Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger
A Lesson on the Gigantic and Capital

Zanan Akin

In a colloquium in 2015, Dan Dahlstrom makes a striking point about Heidegger's avoidance of certain names in the history of philosophy, that this avoidance is not necessarily related to the “Jewish heritage” of the respective thinkers. It is true that we rarely encounter the name Spinoza, he mentions, but “we also never read a word about Hobbes, Hume, Locke, or Berkeley”.¹

Marx constitutes an interesting case regarding Dan Dahlstrom’s point. Because Heidegger does not avoid Marx himself, but interestingly, he avoids a fundamental concept in Marx, namely capital. I would call this avoidance symptomatic in the sense that capital in its absence is the most present term in Heidegger’s rare moments of dialogue of thought with Marx.

I argue that in its core, Heidegger’s dialogue with Marx is centered at the metaphysical question regarding the relation between one (ἓν), boundary (πέρας) and the unbounded (ἄπειρον); and is capital not precisely this relation? Yet, why does Heidegger then never mention this concept?

In the following, I will try to develop an answer to this question, by staging an absent part of a missing dialogue on capital and the Gigantic. I aim to show that Heidegger, with his thinking of the Gigantic, had an insight into a crucial moment inherent to capital which Marx could not anticipate. In return, Heidegger’s avoidance of capital leads him to fail to see that his privileging of boundary and finitude cannot retreat from machination. The unity of the fourfold; be it in a released way of dwelling, or in the thing which is forged into its boundaries by poetic labor is today only a new sublime means for the constant productions of “authentic” lived experiences that become something to be bought and sold in later capitalism.

Without consideration of capital, Heidegger’s metaphysical privileging of the boundary rather turns into a political fantasy which gains a crucial role in understanding our age of global identitarian ressentiment: if it is a boundary, which restores the sense of unity and spares nature, then the fantasy of sparing nature as an original site of oneness is merely one step from turning into a fantasy of sparing the borders of a country as the original site of a nation and “save” its differentiating feature from today’s global figure of fear, that is from the “migrant”.

1

Let us begin by approaching the link between one, boundary and the unbounded.

As we know, for Heidegger ἓν denotes the One of metaphysics as Κοινόν, that is being-One which is common to all beings, such that One as unifying unity determines being as beingness in the entire history of metaphysics.² For understanding boundary (πέρας) and the unbounded (ἄπειρον), we must enter in a room of speculation in the Hegelian sense. Because we can understand πέρας sheerly as boundary, limit or an end and ἄπειρον as un-bounded, un-limited. However, there is, at least, one more layer of a meaning here, which is of fundamental significance for our aims: Πέρας is not just the “end” in the sense of lack, or running out of something, like the ending of the fossil fuel era; or ending like the stopping [aufhören] of rain, as Heidegger speaks of it in Being and Time.³ We should rather hear Πέρας as an end in the sense of τέλος or Zweck. So, we can understand end like “an end”, when we say in English a means to an end. Bounding as an end is that which restores unity. Understood in that sense, ending is in fact beginning of something to its presenting and appearing to us in its oneness.

Things get quite interesting, though, when we turn to ἄπειρον. For ἄπειρον is that which can never find an end, which in and by perpetuating its means, in its all-mighty infinity, in its unboundedness, is incapable of restoring any unity, any sense but just one-ups its own senseless repetition without being capable of finding an end (in both meanings).

I confess that this sounds quite confusing. But, what if a famous Daft Punk song, that is Harder, better, faster, stronger could help us understand this weird dialectic in its most concise and accessible way?

So, before delving into the metaphysical implications of all this, let us look at a certain part of the lyrics:

Work it harder, make it better
Do it faster, makes us stronger
More than ever, hour after hour
Work is never over.⁴

This is indeed the problem with ἄπειρον that Heidegger had perfect insight of. The one-upping of our capacity to making better, faster and stronger results in nothing but the strange fact that it perpetuates also work which never finds an end.

In fact, the condition of one-upping of the means, I mean our capacity to making better and faster, as we will see with Heidegger in a minute, is the very incapacity to bring about any work. In other words, a never-ending work is not “work” in the true sense but just indifferent labor, or: only labor with an end in both senses can make up work.

