.m:2

6. The Constitution of Communism (1973-78).

6.1 From Capital to the Grundrisse.

6.2 The impossibility of socialism: the crisis of the law of value.

6.3 Surplus value and profit.

6.4 Self-valorization and the theory of the wage.

Remark: The practices of self-valorization.

6.5 The constitution of the subject.

6.6 The social worker: a new problematic of subjectivity.

Remark: Renverser Foucault: Negri's constitutive ontology.

6. The Constitution of Communism (1973-78)

We reach another turning point in the course of the Italian

social struggles and in the development of Negri's thought in the

period 1973-74. By this time the numerous political organizations

which had sprung up with the explosion of 68 were in crisis. Potere

operaio, the group in which Negri had worked, recognized in 1973 that

its form was no longer adequate to the needs of the social struggles

and thus it decided to dissolve. However, it would be incorrect to

say that in Italy the revolutionary fervor of 68 was spent by 73;

rather, it continued in its intensity while undergoing a radical

transformation, a de-centering, a multiplication in diverse social

forms. This continued intensity through the 1970s is one aspect

which marks the Italian social struggles as anomalous with respect to

the rest of Europe and the United States. Yet, when we consider the

substance of the problems addressed, this period marks the end of

Italy's political anomaly. Capital's restructuration brought the

Italian economy in line with the development of other European

countries and the political experimentation of the movements focussed

on the primary issues which have confronted the entire first world

since the 70s: the increasingly abstract and social nature of work,

the autonomy and multiplicity of social struggles and hence the new

character of the social subject. In other words, between 1973 and

1978 the Italian social movements made a first attempt at dealing with

the problems of analysis and organization facing us today. Negri is

fond of saying that the 19th century (with its factory production,

vanguard movements, etc.) lasted until 1968; that rupture was so

explosive that we entered directly into the 21st century. It should

be no surprise that these first years of the 21st century were

characterized by wide ranging experimentation, striving to come to

terms with the new social conditions. Once again, Negri attempted in

his theorizing to keep step and follow the innovations and evolution

of social practices -- he sought to interpret them, to lend them

coherence and strength. It becomes even more clear in this section of

our study that Negri's theorizing can only follow the practice of the

masses.

As we noted earlier, a serious historical study would be required

to illuminate the practical and political pressures and inspirations

which lay behind Negri's work. Here we will have to be satisfied with

a brief historical sketch. We could say, in very general terms, that

there were three principle causes of the crisis of the movements in

1973-74. I) A political condition: the "Historic Compromise" in 1974

between the PCI and the ruling parties of the government (the

Christian Democrats in particular) marked a profound shift in

political alignments and effectively destroyed the social space on

which the movements had operated previously. In the 60s the left wing

of the communist party had been a force of opposition and it had

functioned as a sort of buffer between the movements and the parties

of government. For example, Mario Tronti and Massimo Cacciari

participated actively as theorists in both the PCI and in the extra-

parliamentary movements: the fluidity with which they moved from one

context to the other demonstrated the openness of the PCI to

contestation and the real (if limited) continuity which was possible

across the left. After the PCI gave up its oppositional stance with

respect to the government, however, the continuity became impossible

and the movements were positioned on a separate terrain, against all

of the official parties. (1) II) An economic condition: the

capitalist restructuration had by this time achieved a significant

modification of production, de-centering it, shifting the focus away

from the large factories of mass production. Capitalist strategy

pushed toward a socialization of production. Just as in the 20s and

30s capitalist restructuration was designed to massify production and

deskill the work force in order to destroy the conditions of the

paradigm worker subjectivity of that period (the professional worker)

and its vanguard form of organization (the professional vanguard), in

the early 70s capitalist restructuration aimed at a socialization of

production in order to erode the conditions of the mass worker and its

mass vanguard form of organization. By 1973, there was a wide-spread

recognition among militants that the mass worker of the large

factories could no longer serve as the paradigm or focal point of

worker subjectivity, that it no longer exerted an hegemony over the

horizon of social struggles. III) A social condition: partly in

response to these changes in production but also in response to long-

standing tensions among militants, "a change occurred within the

subjectivity of the movement, in its culture and outlook towards the

future." ["Do You Remember Revolution?" 235] The movement developed a

new plurality and a specifically social character. The death (or

euthenasia) of the mass worker was not accompanied by a moment of

nostalgia, (2) nor even a lull in revolutionary activity, but rather a

dislocation of that energy to a different social plane.

