Marx's Affect (and Its Exploitation)

Abstract:Linking Marx and Spinoza, this essay theorizes labor-power as "an individual's aggregate of affective capacities in its transindividual constitution of itself and the world." Appropriation of labor-power is always also appropriation of affective—scientific, technological, organizational, etc.—capacities. Drawing on Jacques Lacan, I argue that affective exploitation dates back to the precapitalist modes of production of slavery and serfdom and that capitalism's innovation consists in intertwining this age-old affective exploitation with economic exploitation (surplus-value). Being driven to transform into surplus-value ever more affective (practical, cognitive, emotional) capacities, capital also propels an unforeseen advance in these capacities—evidenced in the scientific and technological achievements of capitalist modernity. Therein lies capital's tension, as a Janus-faced machine of both revolutionary affective potential and abyssal powers of affective exploitation. Today's informatized capitalism—in which the means of production coincide with the means of entertainment (information)—obtains unforeseen exploitation of surplus (i.e., unpaid) labor while fostering the techno-utopian fantasy that our labor contributes to our individual flourishing.