Necro-economics
Craig already mentioned Warren Montag’s piece, “Necro-economics: Adam Smith and Death in the Life of the Universal”, in the latest Radical Philosophy. Here, Montag begins by proposing a reading of Adam Smith, in the manner of Althusser’s reading of Capital - and those familiar with Althusser will quickly make out Montag’s powerfully conjunctural reading of Smith’s universality, of economic theodicy and consciousness, and the distribution of life (and death).
The piece begins with Smith and Hegel, with the question of universality and its - Montag’s choice of words is particularly astute - rationing and distribution. It then touches on Foucault and Arendt, but is more specifically working with the writings of Agamben, Mbembe (whose work deserves to be read more widely) and, of course Marx.
I won’t reiterate Montag’s discussions of biopolitics and necropolitics here, nor that of economy and politics - the essay should certainly be read in full. But I will excerpt something of Montag’s conclusion, which (with some irony) sharpens the point of his conjunctural reading of Smith:
[…] Smith postulates an equilibrium or harmony productive of life that is paradoxically created and maintained by the power of the negative, of death: that the allowing of death is necessary to the production of the life of the universal. Smith’s economics is a necro-economics. The market reduces and rations life; it not only allows death, it demands that death be allowed by the sovereign power, as well as by those who suffer it. In other words it demands and requires that the latter allow themselves to die.
From this we must conclude that underneath the appearance of a system whose intricate harmony might be appreciated as a kind of austere and awful beauty, a self-regulating system, not the ideal perhaps, but the best of all possible systems, is the demand that some must allow themselves to die. This of course raises the possibility that those so called upon will refuse this demand – that is, that they will refuse to allow themselves to die. It is at this point that the state, which might appear to have no other relation to the market than one of a contemplative acquiescence, is called into action: those who refuse to allow themselves to die must be compelled by force to do so. This force, then, while external to the market, is necessary to its existence and function. This, to borrow a phrase from Carl Schmitt, is the moment of decision which makes possible the very systemacity of the market system. […]
Montag then illustrates this with a brief discussion of the reduction of wages and anti-combination laws:
[…] when market forces alone do not protect the masters from the indignation of those faced with starvation (which, as recent theoreticians have reminded us, does not automatically or immediately lead to death), the civil magistrate must intervene by rigorously enforcing the laws against the combination of workmen. The threat of ‘punishment or ruin’ will thereby break their resistance and allow the market to protect them as it will. […]
… and looting:
[…] Yet far more menacing is the danger that the merchant will be ‘utterly ruined and … his magazines plundered and destroyed’ by mobs driven by ‘hatred and indignation’. The inferior ranks of society do not, and indeed cannot be expected to, understand that their distress, even their destitution and slow starvation, are necessary and that with the market’s rationing of food must inevitably follow a rationing of life itself, an allowing of some to die, so that others, a majority perhaps, may live. The mob, faced not with absolute scarcity – that is, with the demonstrated absence of food at any price – but with a relative scarcity in which enough food exists to feed an entire population, though which, by virtue of price, lies beyond their means, may refuse mortality or even slow starvation and simply seize the stores themselves.
It is here that the sovereign power must intervene, not necessarily to kill those who refuse to die, but to ensure, through the use of force, that they will be exposed to death and compelled to accept the rationing of life by the market. […]
- xposted to Long Sunday.
