
1 Working Paper Series Papers available in the Working Paper Series are works in progress. Please do not cite without permission. Any comments should be addressed directly to the author Reference WP012 Title Self Valorisation and the Exploration of the Common’ Author Oli Harrison Email: [email protected] 2 ‘Self Valorisation and the Exploration of the Common’ Key Words – Negri, Revolutionary Subjectivity, Self Valorisation, the Common, Marx Abstract The purpose of this article is to establish the continuity of a key concept in the work of Antonio Negri, both individually, and in his co authored work with Michael Hardt. I will argue that although developed in a very specific practical and theoretical conjuncture, the concept of ‘self valorisation’ is critical for understanding Negri’s theory of revolutionary subjectivity, both then and now. Even the most rudimentary glance at Negri’s early and later work will confirm that the concept is used significantly less, and yet, I will demonstrate that through what I call the exploration of the common, the theory remains highly operative. Although wrested from its original context, then, self valorisation finds itself used in a way that attempts to bridge the gap between the technical and political aspects of the class composition of the multitude. 3 Introduction Since the publication of Empire (2000) and Multitude (2004) the work of Antonio Negri has become increasingly prevalent in radical social theory. In one sense, at least, this was always likely to be the case, especially when one considers Negri’s own personal reputation as a militant scholar that in the 1970’s, found himself in serious trouble with the Italian authorities. On another level, however, the success of Empire was perhaps due to its seeming ability to cross and combine various academic disciplines. Academically the book generated numerous debates, and in general, both translations of Negri’s earlieri and laterii writings (in English), alongside contemporary volumes dedicated to his work are becoming rapidly available. Yet it has always seemed to me that the foundation to many of the arguments in both Empire and Multitude could in fact be found much earlier, particularly in Negri’s collected lectures that came to comprise Marx beyond Marx (1982). Hence, the method of the ‘antagonistic tendency’, the notion of ‘real subsumption’, the embryonic multitude in the form of the ‘socialised worker’, the demands for a ‘social wage’, all very much at the heart of Negri’s most recent work, can be found directly in his early periods. For the purposes of my argument, the same phenomenon can and must also be applied to Negri’s theory of self valorisation. Negri’s theory of self valorisation, in other words, although developed in a very different context, remains very much at the heart of his theory of revolutionary subjectivity today. In the English speaking world, without a doubt the most significant attempt to take up this concept has been by Harry Cleaver (1982, 1992, 2003) Over the years the various materials on his personal website (including his highly useful reading guide to Marx’s Capital) have remained an excellent resource, and it is without a doubt he that has offered the most consistent and engaging appropriation of Negri’s concept. However, 4 to my knowledge at least, what Cleaver hasn’t done (as yet) is to situate the concept in Negri’s most recent thought, both individually and in his well known collaborative work with Michael Hardt. The aim of this essay is to contribution to that task. Structurally, the essay will follow a simple pattern. I will start by establishing the contours to the particular form of Marxist theory that developed in Italy during her period of post WW2 reconstruction. I will then move directly to assess the way Negri’s theory of self valorisation emerged as a way of radicalising the most basic elements to that theory. Finally, I will demonstrate where his theory sits today. 5 Operaismo During the post WW2 years of Italian reconstruction, a group of young militant scholars gradually began to pull themselves away from the orthodox concerns of their respective institutional allegiances (Wright 2002, p15) In particular, they began to question their complicity in establishing the basis on which Italy’s ‘economic miracle’ would be built; the enforced docility of labour. In this sense perhaps the most pressing concern was rethinking the precise relationship between capital and labour. In this sense Tronti’s (1979a, 1979b) work would become decisive, and would lead to the development of a specifically Italian chapter in the history of Marxist theory. According to Tronti (1979a, p1) for too long had Marxist theory regarded the development of working class struggle as a mere ‘reactive’ phenomenon, based on and simply mirroring the development of capital. What was needed, according to him, was nothing less than a complete inversion; ‘to reverse the polarity, and start again from the beginning: