Under capitalism the Aristotelian four causes must be refracted through class and commodity structure
Evidence
A Marxist criticism must therefore readapt the insights of these two models—the insistence on the making process and the priority of the instruments or objects characteristic of the environment—to the modern world of the industrial production of consumers’ goods. Following Heidegger’s formula, it will stress the way in which the commodity form conditions all more contemplative and theoretical perceptions of objects, including of course the aesthetic mode of perception. And in a world in which exchange value takes precedence over use value (such is, essentially, the definition of a commodity) it is not surprising that the making of works of art should also be governed by this dominant structure, which reaches down to influence everything in our daily world, our relationships with other people just as much as our relationships with objects. Thus the Aristotelian model, based on a simpler world in which use value was predominant, requires a complete overhaul and readjustment if it is to do justice to the structural mystifications of the advertising universe. We would therefore expect a profound modification and expansion in the Aristotelian final cause, as well as in the formal one. Moreover, to the degree that the paradigm of modern creation has become factory and institutional work rather than the skills of the individual craftsman, we would expect to think henceforth in collective rather than in individual terms, so that the efficient cause refracts into a class of workmen before an established process, and implies the class for which they work as well. So it is that an adequate vision of the Aristotelian model for the realities of capitalism would see the work of art as a product rather than as a made object; it would deal not only with the mode of production, but also with those of distribution and consumption. It would imply study of the consumer as well as of the producer, and might even, indeed, find itself touching on the problems of supply and of the sources of raw materials. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 752
Categorization
- XREF: Connects directly to Jameson’s Frankfurt lineage: this is the Adorno/Heidegger mediation thesis applied to aesthetic production, and the collective-vs-craftsman shift recalls Benjamin’s essay on the artist as producer. — connects to: Marx’s organic composition of capital extends to the organic composition of individuals — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2313; Aristotle’s four causes presuppose an artisanal model of production — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 750; Feudalism’s social composition determined capitalism’s form — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 198 (+3 more)
- DEFINE: Defines the commodity exhaustively via the exchange-value-over-use-value distinction, then derives the entire critical apparatus from that single definition.
Broader Connections
- Feudalism’s social composition determined capitalism’s form
#expands(0.80) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 198 - Kantian ethics made morality rational and shorn of embodied form, displacing Aristotelian ethics
#expands(0.75) — Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 191 - For Marx the commodity structures people’s actions, worldviews, and dispositions
#exemplifies(0.72) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 782 - Trinitarian doctrine was built on the Aristotelian concept of independent substance.
#qualifies(0.72)