In his chapter on Marx’s critique on capital, Dipesh Chakrabarti (Provincializing Europe:
Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, Princeton 2000) tries
to deal with the idea that provincialized Europe has a universal and
overarching character. Marx criticized capital on two categories: the abstract human and the idea of history.
As historicism assumes that capital arose in Europe out of the Enlightenment rationalism
and humanism, it constitutes a unity both in time and space. For Chakrabarti,
and Marx, the main reason behind this assumption is the need for a homogenous
and common unit for measuring human activity. This measurement will of course
be designed to reduce diversity and human belongings into one category called
‘labor’. Abstract labor, therefore, is to destroy differences among workers.
Abstract labor is abstracted from any empirical history, it is like a ghost.
However, paradoxically, capital is in need of a human, concrete, labor in
advance in order to sustain this mode of production.
Inspired by Marx’s critique on capital and its defects, Chakrabarti
suggests that there are two histories, History 1 (H1) and History 2 (H2) in
relation to capital. By H1, he refers to capital’s posited history aiming
at producing itself. By H2, on the other hand, he means some other things, or a
universe of pasts, that do not contribute to the self-production of capital.
H2s are many in number, in contrast to H1. However, H2s are not independent
from capital, they simultaneously exists. However, H2s are not alternative
histories, meaning they do not constitute a dialectical ‘other’. Rather, H1 and
H2s live together in the same habitat. Their mutual existence is in purpose. Although
H1 has to destroy the multiple possibilities that belong to H2, through which disciplinary
practices that are meant to accomplish this destruction, H2s will never cease
completely. They will keep interrupting the run of capital’s own logic.
For Chakrabarti, Marx’s critique on capital and its implication as his
own theory of multiple histories make different / alternative ways of life
possible without rejecting or ignoring the other. Globalization of capital (H1)
is of course important for enabling him to thing thoroughly on the issues such
as rationalism and humanism. However, inserting a single, linear history,
assumed by historicists, would not only block ways to understand different but
simultaneously available life styles. But it also prevents us from discovering
how H1 maintains itself and how affective narratives of human belongings can
survive. Calling help of Heidegger, Chakrabarti asserts that one history does
not epistemological primacy over other. Both is necessary for explaining
history without being trapped by the theories depending on ‘the idea of history
as a waiting room’.
However interesting, Chakrabarti’s theory falls short to explain why H1
needs to allow H2 to survive. A universal and overwhelming capital may also
maintain itself, may be more powerful than a shared life.
Second, Marx’s and Heidegger’s positions are not known in his theory. If
a Heideggerian reading of Marx’s critique could open space for H2s along with
H1, does not that mean H2s are also products allowed to survive within the
logic of capital? H2s, in this depiction, still do not have their own logic. If
Chakrabarti thinks, it does not matter whether H2s have their own logic or not,
then their being different has no point.
Moreover, I can see no point to their being divergent if H1 is meant to
reduce H2s’ power to produce different and really alternative capitals.