.m:2
Remark:
The practices of self-valorization.
Negri's original
interpretation has made it clear that a Marxist
argument
for self-valorization, developed from the analysis of small-
scale
circulation, does exist in the Grundrisse. Since we find Marx's
argument
in a fairly underdeveloped, embryonic form, however, it is
difficult
simply on the basis of the text to accept the importance
which
Negri places on this concept. In
order to appreciate Negri's
enthusiasm
we have to look more closely at the context of his
writings;
as he pointed out in his reading of Marx, the concept of
self-valorization
cannot be developed simply in theoretical terms but
only
through the practices of the working class. Once again, as we
have
noted several times in following his career, with the concept of
self-valorization
Negri is attempting to follow the movements of the
masses
and theorize in a manner adequate to their practices. To
understand
his theory, then, we have to look to the activities of the
working
class.
Italy shared many
movements found in other first world countries
that
sought to create alternative economies and counter-cultures,
such as
squatter movements, collective living experiments, new
cultural
projects, independent radio stations, etc. Several practices
that
were wide-spread in Italy at this time should be analyzed in this
regard,
but the most innovative was the "autoreduzione" movement, a
movement
for the collective and autonomous control of prices. Many
of the
counter-culture initiatives contributed to new sets of
values
that defined various emerging communities, but the self-
reduction
movement addressed the issue of the production of value
directly
in the economic sense.
Self-reduction of prices was
considered
as the social correlate of the workers' struggles for the
political
wage: just as the workers will determine their wage, the
consumers
will determine the prices of goods, a political price.
"Autoreduzione
is the act by which consumers, in the area of
consumption,
and workers, in the area of production, take it upon
themselves
to reduce, at a collectively determined level, the price of
public
services, housing, electricity; or in the factory, the rate of
productivity."
["Autoreduction Movements in Turin" 72] This assault
on two
fronts was seen as the means to gradually assert popular
control
of economic planning, to claim a popular determination of
value.
The self-reduction
movement should be recognized in the context
of the
Italian economic crisis that was aggravated by the oil crisis
of
1973. The Italian State's response
to the economic crisis was an
austerity
program (the Carli Plan, 1974) which was founded on the
tacit
support of Berlinguer and the PCI.
In this context we can see
how the
Historic Compromise, and the party's agreement not to oppose
government
policies, pushed a solid wedge between the PCI and the
radical
social movements. Just as the
autonomous workers' movements
organized
to resist programs for increased productivity, the social
movements
developed the strategy of self-reduction as a rejection of
austerity. In Turin, the self-reduction movement
opposed increases in
rent,
transportation costs and electricity rates. The strategy was
not to
refuse payment entirely, but rather to determine collectively
the
price they wanted and apply it on a mass scale. For example, for
a
period in Turin the movement posed a goal of limiting rent to 10% of
one'
salary. ["Autoreduction" 73]
The opposition to rises in bus
fares
and electric rates found mass support and achieved real gains:
through
the intervention of the local Turin unions, prices were
renegotiated. There were also several more-loosely
coordinated
practices
which bordered on self-reduction.
For example, students in
Palermo
protested a bus fare rise by sabotaging the ticket-punchers;
or in
Milan, Autonomisti protested the rising cost of food by holding
grocery
store workers captive and announcing to customers on the loud
speaker
that food would be free that day.
All of these practices
illustrate
how by the mid-70s the radical movements had shifted their
focus
out of the factories and had engaged broader social issues.
The various activities
of self-reduction (through legal, semi-
legal
and illegal means) served to sabotage the austerity program.
More
importantly, though, all of the self-reduction practices
contributed
to the creation of an autonomous sphere in which there
could
be a popular determination of value.
The sabotage of the
austerity
plan, of the valorization of capital, was also the assertion
of the
autonomous valorization of the masses.