There were several faces to this transformation in the movement,

but the growing feminist movement, which in this period centered

around the Referendum on divorce (1974), can be considered as

exemplary and as a source of inspiration for the other sectors of the

movement. "The feminist movement, with its practices of communalism

and separatism, its critique of politics and the social articulations

of power, its deep distrust of any form of 'general representation' of

needs and desires, its love of differences, must be seen as the

clearest archetypal form of this new phase of the movement." ["Do You

Remember Revolution?" 236] The organizational experiments of this new

phase are perhaps best represented by a new umbrella group called

Autonomia, which sought to link together diverse groups (feminists,

workers, students, the unemployed) in a loosely-organized network. In

practice, the movement developed a "logic of separation," that is a

logic whereby the struggles attempted to follow a course of

development that was independent from the forces of capital and the

State, irrecuperable in terms of any dialectic of control. One of the

goals of "Autonomia operaia" (workers' autonomy), then, was the end of

the workers' dialectical relationship with capital and of the

continuity of capital's cyclical development. The new separateness of

the movement sought a discontinuous form of development: break with

the enemy in order to articulate an autonomous internal logic. The

ideal of autonomy also referred to innovative attempts at organization

within the movement, a pluralization of direction and interest, a

radical democratization of decision-making. In practice, the

organizational structure of Autonomia was constantly in flux,

continually searching for adequate means to unite a multitude of

diverse, local autonomous groups, with their own individual projects,

in the flexible framework of a coherent national struggle, while never

ceding power to any centralized directing authority. Subterranean

connections were thought to link together the various "tribes of

moles." (3) The concrete forms of the organizational experiments of

Autonomia and their relative success have yet to be adequately

analyzed; what is important from our theoretical perspective, though,

is the articulation of a logic of separation and the radical attempt

at a real pluralization and socialization of the movement.

6.1 From Capital to the Grundrisse

In this period, then, Negri shifts his theoretical perspective in

order to keep step with the transformation of the social struggles.

We defined the previous turning point in Negri's work as a "c‚sure

subjective", as the attempt to grasp the power of the working class

subject and to bring it to the center of the theoretical scene. This

second turning point is a reinforcement of that c‚sure: Negri must

bring the Leninist worker out of the factory, maintaining the strong

conception of the subject while allowing it a real plurality and a

specifically social definition. We say earlier that the first turning

point was accomplished through a movement from Marx to Lenin, or

rather from the theoretical framework of critical Marxism to that of a

Leninist Marxism, a Marxism of proletarian projectiveness: no longer

was the proletarian project subordinated to the theoretical critique

of capital, but rather the critique was employed in the service of the

project. Now, at the second turning point, Negri has to solidify the

transformation, giving the subjective and projective theorizing a firm

basis in a constitutive practice. In his typical shorthand, Negri

summarizes this entire theoretical transformation, spanning the two

turning points, as the movement from Capital to the Grundrisse within

Marx's work. (We could pose Lenin as the hinge that links the first

Marx to the second.) "Dal Capitale ai Grundrisse, si Š detto, dalla

critica della valorizzazione capitalistica alla scienza della

autovalorizzazione operaia: questo Š il cammino che oggi ci Š lecito."

[Forma Stato 23] If the first turning point, then, mapped the terrain

from Marx to Lenin, this second turning point is an attempt to move

from Lenin to Marx, to a new Marx beyond Lenin: to the Marx, in other

words, that is beyond the theory of insurrection, the Marx that has

incorporated this moment of antagonism and that explores on this new

terrain the direct constitution of communism.

