[NOTE: This was written on the 14th of August this year. I have only waited to post it because it was written as a complementary essay to Joseph’s essay on Bataille and Marx which he did not finish, and is still “working on” (it isn’t to his standards,” whatever that means). I will add the link when he publishes it]
Prefatory Note
I want to do hopefully my last longer interaction with the theories of Karl Marx. To do this, we will revisit Steven Shaviro’s comparative analysis of Karl Marx and Georges Bataille found in his book Passion and Excess.
I
Shaviro says, “Marx’s fundamental insight [is] that disequilibrium — repeated economic crisis — is a ‘normal condition, immanent to the functioning of capitalism as a system”.[1] Crisis starts within capitalism at the very extraction of surplus value, so it is clear that, if Marx is correct, crisis, that is, disequilibrium is a condition inherently caused by bourgeois property relations. He continues, “Disequilibrium is endemic to the system because it is the condition under which commodity production, and the concomitant establishment of money as universal equivalent, is alone possible”.[2] We must heed those words of Marx when he speaks of crisis. Marx says, “The fact that the movement of capitalist society is full of contradictions impresses itself most strikingly on the practical bourgeois in the changes of the periodic cycle through which modern industry passes, the summit of which is the general crisis. That crisis is once again approaching”.[3] The summit is the moment in which expenditure throws capitalism into crisis.
“Homogeneity signifies here the commensurability of elements and the awareness of this commensurability”.[4] Homogeneity means only that things are commensurable. Commensurability, that is, things having common measure is a fact of homogeneous society, and, to quote Bataille, “Homogeneous society is productive society”.[5] And this is the reason why Bataille sees that “[p]roduction is the basis of a social homogeneity”.[6] Capitalism is thus a homogeneous system because commodity production is its starting point. And it is subject to the same issues that plague homogeneous societies. But this all presupposes that homogeneity is a fact of society. Shaviro explains, “in the capitalist world of abstract labor and generalized commodity production, nothing escapes reduction to homogeneity (everything is a commodity, everything has its price). Even (or especially) human subjectivity is commodified and reproduced, in the form of labor power”.[7] In this way, homogeneity is just exchange value. Everything has an exchange value within capitalist society, everything is homogeneous in this sense. And this is why production is the basis of homogeneity! Things are produced and then exchangeable, for if it is not produced, then it is not. Even subjects are produced, they are interpellated, brought into being. Everything is produced because things are of restricted economy, not of the general economy.*[8]
This is where money becomes important. Money is the universal equivalent for both Marx and Bataille. In terms of Bataille, we see that this is evident due to the fact he says, “The common denominator … is money”.[9] For Bataille, money is also “the foundation of social homogeneity,” that is, exchange value.[10] Now, this is not to say money or price is exchange value. This is not what Bataille is saying. Rather, Bataille is saying money works in tandem with the equivalency of commodities. But is this reflected in Marx? Marx says, “Money necessarily crystallizes out of the process of exchange”.[11] Money, for Marx, “serve[s] as the form of appearance of the value of commodities”.[12] Lastly, Marx sees that “commodities are merely particular equivalents for money, the latter being their universal equivalent”.[13] And this closely reflects Bataille’s sentiment.
II
Shaviro holds that “no element of society escapes being coded by the abstract possibility of homogeneous exchange[, but] this process of universal coding is not self-sufficient and self-perpetuating”.[14] Homogeneity is not self-sufficient because it is predicated on the exclusion of heterogeneous elements, that is, those unproductive and useless elements; Bataille says, “Every useless element is excluded [from homogeneous society]”.[15] Shaviro recognizes that expenditure (unproductive consumption) infests all modes of social organization, that is, all compositions. No society is safe from the violence that is expenditure. Capitalism does not abolish expenditure, as Shaviro rightly recognizes. Rather, “the logic of accumulation governing capitalist economic relations leads only to a hypocritical dissimulation of primary expenditure, not to its abolition”.[16] Production and accumulation suppress expenditure, not erase it. And, in fact, production and accumulation are predicated on expenditure, that is, the expenditure of the Sun. The order of production, just like homogeneous society does with heterogeneous elements, must exclude expenditure in order to constitute itself. Shaviro, in this sense, connects heterogeneous existence with expenditure. But this connection is integral to any understanding of Bataille’s work. Bataille’s philosophy can be seen as a bunch of dualisms: the dualism of continuity and discontinuity, of expenditure and production, of the sacred and the profane, etc. And all of these dualisms work together. For example, one enters into continuity through their annihilation, one is expended.
