Deleuze & Guattari vs. Marx

In this video, I explain Deleuze and Guattari's departure(s) from Marx.
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[@ilyassbouioitlan7701]

I love how you explain without dumbing things down

[@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.

[@AvantiMoltoVeloce]

Thank you for this comment :)

[@threeletteragent]

This is a very fluent and clear analysis. These ideas are quite hard to pin down into material conditions and you've done a good job of applying it in a tangible sense.

[@arctomoldiness9312]

What is Foucault's "AO"?

[@threeletteragent]

@@arctomoldiness9312 Foucault’s preface to Anti-Oedipus.

[@bighams69]

Very well put, and I believe I agree. Perhaps it is D&Gs point to always stay ahead of the reterretorialization process of capitalism? Or at least strive to operate outside it, moving along as capitalism takes it over?

[@uchromia]

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

[@xbird532]

Hegel’s philosophy is based on negation and the negation of the negation, or the dialectic. Deleuze wants to escape this negation. Michael Hardt’s book on Deleuze explains why Bergson, Nietzsche, and Spinoza were significant for Deleuze in creating a philosophy that escapes the dialectic.

[@alysrowe4766]

Deleuze's 'Nietzsche & Philosophy' explains this quite comprehensively

[@flowtho7742]

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

[@MarcEtMichele]

Humanism that might be interpreted as naturalism instead. I don't know if Marx is concretely humanistic

[@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."

[@moscamuerta]

yess please!!

[@schadowizationproductions6205]

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

[@ernestozed4004]

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.

[@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.

[@theplacebeyondspacetime]

It's not important that Mass Media is controlled so much as it is how, why, and by whom. Noam Chomsky and Ed Hermann displayed a model of the political economy of the mass media, but that was just in the US. Many countries have very different media infrastructures to take into account.

[@clumsydad7158]

camera videos are cool, good idea again !

[@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 de-fanging/de-clawing/clipping 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 stillllll reeeeeads 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.

[@xspartan346x]

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

[@genathing903]

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.

[@clumsydad7158]

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

[@kazz970]

This is the greatest thing I've ever seen.

[@iwtdkmp5081]

Thank you yogscast lewis

[@exlauslegale8534]

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.

[@RenWilMaraN57686]

I'm with Marx. 100%. The micro politics of D&G (and throw in Briadotti) goes nowhere. When you think of the Post-isms and the evolution of the cultural categories that emerged, they have often been subsumed and commodified by Capitalism. For instance, when I think of gender or race or sexuality issues - I see a plethora of Robin de Angelo style Diversity-Equity-Inclusion programs that Corporations can buy - so we can all be 'included' into Capitalism, I see an army of well intentioned NGOers working hard to foster inclusion (through entrepreneurship - into Capitalist modes of production), I see 'the pink dollar' marketing strategies, I see adidas's range of designer gender fluid t shirts @ $200 a pop, I see the notion of the family replaced by commodified child-care, aged care -home help and so on to free us for production and contribute to consumption. I don't see the multitude withdrawing from, or rhizomatically 'becoming something beyond, Capitalism. Since the Post 68 left and the advent of theory such as that of D&G - I see more and more 'inclusion', more 'entrenchment', more consumption in a diverse Capitalist order. I also see the individualisation process that such theories produce leading to fragmentation, resentment, isolation and division. I see the production of the off-shoots of such theory - marketed as new knowledge - as part of enclosed eco-system that emerges in the academy - speaks only to the academy - to generate the currency of the academy (recognition & research grants) and remains largely impenetrable and irrelevant outside of the academy - except for the graduates of the academy as they move into the professional managerial class and a few publishing houses. I see the demise of the very (working class) institutions that the posed a real threat and challenge to Capitalism in the 20thC. Beyond 68 - and the odd brief flash - Nothing. The best I can say about D&G is that it is utopian. Give me the Class Struggle any day.

[@AnnoyingCitizen]

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.