In the context of our
study,
we can see that these practices stimulated Negri's theorizing
and
forced him to extend the Marxian concept of self-valorization to
the
point where it could account for the political significance of the
new
social horizon. This example
illustrates very clearly the
relationship
between practice and theory in Negri.
In fact, the
originality
of Negri's theory of self-valorization should not be
credited
to his theoretical skills, but to his ability to grasp in
theoretical
form the innovation of the popular practices.
6.5 The constitution of the subject
With the concept of
proletarian self-valorization and the theory
of the
wage Negri believes to have finally arrived at a positive
subjective
foundation in Marx's thought. Now,
however, this
foundation
has to be extensively articulated in order to reveal its
revolutionary
power. If the theory of profit is
a developed theory of
capitalist
subjectivity, the theory of the wage should be able to
provide
a parallel theory of worker subjectivity.
Following this
logic,
Negri attempts to recompose the theoretical elements which can
effect
this Marxist passage, "to follow the red thread that serves as
woof to
antagonistic subjectivity." [154]
Before he embarks on
a Marxist theory of the subject, however,
Negri
must address the theoretical difficulties surrounding humanism
and
subjectivity in Marx. This polemic
brings us back once again to
Negri's
challenge of Althusser's structuralist project. Althusser is
certainly
correct, Negri maintains, in attacking the humanists'
arguments
for a Marxist subject that springs from a naturalistic and
preconstituted
foundation. In this regard,
structuralism provided a
moment
of openness and freedom with regard to the subject in Marxist
theory. Nonetheless, in Negri's view the
structuralist solution to
the
problem of humanism is equally mistaken.
"In avoiding humanism,
some
would seek to avoid the theoretical areas of subjectivity. They
are
wrong. The path of materialism
passes precisely through
subjectivity. The path of subjectivity is the one
that gives
materiality
to communism. The working class is
subjectivity,
separated
subjectivity, which animates development, crisis, transition
and
communism." [154] The
humanist-structuralist polemic misses the
point
entirely. The subject is central
to Marx's thought, but it is
not the
ideal (rational, unalienated, natural, etc.) subject of
humanism. It is rather a subject that is
articulated, developed,
constituted
through the practice of the masses.
Therefore, Negri
insists
on the central importance, but the profoundly anti-humanist
sense,
of terms such as the "universal individual." "This term
depends
more on the overthrow of the brutality of money relations, or
their
socializing force, than on some naturalist or historicist
consideration,
or on some continuist consideration.
The separation is
radical,
and it serves not only as a key to achieving the inversion,
but
also as a matrix of constitution." [156] The thematic of the
subject
in Marx, then, merges with that of ontological constitution:
the
proletarian subject arises as a process of constitution subsequent
to a
radical inversion of the terrain.
In other words, humanistic
Marxism
poses liberation and communism as a project of release, as the
unfettered
expression of the natural essence of the human subject,
free
from the alienation of capitalist social relations. Negri is
proposing
a Marxist subject that has the same ontological density, but
combines
it with a real freedom and an openness to practice. The
subject
is not discovered on a metaphysical plane but invented in
practice;
its essence is not released but constituted by the process
of
liberation.
The articulation of
communism is identical with the articulation
of the
proletarian subject: "communism takes the form of
subjectivity."
[163] The Grundrisse, then, the
text which represents
Marx's
"subjective approach" is also the principle text that presents
Marx's
positive conception of communism.
According to Negri, this
conception
of communism centers around a double approach to work:
communism
is both the abolition of work and the liberation of work,
the
exaltation of its creative power. (9)
In the terminology that
Negri
has developed, these two moments correspond to the "refusal of
work"
and "proletarian self-valorization"; or, in more traditional
terms,
we could describe this as the destruction of capitalist
relations
of production and the autonomous articulation of proletarian
productive
forces. The definition of
communism is first and foremost
a
definition of communist work.