Expenditure disrupts the order of production (restricted economy) with its entrance because the order of production no longer has an outside which it can constitute itself upon. Expenditure is catastrophe. Expenditure is class struggle in this sense: constant contestation of capitalism’s social fabric, that is, class. Because all orders of production are predicated on excess, and thus on the inevitability of expenditure, which is the destruction of the order or production, “‘the most complete result’ of bourgeois economic calculation is ironically its own decomposition”.[17] So much for the economic calculation problem. One could say that in expenditure there are no problems because, to quote Joseph Stalin, “Death solves all problems. No man, no problem”.[18]
Useful and productive activity is teleological activity, and no one, other than Bataille, recognizes this better than Ludwig von Mises of the Austrian school of economics. Most who just disregard the Austrian school do it out of dogma, and I would know this as I have done this in the past with my more Marxist friends. But to deny the lucidity of Mises’ exposition of praxeology in Human Action is a denial that comes out of dogma. Mises very clearly has the intention of refounding economics and its basis or rather showing the basis that has always been there. And this intention is not at all foreign to us Batailleans. Did Bataille not begin a Copernican revolution within the fields of economics and ethics? Did Bataille, in the first volume of The Accursed Share, not plead with economists to not come into reading his book with critical dispositions? We approached the radicality of Bataille’s general economics with an uncritical attitude. We will approach the radicality of Mises’ praxeology the same. It is very clear that Mises has honest intentions after reading the introduction to Human Action. He wants to investigate the philosophical revolution that was seeing “[h]uman action and social cooperation … as the object of a science of given relations” instead of looking towards human action as the object of “a normative discipline of things that ought to be”.[19]
Mises does not shy away from being called a bourgeois economist. He is not afraid of embracing what Marxists call ideology. He is not afraid of approaching the “‘bourgeois’ makeshift” that is economics.[20] Bourgeois economics is all about teleology; Mises says, “[economics] is a science of the means to be applied for the attainment of ends chosen”.[21]
For Mises, “Human action is purposeful behavior”.[22] Human action “is will put into operation and transformed into agency, is aiming at ends and goals, is the ego’s meaningful response to stimuli and to the conditions of its environment, is a person’s conscious adjustment to the state of the universe that determines his life”.[23] Praxeology is definitively a part of restricted economics because praxeology does not look at “the forces and factors that impel a man toward a definite action”.[24] Remember though, this is not in any way a prescription. Seeing things from the perspective of restricted economy is not “wrong” morally. But wrong in terms of factuality? That is a different story… But I will say that from a restricted economic perspective, which is the only perspective every Austrian I’ve met cares about (so I don’t believe they will care for what I am saying), I do not see how praxeology is “wrong” per se.
For Mises, “We cannot think of a world without causality and teleology”.[25] Thus, we must acknowledge though that even the tightest analyses of market dynamics (including the dynamics of market actors) and economics have the epistemic blindspot that is expenditure. The reason expenditure is an epistemic blindspot for praxeology, and thus generally Austrian economics is because it has nothing to do with teleology and causality and, to quote Mises, “[t]here are for man only two principles available for a mental grasp of reality, namely, those of teleology and causality”.[26] Now, what Mises means by this is that knowable phenomena, the subject of all (homogeneous) sciences, can only “be conceived as the outcome either of the operation of mechanistic causality or of purposeful behavior,” “there is no third way available” “for the human mind” in Mises’ view.[27] Now, obviously expenditure is not teleological because it has nothing to do with subjects except for their annihilation, and, as we know, the subject is action in the view of Kojève and Bataille. The reason expenditure is not in any way caused, nor causal is because expenditure is not a thing, nor a knowable phenomenon. Expenditure cannot be said to be actual or virtual, as it “cannot be given any substantial expression or assigned any mode of presence”.[28] Expenditure is the effect of NOTHING. Shaviro says, “to capture, exploit, or express [expenditure] in any way is ipso facto to place it within the horizon of utility, hence to misconstrue it”.[29] What Shaviro calls heterogenous expenditure, that is, unproductive consumption is the opposite of what he would call homogeneous expenditure, that is, productive consumption. And though Shaviro makes this distinction for himself, we must clarify that we only use the word expenditure to designate unproductive consumption. In this light, expenditure is not a knowable phenomenon, nor is it an unknowable noumenon; Bataille says, matter is not “the thing-in-itself”.[30] Matter, for Bataille, is not knowable “physical phenomena,” rather matter is “raw phenomena”.[31] Matter is unknowable phenomena, because the unconscious is not of the order of knowledge. In this way, it may be said that expenditure is still the opposite of phenomena in the sense of the phenomenal world, but it is not of the noumenal world. Rather, it could be said that expenditure is more akin to “another kind of phenomenal world, a world which is ‘unknowable’ for us” to quote Nietzsche (§ 569).[32]
Thus, “in the absence of any teleology, the internal regulation of a system of endless economic activity becomes increasingly problematic”.[33] And this leads Shaviro to the conclusion that “[t]he more homogeneous a society becomes, the more its hierarchies of power and value tend to be leveled, and the less capable that society is of enforcing the homogeneous reduction on which it is predicated”.[34] Homogeneous society, and therefore capitalism, thus “entails a tendential dissociation of homogeneous social existence”.[35] Homogeneous society tends toward the failure to suppress heterogeneous expenditure. Capitalism tends toward crisis and, ultimately, collapses in the face of the Sun’s exuberance.
