"Family, Capital and the Left Now"

Julie Torrant

As globalization and implementation of neoliberal policies widen the
class gap in the North as well as the South, the failure of the
classic poststructuralist and postmodernist knowledges, which posit
the culture ("laws of motion of the 'sign'") as the motive force in
history, to account for new material formations becomes more clear.
Equally clear is the fact that what is represented as "resistance" to
the emerging social order by the bourgeois left (from Blair to Nader)
is simply a legitimization and affirmation of the system through
"reforms" of some of its practices. Between the theoretical left
(poststructualism) and Reformist left (activism), Orthodox Marxism is
the only boundary knowledge-praxis that can not only explain the
emerging contradictions of global capital but also actually point to
lines of praxis that can change it.

In my paper I will focus on an exemplary "new" theory--pragmatism--to
demonstrate the complicities of post-theories with global capital.
New pragmatism is an ensemble of discourses which hybridize "new"
theories of cultural "difference" with the mechanical materialism (or
"matterism") of pragmatism. It claims that it supercedes the
classical poststructuralist and postmodernist (and, by implication,
other merely cultural theories such as cultural feminism and cultural
anti-racism) by focusing not only on "cultural politics" but also on
what Richard Rorty calls "real politics," (by which the reformist
left means "policy") a politics, that is, of wealth (re)distribution.
The obsession with "policy" as a sign of activism (seriousness for
change) is that the New York University Press series edited by
Michael Berube now claims to publish books which have "policy"
implications. Serious "left" books, in other words, are the ones
which actually act as repair manuals of capitalism.

In this essay, I take the issue of (new, "postmodern") family/ies as
a test case in the contestation between (neo)pragmatism and Orthodox
Marxism over what constitutes an effective theory for the working
class family now.  Neo-pragmatism, as a theory of  "family" (Barrett
and McIntosh, Stacey, Stack) critiques the modern ideology of The
Family as an exclusionary "discourse" which blocks "other" families
(such as gay families) from the legally and socially sanctioned
institution of "family."  From this view, "post" family is a
fundamentally "new" (discursive) institution, which, because it is
"inclusive," marks the resolution of the fundamental contradictions
of the social in the "postmodern moment."  However, this theory
cannot explain why--given that there is much wider acceptance of
"other" families now than twenty years ago--this has not led to an
"end" of, but rather the exacerbation of the contradiction between
the needs that families are "supposed" to meet and those that they
are able, in actuality, to meet.

In contrast to "post" theories of the family, historical materialism
argues that the family is not (merely) a discursive construct;
rather, the family is (still) an economic institution, with its
primary economic role as (a key site of) the reproduction of
labor-power from generation to generation as well as day to day.
=46rom this view, family is an articulation of private property
relations and this is why, in capitalism, it cannot meet the needs it
is ("supposed") to meet.  However, this does not mean that from this
view the emergence of "new" families is not significant.  Rather,
from this view the "new" (postmodern) family is exemplary of
capitalism in its imperialist stage wherein "Capitalism . . .arrives
at the threshold of the most complete socialization of production"
and thereby, "[i]n spite of themselves, the capitalists are dragged,
as it were, into a new social order, a transitional social order from
complete free competition to complete socialization" (Lenin,
Imperialism).

In contrast to the advocates of neo-pragmatism, I argue that "new
family" is in fact the (re)formation in new
foundations/practices/subjectivities for a new transindividualistic
family in the late-imperialist phase of capitalism.  It registers the
conflict between the forces and relations of production, but cannot
reconcile that conflict, which is rooted in private property
relations.  Moreover, by arguing   that the postmodern family
represents a fundamentally "new" formation (rather than a
re-formation), "post" theories work to enable the substitution of
(local) "family" for (international) "collectivity."  As such, "post"
theories work to block the transformation of the social which is
necessary for meeting the basic and historical needs of all.