Abstract: The legacy that Marx’s critique of political economy has bequeathed us who are thinking in a non-Marxian time, the time of supermodern capitalism, is a contradictory set of problems. Within it, one can criticize both the solutions proposed by Marx and the problems he raised; and first and foremost, what Marx unproblematically assumes to be self-evident. This is precisely what is at stake in my theory of surplus value – clearly incommensurable with Marx’s – that I have long summarized in the aphorism “Schumpeterizing Marx, Marxisizing Schumpeter”. Nevertheless, the theory of structures of mediation – being a critical theory of supermodern capitalism – follows, perhaps with quite a few caveats, the lessons of the revolutionary form of science that Marx has bequeathed us. I’ll say it again: the society we live in is not the one whose historical fate is critically theorized in Capital; nor is it Weber’s “modern capitalism” – what at the beginning of the previous century he called “the most fateful force in our modern life”; we live in supermodern capitalism and our problem is its historical fate; or, to put it more theoretically, its historical limits. My paper proceeds from those traps that the Marxian problematic has set beneath his theories of value and surplus value, goes through the theory of surplus value that I propose in opposition to that of Marx, and, finally, suggests the scenarios which the future has in store for us beyond these historical limits.

Abstract: This article proposes a reflexive theory of the conceptions of capitalist crises. Reflexivity here entails acknowledging that the notions of crisis do not simply and transparently reflect its nature, but may themselves reflect upon the latter. Firstly, I study the productivity of the ways crises appear, and argue that the nature of a crisis is not pregiven. Then I introduce basic notions from the non-classical logic of the dialectical proposed by Deyan Deyanov, or what can be called an organon of the problematique of structures of mediation. Lastly, I apply the proposed theoretical construct in an analysis of the conditions for the appearance of today’s ecological crisis as a necessary, and not contingent, effect of the nature of capitalism.

Abstract: This article problematizes Marx’s theory of labor. It shows that Marx’s understanding of labor is not a coherent and non-contradictory whole, but contains different, sometimes incompatible, moments. My main argument is that Marx analyzes labor as a structure of mediation. This is the case regardless of whether he refers to labor as mediation between human and nature on a more abstract philosophical level, or, on the contrary, stresses its concrete historical character, where the self-movement of capital is mediated by labor. Returning to Marx’s theoretical legacy, I show how, beyond his multidimensional reflections on labor, a specific view of labor as mediator persists. The purpose of the distinction between multiple levels of analysis in Marx’s work is to explicate the limits of his concept of labor. In the spirit of Weber’s “disenchantment of the world”, it may be asserted that Marx reduces labor to its “disenchanted” form. Moreover, the article argues that it is possible to conceptualize other forms of labor by engaging with and against Marx’s work, where those other forms remain marginal in his analyses. This is done by juxtaposing Marx’s notions with the concepts of the theory of structures of mediation and its organon – the non-classical logic of the dialectical – developed by the Institute for Critical Theories of Supermodernity.

Abstract: This article attempts a summarized presentation of the problem of subjectness as a problem of restoring the functions of subjectness to history (if we can speak of subjectness in the singular at all), primarily in the case of abductive inference as one of the pre-deductive forms of inference in the endogenous practical logics of the dialectical. Since the latter can hardly be thought of effectively in the theories of structures of mediation without the modality of the exogenous non-classical logic of the dialectical, the article will proceed from the more general problem of the conditions of possibility for its introduction, first and foremost the successful contentful formalization of the Marxian syllogistic. That is why the first sections of the article are based on a critical examination of the productivity of two formalizations of the Marxian syllogistic adhering to Capital: David Harvey’s, on the one hand, and Deyan Deyanov’s on the other. This will allow us to explicate, in the next sections of the article, why the second contentful formalization is essential in the non-classical logic of the dialectical. This logic’s main characteristics will be presented in the third and fourth sections as a necessary condition for understanding the problem of subjectness in abductive inference as a practical logic not only in the narrow sense, as in the case of scientific discoveries, but also in a wider sense – as a logic in technological inventions and economic innovations (or generally in innovative labor). Precisely against this background and in contrast to the critical consideration of other analyses of subjectness – such as those by Georg Lukács and Louis Althusser, both inspired by Marx’s revolutionary form of science – the final section of the article outlines some important specific features of the theoretical approach to the problem of subjectness (in abductive reasoning in particular) in the theories of structures of self-mediation.

Abstract: This article proposes a rethinking of the concept of nature in terms of non-predetermined possibility. The first part retraces the notion of nature implied by the theory of structures of mediation; the second part offers a critical rereading of Aristotle and Hegel and their respective understanding of nature in order to outline a basis for a redefinition of nature that could help contemporary critical theory, social and human sciences. Put succinctly, nature is conceived as a constitutive exteriority that functions as an internal element. Nature is limiting its own self in such a way that it produces the very distinction between natural and non-natural as a natural distinction. Thus, it allows us to question the nature of technology, of history, of society, of culture – in short, of everything that traditionally has been opposed to nature.