III
“The dissimulation of heterogeneous expenditure is concomitant with the processes traced by Marx in Capital: the generalization of money and of the circulation of commodities”.[36] For Marx, the circulation of commodities (hereinafter referred to just as ‘circulation’) does not equate to the direct exchange of products (hereinafter referred to just as ‘direct exchange’ (do not confuse this with when I use the word ‘exchange’)). He says, “The process of circulation, therefore, unlike the direct exchange of products, does not disappear from view once the use-values have changed places and changed hands”.[37] Circulation involves money (I am just stating the obvious to Marxists, I know). C–M represents the metamorphosis of a commodity into money, this is also known as a sale. M–C represents the metamorphosis of money (which is a commodity in its own right) into a commodity, this is also known as a purchase. Thus, C–M–C is the circuit (hence circulation) of a commodity. Yes, this could be seen as C–C, and Marx notes this, but circulation’s involvement of money as a mediator between commodities causes the process of circulation to be internally different from the process of direct exchange. But, what does this have to do with consumption? Commodities are consumed when they’re used; Marx says, “Use-values are only realized [verwirklicht] in use or in consumption”.[38] Thus, we must look at commodities-as-use-values. Commodities are use-values, but within the process of exchange, the differentiation of a commodity occurs. Marx says, “Commodities first enter into the process of exchange ungilded and unsweetened, retaining their original home-grown shape”.[39] But this original home-grown shape is lost through differentiation. In the process of exchange, the commodity is differentiated into commodity and money. These are the two opposite poles: the pole of the commodity is one of use-value, whereas the pole of money is one of exchange-value.[40] And because of the fact that exchange-value is essentially, in the context of the capitalist economy, homogeneity, we can therefore conclude that money is homogenizing. Money cannot be consumed in the economic sense of the word (I’m sure someone could literally eat money), and in this way it suppresses consumption, that is, it momentarily halts any possibility of consumption because there is no commodity-as-use-value, there is only money-as-exchange-value, if that makes sense. In other words, money prevents the immediate consumption of a commodity, because one does not have a commodity in their hands but rather money, and therefore they have no commodity whose use-value can be realized at that moment. So, money suppresses consumption, but it is also homogenizing in another sense. Marx says, “Money is the absolutely alienable commodity, because it is all other commodities divested of their shape … Since every commodity disappears when it becomes money it is impossible to tell from the money itself how it got into the hands of its possessor, or what article has been changed into it”.[41] The qualitative difference of commodities is erased in their metamorphosis into money. Difference is erased and the possibility for consumption with it. This is why Shaviro says, “All the possibilities of consumption are rendered interchangeable through the mediation of money in the infinitely extended process of circulation”.[42] Circulation is homogenizing because, to quote Marx, “Circulation sweats money from every pore”.[43] Marx summaries our sentiment when he says,
Since money does not reveal what has been transformed into it, everything, commodity or not, is convertible into money. Everything becomes saleable and purchasable. Circulation becomes the great social retort into which everything is thrown, to come out again as the money crystal. Nothing is immune from this alchemy, the bones of the saints cannot withstand it, let alone more delicate res sacrosanctae, extra commercium hominum. Just as in money, every qualitative difference between commodities is extinguished, so too for its part, as a radical leveller, [circulation] extinguishes all distinctions.[44]