"Work which is liberated is
liberation
from work. The creativity of
communist work has no
relation
with the capitalist organization of labor. Living labor --
by
liberating itself, by reconquering it own use value, against
exchange
value -- opens a universe of needs of which work can become a
part
only eventually. And in this case,
it is a question of work as
essential,
collective, nonmystified, communist work: instead of work
as
capitalist construction. The
reversal is total, it allows no kind
of
homology whatsoever. It's a new
subject. Rich and joyous."
[165]
Marx
conceives a passage from communist work through the structure of
proletarian
self-valorization to a new social subject.
Negri insists that
Marx's definition of the concept of communism
is full
and methodologically rigorous.
Marx does not pose communism
as a
fixed point of arrival, but as process of constitution. "There
is no
other exposition of communism possible except that of the
transition. Otherwise it is an ineffable
concept." [161] The
conceptual
unity of "communism", "transition" and
"liberation" in
Marx's
thought, however, does not lead to a reformist argument. On
the
contrary, here the transition is a revolutionary one that can only
begin
subsequent to a radical pars destruens, an absolute exclusion of
the
enemy. For Negri, the term
"transition" underlines the fact that
communism
is a project of liberation only insofar as it is a positive
process
of constitution. The subject of
communism does not exist in
embryo
on a metaphysical plane waiting to be liberated, but rather it
must be
constructed in the practice of the masses. "Communism is a
constituting
praxis." [163] Utopian
blueprints are impossible because
the
revolutionary process will create its ends.
Up to this point we
have followed Negri's interpretation of a
projective
logic in Marx's work: he has traced "the logic of
antagonism,
the plural logic at work in Marx's discourse" [171] that
operates
a passage from the inversion to a positive constitution, from
the
destruction of surplus value to a proletarian self-valorization
and
finally to the constitution of revolutionary subject in communism.
However,
Negri must admit that while this logic runs throughout the
Grundrisse
as a powerful motor, it never fully materializes in Marx's
work:
the project of communism never takes on a substantial form.
Marx
outlines a path, but does not travel it himself. In other words,
Marx
does not seem to be able to help us answer what has become the
fundamental
question: What are the concrete mechanisms of constitution
that form
the passage from the insurrectional pars destruens to the
social
subject of communism? For Negri,
this limit represents not a
problem
but an opportunity. "The fact
that Marx himself could only
achieve
partial results must not block us, but rather, on the
contrary,
it should stimulate us to follow his hypothesis." [175]
At this
juncture, Negri claims to be able to go "beyond Marx" once
again
not because he is blessed with greater analytical talents, but
because
since Marx's time the class struggle has pushed history
forward. Negri's argument is that Marx's
research was blocked because
it had
raced too far ahead of the contemporary social reality; only
today
do we have the necessary conditions to theorize a "beyond", to
realize
Marx's intuitions. (10) This
passage, of course, cannot be
accomplished
by theory alone. "Here, in
order us to advance, only a
mature
revolutionary practice can allow us to displace the problem
completely,
to fully develop the subject." [175, modified] The
theoretical
plane, then, must follow this passage in the practice of
the
masses; theory must become "a constitutive phenomenology of
collective
praxis" [185] in order to register and concentrate the
practical
developments. The role of theory
in this passage is to
recognize
the subject which takes form in the constitutive practices
of the
working class. Therefore, Negri
explains, due to this
disparity
between the historical time and the theoretical time of
Marx's
thought, we are not only missing the planned "Book on the Wage"
but we
are also missing a book (which Marx did not even plan) on the
passage
from the theory of the wage to a theory of the subject: "The
Book on
the Social Individual of Communism." [182]
6.6 The social worker: a new problematic of
the subject.
By the time that
Negri wrote Marx Beyond Marx (1978), the
thematic
of "the theory of the subject" was in crisis in Continental
thought. Marx provides Negri with a means of
addressing this crisis.
In the Grundrisse,
he has noted the need for the emergence of a
workers'
subject, a subject of communism, but also he has recognized
the
impossibility of its real development in Marx's thought because of
the
immature state of the 19th-century class struggle: a Marxian
theory
of the subject can only be established on the basis of the
practical
developments of the working class.