Abstract: In the genre of experimental thinking, this article poses the question of what is the field of primary self-evidences from which those critiques of the present that have as a stake Gaia (Bruno Latour) and the living earth (Deyan Deyanov) could draw their justification. Can we assume as true – and, if so, in what sense – the self-evidence by which Latour qualifies the universality of the experience that “the ground is giving way” as well as Deyanov’s thesis that the living earth today “may be warning us, blaming us, taking revenge on us, and demanding atonement from us” in the face of “ecocollapse”? Within the framework of an ecological phenomenology inspired by the later Husserl’s analytics of the life-world, the article outlines an understanding of primordial nature which places in epoché the Galilean nature of “bare things” that exists as an “absolutely persisting” reality in itself and “speaks in the language of mathematics”. At stake in this phenomenological archeology is the manifestation of a “primal generative” core (Husserl) in the light of which the object constitution of the natural world unfolds eo ipso as a constitution of a world of goods; while the alien (in their cultural-historical formation) surrounding worlds open up to the possibility of connection-in-separation in “the one life-world of Gaia”. This phenomenological archeology can be viewed as a correlate of the practical archeology of the “forgotten” nature which, upon every techno-natural disaster, rejects its status of formless material and manifests itself as a phenomenon of befalling.

Abstract: Despite the efforts to revise Foucault’s early lecture courses at the Collège de France towards an anti-Marxist interpretation, these lectures constitute an indelible sign of the French philosopher’s fruitful intervention in the field of Marxist analysis of exploitation. I focus on the lectures of 1972–1973 and 1973–1974. As I attempt to show, Foucault’s analytics of power relations, developed in these lectures, helps us understand the embeddedness of political technologies in the process of capital accumulation. My reading concentrates particularly on the role of violence (and different mechanisms and institutions of violence and coercion) not only as a “prelude to the history of capital” (Marx), but as its constant fellow-traveler. As Foucault shows, “apparatuses and techniques of confinement” are means to “accumulate men” for the ends of capitalist production and, in this sense, they are not only indispensable for the reproduction of capital but function also as “levers” of its accumulation.

Abstract: No tyranny has been powerful enough to deprive the people of sleep. Nevertheless, a series of surveys in recent years have found that sleep deprivation is increasing globally. This article tries to explain this trend as an effect of the virtualization of labor time or, to simplify, the transformation of labor time into a potential value that cannot be exhaustively actualized. The logic of this transformation can be recognized in the concept of human capital, and its microphysics: in mechanisms such as deadlines, project presentations, client meetings, and temporary labor contracts. The article argues that the virtualization of labor time detaches exploitation from oppression, reshapes it into repression or depression, blocks the defense mechanisms provided by social and civil rights, and makes us vulnerable to violence from within.

Abstract: Mamardashvili and Marx

Abstract: This is not an article, but a manuscript from the early 1980s which has not been published until now – not because of ideological censorship, but because the critique of the modernist dogma about the opposition between nature and society – a critique that is at the heart of Raychev’s discovery about socialized natural processes – was not comprehensible to the then mainstream. To those of us already working on the theory of structures of mediation, the manuscript in question was a revelation, giving us a chance for innovative thinking. After raising the problem of socialized natural processes as a problem of productive forces in their initial form, Raychev critically addresses a number of problems which were already on the theoretical agenda of Marxism at that time: from the opposition between activity and communication (in the solution of which Raychev proceeds from a revolutionary insight of historian Boris Porshnev) through the crises of everyday life and their resolution, to arrive at symbols and community relations – only as a problem requiring further theorizing, not as a proposed solution. The manuscript, which is held in the archives of the Institute for Critical Theories of Supermodernity, is published here with minor cuts concerning some debates from the 1970s and 1980s that – in our opinion – are no longer of interest to the present-day reader. The title highlighting Raychev’s discovery was chosen by us.

Abstract: This article by Rastko Močnik on ideological interpellation, written in 2013, is one of the testaments to how much our understanding of the critique of ideology owes to our encounter with this remarkable thinker. Regrettably, during the past decade, though passed from hand to hand, it remained in manuscript, kept in our archives – first at the Institute for Critical Social Studies (Močnik was Co-Chair of its International Board of Directors) and then at the Institute for Critical Theories of Supermodernity. Arguably, the article summarizes the essence of his theory as he developed it during those years in a series of lectures at the Universities of Sofia and Plovdiv. Revisiting the Althusserian problem of ideological interpellation, Močnik starts from the problem of orientation towards another’s discourse and of what he calls “double inscription” of discursive sequences; goes through some of his past solutions (relying primarily on Oswald Ducrot’s theory of argumentation in language), and through Deyan Deyanov’s theory of pre-predicative self-evidences of thought and the chances of proposing a new solution based on it; and, finally, analyzes in microscopic detail several case studies to arrive at the interesting conclusion that we need to distinguish between a “reproductive ideological interpellation by identification”, and a “disruptive interpellation by subjectivation”. What will Močnik’s theory offer us from now on and what awaits us in our dialogue with it? Only the future can tell.

