Henri Lefebvre: A Critical Introduction - autonomous learning

H e n r i L e F e b v r e
and Nietzsche’s clarion call, just as it was Lefebvre’s. And didn’t
Hegel suggest in The Phenomenology of Spirit that “the supreme
power of being” came from “looking the negative in the face and
living with it”? Power, of course, is upfront and very explicit in
Nietzsche’s œuvre; in Marx’s it’s implicit almost everywhere. His
parable at the beginning of “The Working Day” chapter of Capital
has a surprisingly Nietzschean conception of power, something
not lost on Lefebvre.
“The capitalist maintains his rights as a purchaser when he
tries to make the working day as long as possible,” writes Marx,
“and, where possible, to make two working days out of one. On
the other hand, the peculiar nature of the commodity sold implies
a limit to its consumption by the purchaser, and the worker maintains
his right as a seller when he wishes to reduce the working day
to a particular normal length.” 34 Marx’s verdict on the resolution
strengthens his allegiance with Nietzsche: “There is here therefore
an antimony of right against right and between equal rights force
decides. Hence is it that in the history of capitalist production, the
determination of what is a working day presents itself as a result
of a struggle, a struggle between collective capital, i.e., the class
of capitalists, and collective labor, i.e., the working class.” Those
who win, in other words, those who are the victors in political contestation,
thereby decide what a “just” working day might be, in a
principle that not only holds at the workplace but pervades every
aspect of social, political, and legal life under capitalism.
In this clash of rights, Marx cautions, there’s no absolute truth
“out there” waiting to be discovered, no “universal” morality to be
invoked to separate good from evil, right from wrong. Instead, his
notion of truth mimics Nietzsche’s “perspectival” notion of truth:
it presents itself as a relative creation, as a clash of perspectives
whose outcome emerges through struggle, through the implementation
of force and power. In The Will to Power, Nietzsche said
(section 534), “The criterion of truth resides in the enchantment
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