and at the beginning is the class struggle of the working class’. Whether one regards this as a ‘theoretical regression’ (Lumley 1980, p129), a Copernican inversion’ (Moulier 2005, p 19) or for its ‘scandalous novelty’ (Wright 2002, p 63), its importance as a fundamental axiom for the development of Negri’s theory of self valorisation cannot be overstated. For Tronti, then, ‘At the level of socially developed capital, capitalist development becomes subordinated to working class struggles: it follows behind them, and they set the pace to which the political mechanisms of capital’s own development must be tuned’. Far from being the mere re-active objects of capitalist exploitation, through Tronti’s insistence we learn an entirely different story. It is, in fact, capital that is re-active, and it is the working class that ‘sets the pace’ to which it must find an adequate response. Even when reduced to a mere ‘factor of production’, (Tronti (1979b, p10, p18) would insist that 6 the working class still held the key commodity on which the whole edifice of bourgeois society was built – labour power. There is ‘no active life in capital’ without it. Hence, objectively the working class was the most powerful subjectivity that could confront capitalist hegemony. The ‘simplest of revolutionary truths’ thus becomes immediately clear; ‘capital can not destroy the working class: (but) the working class can destroy capital’. Tronti’s starting point, then, is simple enough. It is the power of living labour that is the dynamic element to capitalist society. For capital, this power must be harnessed in such a way to ensure it remains mere labour capacity, and doesn’t develop into a fully blown antagonistic subjectivity. The possibility remains, however, that the latter option might indeed occur. What, in other words, would be capital’s response if the working class set a pace to which it couldn’t follow? It was Raniero Panzieri that was to provide the most significant answer. In his excellent ‘The Capitalist use of Machinery’ (1980) he argued strongly that Italian post war reconstruction was premised directly on the strategic use of machinery to break the power of the Italian working class, a power that had accumulated significantly during the resistance to Fascism. It is crucial to note the importance the re-reading of Marx during this period; especially the chapters in Capital that deal with the development of the division of labour and the consequent growth of machinery (Casarino & Negri 2008, p50) In this respect, the significance of the return to Marx was twofold. In chapter 14 of Capital, for instance, Marx (1990, p458) outlines clearly the way that the ‘specialised worker’ was to become the basis to a potentially much stronger subjectivity, as embodied in the ‘collective worker’. A chapter later, Marx (Ibid, p562, 563) adds that it was the development of machinery that was used selectively as a means of both deskilling the specialised worker, and disciplining the collective worker. Following Marx, then, against the complicit union 7 strategy of the time Panzieri (1980, p49) argued that far from being a mere ‘passing phase…a painful but necessary transition’, the capitalist use of machinery was used solely to both deepen its domination and offer ‘new possibilities for the consolidation of its power’. Panzieri’s work on the strategic employment of machinery to combat working class struggle was to be enriched by a series of ‘workers enquires’ in the factories of FIAT and Olivetti, under the foresight of Romano Alquati (Wright 2002, p 46). In what was to become Alquati’s most enduring legacy for the development of Operaismo (Wright 2007, p279), it was in and though these studies that the key theoretical concept of ‘class composition’ emerged. This theory would quickly become a perfect example of the ‘rigorously one sided class logic’ that was initially demanded by Tronti (1979a, p6) In Volume 1 of Capital Marx (1990, p762) referred to the ‘composition of capital’ primarily in relation to capitalist power, i.e. the relationship between constant and variable capital, and the way this would determine its ability to exploit the working class. Beyond this perspective, the analysis of class composition sought to understand the ways the working class could resist capitalist exploitation, and in so doing, find ways of developing its own composition. The theory of class composition involves an analysis of both the technical and political characteristics of productive subjectivity (Negri 2008b, p105). Technically, class composition is conditioned by the objective characteristics of labour itself, i.e. the way in which it is organised, the tools that it uses, the commodities that it produces etc. Politically, class composition is established by both a present and anticipated development of its subjective capacities, all of which would develop in line with its technical determinants, i.e.
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