In the Grundrisse we already have Marx's analysis of two types of labour: abstract and concrete labour. Work is abstract in being relatively independent of the individual workers who produce commodities. And as Alberto Toscano puts it in Marx Reloaded, whether the work is “immaterial” or cognitive, or material or physical, seems less important than how that work is practically organized."
Barker, Jason and Huw Lemmy (Interviewer). "Interview with Jason Barker, director of Marx Reloaded" in: VersoBooks.com. February 7, 2012. (English).
There’s the interview Ken Loach gave to The Telegraph last year (15 Oct 2010) where he slams television for its lack of creativity and welcomes the cull of senior executives at the BBC on the grounds that they represent so many layers of non-productive labour. His point was that television is full of commissioning editors that stifle the creative process and only get in the way of what film-makers are trying to do. But this was not at all the experience I had in making Marx Reloaded. If anything, the reverse was true… The fact that television has become such a fragmented industry all around the world means, quite contrary to what Loach is arguing, that spaces will inevitably open up for films about Marx and other marginal or potentially “controversial” subject matter.
Barker, Jason and Nemanja Korsic (Interviewer). "Marx Enters the Matrix." in: New Left Project. May 26, 2011. (English).
The idea that layers of TV executives are stifling the life out of film-makers, suffocating them, or rejecting all the genuinely “creative” or “cutting edge” ideas, is wrong. Maybe it’s a fantasy that exists only in Ken Loach’s imagination. It doesn’t take account of the ways in which TV production has evolved. And it strikes me as a complete myth that all we need do is remove the supposedly non-productive, stifling layers of bureaucracy in order to finally unleash the creative energy that’s trying to get out.
Barker, Jason and Nemanja Korsic (Interviewer). "Marx Enters the Matrix." in: New Left Project. May 26, 2011. (English).
Over the years I’ve come across this very snobby attitude - maybe it’s changed - towards media and film theorists on the part of philosophers. If you apply Alain Badiou’s theory to The Matrix then immediately there’s this suspicion that you’re doing it simply to add an air of intellectual sophistication to your argument where none exists. My first degree was in media studies and I’m proud of it. There’s no reason to assume that essays on The Matrix can’t involve valid philosophical arguments.
Barker, Jason and Nemanja Korsic (Interviewer). "Marx Enters the Matrix." in: New Left Project. May 26, 2011. (English).
Why does Marxism repeat itself? Quite simply because it doesn't know it's dead. This is the definition - and the destiny - of every ghost: to persist in its own hysteria.
Barker, Jason.
What I have in mind might best be described as a singular offensive operating under the rubric of a (little) cultural revolution (small ‘c’ and ‘r’). I say ‘(little) cultural revolution’ in full recognition of the ‘end of grand narratives’, but nonetheless aware that battle must commence by way of the debris of all those discursive regimes that still hold the Other in such high regard.
Barker, Jason.
I do not mean to trivialize the social democratic or reformist tendencies at work in contemporary mass politics, since some of them may be very important. What I want to say is that 'revolutionary' modes of politics are no longer conditioned through undermining, either from within or without, the institutional legitimacy of the State - whether in terms of dismantling the existing ideological or repressive State apparatuses.
Barker, Jason.
There is no 'democracy to come'. Time, as Plato says, is only the image of eternity, after all.
Barker, Jason.
For what it's worth my personal conviction is that Badiou’s intrinsic ontology makes any idea of the future, in these times of s(p)ecular Crisis and intellectual revisionism, seem rather gratuitous and superfluous to the militant task of thinking. I mean that as a compliment.
Barker, Jason.
Whenever people say that Marx was 'right' or is 'relevant' it sounds like leftist melancholy. Today the left is incapable of mounting a coherent counter-hegemonic challenge to capitalism, but at least Marx was right. Some consolation! In any case, since when did being right or wrong ever bother Marx?
Barker, Jason.
Source: European Graduate School (EGS)