What is the meaning, though, of Negri's "discovery" of a new Marx

in the Grundrisse. Marxist studies have seen several attempts to

reorganize the priority among Marx's works: the humanists' effort to

rehabilitate the 1844 Manuscripts and the structuralists' arguments

for the primacy of the Theses on Feurbach and Capital are only the two

most celebrated. What is important, of course, is not so much any

philological argument about the "true" center of Marx's thought, but

rather the possibilities which we are afforded by a certain

configuration of the trajectory of his thought. For Negri, then, the

reorientation toward the Grundrisse represents a focus on the

constitution of the subject and of a positive, constructive vision in

Marx's work. Capital is the text which "served to reduce critique to

economic theory, to annihilate subjectivity in objectivity ...." [Marx

18-19] On the other hand, "the Grundrisse constitutes the subjective

approach ... to the analysis of revolutionary subjectivity in the

process of capital." [9-10] Negri uses the reversal in the priority

of Marx's texts as a technique to highlight the subjective and

projective character of his thought.

The subordination of Capital to the Grundrisse is clearly also a

polemical maneuver. In the introduction to the French translation,

Marx au-del… de Marx, Yann Moulier presents Negri's interpretation as

a direct response to Althusser. Negri's lectures on the Grundrisse,

which comprise the book, were delivered at Althusser's invitation at

the Ecole Normale Sup‚rieure where Althusser's famous seminar on

Capital was held over 10 years earlier. "Lire les Grundrisse aprŠs

lire Le Capital, par cons‚quent. Il me semble que c'est au fond l'une

des r‚ponses la plus globale, la plus articul‚e adress‚es aux

positions th‚oriques de Louis Althusser, en ce qu'elle est une

critique positive de reconstruction: elle part en effet d'un systŠme

coh‚rent en tant que tel." [ii] The burden, then, is on Negri to show

the timeliness of his approach: even if at the time of Althusser's

seminar (1965) a reading of Capital and its critical approach were

appropriate, today (or at least in 1978) an interpretation of the

Grundrisse and its constitutive method is more adequate to the

theoretical and practical needs of the social movements.

We have already outlined several theoretical tasks which must be

addressed in this phase of Negri's thought; there remains one more

important topic which we must treat, however, and that is the process

of ontological constitution. In the previous chapter we examined the

destructive power of Negri's Leninism: the first moment of a liberated

subjectivity that destroys the conditions of its subjugation, that

destroys itself insofar as it is the object of exploitation. This

antagonistic and destructive power is what opened the path to a

positive ontology. Now the first moment must be complemented with a

second moment of liberated subjectivity, a positive, constitutive

moment. This constitutive ontological tension, this tendency toward

the constitution of a positive horizon of society, runs throughout

this phase of Negri's thought as a driving force, a motor. In his

terms, this is the project for the constitution of communism. We turn

to the Grundrisse, then, as Marx's most developed vision of communism.

In the previous period Lenin provided the c‚sure ontologique, the

opening toward a constitutive ontology; now, Negri turns back to Marx

to fulfill this ontological potential, to fill it with substance.

"Certo, Š una ben strana ontologia, questa che qui si rivela: essa Š

tutta giocata sulla potenza della prassi collettiva del proletariato

che rovescia il mondo dei valori di scambio in costruzione della

propria potenza complessiva, sulla prima natura del mondo, contro la

seconda natura del capitale, per la terza natura comunista." [Forma

Stato 23] The Grundrisse allow Negri to pose communism as nature, a

third nature, that is a collective construction with the weight and

the substantiality of being.

Even if it is true that in the period which we are treating here

(1973-78) Negri does not fully succeed in fleshing out this

ontological vision, nonetheless this limitation should not prevent us

from gathering and analyzing the elements which he does succeed in

arranging toward this goal. Therefore, we propose to follow along the

path of Negri's interpretation of the Grundrisse, introducing other

texts from this period when appropriate, and keeping in mind the

theoretical and practical tasks and pressures which are driving his

efforts. Finally, we will outline the directions of his subsequent

research designed to pursue these issues further.

6.2 Socialism is impossible: the crisis of the law of value

The Italian economic crisis of the 70s, following the

extraordinary boom of the 60s, put added strain on the already tense

social relations. The Italian State attempted to manage the crisis

through manipulations of monetary policy and immediately monetary

policy was recognized as a weapon that capital wielded against the

working class, as a means of effectively lowering wages, of extracting

surplus value on a mass scale. Throughout the political struggles,

money was regarded not as an indifferent medium for the circulation of

value, but as a political weapon, as a site of class conflict. Negri

attempted to broaden this political debate and give it a solid

grounding by posing the issue of the role of money in terms of the

entire capitalist system of valorization. As early as 1971, just

after the Nixon measures to decouple the dollar from the gold

standard, Negri spoke of a "crisis" of the law of value, a crisis that

is of the capitalist process which poses labor as the Grundnorm of the

social system of value. The law of value, as Negri describes it, is

related to a formal juridical theory that poses the structures of the

State in the role of an objective or indifferent mediation of social

forces, but that in fact institutes capital's process of valorization

and thereby mediates the exploitation of the working class. The

crisis of juridical formalism, then, the crisis of the Planner-State

and the Welfare State that resulted from the workers' assaults of 68-

69, brought with it a crisis of the law of value.