This is exactly why capitalist society is the highest stage of homogeneity. Nothing is safe from being homogenized. In fact, as Marx recognized, everything has already been homogenized. Everything can already be exchanged. Thus, it is in the very fact that commodities circulate, that spells the tendential collapse of capitalism, because, as we know, the more homogeneous a system becomes, the less it will be able to constitute itself, as the homogeneous depends on the exclusion of the heterogeneous. So, with the circulation of commodities, and money’s attempt at the despotic extinction of difference, eventually the heterogeneous, which is non-logical difference, is either destroyed, in which homogeneity then collapses with it, or it fights back (this is class struggle), engendering crisis within the homogeneous sphere of society. We must also note that, for Bataille, the subject is (“predicated on” its) difference (from all of existence); “Me, I exist … different from all other being and such that the various events that can reach all other being and not me cruelly throw this me out of a total existence”;[45] and this is why another contradiction arises: “social homogeneity, the zeroing of social and cultural difference which, claims Bataille, clashes with the human individual’s desire to ‘conserve’ its difference from others”.[46]
IV
Shaviro says, “Bourgeois society does not merely strive to regulate, reduce, and privatize the expenditures of consumption. Its major imperative is one of incessant productivity and ever greater valorization”.[47] Capitalism isn’t just about excluding its outside (expenditure), it is about becoming more productive and more “valorant”. But what is this concept of ‘valorization’?
Marx says,
If we now compare the process of creating value with the process of valorization, we see that the latter is nothing but the continuation of the former beyond a definite point. If the process is not carried beyond the point where the value paid by the capitalist for the labor-power is replaced by an exact equivalent, it is simply a process of creating value; but if it is continued beyond that point it becomes a process of valorization.[48]
The valorization process is therefore the process that is the generation of surplus-value. Capitalism is all about creating a profit and as fast as possible.
Before we continue, let’s go over the difference between money-as-money and money-as-capital. Marx holds that the form of circulation is what differentiates money-as-money and money-as-capital. As we have gone over, money-as-money circulates in the fashion of C–M–C. Thus, Marx sees that it is M–C–M is the circuit of money-as-capital. He says, “M–C–M, the transformation of money into commodities, and the re-conversion of commodities into money: buying in order to sell. Money which describes the latter course in its movement is transformed into capital, becomes capital, and from the point of view of its function, already is capital”.[49] Money-as-capital is thus money which does not have the end of acquiring a commodity, but rather has the end of advancing itself; “The money therefore is not spent, it is merely advanced”.[50] M–C–M is therefore the advancement of homogeneity. M–C–M’s “driving and motivating force, is determining purpose, is therefore exchange-value”.[51] But why just trade $100 for a commodity just to sell it for $100? Why just have tautology? Marx says, “it is evident that the circulatory process M–C–M would be absurd and empty if the intention were, by using this roundabout route, to exchange two equal sums of money, £100 for £100”.[52] With this recognition of the tautological emptiness of M–C–M in mind, Marx says,
More money is finally withdrawn from circulation than was thrown into it at the beginning. The cotton originally bought for £100 is for example re-sold at £100+10, i.e. £110. The complete form of this process is therefore M–C–M’, where M’=M+ΔM, i.e. the original sum advanced plus an increment. This increment or excess over the original value I call ‘surplus-value’.[53]
So, this is what we realize about capitalism:
(Assume 10% increase)
Cycle 1: M ($100)–C … Production Process (Labor + Valorization Processes) … C’–M’ ($110).
Cycle 2: M ($110)–C … Production Process (Labor + Valorization Processes) … C’–M’ ($121).
This series of cycles continues ad infinitum. And this is why Marx says, “the circulation of money as capitalism is an end in itself, for the valorization of value takes place only within this constantly renewed movement. The movement of capital is therefore limitless”.[54] And this latter fact causes Shaviro to say, “Nothing is allowed to escape the circuit of reproduction. Waste, or unreserved and nonreciprocal expenditure, is the one possibility that remains absolutely unthinkable”.[55] Expenditure is what disrupts and collapses the whole circuit of capitalist expansion. Or is expenditure the very thing that allows the production of surplus value, and therefore allows the expansion of capitalism, as Shaviro suggests? Let us find out.