[@jobsonjoshwa44]

Well, that is not entirely true, David. Marx did not believe capitalism is a one-way street that would self-implode for communism to take over. Marx understood the regimes of capitalism in terms of countervailance. He precisely tries to address this in 'Grundrisse' when he talks about the necessary tendency of capitalism to limit itself internally. Here are a few lines from the book: "...capital drives beyond national barriers and prejudices as much as beyond nature worship, as well as all traditional, confined, complacent, encrusted satisfactions of present needs, and reproductions of old ways of life. It is destructive towards all of this, and constantly revolutionizes it, tearing down all the barriers which hem in the development of the forces of production, the expansion of needs, the all-sided development of production, and the exploitation and exchange of natural and mental forces. But from the fact that capital posits every such limit as a barrier and hence gets ideally beyond it, it does not by any means follow that it has really overcome it, and, since every such barrier contradicts its character, its production moves in contradictions which are constantly overcome but just as constantly posited. Furthermore. The universality towards which it irresistibly strives encounters barriers in its own nature, which will, at a certain stage of its development, allow it to be recognized as being itself the greatest barrier to this tendency, and hence will drive towards its own suspension." (p. 410). You can contest the constitutive elements of the 'limits' that he is talking about, but I'm afraid it won't be enough to ratify your arguments : )

[@simonherckens5509]

Interesting you mentioned Gramsci. As he said capitalism can survive because it appropriates the different counter hegemonic forces. Where the only solution is to educate the masses, so they van transcend their common sense (and thus the hegemonic bloc). Did Deleuze and Guatarri come to a similar conclusion about the solution or did I get that part wrong? Btw I'm definitely on their side and not on Marx's side.

[@CassandraForAGlobalTroy]

D&G don't think you can just educate people out of the control of capitalist ideology, because it is easy for hegemonic forces to capture and rehabilitate counter-hegemonic movements themselves or to mire them in campism that renders them incapable of accomplishing their goals. That's why the concept of rhizomes is so important to them - they think you escape hegemonic forces by remaining fundamentally nomadic and "structureless" and avoiding the sort of arboreal structures that are easily rehabilitated by capitalism.

[@SahiranBeatz]

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

[@marcomiranda9476]

I don't either, I'm trying to find a video that addresses this--but he definitely is empathizing it.

[@SahiranBeatz]

@@marcomiranda9476 I think it's coming from deleuze&guattari's "anti-oedipus" but I don't know much about it

[@marcomiranda9476]

It might be just another way that people cope with capitalism, a crutch of sorts…because he lumped it in with religion and family. Another way that capitalism might subjugate you when you think you superseding it. Regardless, that creator is bent against anti-psychoanalysis. He has alluded to it elsewhere, so I’m not sure it’s Deleuze.

[@fetishmagic2419]

sis.............. ijbol is this satire or should someone introduce you to our good sis sigismunda and karlita

[@mostlytranslucent]

Team Marx. One big problem with D&G's post-Marxism is that their analysis isn't specific enough to capitalism. All modes of production that have existed are constituted through coercive institutions. So the analysis doesn't say enough about the specific way capitalism alienates and exploits - which certainly isn't the vague "anti-freedom" of capitalist social reproduction alluded to here, but the concrete historical opposition of workers and capital as a real and ongoing historical crisis. It may be true that the class struggle theory of history is too vague about the future, but the micropolitics of post-Marxism is vague about the present, jettisoning the crucial project of class consciousness for micropolitics (really a kind of neoliberal anti-politics) and therefore playing it's part in reconstituting capital social production as much as the objects of its critique. At the end of the day, all these attempts to try to problematise the Marxist subject strike me as ways to rationalise a real, crushing defeat of the left. But that defeat was historical, not intellectual, and the implied question-begging mode of saying "what if we had 1917 energy but with such-and-such retconned theory of subjectivity?" concedes too much, as it usually dispenses with the substantive notion of human freedom that is the core of emancipatory politics. Your channel is great, thanks for the invitation to share opinions - you're a great teacher making excellent content

[@fumoblitzkrie]

I agree with you on many things, on an accelerationist note tho (as I am an accellerationist myself), I'd like to point out that the worst things humanity has done were almost always the product of exalted collectivism, not of rampant individualism. I think reactionarism is collectivistic at the core, not individualistic.