2

This is precisely the problem that Heidegger touches in his lecture, Aristotle’s Metaphysics, namely, how to understand work in regard to boundary and the unbounded. In a certain point of the lecture, he mentions the necessity to clarify what it signifies that man has a relation to the works he produces.⁵ Exactly in that moment, all of a sudden, Marx enters into the picture. Interrupting his train of thought, Heidegger makes the following remark:

It is for this reason that a certain book called Sein und Zeit discusses dealings with equipment; and not in order to correct Marx, nor to organize a new national economy, nor out of a primitive understanding of the world.⁶

Well, I am not sure about the two latter negative motives, but I would certainly claim – even if correcting would be the wrong word for such a refined thinker as Heidegger was – Heidegger does think that Marx, following Hegel’s metaphysics of labor misses something fundamental in the relationship between πέρας and ἄπειρον. In order to understand what Marx might have missed according to Heidegger, let us begin with focusing on the following passage:

[…] What is produced, what is intended for production, is the ἔργον. This does not result arbitrarily and by chance from any work or activity whatsoever; for it is always that which is intended to stand there and be available, that which must appear in such and such a way and offer this specific look. Indeed, how the work is to appear, its outward appearance, must be seen in the production and for it. The outward appearance, εἶδος, is already seen in advance, and this is so not only in a general and overall fashion; rather, it is seen precisely in what it comes to in the end if it is to be fully ended and finished. In the εἶδος of the ἔργον, its being-an-end- –the ends which it encloses–is in advance already anticipated. The εἶδος of the ἔργον is τέλος. The end which finishes, however, is in its essence, boundary, πέρας. To produce something is in itself to forge something into its boundaries, so much so that this being-enclosed is already in view in advance along with all that it includes and excludes. Every work is in its essence "exclusive"[…] Producing is limiting and excluding primarily because the whole event of producing is, so to speak, secured to the anticipated outward appearance of the ἔργον as εἶδος, τέλος, πέρας.⁷

We encounter the significance of boundary in its ability to restore the unity also in Heidegger’s Ge-viert [fourfold]. The dwelling in the fourfold is not just an arbitrary mixture of four, such that we can only speak of dwelling insofar as it is based on the unity of the fourfold, as it comes clearly to the fore in the following: “By a primal oneness the four—earth and sky, divinities and mortals—belong together in one.”⁸ We can dwell in the world, because the fourfold forges the space in boundaries. So, we can talk only of Raum, insofar as it is within a boundary. For boundary is that from which something begins its presenting. Let us consider the following passage:

Space is in essence that for which room has been made, that which is let into its bounds. That for which room is made is always granted and hence is joined, that is, gathered, by virtue of a location, that is, by such a thing as the bridge.⁹

Through the example of the bridge, we can already gain access to Heidegger’s distinction between Her-stellen and Ge-stell.

Heidegger understands the German Verb her-stellen literally, namely as to position something together, from there (or: nowhere) to here [her].¹⁰ So, her-stellen can only be thought, insofar as that which is her-gestellt restores a sensual unity. In other words, Her-stellen gathers oneness.

The basis of Her-stellen is surely labor, insofar as it is human labor which forges something into its boundaries. So, if we speak of things that are her-gestellt, this means that our labor can bring about sensual unity. This means then in Her-stellen, the end of our laboring is already anticipated in its beginning. We can talk of Her-stellen, as long as the purpose and end of our laboring activity is disclosed to us, so that we can make sense of it.

Heidegger distinguishes things strongly from mere objects in the sense of Gegenstand. Things do recognize vicinity and remoteness, but objects do not.¹¹ A bridge, for example, as far it is a thing, can “near” us according to Heidegger [ent-fernen] and it guards the remote.

The crucial question here, is: what happens if the boundary is lost and the laboring activity does not forge anything in its boundaries, that is, does not result in any sensual unity and thus does not make any sense for us?

This is, according to Heidegger, the problem of modernity par excellence, which he calls machination. If the laboring activity does not forge anything in its boundaries and cannot restore a sensual unity, we cannot talk about Her-stellen, that is a positioning of things here by restoring a sensual unity, but rather from always-already framed productions of representations of the subject as objects that Heidegger calls Ge-stell. If what characterizes Ge-viert is the gathering of four in primal oneness, then what characterizes Ge-stell is the gathering of positionings which cannot restore any prime unity.