The contemporary crisis
of the
theory of the subject, then, is not merely a crisis in
"theory",
but more fundamentally a crisis in "practice"; it is the
reflection,
in other words, of the immature state of a new phase of
struggles. This crisis will not be resolved in the
theoretical domain
until
the social movements have developed to a point where they can
present
the figure of a new laboring subject in practical terms.
However,
even if it is not the role of theory to "resolve" the
problem,
theory can nonetheless serve an important function by posing
the
problem in adequate terms.
Therefore, in order to pose adequately
the
problem of the subject, Negri goes back to follow the guidelines
he
developed earlier in the form of a Leninist class phenomenology.
The
subject of the working class can be discerned through two parallel
paths
of analysis: through the interpretation of the determinate
composition
of the workers and through the recognition of their actual
subjectivity. These two Leninist paths of analysis
help Negri frame
the
question of the subject in the contemporary context.
A first approximation of working class subjectivity,
then,
according
to the determinate path of Lenin's method (see above Chapter
5.3),
can be defined through an analysis of the form of labor and the
organization
of production specific to an historical period -- these
are the
conditions for the worker subject.
The first element that
must be
grappled with, then, is that the nature of labor has changed.
The
capitalist restructuration in response to the attack of 68
consisted
principally in the dismantling (or computerization or
exportation)
of the mass factory; capital recuperated labor power
through
a radical decentralization of production processes and an
increasingly
abstract and socialized form of labor.
Just as the power
of the professional
worker was undermined by deskilling the labor
force
in the 20s and 30s, in Italy in the early 70s the hegemony of
the
mass worker was destroyed primarily by the socialization of
production. The transformation of the relations of
production
presents
the conditions of a new worker subjectivity. This simple
logic
allows Negri to name the worker subjectivity that has been
determined
in the capitalist restructuration.
The "social worker" is
the
worker in the absolutely diffuse social factory for whom labor
power
and exploitation are not merely economic but also immediately
social
categories. Thus we can extend the
chart that we presented
earlier:
.m:1
dominant capitalist | paradigm class | adequate
structure
of production |
subjectivity | organization
________________________|______________________|________________
|
|
specialized
industrial | professional | professional
production |
worker
| vanguard party
________________________|______________________|________________
|
|
mass
industrial |
mass
| mass vanguard
production | worker | party
________________________|______________________|________________
|
|
social production | social worker | ?
|
|
.m:2
The
"social" attribute of this new subjectivity carries both reactive
and
active connotations: the worker is completely socialized in that
its
labor is exploited by social capital not only in the factory but
throughout
society; but with these transformations, the worker gains
new
productive capacities and produces more highly-abstract and
immaterial
social commodities. According to
Negri, the paradigm
product
of the social worker is "social cooperation." The social
worker
directly produces the very fabric of society. It is quite
clear
that, in the very brief account I have given here, the "social
worker"
is a problematic proposition. In
effect, it does not yet
function
as a coherent theory of the subject, but rather it merely
serves
to delimit the terrain on which the problem of the subject
should
be posed; Lenin's determinate path of class phenomenology gives
us a
name before we can identify the subject itself.
Negri was also able
to (or forced to) recognize the new form of
worker
subjectivity with a parallel path of investigation, that is
according
to the spontaneous path of Leninist analysis (see Chapter
5.2). The combativity of the newly emerged
social groups, especially
the
feminists and the students, presented powerful and spontaneous
expressions
that could not be recuperated in the model of the mass
worker:
their labor was different from that of the mass worker in real
and
concrete terms. The subjective
expressions, the revolts and the
resistances
of these movements demonstrated the power of abstract and
social
labor that previously had not been recognized on a political
level. The feminist focus on domestic labor in
this period, for
example,
brought into question the traditional means of discussing
labor,
production and exploitation; women refused to have their labor
subordinated
as unproductive or unnecessary.
