Abstract
Robert Nichols has performed two important services for Anglo-American political theorists in his capacity as translator of The Dispossessed. First, he has skilfully translated Daniel Bensaïd’s incisive but still neglected essay, thereby contributing to the latter’s growing reception in the English-speaking world. Second, Nichols has also supplied an updated translation of Marx’s early journalistic reflections on the Wood Theft Law, which is the subject matter of Bensaïd’s essay. These accomplishments parallel the underlying aims and strengths of Bensaïd’s short book, namely, returning to Marx’s earliest journalistic writings with the aim of making critical sense of contemporary forms of dispossession and the diverse struggles to which they give rise.
As Nichols points out in his concise introduction, Bensaïd was foremost an activist-theorist, originally steeped in the Trotskyist revolutionary tradition but drawn increasingly to the work of Walter Benjamin in later years. This dimension of Bensaïd’s political biography helps explain why he may have been less concerned with the reception of his work in the English-speaking world. Bensaïd’s scholarly interventions were above all political, and The Dispossessed is an excellent case in point. Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to sidestep the penetrating philosophical insights that are interspersed throughout the book, especially in connection with the interplay between law and politics, in Marx’s world as much as our own.
Bensaïd’s investigation begins with an explication of Marx’s early journalistic reflections on the Wood Theft Law, which, if implemented, would criminalize the customary practice of gathering fallen forest wood by impoverished peasants. What is particularly distinctive about Bensaïd’s explication is that it dialectically reconstructs Marx’s disparate writings by weaving together concepts that are seemingly contradictory and inseparable: pauperism and malfeasance, property and theft, market and popular economy, private property and the right of necessity, privatization and the common good and so forth. The virtue of Bensaïd’s point of departure is that it remains attentive to the rich background of social struggles that inform the various antinomies of right, whether they are conceived as the property rights of landowners against the customary rights of the poor, or for that matter, the contractual rights of capitalists against those of workers. In this respect, Bensaïd thoughtfully positions his contribution alongside the Marxist historian E.P. Thompson, who identified the legal arena as one that is characterized by struggles over competing conceptions of property (12–13). What sets Bensaïd apart from Thompson is that he traces the antinomy of rights to Marx’s earliest writings all the way through his mature work while also noting Marx’s decision to republish his early journalistic writings in 1851 (8). The upshot of Bensaïd’s explication is that he can make cogent sense of Marx’s defence of the customary rights of the poor (18–20), his vociferous debate with Proudhon (32–36) and his endorsement of individual property in Capital (49–51), without being mired in de-politicized debates about the significance of the so-called ‘epistemological break’ in Marx’s thinking.
To be sure, Bensaïd’s essay also ventures beyond Marx, although it does so in the spirit of Marx’s call to clarify the struggles and aspirations of one’s age. Consequently, the third and final section of Bensaïd’s stimulating study focuses on contemporary forms of dispossession, which culminates with a renewed call to action: ‘Rise up dispossessed of the world!’ (57). Bensaïd is concerned in this final section with the different manifestations of privatization in the contemporary world, ranging from the privatization of the natural environment and genetic materials to knowledge and criminal justice. Every form of dispossession is bound up with its opposite – the common good, ‘inappropriable goods’, the public domain and the ‘enforceable right to existence’ (57). Bensaïd leaves open the question of who will prevail and which rights will be vindicated. After all, politics for Bensaïd cannot be determined a priori.
The mark of an excellent work is that it leaves the reader grasping for more. The Dispossessed is precisely such a work, written in haste, which left the reviewer wanting Bensaïd to say more about the diverse composition of the dispossessed and its implications for solidarity strategies locally and globally. Bensaïd’s essay evidences an impressive grasp of legal and political theory and demonstrates that a creative engagement with Marx’s work can elucidate ongoing debates about law, justice, rights and the good life. Here too one wishes that Bensaïd had spent more time unpacking what he took to be most promising in Marx’s historically informed and secular understanding of justice (36). At its best, The Dispossessed leaves these and other questions to a future generation of theorist-activists, who will undoubtedly share his ambition of interpreting the world in order to change it. The Dispossessed offers an excellent glimpse into the work of a vibrant thinker, whose untimely death in 2010 robbed the world of his wide-ranging insights.
