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In Paolo Virno, Grammar of the Multitude

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In Paolo Virno, Grammar of the Multitude A Grammar of the Multitude For an Analysis of Contemporary Forms of Life Paolo Virno Foreword by Sylvère Lotringer Translated from the Italian Isabella Bertoletti James as!aito Andrea asson SEMIOTEXT(E) FOREIGN AGENTS SERIES F()6#()'" #e$ the Multitude Paolo Virno’s A Grammar of the Multitude is a short book, but it casts a very long shadow. Behind it looms the entire history of the labor move- ment and its heretical wing, talian !workerism" #operaismo$, which rethought %ar&ism in light of the struggles of the '()*s and '(7*s. +or the most ,art, though, it looks forward. -bstract intelligence and imma- terial signs have become the ma.or ,roductive force in the !,ost-+ordist” economy we are living in and they are dee,ly affecting contem,orary structures and mentalities. Virno’s essay e&amines the increased mobility and versatility of the new labor force whose work-time now virtually e&tends to their entire life. /he !multitude" is the kind of subjective con- figuration that this radical change is liberating, raising the ,olitical 0ues- tion of what we are capable of. Operaismo #workerism$ has a ,arado&ical relation to traditional %ar&- ism and to the official labor movement because it refuses to consider work as the defining factor of human life. %ar&ist analysis assumes that what makes work alienating is ca,italist e&,loitation, but o,eraists reali1ed that it is rather the reduction of life to work. Parado&ically, !workerists" are against work, against the socialist ethics that used to e&alt its dignity. /hey don’t want to re-a,,ro,riate work #!take over the means of ,roduction"$ but reduce it. /rade unions or ,arties are concerned about wages and work- ing conditions. /hey don’t fight to change the workers’ lot, at best they make it more tolerable. 2orkerists ,ressed for the reduction of labor time and the transformation of ,roduction through the a,,lication of technical knowledge and sociali1ed intelligence. n the mid-3*s the leftist ,hiloso,her 4imone 2eil e&,erienced the a,,alling ab.ection of the assembly line first hand by enlisting in a factory. 4he wondered whether 5enin or 4talin could ever have set foot in a work- 7 - 78-%%-8 9+ /:; %<5/ /<=; ,lace and celebrated workers’ labor. !/he ,roblem is, therefore, 0uite clear," she concluded in Oppression and Liberty after renouncing %ar&ism and breaking u, with the organi1ed workers’ movement. ! t is a 0uestion of knowing whether it is ,ossible to conceive of an organi1ation of ,roduc- tion" that wouldn’t be !grinding down souls and bodies under o,,ression."' t was too early to achieve this goal through automation and her efforts remained isolated. t finally took the talian 9,eraists in the late 5*s to ,ick u, where she left off. deologically, 9,eraism was made possible by the 8ussian invasion of :ungary in '(5), which revealed the true nature of bureaucratic socialism. /o young talian intellectuals on the left of the left #among them /oni >egri and %ario /ronti$ it became clear that the 4oviet <nion wasn’t the 2orkers’ ?ountry, but a totalitarian form of ca,italism. -round that time the first large emigration of talian workers from the im,overished 4outh to the industrial >orth ,roved even more unsettling. nstead of submitting to the new system of mass ,roduction, young unskilled workers #!mass-work- ers"$ by,assed established trade-unions, which ,rivileged skilled workers, and furiously resisted the +ord assembly line. /he 9,eraist movement took off in '()' after the first massive labor confrontation in /urin. Quaderni ossi #!8ed >otebooks"$, its first ,ublication, analy1ed the im,act the young mass workers had on the labor force and the new !class com,osition" that emerged from recent ca,italist transformations. !lasse Operaia #!2orking ?lass"$, ,ublished in '()@, formulated a new ,olitical strategy, the refusal of work, challenging ca,ital to develo, its ,roductive forces with new technology. /his !strategy of refusal" #a seminal essay by %ario /ron- ti$ was a,,lied !inside" ca,italist develo,ment, but !against it." t antici,ated the ,ost-)6 analysis of ca,ital by +Ali& 7uattari and 7illes =eleu1e in Anti"Oedipus, '(7B, and brought talian social thinkers and ,ost-4tructuralist +rench ,hiloso,hers together in the mid-7*s. 2hat mass-workers ob.ected to most was the transfer of human knowledge to the machines, reducing life to !dead labor." /here was an e&istential dimension there, but active and creative. /heir effort to change labor conditions was unknown to classical %ar&ism, mostly ,reoccu,ied with mechanisms of o,,ression and their effect on the working class. n #aybreak, >iet1sche summoned ;uro,ean workers to !declare that henceforth as a class they are a human im,ossibility and not .ust, as is cus- tomary, a harsh and ,ur,oseless establishment." -nd he e&horted that !im,ossible class" to swarm out from the ;uro,ean beehive, !and with this act of emigration in the grand manner ,rotest against the machine, against ca,ital, and against the choice with which they are now threatened, of 6 P-959 V 8>9 becoming of necessity either slaves of the state or slaves of a revolutionary ,artyC" /his celebration of e&ile can be found in %ichael :ardt and /oni >egri’s $mpire, a best-seller among -merican %ar&ist academics and art critics #!