The movement presented a
myriad
of subjective faces, each demanding recognition. The challenge
for
Negri, in this context, was to pose the subjective unity of the
movement
without eclipsing the real internal differences between the
autonomous
groups. He recognized that if the
concept of "labor" was
to be
posed as a generalizable category in the contemporary mode of
production,
it had to be posed on a sufficiently abstract plane.
Negri
believes that the concept of "social work" allows us to grasp
the
unifying quality in the labor vindicated by all of the new
movement
(feminists, students, factory workers, service industry
workers,
informal sector workers, etc.).
The social worker is Negri's
attempt
to follow a strong conception of the worker subject out of the
factory
and into society, maintaining its coherence while accepting
the
radical plurality of its expressions.
Finally, we should
note that Negri's proposition of the social
worker
as the adequate problematic for a contemporary theory of the
subject
helps us avoid two difficulties which have plagued many recent
discussions
of subjectivity. On one side are
those who, in the
attempt
to preserve the unity of a general conception of the subject,
have
failed to accept the radical and irrecuperable differences of new
and
newly-emerged groups. Among these
are the Marxists who harbor a
nostalgia
for the universal image of the factory worker as the symbol
and
archetype of revolutionary subjectivity.
On the other side are
those
who have taken the proposition of subjective differences and the
crisis
of the theory of the subject to mean that a coherent theory of
the
subject is no longer possible, that the subject has effectively
disappeared. These theorists would argue that the
concept of "worker"
no
longer functions as a subjective category. Negri's proposition of
the
social worker attempts to negotiate this paradox of subjective
unity
and multiplicity on an abstract and social plane. Even though
in the
period of our study (1973-78) Negri does not and cannot arrive
at a
satisfying proposition of the problematic of the theory of the
subject,
his efforts to delimit the terrain of the social worker are
certainly
suggestive of further possibilities.
To ask more of a a
theorist
at this juncture would be asking him to take up fortune-
telling:
the future of the subject must be played out through the
practical
struggles and developments of the social movements.
Remark:
Renverser Foucault: Negri's constitutive ontology.
It has been clear at
several points in our reading that the
trajectory
of Negri's political and philosophical career has led him
to the
study of ontology, yet we should recognize that his use of the
term
"being" is highly unconventional. What exactly does Negri mean
by
ontology? How does ontology
address the political pressures that
are
driving his thought? The answers
to these questions are not
immediately
evident in the work we have considered and, in fact, Negri
spends
much of the next 10 years, the 1980s, struggling to define and
flesh
out his ontological framework.
Instead of summarizing the
results
of Negri's research during these years, however, I think it
would
be more productive to try to situate Negri's ontological
problematic
within the context of contemporary theory.
The mainstream of Continental
metaphysics has been occupied for
quite
some time by the problematic of the negative foundation of
being. Several diverse strains of negative
thought have found
substantial
followings (drawing inspiration from Nietzsche,
Wittgenstein
and Husserl among others), but let us focus briefly on a
Heideggerian
version which has played an especially influential role.
One
aspect of Heidegger's work that has received considerable
attention
is the development of the Hegelian ontological relation
between
foundation and expression; Heidegger continues and
problematizes
the Hegelian discussion of the definition of the
foundation
of being. (11) There is
necessarily a rupture between the
foundation
and the expression of being because, in the framework of
negative
thought, the foundation of being in itself is always
ineffable:
this is the paradox of negative metaphysics. The
foundation
can only be when it is said, but the being-said itself has
no
foundation -- it is pure voice. The voice that expresses being, in
other
words, has an absolutely negative ontological statute. Being
seems
to rest precariously on a poetics of silences. Language and
logic
function as positive surfaces, but there remains the mysterious
and sometimes
mystical realm of negativity in the background, as the
ontological
scaffolding. In the Heideggerian
framework, the
foundation
of being does not cease to be a problem, but rather it
seems
to gain an intensity in its absence.
