Introduction
I attended Panagiotis Sotiris’ Lecture “The Possibilities of Left Government in Europe” on September 24, 2025 (see https://socialistproject.ca/leftstreamed-video/possibilities-of-left-government-in-europe/). There is much with which I agree, such as the need to engage in more radical politics. In the case of Greece, for instance, the possibility of withdrawing from euro during the economic crisis was met with the threat of high unemployment, mass layoffs, reductions of social services–and that is what happened anyway when Greece retained the euro. It would have been better to engage in radical politics while undergoing similar effects to advance a socialist strategy rather than caving into the European Union.
I did ask him during the question and answer part of the lecture what the relationship between the value form and exploitation and ideological struggle. I had read an earlier article written by him on the value form (2015, “Althusserianism and Value-form Theory: Rancière, Althusser and the Question of Fetishism” in Crisis & Critique, Volume 2, Issue 2). In that article, Sortiris argued for the view that commodity fetishism (which makes social relations appear as relations between things, or as things apparently possessing social powers because of their nature as things and their relations as things) makes the process invisible.
In the article, analyzing the early views of the French philosopher Jacques Ranciere, Sortiris argues that Ranciere considered the value form in connection with the social relations of production (relations at work between workers–not just at the immediate workplace but relations across workplaces) as an “absent cause.” The social relations of production in a capitalist society lead to the vanishing of their causal role in producing the value form–a form that involves the expression of the value of one commodity in another commodity–ultimately in money. The visible value form can be viewed as commodities having a price tag on them.)
The value form makes it appear that the relation between persons (especially between persons in their role as workers) is a relation between things–hence the absent cause in the very nature of the value form. The value form thereby leads to a misperception of the nature of social relations Thus, the source of a surplus of value (profit) is not perceived as deriving from the exploitation of workers but rather from other causes: selling above the value of the commodity, the abstinence of the employer, the material productivity of machines, etc..
The constant increase of value and a surplus of value (profit) in an infinite process of accumulation of more and more capital (interrupted by inevitable crises) seems to occur independently of workers’ efforts and relations. This apparent independence of the emergence of a surplus of value (profit) from workers’ labour and their social relations forms a necessary part of the whole process and is not just an aside. In other words, an ideology that favours the class power of employers is built into the very structure and process of the exploitation of workers in a capitalist society. The ideological nature of the value form–its fetishistic nature–forms a link between the objective structure and process of capitalist exploitation on the one hand and the subjective vanishing of the nature of this process in the consciousness of producers and exchangers on the other. Sortiris quotes Ranciere concerning this objective-subjective principle:
‘[a] principle which posits that the constitution of an object and the constitution of its illusion are one and the same process
Contradiction Between the Content of the Lecture and the Content of the Article
In his lecture, though, Sotiris argued differently. He did refer to the naturalness of the power of money–that money appears to have the power to acquire commodities by nature, for example (the apparently natural purchasing power of money). But he claimed that academics tend to underestimate the extent to which workers feel they are exploited, even in their bodies. Do workers actually feel exploited in being outraged at producing a surplus of value (profit) that is greater than the value of what they sell to the employer? They certainly feel oppressed on several occasions (and even that is never really articulated and is certainly not encouraged by most union reps) and fight back in various ways, but that hardly means the same thing as being conscious of their exploitation and even of their persistent oppression throughout the workday. How could union reps frequently express the idea of “fair wages” and “fair contracts” otherwise? (See for example Fair Wages: Another Example of the Ideological Rhetoric of Canadian Unions, Part Two: Unifor or Fair Contracts or Collective Agreements: The Ideological Rhetoric of Canadian Unions, Part Three: Unifor (Largest Private Union in Canada)).
Indeed, what he wrote in the article and how he replied in the lecture contradict themselves. If the value form involves the process which produces its vanishing from perception in the form itself, the consequence is the dissolution of consciousness of exploitation. To say, as he does, that workers are conscious of their exploitation decidedly contradicts his characterization of the value form.
In the lecture, he did point out that a large cultural transformation would be necessary to eliminate the value form and could not simpy be eliminated through administrative means.
The Limitations of Small-Scale Social Experimentation
He then argued in the lecture that one of the practical things required is experimentation, even on a small scale. That is debatable. Small-scale experimentations often simply ignore the major power structures and end up marginalized; co-ops for example fail to challenge the class power of employers, and if exploitation is hidden from most workers who work for them, why would they oppose in any systematic way such class power? Furthermore, small-scale experimentation can frequently be co-opted or neutralized through various actions of the capitalist state.
Thomas Mathiesen’s works The Politics of Abolition and Law, Society and Political Action: Towards a Strategy Under Late Capitalism point out the real danger of leftist positions being co-opted. Mathiesen argues that the capitalist state has become particularly adept at co-opting or neutralizing more radical movements so that it is necessary to emphasise the abolition of structures rather than their reform in order not to contribute to the continuation of repressive structures. From Law, Society and Political Action, page 73:
In the fourth place, we have seen that legislation which breaks with dominating interests, legislation which in this sense is radical, is easily shaped in such a way during the legislative process that the final legislation does not after all break significantly with dominating interests, as the examples from political practice of trimming, stripping down, the creation of pseudo alternatives, and co-optive co-operation, show.