What previously appeared to Negri as an historical development of

the class struggle, however, is now consolidated with the aid of Marx

as a theoretical development. In other words, long before these

advances of the workers' movement and these changes of the capitalist

State, Marx recognized and developed this crisis of the capitalist

system of valorization in theoretical form: crisis is immanent to the

law of value itself. Negri finds this argument expressed in its

fullest form in the "Chapter on Money" in the Grundrisse. According

to Negri, Marx's approach to the discussion of value here presents us

with significant advantages over that in Capital. Whereas in Capital

the treatment of value starts with the commodity, in the Grundrisse it

begins immediately with money, the lurid, antagonistic face of value.

[Marx 24] The Marxian discussion of money in the Grundrisse is framed

as a critique of Proudhon and socialism. Marx and Negri both

understand "socialism" here as a society which strives for equality,

but preserves the capitalist process of valorization. According to

Marx, Proudhon conceives of money as a general equivalent that

adequately represents the value embodied in socially-necessary labor.

Democracy, from a Proudhonian perspective, could be described as the

total realization and social diffusion of exchange value; he wants to

preserve capital, in Marx's view, and just get rid of the capitalists.

[38] Marx's polemical response to Proudhon is that if money is an

equivalent, it is an equivalent of inequality, an equivalent of

exploitation. In other words, the capitalist process of valorization

cannot be based simply on socially-necessary labor, but must also

include surplus labor, as its foundation. If the production process

is not carried beyond the point where the value created is equivalent

to the value paid by the capitalist, Marx explains, it is simply a

process of creating value; the defining characteristic of capitalist

valorization is that the two values are not equivalent. (See above

Chapter 4.5) Proudhonian socialism is an impossible, utopian vision

because money (and the wage labor which supports it) is always and

necessarily based on exploitation. In this framework "one cannot

speak of value without speaking of exploitation...." [24] A socialist

perfection of the law of value would go hand in hand with and would be

identical to a capitalist perfection of exploitation.

This polemic against socialism should be read in the Italian

context of the 70s. After the Historic Compromise, the PCI, hailed as

a model of Eurocommunism, advocated a policy of close participation

with capital. The revolutionary voices in the party, which were so

central in the immediate post-war period and which lingered through

the 60s, were now all but silent. Negri's emphasis on Marx's

rejection of socialism (defined as the proposition of equality along

with the preservation of capitalist valorization) is certainly

fashioned as an indictment of PCI policy. The question of

valorization serves to demystify the politics of socialism and to

divide the scene into two camps: those who support capitalist

valorization are on one side and those who oppose it on the other.

Negri argues that Marx's argumentative strategy to present value

exclusively in the form of money in the Grundrisse, then, is designed

to demonstrate not only that socialism is impossible, but that crisis

is an integral element of the very process of capitalist valorization:

"money ... shows us immediately the law of value as crisis." [40]

What the money-form makes explicit about the law of value is its

tendency toward a relationship characterized not by mediation but by

command. When Marx considers value as money, that is, it does not

appear as an objective, indifferent form of mediation, but as a

subjective form of the exertion of power. "Money, the form of value,

is a relation of inequality, generically representative of the

property relation, substantially representative of the power

relation." [32] In essence, situating the discussion around money

makes clear for Marx that an objective treatment of the law of value

must be replaced by a subjective treatment of the law of surplus

value.

In Marx's analysis of money, Negri has read the theoretical

development from the crisis of the law of value to the construction of

capitalist command. We should remember here that Negri uses the term

"crisis" in a particular sense: as the revelation of a mystification,

but of mystification which is still effective to a certain extent.

