200 Jahre Karl Marx: Philip Banse im Gespräch mit Stephan Lessenich

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Mr. Lessenich, Marx had a beard. Was he a hipster?
Well, his beard probably wasn't trimmed enough for that. He probably would have had
to cut it back and also tend it properly.
so now, externally maybe, so, sort of, but he wouldn't
really fit in with today's hipster image But he definitely was a man-about-town.
So he not only formulated a great theory, he also left traces in life
and in his surroundings.
Absolutely. I think that's half the story, if you want to understand Marx.
First of all his impulse, yes, and his motivation is naturally
Of course ... the critique of political economy, i.e. what he
found, not only with Hegel but also with the entire
bourgeois economy of the time, he of course took as a provocation.
and basically it's essential to understand his work as a critical
approach to the existing knowledge and the ideologies surrounding it.
You once wrote or said:
"Anyone who wishes to understand the dynamics and contradictions of contemporary society
has to read Marx and Capital." Why?
As the simplest answer I'd say, because Marx poses the systemic question is asking the system question and not
primarily in normative terms, that he says capitalism is a
morally untenable system, because it produces so much social upheaval,
but instead because he posed the systemic question in analytical terms. He really
worked out the systemic elements of the capitalistic mode of production and
mode of socialisation, and he showed that
basically, today one would say one way or another all actors in this system
are also driven and compelled, dominated.
A capitalist is someone who, in bourgeois economic one would say responds
to market signals, and Marx would say in the process of accumulation is ceaselessly forced to
notch up his performance economically 29 00:02:23,180 --> 00:02:26,440 to see to it that he makes a profit, to be able to
reinvest in the next period. He really sketched these systemic pressures
in unsurpassed fashion, and they still play a central role today
in diagnosing the present.
We'll speak about digitalisation once more shortly,
but before once more about such really fundamental problems of industrial societies:
Distributive inequality between poor and rich, distributive inequality between North and South
where prosperity and income are concerned. Can one explain these issues with Marx?
Where can one sketch out solutions?
Marx was, after all no inequality researcher 39 00:03:01,040 --> 00:03:03,800 in the modern sociological sense. In modern sociology one has
strata, different income groups and then tweaks
these categories. And he was actually a theorist of exploitation,
and that means more than just inequality. He said there are two classes and they
stand in a relationship of domination,
the one exploiting the other. They have nothing to offer on the market
but their labour power, and the others purchase this labour power, thereby
purchasing a valuable product that they acquire individually and
then can further exploit. And it's here that a number of points tend to get lost
in modern inequality research. The aspect of domination.
Marx also created a sociology of domination in capitalist
society. Capital as a social relationship governs
society and in the society and specific classes or class actors
rule over others. So I think...
This is true today as well?
It's true today as well.
But what if lots of people perhaps
become unemployed in the future? Is an unconditional basic income
capitalism's reaction? First we had Bismarck's reforms,
then we had Social Democracy, then during the Cold War we
made the systems a bit more social and
adapted to capitalism. So is an unconditional basic income
capitalism's next reaction to preserve itself in this form
within the framework of digitalisation?
First off, capitalism has always succeeded,
if it were now an actor, or under
capitalistic relations it was always the case that even in the case of radical
technological innovation,
human labour power was still required. During these shifts it was always thought 68 00:04:41,190 --> 00:04:46,320 "Well, this now will ultimately make human labour power superfluous" for the
capitalist dynamics that somehow process this within their own logic. But it has never turned out like that.
What sort of a society is it that arises through digitalisation,
how, for instance, do we alter ourselves how do we define our individual „I",
if perhaps work doesn't disappear, but lessens?
Well, I think we'd live in a divided society
as we in fact always have. Industrial society was
also a divided society and not just between labour and
capital, but also on the labour side. persistent gender-specific
division of labour, industrial labour being male and everything else outside of the
market and industrial sectors tendentially female. And I think we will
see a new form of division.
What will change fundamentally?
Well, the connection between labour and - this is happening already today 82 00:05:38,220 --> 00:05:43,290 exploitation of labour in one firm. A business spatially affixed to
a specific location. One goes somewhere, works there, and then
goes back home. That is the classic notion of industrial labour.
That of course has also changed greatly by now, even without digitalisation
through service labour. The boundaries between
work and life have become increasingly fluid, and that was true before the era of
emails or other chat programmes. But of course
that will get more intense. So I think the dissolution of labour,
the decentralisation of labour, will increase and that also means the
socialising effect of labour, what one had in firms in the past,
which to Marx as well was a major socializing factor.
So the working class socialises its common fate,
which also takes place in a specific location. That will be gone, and
thus all who seek to organise labour, unions are seeing this today already,
are also in a difficult position,
having to think „How, under such radically decentralised and despatialised
forms of exploitation of labour, still present and organise
work as something collective?"
Stephan Lessenich, thank you for your time!
Thank you!

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