V
Shaviro then puts forward a notion that I can’t say I agree with. He says,
‘Labor,’ or the free discharge of human energy, is captured and turned to account in the form of the commodity of labor power. Expenditure, one might say, is ‘lost’ in the profound sense of no longer being permitted to lose itself. It is transformed into a measurable capacity, a source of productive energy. Surplus value is then the trace of indefinite expenditure, the mark of heterogeneity subsisting even within the movement of appropriation.[56]
Unproductive expenditure cannot contribute to the production of the value of a commodity, not only because of the very contradiction in terms between unproductive and production, but also because Marx himself says so. Marx says, “all wasteful consumption of raw material or instruments of labour is strictly forbidden, because what is wasted in this way represents a superfluous expenditure of quantities of objectified labour, labour that does not count in the product or enter into its value”.[57] To further, labor, for Bataille (who follows Kojève and Hegel in this movement), is productive negation. It is necessarily the opposite of the unproductive affirmation that is expenditure. And we still have yet to mention the fact that, for Bataille, it is work that differentiates humanity from the violence of animality![58]
But where does this leave us? Is Marx’s labor theory of value and surplus value theory then wrong? We cannot say that they are wrong. We have presented no critique.
Firstly, all value theories presuppose that commodities have value (and certain value theories define value differently from others). Secondly, we can say though that the commodity is a composition, as all things are. The question then becomes “Is the value already held within one of the composites, is it created by labor, or does the subject determine it?”. I cannot necessarily be of the opinion that the subject determines it because the subject does not even determine themself. At best, value is inter-subjectively determined, or, at worst, it has nothing to do with the subject at all. I cannot be of the opinion that it is inherent in one of the composites either because for Bataille there is no privileged scale, no essence which a thing is reducible to. Thus, I cannot say that, independent of me, an object has a property. In fact, I cannot say that, independent of me, an object is. For, is the subject and object of the profane world, and the sacred world of their annihilation? In this way, the sacred world which is “independent of me” and not of objects, does not imbue objects with certain properties. How could it? There are no objects… There is NOTHING!
So, out of the latter three options (I know there are more value theories but we do not have time to discuss them here) labor must be the source of both value and surplus value. Labor, or work, is what composes those compositions known as commodities. And in the process of composing (the production process), labor imbues value within commodities. But wait. How does surplus value work then? How can one over-compose an object without it being a different object? One cannot. And this is why the Marxian theory of surplus value becomes problematic. Once one goes over the socially necessary labor time, they are being, in a way, unproductive. They are “taking too long”. Uselessness has infected the production process in that production is happening so inefficiently, it seems that there are momentary stops in the production process where production seems to not happen at all. With production stopping, with the tired worker working their self to death, expenditure enters in to disrupt the whole process momentarily. It is like a flash of lightning. And then the worker leaves work, exhausted. Surplus value cannot be produced during those moments because expenditure is unproductive.
I suggest that you pay no attention to my latter “critique” of the Marxian theory of surplus value, as it is not only underdeveloped, but also because one could argue that it is in those moments when the lightning of expenditure has struck and then the profane thunder of its inhibition sounds, that production resumes, therefore allowing for the production of surplus value.
Solar economics is crisis theory on cosmological crack…
Notes
[1]: Steven Shaviro, Passion and Excess: Blanchot, Bataille, and Literary Theory (Tallahassee, FL: The Florida State University, 1990), 41.
[2]: Ibid., 42.
[3]: Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume One, trans. Ben Fowkes (New York, NY: Penguin Putnam Inc., 1990), 102.
[4]: Georges Bataille, Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927–1939, ed. Allan Stoekl, trans. Allan Stoekl, Carl R. Lovitt, and Donald M. Leslie Jr. (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1985), 137.
[5]: Ibid., 138.
[6]: Ibid.
[7]: Steven Shaviro, Passion and Excess: Blanchot, Bataille, and Literary Theory (Tallahassee, FL: The Florida State University, 1990), 42.
[8]: *(When Bataille speaks of sacrifice as the production of sacred things, he is just furthering our point. Sacrifice doesn’t produce anything, because the sacred world is where things lose their thinghood. What Bataille is doing when he calls sacrifice the production of sacred things is just furthering the idea of how unproductive sacrifice is, because sacrifice throws the thing out of the order of production into the sacred world which is opposed to things. Sacrifice produces NOTHING.)