[@lukeskirenko]

This is predominantly fluff. One can generalise about a broader system based on what one has observed, but this is anecdotal. But to formulate a generalised model of what that system is requires compiling as much specific information as possible in order to make predictions about where the system will go, and then to be able to adjust the model to match the discrepancies, i.e. to be able to show how the past data didn't align with the new specific information. That would be constructing a model. In the absence of that, not much can be said. But a lot can be waffled, and people can argue about vague generalisations that can't be compared to a data set, because there isn't a methodology to compile a data set. Mark Fisher can cherry pick cultural observations to confirm a bias as to an anthropomorphic essence of a thing called Capitalism. And even more confusion, the university system is part of the vague thing that's being called Capitalism, and so the model has to take into account the dynamics of the public sector also. It makes a nice career for academics to grandstand and make it seem as though they have the long view (even though 20th century philosophy really pulled the rug out from under that game, or should have done if it were understood), but really no-one has a clue what's going on. And to get to the point where the system is actually comprehendible would also appear to create the possibility of a different system, since if it were possible to analyse the dynamics in terms of a huge data set, it would also presumably be possible to exert more control over how the system functioned.

[@demit189]

A Marx book would’ve been interesting. I imagine it would’ve been as disruptive as his Nietzschean reading.

[@Lastrevio]

I think both of them are underestimating the importance of technological development here. Capitalism creates virtual reality, quite literally turning into reality what was in the previous systems (temple economy, slave economy, feudalism...) only fantasy. Cinema, video games, artificial intelligence, the internet, social media and so on could have only been created in capitalism. So I'm more in line with Baudrillard here than any of the other two. I think the inevitable fate of capitalism is the destruction of reality and the creation of fantasy in order to replace reality. Accelerated, unlimited economic growth destroys the planet, so we are replacing it with virtual reality. It destroys communities, but it also creates social media, as a replacement, it destroys the family, but it invents dating apps. But I don't think we should just fall into a deterministic line of thought and insist that capitalism will just "take care of itself" by immediately inventing a solution for all the problems it causes. There are two outcomes here, depending on who will own these immaterial, "cloud capital" means of production, such as social media following, big data, AI, etc... Yanis Varoufakis for example already believes that we live in what he calls "techno-feudalism" where the markets themselves are owned at a "meta" level by one single person.

Your "analysis" of Marx's view of capitalism is embarrassing. You should stop babbling and read The Capital.

[@TheoryPhilosophy]

You are clearly new here. Check out the channel, and prepare to be enlightened

[@ccchhris]

People living in semi-feudal conditions don't need capitalism before communist national-liberation... This is just the economist-opportunist understanding of Marx from the second international. "Natural evolution... development of the productive forces... not revolution". "Everything just arrives at communism spontaneously from capitalism through economic development". Maybe read Marx's revolutionary writings where the self-consciousness of the masses plays a role. You're talking about the economy as if its this isolated mechanical system without living breathing conscious people in it. But your response to this will probably just be a _reducto ad absurdum_ fallacious historical analogy simultaneously confusing Stalinism with fascism.

[@jasonmunger4206]

Love the content. Would it kill you to shave? I mean facial hair doesn’t equate with authenticity unless you’re a rabbi or physicist

[@suranumitu7734]

what

[@clumsydad7158]

Marx set the whole theoretical framework, essentially defining capitalism and communism and creating this great tension between these general forces. As great as his conceptualizations are, they are essentially primitive, as all these happened pre Darwin, Nietzsche, Freud, Jung, Watson & Crick, etc. Humanity is still getting to know itself and becoming nuanced, and basically yet trying not to destroy ourselves. I see now the most likely path as change happening from within, modulating and adapting existing systems, and pushed in healthier directions as we approach precipices of disaster and even pass through a few brutal ones. As the world more unites, races and nations will be put to the background, and humanity will stop a lot of the stupid B.S. we still suffer through. But, it's yet unfathomable to most, even to people who try, how far humanity stretches into the future, and what civilization will mean in 3,000 AD ... 10,000 AD, etc. So yes, I guess I'm more on the lines of flight side of things. And I think that finally in a way, almost a quiet way, the internet is coming into what was envisioned (purportedly) as an international, rhizomatic network,,, hopefully 'for good' eventually

[@AnnoyingCitizen]

uh, no.

[@marcomiranda9476]

The “lines of flight” thing is just nonsense, capitalism eats everything.