Transactional Loops
This essay interrogates the possibility of non-transactional thought. It begins with a look at Nick Land’s understanding of capitalism. From there, it re-envisions and re-conceptualizes Land’s concept, moving away from the language of “capitalism” towards a language of “transaction”. Transaction is understood as a phenomenon of thought antecedent to capitalism, but which informs capitalism. By situating the problems of capitalism within a larger framework of transactional thought, we can turn to possible solutions looking to escape this transactional nature; going beyond (or overcoming) transaction from either Heideggerian Average Everydayness or a Laruellean (non-)decision.
This essay developed out of a conversation with my friend Bryan Smigielski, who might hate that I’ve posted this.
Nick Land’s Capitalism
As a result of driving more, I’ve been listening to a lot of podcasts recently. One podcast that came across my radar was the Hermitix podcast, which happens to fit within my ‘theory-centric’ preference. One of the episodes I’ve listened to featured an interview with Nick Land.
For those of you unfamiliar with Land, he rose to prominence as one of the founding members of the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU), which was lightly associated with the University of Warwick’s philosophy program in the 1990s. His writing from the time period — published under the title Fanged Noumena — brought together a variety of divergent theoretical strands (poststructuralism, cybernetics, sci-fi) in the production of what might be called techno-acceleration, or accelerationism. His latter, post-2007 research and writing — most famously in The Dark Enlightenment — portray a reactionary shift in his theory (though some debate whether there really is a shift), as Land has become a seminal figure with the Neo-reactionary (NRx) strain of the right.
This brief introduction to Land helps to situate his understanding of capitalism. Land is particularly interesting insofar as he is paradoxically grounded in Marxist theory while remaining a proponent of capitalism. In this podcast, Land suggest that capitalism is “nothing but a self-amplifying diagram. Every attempt to fix a particular epoch or set of characteristics of capital to that, concretize it beyond that abstract loop, tend to be outflanked and enveloped by the actual process which has no sort of attachment to any particular instantiation.” This loop, he implies, is the act of competition in human interaction. Thus, anytime we attempt to select for the more efficient, useful, or better option between any set of given option, we have fallen into capitalism.
This is a definition which, I would guess, many would agree with. When we attempt to make a decision between things, we commodify and objectify them, reducing them to their utility for us. As a result, even our activities which seem outside of capitalism — or even anti-capitalistic — tend to fall back into this understanding of capitalism. For instance, my posting this article on various websites is a commodification of my thought. I produce it in order to get a particular response: I want a facebook ‘like’, or a medium ‘clap’, or I hope someone will read this and ask my to write a paper for their journal, a chapter for their book, or invite me to their conference. But it goes beyond even this sort of cultural or social capital, to include any attempt at creating more efficient means of resource distribution. Thus, any attempt to ‘improve’ a system or structure could be considered capitalist insofar as it treats the various processes and procedures as objects for improvement (i.e. commodification).
Yet, despite the fact that I think Land is onto something here, I have at least two issues with calling it “capitalism”. First, this conceptualization allows for a bait-and-switch between equivocal concepts of capitalism. I think that this, in some instances, is what happens in Land’s work. We can talk about capitalism in this very abstract sense — as transactional loop — but in the same breath talk about a very particular economic system. If we define this phenomenon as capitalism, then any sort of resource distribution system that works through an iterative process in order to develop an effective or efficient distribution would be considered capitalism. Yet, this is not how the term is used colloquially or economically. Rather, capitalism is used in a technical sense to refer to a very specific system of economic distribution that is situated around the development of surplus value by capitalists through the principle of MCM’ (Money-Commodity-Money’). Thus, we use “capitalism” in two voices (thus equivocal): first as the abstract transactional loop, and then as the more technical and grounded economic distribution system. There is a confusion when we call this abstract phenomenon ‘capitalism’ because it suggests that the two phenomenon are the same when there is a difference between the two.
A second problem I see with this signification is that it understands capitalism too broadly, ignoring the historical situatedness of its realization. Deleuze and Guattari (who Land is influenced by) suggest in their text Anti-Oedipus that capitalism has been present throughout human history as a virtual force that cultures push back against. In this way, capitalism has always been real, but only recently has become actualized. This means that capitalism has always haunted human history as something that had the potential to awaken. However, if I understand the Landian interpretation of capitalism correctly, it would mean that capitalism was not merely virtual, but actualized throughout human history insofar as humans aimed to improve their structural surroundings (whether these be in terms of thinking through more efficient means of food production, farming, etc). Yet, again, it seems strange to call this ‘capitalism’, insofar as it uses the term much more broadly than we typically would use it.
Transaction
It is for these reasons that I suggest an alternative signifier for the phenomenon Land has described. Rather than “capitalism”, I wish to call this “transaction” fitting with the “transactional loop” of Land’s description. Land is correct that transaction is a self-sustaining monster; a monster which Mark Fisher, in a similar vein, might call capitalist realism. However, by displacing “capitalism” and replacing it with “transaction” it will allow us to go beyond the problematic typically presented in critical theory which treats capitalism as the central evil of modernity, in order to replace it with transactionality which is anterior and primordial to capitalism. In other words, capitalism is an instantiation of transactionality.