To sum up, the destruction of the thing, the loss of sense and ultimately the forgetfulness of being belong together and all must be linked with the loss of boundary. For the sense of being which is not overshadowed by the Κοινόν (the common) of the metaphysics and thus must be thought of as uniqueness¹², that is the only true One, lies in the boundary, in the limit, or to put it simple: in the capacity to be finite, insofar as Heidegger is convinced by the following: Je endlicher, um so wesentlicher.¹³

3

At this point let us turn to Marx:

For Marx, Capital corresponds to a form of labor –or to put it precisely– to a formless, alienated labor, which can only emerge under the condition of the loss of boundary. In that sense, the condition of possibility for capital to emerge is the dissolution of the form of Her-stellen as the basis of production. This is to say that capital emerges only when the form of laboring activity can be detached from its boundedness to a sensual unity; to a particular product and also to a particular quality, as well as to a particular laborer and ultimately to any purpose or “end”, immanent to the laboring activity that can be disclosed by the particular laborer.

In order to delve into the role of the loss of boundary that underlies capital a bit more deeply, let us shortly turn to Hegel’s determination of the shift from quality to quantity in Logic as loss of boundary: for Hegel, quality can be understood as the boundary of being-something. So, if something is, it is because this particular something is not another. Let us take red. Something is red, because it is, let us say, not blue. So, the boundary of red is what makes it red, that is its quality.¹⁴ Quality shifts to quantity, if the boundary becomes indifferent to being.¹⁵ So, in that sense, we can speak of quantity as a quality which has lost its boundary (πέρας) and become indifferent.

Marx makes use of this determination in deciphering the “metaphysical assumption” in the labor theory of value that points tacitly to a shift in the conception of abstract labor form from quality to quantity. It strikes him that the national economists treat labor as a mere quantity qua labor time. Marx indicates however, that labor as quantity qua labor time, presupposes a qualitative unity of human labor form which can only be intelligible if the qualitative distinctions between individual labor become already indifferent. So, Marx’ exploration is based on nothing less than the loss of boundary in Hegel’s determination of the shift from quality to quantity, where Hegel defines quantity as indifferent quality [gleichgültige Qualität].¹⁶

Metaphysically regarded, then, capital is this regime of the accumulation of labor: a strange form of causa sui¹⁷, a mediation of the boundless labor with itself, which by overbidding its productivity, overbids itself.¹⁸ Capital is thus an alienated form of labor, insofar as in itself it is labor but for itself it is not.

4

Here, we must note something fundamental: Marx, instead of mourning it, welcomes the loss of boundary. This is to say that for Marx, any primordial sense of Her-stellen as Heidegger would understand it, is irreversibly lost and more: Marx regards any longing for a primordial sense of unity in production reactionary and subsumes such aspirations under the term feudal socialism¹⁹.

Before we arrive at quick judgements of a sheer opposition between Heidegger and Marx, we should note a quite subtle motive which they, in utmost opposition, somehow share: Marx welcomes the unbounding, de-limiting effect of capital detaching the human labor form from any particular quality to reach its immanent limits. For Marx believes that only when a certain level of progress in labor productivity can be gained, the un-bounded and automized productivity of capital can be overcome: only in this way the blind productive force can be subjugated under the condition of collectivity.

At the same time, however, we should notice a subtle dialectical point here: When Marx pleads for putting the un-boundedness of capital into boundaries of collective decisions, he in fact aims to unbound the egalitarian capacity of human action from the boundaries of a form of society which is characterized by the primacy of private property and inequalities intrinsic to its regime of accumulation. Marx welcomes capital melting down every hitherto strict qualitative form of labor commodifying the living labor form as indifferent quality, as this legally elevates human beings who were previously bound to each other through hierarchical relations to equally valid commodity owners and includes the hitherto excluded groups more and more into the legal social sphere. This is a necessary, albeit not the ultimate step for overcoming capital.²⁰

In short, Marx believed that the only way to free the human productive force from the boundaries of an automized, boundless and senseless regime of accumulation of capital was to push the de-limiting power of capital till the point of its own consummation.²¹ How can we make sense of such a strange reasoning?