"Quando si parla di crisi della legge del valore occorre fare

attenzione: la crisi della legge non ne elimina infatti la vigenza, ne

modifica invece la forma trasformandola da legge dell'economia

politica in forma del commando dello Stato." [Dominio 13] In summary,

then, what the "crisis" makes clear is that the law of value does not

operate as an objective or indifferent formal structure, but rather as

a subject of capital and its social organization; the crisis brings to

the surface the command implicit in the law.

There is a very significant methodological point which follows

from Negri's reading of Marx's "Chapter on Money": here the concept of

"civil society" is absolutely excluded from social and political

discourse. In Hegelian political theory, civil society is the element

that mediates between the plurality of individual forces and the unity

of the State. Many Marxists in the Hegelian tradition (Gramsci is

notable among them) have exalted the indifferent mediating force of

social interchange in civil society as a fundamental organizational

principle and a key element in progressive change. (4) Negri argues,

however, that with the historical crisis of the Planner-State and the

advent of the Crisis-State, there is no such force of social

mediation, but rather the State has to impose directly the rules of

social interchange. [Proletari 30-31] Thus, the concept of civil

society, fundamentally linked to a formal conception of juridical

norms, loses its applicability. Furthermore, however, and perhaps

more profoundly, Marx's "Chapter on Money" makes clear that the

impartial mediation of value, at the heart of the concept of civil

society, is impossible in a capitalist framework. Without the law of

value as a foundation, the concept of civil society crumbles and

leaves behind a raw antagonism on the social horizon, between those

who exploit on one side and those who are exploited on the other. (5)

Finally, following the line of Marx's argument it seems that if

we are to propose a project of liberation in this context, it must be

a liberation from value tout court! [Marx 26] Obviously, such a

radical destruction of the mechanism for the production of value

cannot stand on its own as a complete process, or rather, such a

proposition would constitute a purely anarchistic vision. Negri asks

then, is it possible for the working class to use its productive

force, its inventive and creative power, to valorize itself

autonomously? [Proletari 45] Is there a proletarian self-valorization

which exists as an alternative to the capitalist process of

valorization? This is the question that sends Negri back to the

Grundrisse to follow the development of Marx's argument.

6.3 Surplus value and profit

Marx does not, however, move directly from the analysis of

capitalist valorization to that of proletarian self-valorization --

his reasoning needs first to articulate a new foundation through a

developed theory of surplus value. According to Negri, the analysis

of money as command serves Marx as the point of departure for the

theory of surplus value. The theory of surplus value will cover the

same terrain that we saw in the analysis of money, but this time with

an inverted perspective, so that the discourse will lead to the

emergence not of the subject of capital but of the subject of the

working class. "Money is the black thread which links together ...

the command of capital; the theory of surplus value is the red thread

that should make the same operation from the workers' point of view

...." [Marx 63] Therefore, we need to go back with Marx to reexamine

the fundamental relationship between labor and value, this time from

the workers' standpoint.

The basic distinction that opens the analytical path for the

theory of surplus value is the division of labor time into necessary

labor time and surplus labor time. The elegant simplicity of Marx's

reasoning is the major strength of the argument as a political weapon.

The value of necessary labor is defined as the cost of the

reproduction of the worker over a fixed period. The capitalist is

constrained to pay this amount to the worker in order to continue the

work relationship. The worker, however, works longer than the time

necessary to produce this value. The value created during this

surplus labor time is kept by the capitalist and defined as surplus

value. Negri notes two aspects of this basic foundation which give

the theory of surplus value its power. First, Marx's transposition

from the law of value to the law of surplus value brings to center

stage a principle antagonism between subjects. "The theory of surplus

value is ... immediately the theory of exploitation." [74] The

antagonism defined in this relationship is the germ of the workers'

subversion of the work relationship and the beginnings of worker

subjectivity. Secondly, when Marx defines the concept of necessary

labor, he uses the term "necessary" in a particular way. The costs of

reproduction, of course, do not refer only to the minimal biological

needs of the human organism, but more significantly they refer to the

needs, desires and expectations that have become socially accepted as

necessary in a specific historical context. The variability of the

costs of reproduction and hence of necessary labor is the dynamic key

to the positive side of the theory of surplus value. The proletarian

struggle, according to Negri, is continually striving to broaden the

sphere of reproduction, the sphere of non-work, and hence increase the

value of necessary labor. [71-72] Increase the proportion of

necessary labor and decrease that of surplus labor: this is an initial

strategy suggested by Marx's definition of surplus value. The

collective construction of the necessary is a fundamental political

goal. However, we need to wait for a fuller development of the theory

before we can appreciate the strength and viability of such a

strategy.

