Andres Saenz de Sicilia

This article sketches the outline of a semiotic materialism, drawing on Mexican-Ecuadoran philosopher Bolívar Echeverría's thesis that production=signification. For Echeverría, every process of social production and consumption is and must at the same time be a process of signification and interpretation. This thesis, initially developed in the mid-1970s, emerges most immediately from a novel synthesis of Marx with the work of Jakobson and Hjelmslev. It also establishes an expansive and highly original social ontology, at the core of which is a ‘trans-naturalised’ conception of the specificity of human social reproduction. This ontology both grounds the conceptual innovations of structural linguistics within a critical understanding of reproduction, as the general structure of material life, and demonstrates the necessarily semiotic character of all acts of production and consumption. We analyse this proposition and elaborate upon its critical implications, particularly a deepened theorisation of ideology and fetishism, which Echeverría describes as enacting a ‘subcodification’ of every explicit ‘message’ that can be transmitted, regardless of its content. By inscribing signification at the heart of critical social theory, Echeverría offers a unique account both of social reproduction and the effects of capitalist accumulation upon that process.

One of the fundamental tensions within Marx’s writings arises from the complex relationship between the systematic and historical aspects of his description of capitalist society. A century and a half after the publication of Capital – and in light of the historical adventures of communism that must, for the most part, be considered as an accumulation of catastrophic failures – this tension continues to both energise and attenuate the reception of Marx’s thought, symptomatically expressing the radically distinctive and still elusory practical-theoretical foundations of his project. On the one hand, capital is depicted by Marx as an ensemble of social relations forming an apparently closed totality capable of reproducing itself purely through its own internal dynamism: capital as self-sufficient system. On the other hand, Marx reminds us that the capitalist mode of production does not fall from the sky but grows out of, or violently breaks free from, the economic structures of feudalism, developing within and in antithesis to past relations and technologies: capital as historical in nature and therefore subject to the turbulent play of conflictual energies shaping and propelling human history. For Marx the capitalist system is a whole, a totality of interlocking relations that presuppose and support one another. Yet at the same time, it is not a whole with a timeless, independent, self-moving existence, an essence suspended in the void. Capital does not develop from nothing but is a historical phenomenon subject to temporal emergence and decay amidst a whole host of ‘disturbing influences’.

Although largely unknown to anglophone readers, Bolívar Echeverría (1941–2010) is one of the most important representatives of Latin American Marxism and critical theory to have emerged in recent decades. He was born in Ecuador, but his main intellectual formation took place in Berlin during the 1960s, where he became involved both politically in the generation of the German student movement that saw the SDS and Rudi Dutschke rise to prominence, and theoretically with the associated revival of critical Marxist thought, drawing on the early texts of (so-called) Western Marxism by Lukács and Korsch, as well as later currents found in Sartre, Adorno and Marcuse. In 1968 Echeverría returned to Latin America, settling in Mexico, where he undertook a deepened reading of Marx and Marxism, enriching it further through a critical engagement with a wide range of thinkers and traditions including Heidegger, Benjamin, Nietzsche, Hegel, Braudel, Mumford, and, more importantly for the following essay, structural linguistics and semiotic theory, in particular the work of Jakobson and Hjelmslev.

Capital is often depicted as an all-encompassing and abstract social force which seeks to "subsume" all of human life. But what in fact is involved in such "subsumption" and how might it be resisted? Tracing the discourse of subsumption through the work of Kant, Hegel, Marx and the critical Marxist tradition, this book offers a materialist framework for analysing capitalist power. Saenz de Sicilia argues that capitalist subsumption operates at three distinct yet interrelated levels: exchange, production, and reproduction, each characterised by distinct logics of domination and resistance. Conflicts over subsumption at each of these levels lie at the heart of capitalism’s struggle to determine the shapes of human social life. A major intervention into debates surrounding the historical trajectories of capitalism, Subsumption in Kant, Hegel and Marx: From the Critique of Reason to the Critique of Society systematically refutes the influential thesis that we are now in a stage of "total" capitalist subsumption which leaves no space of refuge or resistance.