In order to preserve itself, capital needs to grow by overbidding the appropriated surplus-value from any individual labor.²² Seen from the viewpoint of capital, we can say that technical innovations are driven by this “necessity.” However, Marx thought that this growth must reach a certain limit at the point where capital, due to an ultimate over-efficiency, fails to extract surplus-value and starts consuming itself.²³

This means that it is nothing but its own over-efficiency which can consume capital from within. According to Marx, this is the fundamental contradiction of capital, and he says that the development of this contradiction should make it clear that, once the machinery is fully developed, the growth of the productive forces can no longer be measured by the appropriation of alien surplus labor, but rather the mass of workers must appropriate their own surplus labor which will lead them to gain free time for intellectual activities.²⁴

Well, we are clear witnesses in 21^st century that the increasing efficiency, that is making faster, better, harder, has not brought us closer to an egalitarian overcoming of capital. This efficiency has more and more rather subjugated life entirely under a pursuit of profit and put the lifetimes of the many in perpetuated service of the leisure of the few. So, what might have gone wrong?

5

This is the point where we should turn back to Heidegger. Because capital seems to contain something of the essence of what Heidegger called the Gigantic that Marx could not anticipate.

In its most “accessible” way, Heidegger defines the Gigantic as “the calculation that is resolved on the machinationality of beings and that denies the impossible.”²⁵ A denial of the impossible should not be understood here as not recognizing the impossible, but rather as an incapacity to find the end of presenting.²⁶ We can make perfect sense of this incapacity, if we think of it in regard to boundary in laboring activity. If labor should be understood in terms of Her-stellen, then its beginning always already contains its end: it forges a work, ἔργον into a unity of sense. This unity is what makes sense for the laboring individual. Capital, however, is based on labor which does not know any end, so it is a production in the mode of Ge-stell. We can then say that the sense of any end, that is the sense of the ἔργον (work) per se, is replaced in capitalist production by one-upmanship [Überbieten]. But the sense that one-upmanship can provide, is literally a non-sense, that is nothing sensual; so how can it be a substitute for sense of ἔργον at all?

We can understand this only if we grasp the shift of subjectivity from ἔργον in Her-stellen to I as the re-presenting subject, which needs the one-upmanship for the maintenance of the certainty of being the locus of representation: in each “impressive” achievement of something hitherto undoable, in each breaking of a new record, it is the self-certain-life of I, which reinforces itself for a moment, which however, is easily lost, if it cannot be one-upped.²⁷ This is the reason why Heidegger emphasized over and over that machination does not begin with modern technology and complex machines but with the reign of I as the subject which decides the objecthood of objects.²⁸

Through the loss of boundary, the unbounded thus itself becomes the only binding instance, i.e. the unrepresentable becomes the factual limit that must be constantly overcome and presenting thus finds no end anymore.

As we see, one-upmanship is clearly the most fundamental aspect of the Gigantic, but cannot we say: also of capital?

Yes, we can. Because by increasing the “productivity” of labor, capital also conditions a constant regime of one-upmanship, which is paradigmatic in the late capitalist times of permanent innovation. Indeed, what is innovation other than an orientation towards the constant one-upping of never-seen-before, a regime of one-upmanship of representation that can be only be bound to a limit which cannot be given?²⁹ To articulate this in Marxian terms: By commodifying “lived experiences”, the Gigantic of capital turns life itself into a laboring activity, which cannot find an end. This is to say that the increased productivity of labor, under the boundaries of unbounded capital, rather than freeing the lifetime of human beings, subjugates more and more hitherto unimaginable realms of life into the circulation of exchange. To understand this, it would be sufficient to think of three new realms of “work” of our times, which emerged as the perfect examples of commodification of lived experiences: What do Instagram Influencers, YouToubers, or OnlyFans providers sell other than lived experience?

This is to say that under the condition of capital, life itself is devoured by the hunger of oneupmanship and is reduced more and more to “content” that must be produced over and over again and thus becomes a never-ending work of creating more sensational, more unusual lived-experiences.

Even if he never thought of it in regard to capital, Heidegger, nevertheless, anticipated all this. This was the reason of his skepsis against any political project which was based on the one-upping of machen, that is making it “harder, better, faster, stronger”. Thus, his attempt was–at least in his Beiträge Phase– a retreat [Entzug] from the principle of machination, which took another form after the war: releasement.