The theory of surplus value is the micro-analysis of the

capitalist process of valorization, of the relationship of

exploitation from the workers' point of view. Marx expands this

theory to a macro level, to the level of society in the theory of

profit. According to Negri, the theory of profit is a theory of

exploitation in circulation, of the exploitation of society. "The

category of profit has its origins in the equalization of individual

surplus values": profit, in other words, is socialized surplus value.

[92] The shift from the micro to the macro level brings into focus

the socialization of surplus value, or rather the analysis of surplus

value as a social category. This social broadening which marks this

theoretical passage brings with it an important consequence. Whereas

surplus value is concerned with the exploitation of living labor in

the individual production process, in the antagonism determined

between necessary labor and surplus labor, profit takes the results of

exploitation in their fixed social form, indifferent to the individual

labor process. [90] The antagonism, then, that is defined by the

theory of profit is no longer necessary labor vs. surplus labor, but

now living labor vs. objectified labor. "The subjectivity of living

labor opposes in such an antagonistic fashion the consolidation of

dead labor into an exploiting power that it negates itself as a value,

as an exploited essence, thus proposing itself as the negation of

value and exploitation." [98] The social antagonism has been pushed

up to a higher level of analysis. The contradiction between living

labor and objectified labor takes on a subjective form in the

antagonism between the classes. From the theory of surplus value,

then, through the theory of profit, we arrive at a theory of class

struggle.

Up to this point, we have traversed the first half of the path

toward a theoretical analysis of the socialized production process

from the workers' point of view: Marx's developed theory of surplus

value, that merges with a theory of class struggle, has posed a potent

theoretical pars destruens. [103] Negri also brings this theory of

antagonism to life in practical terms in the contemporary struggles of

the 1970s: Marx's theoretical pars destruens translates into a

practice characterized both by the sabotage of social control and by

the articulation of a separate, autonomous logic of organization.

Sabotage, the destructuration and destabilization of capitalist

control necessarily implies a practice of violence. "Proletarian

violence is a symptom of communism;" [Marx 174] it is an expression of

proletarian intelligence and a precondition for change. (6) Violence,

however, goes beyond this symptomatic role and plays a substantial

role in social transformation. "La violenza Š il filo razionale che

lega la valorizzazione proletaria alla destrutturazione del sistema e

quest'ultima alla destabilizazione del regime." [68] However, we

should be sensitive to the fact that since 1973 Negri's conception of

the use and organization of violence has shifted somewhat, in line

with the logic of separation and the theory of autonomy. At this

point, he conceives of proletarian violence as "una violenza non

omologabile a quella capitalistica." [Dominio 69] The polemic here is

against the construction of a party or vanguard as a specular image of

the State, as the institution of a monopoly on violence and hence as

the repression of the free proletarian expression of its antagonism.

This repression and control of mass violence, Negri claims, is the

beginnings of the Gulag. [67] Consequently, he argues for a more

general, polyvalent use of violence that develops in independent terms

along with the proletariat's self-organization. (7) The course of

action, then, which Negri proposes for the initiation of social

transformation consists of both violence and separation. "Il metodo

della trasformazione sociale non pu• che essere quello della dittatura

proletaria. Intesa in termini propri: come lotta per l'estinzione

dello Stato, per la sostituzione intera del modo capitalistica di

produzione attraverso l'autovalorizzazione proletaria e il suo

processo collettivo." [44] Negri uses dictatorship to mean both the

sabotage and the exclusion of the enemy that subsequently clear the

space where a new construction is possible. Dictatorship is the

practical application of the logic of separation. Now, therefore, we

must turn our attention to the pars construens, the constitutive

process which will animate this new terrain.