One of the fundamental tensions within Marx’s writings arises from the complex relationship between the systematic and historical aspects of his description of capitalist society. A century and a half after the publication of Capital – and in light of the historical adventures of communism that must, for the most part, be considered as an accumulation of catastrophic failures – this tension continues to both energise and attenuate the reception of Marx’s thought, symptomatically expressing the radically distinctive and still elusory practical-theoretical foundations of his project. On the one hand, capital is depicted by Marx as an ensemble of social relations forming an apparently closed totality capable of reproducing itself purely through its own internal dynamism: capital as self-sufficient system. On the other hand, Marx reminds us that the capitalist mode of production does not fall from the sky but grows out of, or violently breaks free from, the economic structures of feudalism, developing within and in antithesis to past relations and technologies: capital as historical in nature and therefore subject to the turbulent play of conflictual energies shaping and propelling human history. For Marx the capitalist system is a whole, a totality of interlocking relations that presuppose and support one another. Yet at the same time, it is not a whole with a timeless, independent, self-moving existence, an essence suspended in the void. Capital does not develop from nothing but is a historical phenomenon subject to temporal emergence and decay amidst a whole host of ‘disturbing influences’.

This article sketches the outline of a semiotic materialism, drawing on Mexican-Ecuadoran philosopher Bolívar Echeverría's thesis that production=signification. For Echeverría, every process of social production and consumption is and must at the same time be a process of signification and interpretation. This thesis, initially developed in the mid-1970s, emerges most immediately from a novel synthesis of Marx with the work of Jakobson and Hjelmslev. It also establishes an expansive and highly original social ontology, at the core of which is a ‘trans-naturalised’ conception of the specificity of human social reproduction. This ontology both grounds the conceptual innovations of structural linguistics within a critical understanding of reproduction, as the general structure of material life, and demonstrates the necessarily semiotic character of all acts of production and consumption. We analyse this proposition and elaborate upon its critical implications, particularly a deepened theorisation of ideology and fetishism, which Echeverría describes as enacting a ‘subcodification’ of every explicit ‘message’ that can be transmitted, regardless of its content. By inscribing signification at the heart of critical social theory, Echeverría offers a unique account both of social reproduction and the effects of capitalist accumulation upon that process.

Although largely unknown to anglophone readers, Bolívar Echeverría is one of the most important representatives of Latin American Marxism and critical theory to have emerged in recent decades. He was born in Ecuador, but his main intellectual formation took place in Berlin during the 1960s, where he became involved both politically in the generation of the German student movement that saw the SDS and Rudi Dutschke rise to prominence, and theoretically with the associated revival of critical Marxist thought, drawing on the early texts of Western Marxism by Lukács and Korsch, as well as later currents found in Sartre, Adorno and Marcuse. In 1968 Echeverría returned to Latin America, settling in Mexico, where he undertook a deepened reading of Marx and Marxism, enriching it further through a critical engagement with a wide range of thinkers and traditions including Heidegger, Benjamin, Nietzsche, Hegel, Braudel, Mumford, and, more importantly for the following essay, structural linguistics and semiotic theory, in particular the work of Jakobson and Hjelmslev.

This thesis explores the concept of subsumption in the work of Immanuel Kant, G.W.F. Hegel and Karl Marx in order to construct a distinct theoretical problem resting on the articulation of conceptual and social relations. Each of these authors develops a ‘logic’ within which subsumptive relations are operative: Transcendental logic, dialectical logic and finally Marx’s ‘logic of the body politic’; these are investigated in turn. The thesis opens with a close reading of subsumption in Kant’s philosophy, arguing that it is here that the concept first attains its modern or critical sense. This critical sense distinguishes it from the classical notion of subsumption and gives rise to a novel philosophical account of how synthetic subsumption acts unite heterogeneous elements within a compositional totality. In Hegel’s philosophy this account takes on a series of new determinations, as social, historical and developmental aspects to subsumption are introduced. Nonetheless, Hegel’s concept of subsumption remains within the ambit of a ‘closed’ idealist discourse, just as Kant’s does. The second section of the thesis explores how this closure is thrown into crisis by Marx’s materialist attack on philosophy as a self-sufficient branch of knowledge, altering the stakes of conceptual relations as such, and therefore subsumption. Drawing on the work of Mexican-Ecuadoran philosopher Bolívar Echeverría, Marx’s materialism is reconstructed as a theory of social reproduction, encompassing the practical process of social life in its entirety. This then provides the basis for an analysis of subsumption in its specifically capitalist form, which, the thesis argues, must be thought as operative at three levels of social activity: exchange, production and reproduction, each with their own distinct but interconnected logics of power and resistance. Grasping these three dimensions in their unity, the thesis finally outlines an original framework for comprehending capitalist domination in its concrete specificity. In order to do so it goes beyond Marx’s own theory of subsumption as well as interpretations of it that reinstate theoretical closure to historical contingency. Instead, a dynamic theory of capitalist subsumption is proposed in order to register the diverse mechanisms of control through which capitalist power shapes the course of social reproduction and historical development.

