| Reviews / Comptes Rendus | Labour/Le Travail, 59

Reviews / Comptes Rendus

Bruno Gulli, Labor of Fire: The Ontology of Labor between Economy and Culture (Philadelphia: Temple University Press 2005)

AN INTEREST in Marx's work flourished among Western scholars between the mid-1960s and the late 1980s, but since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the study of Marx and the use of approaches drawing upon his legacy have declined precipitously, as if by some absurd logic that what might be of value in his work depended on the viability of totalitarian state socialism. This dismissal of Marx's project is a mistake. Arguably more than any other major figure in the history of social thought, Marx struggled to grasp the full scope of humanity's history and potential.

Although Marx is generally thought of first and foremost as a political economist, his focus was far broader than the concern with the problem of scarcity. He insisted that we must address how our struggle with the economic problem of scarcity is causally and dynamically connected to our social organization and to our social consciousness. Relatedly, and far more alien to the tradition of Anglo-American social science, he studied our self-creation — the manner in which phenomena of our own creation act back upon us to help determine how we live and think. To the extent that we lose awareness of our authorship of our creations, we are unfree. Because we are in part produced and controlled by our own creations, in potentially harmful manners, our freedom, and therefore welfare, requires that we recover recognition of our authorship.

Labour is at the core of his model of humanity's struggle with the material problem. Labour is a universal condition of humankind, a nature-given necessity: "it is the necessary condition for effecting exchange of matter between man and nature; it is the everlasting nature-imposed condition of human existence, and therefore is independent of every social phase of that existence, or rather, is common to every such phase" (Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, vol. I [New York 1906], 204–205).

However, labour for Marx was more than merely a means to an end. This is the point that Gulli wishes to clarify and develop in this book. Critical to the argument is the distinction between productive labour and non-productive labour, a distinction "blurred by analytical difficulties" that, according to Gulli, Marx himself failed to resolve. Productive labour is labour that has an end outside itself. It is a means to another end. Non-productive labour, or more precisely, labour that is neither productive nor unproductive, is living labour, a real creative power. Living labour is "the fire that gives form to all beings that come out of the relationship between humans and nature or humans and technology." (82)

Under capitalism, labour becomes, and comes to be understood as, merely a means to an end. It is productive labour in subservience to its own product, capital. Much of Labor of Fire addresses the manner in which labour is alienated from itself under capitalism. However, while capital cannot exist without labour, labour exists independently of capital. In other terms, living labour cannot be extinguished by capital, and herein lies its revolutionary power.

There is another way of putting this. Marx viewed labour as fundamental to all modes of production, which form the substructures of societies wherein the dynamics of change are generated. Culture is superstructural. This is the basis of Marx's materialist conception of history. Through labour, "Men make their own history, but not of their own free will" (Karl Marx, "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte," in David Fernbach, ed., Karl Marx: Surveys From Exile [New York 1974], 146). Marx's optimism was grounded in his belief that with abundance and the transition beyond capitalism, culture becomes freed from this materialist determination. At this historical juncture, real human freedom begins. Through living creative labour, humans make their future with free conscious will. As Gulli puts it, "the concept of communism ... cannot be reduced to economic categories." (42) It is where creative labour "is not subsumed or subsumable under the imperatives of the economy." (143)

But what is the nature of post-capitalist society? Gulli's book has virtually nothing to say about what would constitute post-capitalist institutions. Indeed, it is not clear that there would be any. Nevertheless, he believes utopia possible. What he concentrates on is the question of what labour would be. There will be "production without productivism, labour without capital — a production that spans the range of human activity from economy to culture; a poetic praxis, a practical poiesis." (11) Much of the book is an attempt to unpack just what this charged claim means, and it is often tough sledding. Needless to say, this review cannot begin to deliver the fullness of his argument. A few hints will have to suffice. Gulli sees labour ontologically as "human sensuous activity." This "nonestranged form of labor is the essence of man." (25) "Production [becomes] artistic production, ... the result of creative labor." (173) And art "is this world's constitutive power.... [It] is not a social phenomenon, but the grounding of all social phenomena.... the functions of art and labor become identical." (174–175) The "revolutionary task of the present [is for] labor and art [to] speak with one voice." (183) Gulli embraces Nietzsche's view that art must become "the real task of life." To give meaning to such assertions, Gulli draws from the works not only of Nietzsche, but also such major 20th-century thinkers as Heidegger, Adorno, Bloch, and Foucault.

But could such a world exist? This poses a critical question on which Gulli is silent. What would be the social coordinating mechanisms in his post-capitalist ideal or utopian world? Historically, humans have been coordinated by traditions, political authority, and markets. Following Marx, Gulli envisions an ideal future society, but like Marx, fails to address and clarify just how it would be organized. He credits Marx with a concept of human nature "as becoming and always in the making" (29); "man's true nature ... is making itself." (38) But even if humans are as plastic as such assertions suggest, what guarantees that the future will be one in which humans will be free to fully express their creativity though labour?

This book suffers other flaws. Gulli continues to discuss contemporary workers' conditions in the terms used by Marx to describe 19th-century factories, for example, routinization of the work process, workers as mere appendages of machines, etc. He thereby ignores the substantial changes in the workplace that have been occurring in the rich economies that provide workers, individually and collectively, with greater control over the work process.

And for whom is he writing? A small hermetic band of Marxist philosophers? It would seem so. He takes up his differences with other Marxists who are somewhat obscure outside a small intellectual community, and readers not familiar with their works will find his exposition difficult to follow. Indeed, it often seems more an explication of "how they got it wrong" than a strategy that helps develop and make clear his own argument. At times his prose is impenetrable. This is all a pity. His treatise deserves a broader audience.

Yet in spite of its shortcomings, this is an important book for three interrelated reasons: It reminds us of why Marx still matters. It probes for what might be the promise for humanity when it is no longer controlled by a materialist vision of happiness, wherein labour exists rather exclusively for the endless accumulation of material goods and services. And it highlights the centrality of labour to human freedom, creativity, and happiness.


Jon D. Wisman American University, Washington, DC

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