Thread by @agoingaccount

A lot of people are understandably confused about the word "univocity" and why we (MMT Humanities) think it's important to point out and critique.

So here is a definition and explanation of why univocity matters. Buckle up. 🧵

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Univocity is the idea that words have the same meaning in every context that they're used—as opposed to meanings which are predicated on their context.

Sounds innocuous, but I think a concrete example will illustrate some of the problems.

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Consider the idea of "skilled labor." Heterodox economists, as well as Job Guarantee advocates, have long refused to naturalize the idea that some labor is objectively skilled, because that judgment is predicated on the kinds of jobs we're creating in a qualitative sense.

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But because mainstream economists claim that the jobs that exist transparently reflect what we as "consumers" want, "skilled labor" APPEARS to have a univocal meaning.

If your labor is skilled, you'll find employment. Ergo, labor is either skilled or it isn't. End of story.

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But this is false because of another word which is commonly understood "univocally," and that is MONEY.

MMTers don't always (ever) realize it, but when they say "the government is not a household," they're critiquing the idea that money has a univocal meaning.

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The central claim of MMT is that money has a DIFFERENT meaning if you're a household than it does if you're a government (or a "sovereign," but as you may know I take issue with that word.)

For households, money is an object. For society as a whole, it's not.

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We could say something similar about time. Time is scarce for you and I. Like money, we're always running out of it.

For society, though? "We" as a society can plan on any time horizon, even if "we" as individuals don't live forever.

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Now I want to show you a painting I know you've seen a million times.

"The Creation of Adam" imagines "Being" univocally. And what better way to show this than to depict God as a PERSON who is able to reach out and touch you?

For Michelangelo, God is like a household.

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But there's more I want to say. As my colleague @MaxSeijo has argued, the subconscious of liberalism is fascism. What does he mean by this?

Well, the idea that jobs are scarce causes the social imagination to be contracted around a set of activities we can afford to do. 9/

So people are arbitrarily categorized as univocally skilled or unskilled by liberalism.

Fascist demagogues use this as a starting point to say that there are people who can contribute, and people who can't. People who are part of "Das Volk," and people who are dead weight.
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But there are two ways to push back against the obvious death drive logics at play here. One which is still premised on the "Univocity of Being," and one that isn't.

The first is what Deleuze called "Univocal Difference," and I want to suggest this too is a dead end.

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Univocal difference: Here, DIFFERENCE always means the same thing. I know this is a bit confusing, and I'm sorry for that.

Let's go through some objections to the above problems w/ univocal skilled labor & univocal money thru a "Univocal Difference" lens to see the problem.
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If everything "IS" & "IS DISTINCT" in the same way, then abstraction itself is the problem.

What do I mean by this?

I mean that abstraction—that is, shared significations that coordinate human affairs at a distance—can only be imagined as subsumption by an external will.

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So let's concretize this. The main objection to the "skilled labor" problem through a lens of univocal difference would be that employment itself is inherently fascist.

Because jobs=working for a univocal other rather than simply existing as a univocally particular self.

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And we see the "univocal difference" objection in some anti-job guarantee rhetoric, which argues that employment itself the problem.

If "being for others" is not a natural condition, then it's either involuntary servitude (bad) or voluntary aid (good.)

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I would argue that "univocal difference" is why so many leftists insist that money is synonymous with capitalism and/or national sovereignty.

If all money is univocally different, then it's just a violent extension of one's will. And if that's true, then yes, money is bad.

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But there is an alternative to this endless shuffling between "univocity" and "univocal difference."

Money is NEITHER univocally the same (the government is not a household!), NOR is it the sum total of self-expressions of univocally different "monetary sovereigns."

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I want to introduce a third term to "univocity" and "univocal difference," which is ANALOGY.

Analogical relations are neither fully the same, nor fully different.

So one more time, let's look at the example of skilled labor and employment.

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Viewed as analogues, labor skills are different BECAUSE they cohere together. They are analogues of each other because they co-create the same world.

And this includes unemployment. The jobs that exist today were planned yesterday, and that includes the "non-jobs."

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An important point of clarification, though.

Our different labor skills cohere not because of a master plan from a central planning sovereign. And not because of "global capital" either.

The "coherence" is instead ontological. We can't help but participate in causality.

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Yes, I can cause something to happen. But I can't claim to be the univocal cause of anything. Because any position I'm in today was conditioned indirectly by everything yesterday. Economic planning, culture, ecosystems, all played analogical roles yesterday to create today.

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So we can't help but cohere. But that can NEVER take the form of subsuming an "other" at the level of analogical causality.

(Though, in this @Superstruc piece I explored symptoms of this failure to subsume w/r/t the nation-state bit.ly/39VwTbM. )

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Anyway, the point is we can't help but analogically cohere with respect to our participation in creation (w/r/t the social world and really everything).

So monetary governance *as one analogy of that inescapable coordination* is an inalienable horizon of possibility.

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Money is an analogy of governance and interdependence, and we must treat it as such.

Not as an infinite sovereign will that can do whatever it wants because its numbers go on forever, but as an analogy of every other possible coordinating social medium.

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