Contemporary proponents of
negative
thought pursue this issue in diverse directions with greater
and
lesser degrees of success (Derrida in deconstruction, Massimo
Cacciari
in a theory of "Krisis" and nihilism, Gianni Vattimo in weak
thought),
but for those who continue to theorize about being there
remains
a common preoccupation: the problem of a being-said that has
no
foundation, the problem of a voice, an ontological expression that
hovers
over the abyss of the negative.
Negri, along with
Deleuze, is unusual among contemporary
Continental
thinkers in that he does not participate in the
Heideggerian
approach to ontology, in that he rejects the entire
tradition
of negative metaphysics. However,
given an hegemony of
negative
thought in Continental philosophy, where does Negri find the
grounding
that allows him to pursue a positive metaphysics and a
constitutive
ontology? We should certainly
recognize that Deleuze's
and
Negri's investigations in ontology participate in an ancient line
of philosophical
inquiry: Spinoza is certainly the seminal figure, but
Duns
Scotus, Lucretius and others should also be included. Derrida
has
pointed out that Spinoza is the one figure in the history of
philosophy
that Heidegger never came to terms with; perhaps Spinoza's
proposition
of a positive foundation of being proved incomprehensible
to
Heidegger. Negri certainly was
influenced and aided by Spinoza in
the
development of his ontological ideas, but the effective forces
leading
him to pose the problematic of a positive metaphysics were
much
more local and immediate.
Negri, unlike
Deleuze, is not an untimely thinker.
We can best
understand
his turn toward ontology, I believe, if we pose it in the
context
of the new conditions of philosophizing which resulted from
the
impact of Foucault. I am not
claiming that Foucault presents us
with a
constitutive ontology, but rather that his thought provides the
possibility
of this positive foundation.
"With him it is standing on
its
head. It must be inverted, in
order to discover the rational
kernel
within the mystical shell." [Capital, postface to the second
edition
103] Renverser Foucault: this is
perhaps the most adequate
context
for Negri's ontological investigations. Finding this
possibility
in Foucault, of course, requires a particular
interpretation
of his work. What is the status of
ontological
discussion
in Foucault? To many interpreters
Foucault's seems to be a
completely
de-ontologized world. I would argue,
on the contrary, that
ontological
issues remain close at hand, as a substratum, throughout
his
writings; Foucault works away from his Heideggerian and Husserlian
roots
and through his structuralist allegiances finally to bring the
foundation
of being to the surface of the world in the form of "a
historical
ontology of ourselves." ["What is Enlightenment?" 45] In
other
words, many read Foucault's rejection of negative metaphysics
(of the
power of the negative, of the negative essence of being) as a
rejection
of metaphysics and ontology tout court.
This is certainly
one of
the options made available by his passage through
structuralism. Foucault, however, takes a different
route. In his
theory
of the "dispositif" he develops a new conception of the
positive
foundation of being. Being no
longer resides in the hidden
recesses
of a transcendental realm, but now it is flattened out on the
surface
of the world, in the mechanisms, disciplines and deployments
which
positively constitute real practices and desires. This is not
the
place to launch into an extensive analysis of Foucault, and we
should
keep in mind that for our purposes the important element is
simply
the influence his thought had on Negri, but allow me to offer
three
points which may help illustrate the plausibility of reading
this
ontological foundation in Foucault.