6.4 Self-valorization and the theory of the wage

Marx's pars construens must look back to the process of

production and reexamine the theory of surplus value; from that point

it must develop an alternative logic of valorization. Negri groups

this positive theory under the title "the theory of the wage." We

will see in the development that the wage, or necessary labor, acts

independently of capital according to a logic of separation. [131]

Marx, then, goes back to expand on the positive strategic

possibility that we noted earlier in the theory of surplus value:

increase the proportion of necessary labor and thereby decrease the

proportion of surplus labor. This possibility gains strength in step

with the historical development of productive forces. "The more labor

becomes abstract and socialized ... the more the sphere of needs

grows. Labor creates its own needs and forces capital to satisfy

them." [133] In other words, the development of productive forces

brings with it an increased conception of the necessary reproduction

costs of the workers; consequently, capital is forced to concede a

higher wage. Marx, however, views this increase not merely in the

objective terms of capitalist development, but more importantly in

terms of working class subjectivity. From this point of view the

process consists of two elements: 1) the reappropriation of surplus

value to increase the value of necessary labor (the wage) and 2) the

internal management of the reproduction which corresponds to this

value. The first element, the strategy of reappropriation, is a

simple extension of the antagonism between necessary and surplus

labor. To reappropriate surplus value means to reduce it to non-work,

to the freedom and enjoyment of the working class. This strategy,

then, attempts a positive reversal of the theory of surplus value.

"Whereas, in capital's project, labor is commanded by surplus labor,

in the proletariat's revolutionary project reappropriated surplus

value is commanded by necessary labor." [147] This appropriation

represents a battle for the control of the production process, but

also for the expansion of the domain of reproduction, of non-work, in

which an alternative valorization is possible. The strategy of

reappropriation gives Negri a new perspective on traditional wage

struggles. "Solo quando la lotta salariale si tramuta in lotta di

appropriazione -- e si badi bene: non Š necessario che sia lotta di

appropriazione in senso proprio, basta che il salario sia visto come

possibilit… immediata di accedere a nuova possibilit… umane -- solo

allora la stessa lotta salariale Š credibile." [Proletari 48] The

struggle for appropriation coupled with the socialization of

production expands the focus of wage struggles to a struggle for a

"social wage," the cost that capital must concede to the working class

as a whole for its own use and enjoyment. Negri sees the theoretical

development in Marx's thought as parallel to an historical development

in the class struggle: today the wage is tied to the cost of the

reproduction of the entire working class, which is determined by the

advances of proletarian struggles. "Il luogo coperto dal salario

nella continuit… delle lotte proletarie viene dunque, oggi, esteso

alla lotta sulla spesa pubblica." [Dominio 34] The socialized wage

struggle is a struggle for public spending. Only this socially-

expanded struggle can attack the terrain of capitalist valorization

and construct the bases of proletarian self-valorization.

We should pause here to note a return of the "revolutionary

reformism" which had characterized Negri's thought before 1968. In

the "Lenin years," between 68 and 73, Negri shifted his focus toward

insurrectional practices that were in direct opposition to the State.

After 73, however, there was a return to the reformist tactics, such as

wage struggles, which were associated earlier with the operaisto

conception of "class composition." In the mid-70s the wage struggles

of the Italian working class (particularly of the autonomous, extra-

syndical movements) took on a broad social character: the socialized

working class demanded a "political wage" from the Welfare State. To

an extent, then, these strategies can be associated with numerous

other social reform movements. Once again, however, the objective of

Negri's theorizing and of the political movements is not to create a

new institutional structure within the Welfare State, but rather to

demand continual increases of public spending so as to reach the point

of rupture of capital's mechanisms of recuperation. Even if these

movements take a reformist face in a certain sense, the goal is not

"to use the State as a resource", but rather the ultimate goal is to

force the extinction of the State as a form of organization and

control. As I claimed earlier in Chapter 4, in reference to the

operaisto policies in the 60s, this strategy could be called a "bad

faith reformism", or rather reformism taken one step too far. The

proximate enemy of this radical syndicalism was the official workers'

movement, or more specifically the corporativist unions and the PCI.