What is the status of 'the human' and 'humanism' in Marx's thought? Does Marx's critical project rest upon 'humanist' commitments? If so, what are these and how do they shift across his writings and inform his critical theory of capitalist society? Marx and the Critique of Humanism addresses these questions through a diverse collection of critical interventions from leading Marxist scholars. These contributions offer both a renewed appraisal and contextualisation of the notion of 'the human' across Marx's oeuvre, as well as a range of critical perspectives on the status of humanism within critical social theory today. The book revaluates Marx's relation to humanism by examining the intellectual context, influences and interlocutors which shaped his theoretical commitments and critical methodology; the concept of 'Gattungswesen' in Marx's early writings; the ways in which 'the human' informs and is transformed by Marx's critique of political economy; the ecological dimensions of Marx's thought; the reception of Marx's humanism by anti-colonial thinkers; and the relation of Marx's thought to post-structuralist and post-humanist critiques of enlightenment humanism. Moving beyond the simplistic picture of a 'humanistic' early Marx and a 'scientific' late Marx, this volume shows instead how a sustained concern with the human evolves in tandem with Marx's broader intellectual development.

Born in Ecuador, formed intellectually and politically in West Germany, resident of Mexico until his death, Bolívar Echeverría is a singular figure within the landscape of twentieth-century critical theory. Following his early engagement with leftist politics and the existential philosophies of Unamuno, Heidegger and Sartre in his home country, Echeverría moved to Germany in 1961, initially with the intention of studying under Heidegger in Freiburg. Later that year Echeverría relocated to Berlin, where he would eventually become involved both politically in the German student movement that saw the SDS rise to prominence, and theoretically with the associated revival of critical Marxist thought. In the midst of intense cultural and social upheaval, Echeverría established himself as a revolutionary intellectual and expert in Latin American politics, forming friendships with Rudi Dutschke and Bernd Rabehl. In 1968 Echeverría returned to Latin America, settling in Mexico, where he began university teaching alongside Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez and concentrated his research on Marx and Marxism, specifically focusing on the critique of political economy. He began to publish the results of this work from the 1970s onwards, initially in a series of journal and magazine articles and eventually in a number of book-length essay collections. Echeverría’s essayistic predilection was heavily indebted to Walter Benjamin, in style as well as form. He continued to teach at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City up until his death in 2010.

This chapter provides a critical overview of main theoretical issues and debates surrounding the Marxist concept of subsumption. It initially sets the context for Marx’s adoption of the term by outlining the significance of subsumption in German philosophy, in particular for Kant and Hegel. It goes on to explore Marx’s use of the term and engagement with the broader problematic of subsumption in two distinct contexts: 1) his early critique of philosophy and the development of a historically critical, ‘materialist’ perspective (where subsumption under concepts is developed into subsumption under social, political and economic relations); 2) his critique of political economy, where, specified as ‘the subsumption of labour under capital’, the concept takes on a far more technical and specific sense as a function of capitalist domination in the production process (in the distinction between ‘formal’, ‘real’ and ‘hybrid’ subsumption). The varied interpretations and debates around subsumption in the Marxist tradition are then explored. Firstly, considering the use of subsumption as a category of historical periodisation and the thesis of a ‘total’ subsumption in the work of Adorno and Negri. Secondly, assessing theorisations of subsumption within labour process theory, Marxological debates and Latin American Marxism.