I have referred, in another post, to the whittling down of the criminalization of employer actions following the murder of the Westray miners in Nova Scotia, Canada, in 1992 (see Working for an Employer May Be Dangerous to Your Health, Part Three). Co-optation is a real danger for the left.
Mathiesen saw this danger. He calls the state absorbent when it has a refined capacity for neutralizing radical and revolutionary movements and demands. Mathiesen calls being co-opted “being defined in” and being shuffled to the side as irrelevant extremists “being defined out.” He calls “finished” the impossibility of contributing to the overcoming of the economic, political and social structures that characterize the dominance of the class of employers. Page 252:
The strongly absorbent late capitalist society has in fact managed, by the process of defining in, to absorb large parts of the Left into political work of a structure maintaining kind, while at the same time, through the process of defining out, it has managed to neutralize the remaining part of the Left as so-called extremists. By an interchange of the forces which define in and define out, on the one hand, and internal organizational reactions to these forces on the other, the parties of the Left have to a large degree either become ossified organizations which are defined in, or ossified organizations which are defined out. In any case they are, in our sense, finished.
Class Struggle In and Against the State: A Panitch/Gindin Strategy, or A Dual-Power Strategy of Workers’ Councils?
Politically, Sotiris then argued in the lecture that dual power (such as workers’ councils springing up) to manage both the economy and the government would not likely arise anytime soon, so the left must face the fact that if they are to gain power and exercise it in such a way as to initiate a socialist society, they will have to use existing state structures in some way that will in the end lead to a socialist society and the dismantling of capitalist society. He denied that a dual power strategy is viable:
No dual power in the democratic organs of the proletariat seems likely to materialize anytime soon, if ever. Waiting for it is both delusional and criminal. And so all we have to work is with this dreary bourgeis state tethered to the circuits of capital as always. I believe this points to the difficulty of strategizing today.
The use of the state will have to simultaneously involve transforming it–a strategy proposed by Leo Panitch, among others.
Since Sotiris, in his lecture, contradicts his acknowledgement of the hidden nature of capitalist exploitation and indeed the hidden nature of relations between workers in production, his politics as presented in the lecture contradicts the political implications of what he wrote in the article. If workers are indeed prevented from comprehending their exploitation because of the very specific nature of the exploitation process in a capitalist society–its vanishing from sight in its very form– then surely one of the major tasks for the radical left is to engage in an ideological battle against all manifestations and expressions of that vanishing.
In a battle for a socialist society, workers who only have a superficial understanding of their real situation may well be initially brought over to support a socialist strategy, but a socialist strategy will likely involve great sacrifices on the part of workers, and not just for a few years. If such sacrifices are to be maintained, workers need to have a much clearer idea of the real nature of their working lives, and that means grasping their exploitation and oppression in its various forms, both inside and outside work.
A socialist party that wins power through elections, supported superficially by workers who fail to grasp their own real situation, will likely fail since they will lack the sustained efforts and sacrifices needed to aim finally for the abolition of exploitation and oppression in its various forms in a specifically capitalist society.
Similarly, various small-scale experimentations will also likely fail if they are not supported by a clear understanding of the nature and dangers of the specific form of capitalist exploitation since such efforts would be easily neutralized by the capitalist state or integrated into the general process of capitalist exploitation that vanishes from view in the very process of creating its own peculiar forms.
If workers had a much more thorough understanding of their real situation in a capitalist society, they may well start creating organizations of power to challenge the power of the capitalist state. They may also make efforts to address such issues as how to govern without the hierarchical and autonomous structures characteristic of the capitalist state.
Sortiris did talk of the possibility of dual power from below, but he seemed to refer to grassroots and worker organizations that exert force on political parties and parliaments rather than on organizations that aim to challenge both the economic power of employers at work (in the form of a critique of their power to exploit and oppress workers) and their political power in the very form of a state separate from workers and citizens.
Conclusion
Sotiris’ lecture contained many interesting analyses of the situation that workers face in Europe, and workers would do well to watch his lecture. However, his lecture contradicts what he wrote in an article on the value form. If we take seriously the value form as a form that makes the process of its own becoming vanish from the consciousness of workers, then any socialist strategy must include as a major component an ideological battle against views that hide the real situation of workers. Such an ideological struggle may well provide a basic condition for the emergence of dual power–as workers come to realize that it is they who reproduce their own lives and the lives of their employers under exploitative and oppressive conditions.
In a second part, I will provide a consideration of how workers’ exploitation is hidden from the workers themselves, both in relation to current processes of exploitation and in relation to the past process of exploitation. The exchange process between the employer and the workers makes the exchange process appear to be an equal exchange.
The Abolitionary 