<sup>61</sup> This is important because it points to the sense in which Jameson’s category of ‘postmodernity’ (that Representing Capital certainly holds on to) can be understood as an essentially ahistorical, if not antihistorical, category. If ‘postmodernity’ is ‘our’ current historical conjuncture wherein real subsumption subsumes ‘everything’, the irony here is that Jameson’s philosophy of history aligns with Marx’s – the economic and the social become intertwined – precisely at the moment that Jameson evacuates history from Marx (who provides, one might say, a ‘pre-postmodern’ account of capitalism).
<sup>62</sup> What these accounts – particularly Negri’s – do is eradicate the ineradicable, the unsurpassable, limit to capital: the commodification of labour-power. The consequences of this are immense, and leave us with a Marx that is barely recognisable. When, as Negri says, ‘social labour covers all the time of life’, it is not just the difference between labour-power and living labour which disappears, but the very difference between the production- and circulation-process of capital. ‘Social life’ as such becomes synonymous with ‘labour-time’, such that the raison d’être of capitalism is not valorisation, but the tautological desire for command for command’s sake.
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