In this article, I explore Karl Marx’s evolving understanding of the temporal dimensions within capitalism, particularly focusing on his reflections during the 1850s and 1860s. This period marks a significant shift in Marx’s theoretical framework, prompted by his in-depth analysis of the world market and diverse modes of exploitation. The article highlights coexisting forms of exploitation and their entanglement in terms of temporalities. From this perspective, capitalism and its history can be investigated as a complex interplay of temporal layers rather than a linear progression. Marx’s 1858 letter serves as a starting point, emphasizing the importance of accumulation as a long-term process and the challenges of a revolutionary project in a globalized capitalist context. Finally, the paper emphasizes Marx’s mature writings, where he envisions the potential for combining historical layers to challenge capitalism. This nuanced understanding has contemporary implications for globalized capitalism and social change discussions.

Abstract: In my response to Harry Harootunian, Aldo Beretta, Rebecca Fritzl, Niklas Plaetzer, and Vanita Seth, I discuss some of the terms that constitute the theoretical plot of my book: insurgent, universality, temporality. I also discuss the methodology of my work and the difference between radical democracy, insurgent democracy, and what I call the democratic excess. Eventually, in my response to Seth, I show how the work method of Insurgent Universality is maximally distant from any ontological discourse.

In this article I reply to three critics. Responding to Cinzia Arruzza, I argue that capital encounters a large spectrum of differences of gender, religion and ethnicity, as well as differences generated by racism. Capital is able to use these differences to its own profit in order to differentiate wages and intensities of exploitation and thereby divide the working class. Responding to Peter Osborne, I contend that my temporal-layered framework elucidates how capital organises and synchronises different temporalities according to the dominant temporality of socially-necessary labour time. I combine Bloch's idea of 'multiversum' and Benjamin's idea of history in order to show how conflicting temporalities can disclose new political possibilities of liberation. Responding to Harry Harootunian, I articulate the relationship between my reading of Marx and the Postcolonial critique.

This article analyzes the current crisis in terms of a conflict of temporalities, arguing that the pace of the economic temporality and its speed in decision making clashes with the temporality of the state and the slowness of the democratic process of decision making. The synchronization of these different tempos configures the present crisis of democracy and its different reactions, such as the recent Occupy and antiausterity movements, which have expressed their disenchantment with formal democracy. The article examines these disjointed temporalities of capital, state, and popular insurgencies, to explore the possibilities of radical change. © 2014 Duke University Press.