Consider first Foucault's
rejection
of the repressive hypothesis in the context of our
ontological
discussion. Foucault's polemic against
the repressive
hypothesis
is a polemic against a conception of preexisting or
preformed
constitutions; in Foucault, all desires and subjectivities
are
constituted through practices in the world. The moment of
constitution
is fundamental: it constructs a real foundation. This
conception
of constitution offered in Foucault is central for any
materialist
ontology that rejects an ideal and preformed essence of
being
and yet seeks a positive ontological foundation. The second
point I
would like to consider is the difference between a "structure"
and a
"dispositif." It seems
to me that Foucault's mature thought
operates
both a substantialization and a politicization of
structuralism,
that Foucault's conception of a dispositif brings to
bear
the weight, the corporeality and the power of being. The
dispositifs
that constitute the horizon of the world (the limits of
our
thought and action) in a specific epoch weave together to form the
fabric
of being. Through Foucault's
analysis, for example, the
complex
intersection of dispositifs in the era of disciplinarity takes
on a
substantial dimension, constituting and determining the real
possibilities
of thought and practice. In
Foucault, the dispositifs
of
power construct the effective transcendentals of an age. In this
way,
Foucault provides an historical and materialist account of the
constitution
of a second nature, or rather an n-th nature -- a nature
that
was always already artificial.
Ontology is continually remade in
the
complexity of real power relations, subsuming or accumulating all
the
determinations of historical being.
In the exercise of the
dispositif,
then, the question of politics moves to the center of
metaphysics. Finally, the theory of the dispositif
not only
politicizes
and substantializes the theory of the structure in an
ontological
dimension, but also animates it with a new intentionality
and
subjectivity. The dispositifs of
power never act with a global
intention
or project, but nonetheless there is an intentionality in
Foucault's
power just as there is a purposiveness in the nature of
Kant. The dispositifs that constitute nature
organize the world as a
constellation
of subjectivities.
Foucault provides us
with a developed conception of a political
ontology,
that is of a historical being founded in power. Here Negri
finds
the rational kernel. However, as
many interpreters note,
Foucault
seems to present a dominating nature that constructs the
world
in an indefatigable march of subjectivization/subjugation, a
substantialized
"processus sans sujet."
In most of Foucault's work,
the
dispositifs of power seem to be presented as natura naturans (the
constitutive
agent) and social subjects are restricted to the role of
natura
naturata (constituted and determined agents). This is where
Negri
seeks to exercise the inversion of Foucauldian ontology,
bringing
the subject to the position of natura naturans. In other
words,
Negri sees the Foucauldian process of the positive constitution
of
being as an opportunity for subjective intervention. Through our
collective
practice and labor, through our power we can construct a
branch
of the complex network of our being.
"La pratica della
pratica,
e cio il concetto completamente dispiegato della pratica
sociale,
un surplus ontologico che noi aggiungiamo all'orizzonte del
mondo."
[Fabbriche del soggetto 150-51]
Through the organization of
our
collective practice, of our collective labor, we are constructing
a small
but very real segment of our being.
Through social practice
we can
intervene in the constitution of our nature and thus struggle
to
determine the horizons of our thoughts and actions, of our desires
and
pleasures.
I do not expect this
brief explanation to provide an adequate
treatment
of Negri's ontological investigations or the important
questions
that it raises. I aim simply to
situate his project in the
context
of contemporary thought and to show how the ontological
possibilities
in Foucault provide him with a solid point of departure.
Like
Foucault's, Negri's ontology is political in that it has a
positive
foundation in the material and historical field of force that
is
constituted by the exercise of power.
Negri, however, tries to
find
the means whereby social subjects intervene in this process of
ontological
constitution through the organization of their practices.
Political
organization, in Negri's framework, becomes the real
organization
of being.
.m:1
Notes
1 - The coup d'Etat in Chile and the
brutal end of the Allende
government
also had a great effect on the movements.
It was viewed as
an
example that elector and peaceful struggles could not succeed in
accomplishing
social change and thus it contributed to a
radicalization
of the movements.
2 - This lack of nostalgia for the old
factory struggles is what
separates
"operaismo" from "fabbrichismo." The English usage of
"workerism"
and the French "ouvririsme" correspond to "fabbrichismo"
in that
they are used pejoratively to designate those who cannot or
will
not recognize the power of social struggles outside the factory.
The
characteristic of "operaismo" is that it has been able to
transform
itself in step with the changing nature of work.