- s,ecter haunts the world and it is the s,ecter of migrationC"$ as well as in Virno’s A Grammar of the Multitude, which it com,lements in its own way. /his call retroactively found its model in the unorthodo& and mobile migrant labor force of the 2obblies # nternational 2orkers of the 2orld$ who organi1ed immigrant workers throughout the <nited 4tates in the '(B*s. #:ence the ,arado&ical fondness of o,eraists for the -merican workers’ movement and -merica in general$. %igration as a form of resis- tance also recalls %ar&’s essay on modern coloni1ation, laborers in ;uro,e deserting famines or factory work for free lands in the -merican 2est.B t took the inventiveness of talian social thinkers to turn this cursory account of the workers’ desire !to become inde,endent landowners" into an antici- ,ation of the ,ostmodern multitude. 2hile :ardt and >egri consider this kind of ;&odus !a ,owerful form of class struggle," Virno cautions that desertion was !a transitory ,hase," an e&tended meta,hor for the mobility of ,ost-+ordist workers #;uro,ean laborers worked in ;ast ?oast factories for a decade or two before moving on$. - nuance, maybe, but significant. <nlike :ardt and >egri, Virno refrains from turning e&ile, or the multi- tude for that matter, let alone communism, into another s,lendid myth. -utonomist theory is found in many ,laces, including the <nited 4tates, but the movement develo,ed most ,owerfully in taly where the )*s’ movement e&tended well into the 7*s. Breaking away from the orthodo& and ,o,ulist %ar&ism of -ntonio 7ramsci, founder of the talian ?om- munist Party, young 9,eraist intellectuals learned from the workers themselves what the reality of ,roduction was. /hey hel,ed them create their organi1ations and confront the system of ,roduction head on through strikes and sabotage. /his ,ragmatic and militant as,ect of workerism sets talian social thinkers a,art. /hey o,,osed the hegemony of the talian ?.P. and 7ramsci’s strategy of small ste,s #the !war of ,osition" within civil soci- ety$ which led to ;urocommunism and the !historic com,romise" with the governing ?hristian-=emocrats #conservatives$. 9,eraists were the first to 0uestion the centrality of the ,roletariat, cornerstone of the entire socialist tradition, and call for a reevaluation of the categories of class analysis. /he notion of !changing class com,osition" introduced by 4ergio Bologna allowed them to re-center the revolutionary struggle on the !new social sub- .ect" .ust emerging at the time both from the factory and the university.3 /he !/roubled -utumn" of '()( was marked by the ,owerful offensive of mass-workers to obtain e0uality in salaries. Various workerist grou,s .oined ( - 78-%%-8 9+ /:; %<5/ /<=; together to create a new organi1ation, both a grou, and a maga1ineD %otere Operaio E2orkers’ PowerF. t gathered a number of theorists like %ario /ronti, /oni >egri, +ranco Pi,erno, 9reste 4cal1one and Bologna. /heir reformulation of Mar&ism became seminal for the entire autonomist move- ment. n '(7@, the clandestine line of the 8ed Brigades clashed with the o,en forms of collective organi1ation within Potere 9,eraio and led to the grou,’s self-dissolution. /he workers’ formidable ,ressure to control the cycle of ,roduction met with serious ,rovocations from the secret services and the ?hristian-=emo- cratic government, starting with the bombing of Pia11a Fontana in Milan in '()(. :astily attributed to the anarchists by the government, it .ustiGed an intense ,olice re,ression of workers’ organi1ations. /his !strategy of tension" tore taly a,art and sent shock waves well into the 7*s, verging on civil war. t triggered among factory workers in the +iat factories the creation of underground terrorist grou,sHthe !8ed Brigades" and !Prima 5inea" are the most well-knownHtargeting leaders of the industry and ,rominent ,olitical Ggures. /he kidna,,ing of =? President -ldo %oro and his cold- blooded e&ecution by the 8ed Brigades after the government broke off the negotiations, further u,set the ,olitical balance in taly. n '(75 Potere 9,eraio was re,laced by -utonomia, a large movement involving students, women, young workers and the unem,loyed. /heir rhi- 1omatic organi1ation embodied every form of ,olitical behaviorH anti-hierarchical, anti-dialectical, anti-re,resentativeHantici,ated by 9,eraist thinkers.
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