Abstract: On Time and Nothingness by Andrey Raychev and Kancho Stoychev, Sofia: Iztok-Zapad, 2023

Abstract: According to modern science and technology, all components of the world are subject to calculation and mastering for the sake of human utility. Reality in itself, investigated and used in this way, does not set any principled moral-normative limits to human intervention, it is not a field of appearance of the sacred or the divine, a revelation of a more profound, metaphysical, i.e., “ultimate” truth. Under these conditions, religious experiences require a sacrifice of the intellect, and remain difficult to communicate and share and, furthermore, only within the realm of personal interpersonal relationships. A resurgence of religion cannot be ruled out, but it would require the emergence of new prophets and saviors.

Abstract: This article discusses approaches to Weber’s thesis of the disenchantment of the world by following the reflexive strategy that Weber calls a “critique” (in the Kantian sense) of concepts which opens them up to their historically changing diagnostic potential. The analysis is focused on the in-depth archaeology of Weber’s thesis proposed by Johannes Weiss, which explicates the antagonisms between the rationalism of modern science, the ethical rationalism of the religions of salvation, and the magical image of the world, thereby elucidating junctions between properly Weberian and Nietzschean motifs and problematizing “the future of religion”. In the spirit of the privative definition of modernity as a “godless and prophetless time”, outlined by Weiss, this commentary is driven by an interest in the antinomies of modern disenchantment seen as a demoralization of the world, which became a condition of possibility for modernity’s naturalistic projects; but also by an interest in operative sociological concepts such as “image of the world”, “attitude towards the world”, and “religious habitus” which are relevant to the thesis of disenchantment but are not clarified explicitly by Weber.

Abstract: This article will follow approximately the following strategy. I will first show briefly what the logic of Weber’s work with genetic – as opposed to classificatory – concepts consists of and what possibilities it opens up for historical theoretical consideration. I will then trace some possible results of the application of this work to the concepts of “rationalism” (“Western rationalism”) and “capitalism” (“modern capitalism”). Particular emphasis will be placed on some specific configurations (historical encounters) that such work on rationalism and capitalism has come across, but I will show that these – mongrel in character – formations also highlight fields of possible disintegration. All this, as I will summarize in the end, allows further light to be shed on the interrelationship between rationality and capitalism. Finally, rather as a promise for future work, I will briefly consider a different (Schumpeter’s) vision of the relationship between rationality and capitalism, which nevertheless stems from Weberian contexts.

Abstract: In this article, I proceed from the already discussed problem of subjectness in abductive inference, aiming to offer a deeper experimental analysis of its endogenous practical logic in light of the problem of the so-called metamorphoses of magic and disenchantment in the context of the problems of theories of structures of self-mediation. To this end, I first present in detail the problem of the functions of abductive inference, and then offer an experimental analysis of a case of innovative labor – the story of Thomas Edison’s invention of the electric lamp and his attempts to turn it into an economic innovation. Against the background of some major moments in its factual history, I present explicitly the results of an analysis of the endogenous practical logic of the dialectical alongside the results of an analysis of the non-classical logic of the dialectical (while upholding in each analysis the viewpoint of the other, albeit mostly implicitly). Thus, analyzing abductive inference in the perspective of the problems of theories of structures of self-mediation, the article summarizes the chances that this inference provides for thinking multidimensionally of the metamorphoses of magic and disenchantment as a special case of the more general problem of both the operation and mutual mediation of functionally differentiated and functionally diffuse structures.

Abstract: The article’s purpose is to analyze the triad of “the political – politics – political power” as a self-projection, self-representation, self-mediation of the political community; the political as a mediating symbolic structure and medium, the political order (nomos) as transcending all types of order, and politics as an activity devoid of its proper subject and finding its institutional form in political power and in the production of pictures of visibility. The starting thesis is that power is not a “pre-foundation”, “essence” or “substance” of appearances and visibilities. There is no such thing as the political, politics and political power “in themselves”, they always appear as enmeshed in visibilities and pictures of visibility. Thus, a new research field is outlined at the borderline of the sociology of public space and the sociology of politics – the field of historical sociology of political visibilities.

Abstract: This article discusses an epochal regression, while seeking to avoid the social science melodrama. Situating its reflection on the conceptual level, it examines the restoration of capitalism in social formations with a socialist project in Marxist and Marxian terms in order to test their theoretical capacity for historical analysis and, above all, to show what the alternative movements and theory in Yugoslavia could have done but failed to do while they still had time to intervene. More precisely, the article attempts to reveal the locus where theoretical insights turned out to be disconnected from political commitments (i.e., the title should be read as “What we should have learned from Marx but failed to take into account in our practice”). Facing the principal contradiction between socialist processes and political bureaucracy (of which capitalist processes are an indirect effect), the alternative movements in Yugoslavia – disregarding the top managerial groups and their enormous influence within the political bureaucracy – found themselves theoretically unprepared and practically powerless when the united forces of reaction conducted a top-down counter-revolutionary coup and destroyed the socialist federation in fire and blood.