In both its forms, Heidegger privileged the boundary, as he thought that only a withdrawal from the infinity of machination, that is from a hasty machen could restore the sense, save the wordliness of the world in forging things into its boundaries.

Strikingly, he could nevertheless anticipate that his moderate motive of saving the world could also turn into a new form of exploitation of the earth. This comes clearly to the fore in a passage in Building, dwelling, thinking when Heidegger says that “saving” in the sense of setting something free into its presencing should not mean, “mastering and subjugating the earth which is merely one step from exploitation.”³⁰

Today, we must realize that just as the increase of the productive capacity of labor could not overcome capital and the idea of progress was devoured by it, so is the idea of releasement. The proof lies in today’s environmental discourse of sustainability, namely the motif of saving the earth by “sparing nature”: has not the purpose of “sparing” it, turned into the most sublime way of sustaining the exploitability of “nature” as a new “moral” means of expanding the circulation of commodity exchange? Moreover, as our age clearly shows us, this soft morality of sparing can perfectly articulate “moral” consumption with a heroic mission, patriotism and with some weird form of mindfulness. Keeping all this in mind, please consider the following passage from Building, Dwelling Thinking:

Mortals dwell in that they receive the sky as sky. They leave to the sun and the moon their journey, to the stars their courses, to the seasons their blessing and their inclemency; they do not turn night into day nor day into a harassed unrest.³¹

It is bitterly ironic, but could this passage today not be a perfect advertisement for a new “sustainable” gated-community project by a green real-estate company or even worse: for a Mindfulness-Training that we must pay thousands of dollars for to get rid of our “harassed unrest”?

6

Heading to conclusion, let me finally ask: Can we say, as much as Marx failed to see the relevance of the Gigantic, Heidegger failed to realize the relevance of capital?

Heidegger was convinced that the commonality of the same³², i.e. κοίνον resorts to capital fundamentally, such that even in its figure of overcoming, as Marx thought, it must have ended up in nothing but the un-boundedness of the same machination. Thus, Heidegger undoubtedly privileged the boundary. Yet, privileging the boundary has a certain political implication.

I would thus urge us to see the dialectical implications of privileging the boundary and the motive of restoring the senseful unity.

Privileging the boundary results in nothing but the seduction by the One, and the fantasy of the preservation of the original site, be it as the site of the nation or nature. We all know that in determining the culmination point of metaphysics as the indifference of being, Heidegger has privileged difference (of being) that could only be attained by withdrawal from indifferent beings. Keeping the lesson of both the Gigantic and capital in mind, we must say that privileging boundary as a way to restore the difference ends up in nothing but a terrible mixture, of which we are witnesses today; the unboundedness of capital in constant one-upmanship, mixed with an identitarian zeal of preserving borders and identities: is Elon Musk not the proper name of this mixture?

¹ See in Dan Dahlstrom’s talk: https://youtu.be/2yvaIrVxBko?si=S0XU5EYalYO47Cot&t=3020

² See GA 6.2, P. 417

³ See GA 2, P. 325

⁴ Not only the lyrics, but also the official video clip of the song has an avant-garde character in terms of its ability of anticipating the concept of “production” in the consummated form of the principle of machination which culminated in the so-called “digital age”. See the video clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAjR4_CbPpQ

⁵ GA 33, P. 137

⁶ GA 33, P. 137

⁷ GA 33, P. 138-139.

⁸ GA 7, P. 151.

⁹ GA 7, P. 152.

¹⁰ See, GA 79, P. 26-27.

¹¹ GA 79, P. 20

¹² See, GA 65 P. 471.

¹³ GA 27, P. 47. We can translate it as “the more finite the more present”. Here we can regard Wesen as presencing insofar as for Heidegger Wesen refers to an-wesen.

¹⁴ TAW 5, P. 199. Here and in the following I am citing Hegel according to the edition, Theorie Werk Ausgabe in 20 Bänden of Suhrkamp Verlag, edited by Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Markus Michel, Frankfurt am Main 1986.

¹⁵ TAW 5, P.209

¹⁶ [Indifferent quality] See Logic I in Hegel: TWA 5, p. 206.

