply 
political institutions. Creditors and the people who think for them 
are granted enormous social power and prestige because of their 
position, a process that I'd think any reader of Bourdieu might find 
interesting. Someone who pays no attention to this, and talks instead 
about ex-centric floating, isn't just going off another trajectory, 
he's actively mystifying institutions of social power.

Fortunately his books only sell about 5,000 copies each.

Doug

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