For Land, any attempt to think in terms of efficiency or progress is already bound within the capitalist framework. I deny this by suggesting that it is not capitalist, but rather transactional. This is because the problems present in capitalism go beyond commodity production within a fixed milieu. This is a problem with Land, but also with Fisher (and arguably Deleuze and Guattari and much of critical theory as well), insofar as the force they suggest to be “capitalism” extends far beyond how capitalism is typically understood. Capitalism becomes the monster which frames all of thought, creating for us a representational fiction — a simulacrum, a spectacle, a specter — which haunts us and becomes impossible to escape. Thus, for these thinkers our thought is always trapped within an image of thought which is produced via the capitalist processes in which we exist. I do not deny that we operate within such a nomenclature or logic of capitalism. What I will deny is that this process is the result of capitalism. Rather, following Laruelle, I want to suggest that this fiction — operating through the transaction — is central to thought itself. Thought is not capitalistic, but it is transactional. Thus, Fisher, Land, et al., mistake the order of things. It is not because of capitalism that our thought operates through transaction or representation. Rather, it is because of the transactional nature of our thought that capitalism operates by transaction. Thus, to repeat myself, capitalism is an instance of the transactionality of thought.
There is, then, a transactional aspect of thought itself that goes beyond the specter of capitalism. A commodification or objectification that is anterior and prior to capitalism. Thus, even if an economic distribution system can escape the capitalist infrastructure, it can fall back into a process of transaction. Whether or not transaction itself is negative is up for debate. I think there is an opening to suggest that transaction is not negative if it leads to particular ends (i.e. Universal Basic Income, Universal Health Care, etc.). An obvious example might be situations of precocity where transactionality is necessary in order for survival. Populations in area’s that have been abandoned by capitalism often much search for efficiencies and inefficiencies in order to survive. They are, in a sense, searching for market inefficiencies in order to allow them to survive. This is transactional, but it is difficult to think of it as capitalism in the technical sense of the term. But, just because transactionality is useful for survivability doesn’t mean that it is ideal. The problems present in the transaction are similar to those of capitalism: even if we escape the capitalist infrastructure, the retaining of transactionality can produce alienating tendencies in which we objectify or commodify others.
Beyond Transactionality
If there are problems with transactionality, it may be useful to consider possibilities beyond transaction. To close I’d like to explore two of these possibilities.
The first of these is a more negative attempt to undermine transactional thought. I describe this attempt as negative because it attempts to withdrawal from transactionality, thereby negating it. In a Heideggerian register, this could be understood as a removal of the self from the theoretical realm to that of average everydayness. When an object is used in the average everydayness of dasein (the lived, historical I), it is simply treated as an extension of self. So when one uses glasses, or reads a book, or types on a computer, one does not consider that object theoretically. Instead, one simply uses the object as it is being used. It is only when something goes wrong that the object becomes an object of inquiry. In this inquiry one becomes theoretical and exits the average everydayness. In a sense, then, one exits the theoretical and transactional thought — which objectifies or commodifies objects — and simply lives in an average, everyday existence. But we can go beyond this Heideggerian distinction as well, and think about other attempts to escape this sort of transactional thought. For instance, one might consider a particular kind of Hedonism — where one ceases to be critical of what one does, and simply does whatever one wants — or an attempt to return to animality as ways of escaping the transaction in favor of an instinctual or impulsive way of being that is not mapped by transaction.
Yet, while these attempt to remove oneself from transaction (or capital) might succeed on the mental level (insofar as one no longer thinks transactionally), they do little to undermine the dominant system they are a part of. While performing a more impulsive thought, one might be more in line with capitalism than if one is more critical or transactional. Thus, ironically, in the negation of the transaction on the level of thought, one buys in wholesale to the transaction on a more material plane. The hedonist, for instance, might be the one most closely associated with capitalism — buying whatever they want, following the trends as they please, indulging and consuming as they wish. Thus, the negation is really an affirmation of what one is attempting to escape. Rather than withdrawing from a philosophical decision of transaction, the logic remains (in-)decision.
Against (in)decision, we might promote a decision without decision or (non)decision, which promotes a (non)transaction. This too is a negative process, but it is a negation which produces an affirmation (rather than a affirmation which negates). For Heidegger, the average everydayness of dasein is explored through “facticity” (the experiential phenomenon which are the facts of dasein). François Laruelle problematizes this with the notion of “ficticity”. This is a realization that the philosophical systems we engage in to understand the world are fictions that we’ve created to aid in our understanding. With this in mind we can recognize that the process of transaction is a fiction of the mind. This doesn’t mean that it isn’t ‘real’ in the sense that Heidegger uses the term — it is an interpretation of real processes — but it is fictitious insofar as it isn’t Real, or it doesn’t truly explain the nature of reality. This ficticity — simultaneously real but not Real — of transaction allows us to suspend the authority of transactionality.
In suspending the authority of the transaction we do not abandon or simply negativity the transaction, rather we understand that it is an interpretation that is not granted the authority of explaining the world to us. Rather than abounding this structure in order to find the Real (which for Laruelle is unknowable), we can play with transaction in order to use it as we see fit. This allows us a (non)decisional framework of (non)transaction. We produce a decision without a decision, thus using the transactional framework, but without allowing it the authority it is granted in typical thought. This suspending allows us to continue within the realm of the transaction while recognizing its ficticity. Thus it is a negation of authority which allows an affirmation without an affirmation. An affirmation that doesn’t affirm as Real, while it experiments upon what is real. In this way, we might continue to use the process of transaction to think through and undermine capitalism while recognizing that we have suspended the metaphysical authority of that transaction, allowing it to be used by us, rather than allowing it to use us. Rather than removing ourselves from its process in a simple negation, we here attempt to perform a more complex negation which works to negate using affirmation. Thus we reach beyond the (in)decision or the decision to produce a (non)decision or decision without decision.