3 - For a description of the
organizational structures of Autonomia,
see
Franco Berardi, "The Anatomy of Autonomy" in the special issue of
Semiotext(e),
Autonomia: post-political politics, 148-171. Also see
Sergio
Bologna, "The Tribe of Moles" in the same issue.
4 - For a thorough analysis of the role
of "civil society" and the
profound
Hegelian influences in Gramsci's thought, see Norberto
Bobbio,
"Gramsci and the conception of civil society" in Which
Socialism?,
pp. 139-61. Bobbio's reading of
Gramsci as being more
Hegelian
than Marxian was very influential in Italy and it
demonstrates
why Gramsci's theoretical work was of of very little
interest
for Negri and his colleagues. In
effect, the conceptual
elements
that have recently aroused great interest in the Anglo-
American
community -- on hegemony, culture, etc. -- are subsumed in
Bobbios's
reading under the concept of civil society. The operaisti
find
more promise in Gramsci's political work in the factory council
movements
than in his theory. For an
alternative to (or
radicalization
of) Gramscian literary theory, see Alberto Asor Rosa,
Scrittori
e popolo.
5 - For an extensive treatment of the
inapplicability of the concept
of
"civil society" in the contemporary social situation, see Negri's
"Journeys
through civil society (In memory of Peter Brckner)" which
appears
in The Politics of Subversion, pp. 169-76.
6 - We should remember once again that
political violence in Italy
was
very wide-spread, on the part of the radical opposition and on the
part of
the State itself. In May 1975,
Italy passed the "Legge reale"
which
authorized the police to fire on demonstrators any time they
felt
public order to be threatened. It
is estimated that 150
militants
were shot by police between May 75 and December 76.
[Berardi,
"Anatomy of Autonomy" 154]
7 - The use and organization of
political violence in the context of
the
Autonomia movement has yet to be studied in an adequate manner.
What
should be clear, however, is that in contrast to the activities
of the
Red Brigades the political violence of the Autonomisti was not
directed
by any central leadership, but was rather conceived and
conducted
on a local scale. This
independence raises the issue of
control. At several points, particularly after
the beginning of the
State
repression in 1979, Negri and the other intellectual and
political
leaders of Autonomia attempted to restrain the violence of
the
militants with limited success; the real autonomy of the various
elements
made attempts at collective restraint nearly impossible.
Violence,
autonomy and leadership presented conflicting demands.
8 - The thesis of an autonomous workers'
movement which has always
existed
parallel to the official workers' movement is developed in the
context
of German labor history in Karl Heinz Roth, L'altro movimento
operaio:
svolta della repressione capitalistica in Germania dal 1880 a
oggi. This book was very influential for
Italian autonomist
theorists.
9 - The English terms "work"
and "labor" both correspond to a single
Italian
term, "lavoro." In
another context I might make a distinction
between
"work" as the designation of the relationship of production
and
"labor" as reference to the productive force, but since the
Italian
affords no such possibility I have avoided such usage and used
the
terms interchangably here.
10 - This argument is typical of Negri's
work and consistent with the
methodology
of historical materialism. We
should not be surprised by
the
claim that theoretical imagination is limited by practical and
social
developments; the development of history, in other words, opens
new
theoretical possibilities. Marx
had to wait for the maturation of
class
struggle to elaborate his proposition of communism. Negri
employs
the same argument with respect to Spinoza's unwritten chapter
on
democracy on the Political Treatise.
It is not merely Spinoza's
death
which prevented the articulation of this chapter; in 17th-
century
Holland, after the Orangist reaction of the 1670s, it was
impossible
to imagine Spinoza's democracy. In
fact, only today, with
the
social developments of three centuries, is it possible to complete
the
Spinozian text.
11 - I base this simplified presentation
of the Heideggerian
ontological
problematic on the discussion by Giorgio Agamben, Il
linguaggio
e la morte: an seminario sul luogo del negativo.