Negri and the autonomisti were proposing an "other" workers' movement

that was closer to the practices of the masses. (8)

Negri's theory of wage struggles in the 70s, however, also brings

a new focus: in addition to breaking the dialectic of State control,

the struggle for increased public spending was now conceived as

directed toward the creation of new social spaces, of liberated zones

of working class control. The wage struggle, though, can only

construct the terrain. The management of self-valorization represents

a second moment of the process, filling this terrain with new

contents. "Only necessary labor has this capacity to oppose its own

resistance to capitalist valorization, a resistance that is its own

conservation and reproduction. A resistance that does not consist of

simply a point of immobility, but rather is itself a cycle, a

movement, a growth." [Marx 135] The management of the processes of

reproduction is the cornerstone of the constitutive face of self-

valorization. In this sphere of non-work, the working class develops

what Marx calls "a small-scale circulation" that expands and

socializes its mechanisms of self-reproduction. "Small-scale

circulation is the space within which the sphere of needs related to

necessary labor develops. Thus it takes form and constitutes itself

dynamically, consolidates itself in the composition of labor power, in

the composition of the working class. It reproduces itself and grows,

finally defining itself as the potential of struggle." [136]

According to Negri, the analysis of small-scale circulation, of the

proletarian mechanisms of interchange and management in the

interstices of the griddings of capital, is one of the Grundrisse's

major theoretical contributions. [cf. Grundrisse 673-78] This

collective self-management of the working class that emerges on the

small scale is the construction of a social individual "capable not

only of producing but also of enjoying the wealth produced." [145]

This small-scale circulation is not merely a material

interchange, but it also implies the creation and socialization of

value. In the domain of the self-managed reproduction of the working

class, mechanisms of self-valorization arise as the measure of non-

work, as the measure of this productive activity which lies outside or

between the reach of capitalist valorization. [Dominio 46-47] The

structures and content of self-valorization can only be defined by

looking to the actual practices of the working class. The processes

of self-valorization are constructed as a sort of proletarian

primitive accumulation, not an accumulation of fixed wealth, or

capital, but of needs, pleasure, practices. "C'Š una

'tesaurizzazione' operaia che non Š meno rilevante di quello

capitalistica, c'Š un cumulo di elementi di lotta che si trasformano

in bisogni ed arricchiscono la composizione." ["Dall'Estremiso al Che

fare?" 336] The structures of self-valorization are constructed

through the accumulation of proletarian practices that define the

separate social reproduction of the working class.

Now, with the developed theory of the wage and self-valorization,

we are bordering on the domain that Negri calls "beyond Marx." It is

Marx's own terrain which extends beyond the limits of the analysis

Marx accomplished himself. Negri makes his point by means of a

historical and philological discussion about Marx's own changes in his

project for the drafting of Capital. We find in the Grundrisse an

original plan for the comprehensive organization of Capital which

includes a separate "Book on the Wage," but when Marx actually drafts

Capital this separate book disappears. [cf Marx 6-7] Negri has

found in his own reading that the separate development of the theory

of the wage (of the reproduction and self-valorization of the working

class) is very important: why, then, Negri asks did Marx change his

plans and decide to leave this chapter out? Negri offers us two

hypotheses. First, he suggests that since the theory of the wage is

fundamental to the entire theory of capital, Marx dispersed the

argument throughout the entire discourse. The wage, then, or the

power and the perspective of the working class, provides the backdrop

of the discussion and we can read it, just as Negri has done, in bits

and pieces dispersed through out Capital and the Grundrisse. [Marx

130] This first hypothesis, however, is obviously weak because it

does not account for the centrality of the thematic of the wage. As a

second and more forceful hypothesis, Negri suggests that since the

theory of the wage is dependent for its foundation on the struggles

and practices of the proletariat, Marx recognized that he could not

give it adequate treatment given the elementary level of class

struggle in his times. [131-33] The theory can only be articulated

adequately after a "tesaurizzazione" of proletarian practices, need

and desires, in other words after the working class has developed its

own mechanisms of self-valorization. In effect, Negri argues that

Marx's theory was too far ahead of his times and that the gap between

his thinking and the contemporary level of class struggle prevented

him from articulating the developed theory of the wage. "We can

almost suspect Marx of being afraid of falling into utopianism. Of

being afraid of the non-commensurability of theory and organization,

of possible organization." [182] Negri claims, then, that the

Grundrisse is "an anticipation of the course of history." [133] Only

today, with the contemporary developments in the class struggle, can

we effectively go "beyond Marx" to complete the theory nascent in his

thought.