¹⁷ It is noteworthy that in Beiträge – without ever mentioning the name Spinoza – Heidegger traces causa sui back to machination, as in the following: “The fact that something makes itself by itself and consequently is makeable in a corresponding operation: the making itself by itself is the interpretation of φύσις; carried out in terms of τέχνη and its outlook on things, in such a way that now already the emphasis falls on the makeable and the self-making. […] The cause-effect connection comes to dominate everything (God as causa sui). That is an essential deviation from φύσις and is at the same time the transition to the emergence of machination as the essence of beingness in modern thought.” GA 65, P. 127.

¹⁸ Marx calls it in economic terms a Wert setzender wert [valuating value.] See Grundrisse, in Marx: MEW 42, P. 442

¹⁹ See, Communist Manifesto in Marx: MEW 4, P. 482- 484.

²⁰ In saying this, we should never forget that Marx is not a contemporary left-liberal reformist who could be content with some form of inclusion or diversity policy. Because he was quite aware that the elevation to equal validity is only a necessary step, but itself does not in any sense mean true equality, but only a higher, more efficient and sophisticated form of exploitation and oppression which needs to be overcome completely.

²¹ This idea is famously developed towards the end of Grundrisse, of which I cannot go into detail, because of space restrictions. See MEW 42, P.604-610.

²² If the condition of preservation is an overbidding, then we can understand how in its contemporary form of permanent innovation, capitalism could generate a strange form of conservatism of which Heidegger seems to have an anticipating insight. Please note the following passage from Heidegger’s lecture course Grundfragen der Philosophie: “Being struck by what is uncommon comes to pass here in such a way that what is customary is set aside and the uncommon itself becomes something familiar that bewitches and encharms. The uncommon thus obtains its own permanent character, form, and fashion. To do so it even requires an insidious habituality. We might think in passing of all the extraordinary things the cinema must offer continually; what is new every day and never happened before becomes something habitual and always the same.” GA 45, P. 158

²³ See again Grundrisse, MEW 42 P. 604-610.

²⁴ This prediction of Marx is known as the theory of “diminishing profit rate.” Regarding this prediction Rosa Luxemburg had some interesting insights. With reference to this point of interruption, at which capital can no longer exploit surplus labor by itself, Luxemburg notes that it will take a good while before the demise of capitalism due to the fall of the profit rate would happen– roughly until the sun goes out. (Luxemburg 1913).

²⁵ GA 94, P. 503

²⁶ GA 65, P. 136

²⁷ Consider this striking passage regarding the “impressive achievements” in GA 47, P. 293: „Das Maßlose hat sich in die Gestalt der sich übermächtigenden Macht als des einzig Beständigen gehüllt und kann in solcher Verhüllung selbst zum Maß werden. Aus dem so gearteten Maß (der Maßlosigkeit der Überbietung) lassen sich jene Stäbe und Stecken schneiden, nach denen jedermann am billigsten messen und schätzen und wieder für jedermann ein Eindrucksvolles ‚leisten‘ und sich selbst damit ‚bewähren‘ kann. Solche Bewährung gilt zugleich als Bewahrheitung der Ziele und Wege und Bereiche der eingerichteten Wirksamkeit. Jedes Machbare bestätigt jedes Gemachte und alles Gemachte schreit nach Machbarkeit, und alles ‚Handeln‘ und ‚Denken‘ hat sich darein verlegt, Machbares auszumachen“.

²⁸ See GA 65, P. 334 and P. 427

²⁹ See, for example in Beiträge: „Vor-stellen findet am Gegebenen keine Grenze und will keine Grenze finden, sondern das Grenzenlose ist entscheidend, aber nicht als das Verfließende und bloße Und-so-weiter, sondern das an keine Grenze des Gegebenen, an kein Gegebenes und Gebbares als Grenze Gebundene. Es gibt grundsätzlich nicht das »Un-mögliche«; man »haßt« dieses Wort, d. h. Alles ist menschen-möglich, wenn nur Alles in jeder Hinsicht und dieses wiederum im voraus in Rechnung gestellt und die Bedingungen beigebracht werden.“ GA 65, P. 136

³⁰ GA 7, P. 152

³¹ GA 7, 152

³² See GA 69, P. 191-192