[9]: Georges Bataille, Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927–1939, ed. Allan Stoekl, trans. Allan Stoekl, Carl R. Lovitt, and Donald M. Leslie Jr. (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1985), 138.
[10]: Ibid.
[11]: Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume One, trans. Ben Fowkes (New York, NY: Penguin Putnam Inc., 1990), 181.
[12]: Ibid., 184.
[13]: Ibid.
[14]: Steven Shaviro, Passion and Excess: Blanchot, Bataille, and Literary Theory (Tallahassee, FL: The Florida State University, 1990), 42.
[15]: Georges Bataille, Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927–1939, ed. Allan Stoekl, trans. Allan Stoekl, Carl R. Lovitt, and Donald M. Leslie Jr. (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1985), 138.
[16]: Steven Shaviro, Passion and Excess: Blanchot, Bataille, and Literary Theory (Tallahassee, FL: The Florida State University, 1990), 43.
[17]: Ibid., 47–48.
[18]: Anatoli Rybabovk, Children of the Arbat, trans. Harold Shukman (Boston, MA: Litte, Brown, and Company, 1988), 559.
[19]: Ludwig von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics (Auburn, AL: The Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1998), 2.
[20]: Ibid., 4.
[21]: Ibid., 10.
[22]: Ibid., 11.
[23]: Ibid.
[24]: Ibid., 12.
[25]: Ibid., 36.
[26]: Ibid., 25.
[27]: Ibid.
[28]: Steven Shaviro, Passion and Excess: Blanchot, Bataille, and Literary Theory (Tallahassee, FL: The Florida State University, 1990), 45
[29]: Ibid.
[30]: Georges Bataille, Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927–1939, ed. Allan Stoekl, trans. Allan Stoekl, Carl R. Lovitt, and Donald M. Leslie Jr. (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1985), 49.
[31]: Ibid., 15–16.
[32]: Friedrich Nietzsche, Will to Power: Selections from the Notebooks of the 1880s, trans. R. Kevin Hill and Michael A. Scarpitti (New York, NY: Penguin Classics, 2017), 329.
[33]: Steven Shaviro, Passion and Excess: Blanchot, Bataille, and Literary Theory (Tallahassee, FL: The Florida State University, 1990), 48.
[34]: Ibid.
[35]: Georges Bataille, Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927–1939, ed. Allan Stoekl, trans. Allan Stoekl, Carl R. Lovitt, and Donald M. Leslie Jr. (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1985), 140.
[36]: Steven Shaviro, Passion and Excess: Blanchot, Bataille, and Literary Theory (Tallahassee, FL: The Florida State University, 1990), 54.
[37]: Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume One, trans. Ben Fowkes (New York, NY: Penguin Putnam Inc., 1990), 208.
[38]: Ibid., 126.
[39]: Ibid., 199.
[40]: Ibid.
[41]: Ibid., 205.
[42]: Steven Shaviro, Passion and Excess: Blanchot, Bataille, and Literary Theory (Tallahassee, FL: The Florida State University, 1990), 54.
[43]: Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume One, trans. Ben Fowkes (New York, NY: Penguin Putnam Inc., 1990), 208.
[44]: Ibid., 229.
[45]: Georges Bataille, Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927–1939, ed. Allan Stoekl, trans. Allan Stoekl, Carl R. Lovitt, and Donald M. Leslie Jr. (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1985), 130.
[46]: Colin Dibben (1994), 214.
[47]: Steven Shaviro, Passion and Excess: Blanchot, Bataille, and Literary Theory (Tallahassee, FL: The Florida State University, 1990), 54.
[48]: Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume One, trans. Ben Fowkes (New York, NY: Penguin Putnam Inc., 1990), 302.
[49]: Ibid., 248.
[50]: Ibid., 249.
[51]: Ibid., 250.
[52]: Ibid., 248.
[53]: Ibid., 251.
[54]: Ibid., 253.
[55]: Steven Shaviro, Passion and Excess: Blanchot, Bataille, and Literary Theory (Tallahassee, FL: The Florida State University, 1990), 54.
[56]: Ibid., 55.
[57]: Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume One, trans. Ben Fowkes (New York, NY: Penguin Putnam Inc., 1990), 303.
[58]: Georges Bataille, Eroticism, trans. Mary Dalwood (New York, NY: Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2012), 45.
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