Markets, Antimarkets and Network Economics - Manuel De Landa
De Landa - A New Political Economy. I believe that the main task for today's left is to create a new political economy (the resources are all there: Max Weber, T.B. Veblen and the old institutionalists, John Kenneth Galbraith, Fernand Braudel, some of the new institutionalists, like Douglass North; redefinitions of the market, like those of Herbert Simon etc) based as you acknowledged before, on a non-equilibrium view of the matter? But how can we do this if we continue to believe that Marxists got it right, that it is just a matter of tinkering with the basic ideas? At any rate, concepts like "mode of production" do not fit a flat ontology of individuals as far as I can tell.
- Manuel De Landa
That's about as clear as its gotten so far and I couldn't agree more. Well actually I'm not even sure I'd want to use the term "left", there is a huge need for a new political economy, in general. And Marxism has very little (no?) place in it. Left, right? Tired, of fading use, talk about an excessive use of the binary. We can craft something better. De Landa seems to be the only academic around who has really noticed. The left keeps keeps critiquing Capitalism with varied reiterations of Marx's core, and it just doesn't hold up to any real economic scrutiny.
The quote above is from an excellent and extensive Ctheory interview with De Landa. He has a new book out, Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy. It's next on my "serious" reading list. Those interested in his move towards a new political economy should check out his essay "Markets, Antimarkets and Network Economics", where he lays some ground work.
Back to the Ctheory interview:
CTHEORY (Protevi): Okay, but even if the shift from an exchangist to a productivist perspective doesn't work for you, does it at least seem to you a fruitful way of explaining Deleuze and Guattari's tenacious loyalty to (some suitably modified) form of Marxist analysis, as well as their insistence on a systematicity to capitalist production? Or do we have to change so much in Marx to reach what Deleuze and Guattari say in analyzing things that their insistence on calling what they do a form of Marxism simply the result of their social position in the "gauchiste" (non-Communist) left of France in their lifetimes? In other words, their Marxism is a way of thumbing their noses both at neo-liberals and at party loyalists?
De Landa: Well, frankly, I think Marxism is Deleuze and Guattari's little Oedipus, the small piece of territory they must keep to come back at night after a wild day of deterritorializing. Who could blame them for needing a resting place, a familiar place with all the reassurances of the Marxist tradition (and its powerful iconography of martyrs and revolutionaries)? The question is whether we need that same resting place (clearly we need one, but should it be the same? Shouldn't each of us have a different one so that collectively we can eliminate them?).
Yes, yes, I have to agree. Its like a weird little twitch throughout A Thousand Plateaus, and its keeping me from enjoying it quite as much as I'd like to. Actually been trying to write out something similar for a few days now. How nice of De Landa to do it for me. Think ATP is going to read a bit nicer now...
[via headmap and Anne Galloway] [Abstract Dynamics]
11:37:34 PM
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