.m:2
Contents
4. Calm before the storm: critical Marxism
(1964-68).
4.1 Operaismo and the subject of critique.
4.2 The split personality of the critical project.
4.3 The end of liberalism: the State and capital.
4.4 The Keynesian State of planned equilibrium.
4.5 Labor and constitution: the transformation of juridical
formalism.
4.6 The labor theory of right and the socialism of capital.
4.7 The dialectic of capitalist development.
4.8 The internal tensions of the critical project.
4. Calm
before the storm: critical Marxism (1964-68).
Before we begin our
study of Negri's thought we need to
contextualize
it on several different planes: within social theory,
within
critical Marxism and within Operaismo or workerism, an Italian
theoretical
movement which began in the early 60s. (1) Our interest
in this
period is not principally focussed on the originality of
Negri's
theoretical contributions: certainly, there are original and
suggestive
analyses here, but if Negri's work had ended in 1968 it
would
not command our attention here.
Instead, we are interested in
this
period primarily for the foundation it establishes and the
tensions
it poses. These tensions will
prove to be the motor of
Negri's
theoretical developments in subsequent periods. In more ample
terms,
we could say that Negri's thought pertains to Operaismo and
Operaismo
in turn pertains to critical Marxism.
Yet at each level,
this
filiation reveals a certain strain or logical conflict; as these
internal
tensions develop, the critical endeavors themselves become
increasingly
problematic and difficult to sustain.
Our interpretative
strategy
in this period, then, will involve recognizing the
participation
in the approach of the critical tradition while being
sensitive
to the tensions internal to this endeavor.
4.1
Operaismo and the subject of critique.
Operaismo shares the
basic theoretical framework common to
critical
Marxist positions. Certainly,
there are important
differences
among the various tendencies -- the Budapest school, the
Frankfurt
school, the Anglo-American New Left, the French
structuralists,
etc. -- but all of these develop from a common point
of
departure. It will be useful,
then, to set up a general, if highly
reductive
framework to outline this horizon.
Critical Marxism is best
situated
as a development or a permutation in the Hegelian tradition
of
social theory. [cf. Marcuse Reason and Revolution 251ff. and
passim.] What distinguishes critical Marxism
from the other forms of
social
or critical theory is not only that the object of the critique
is
specified as capitalist society but also, and more importantly,
that in
some sense the working class constitutes the standpoint for
the
critical endeavor. (This
"working class standpoint" takes several
different
forms, more or less related to the actually existing working
class,
in the various critical Marxist approaches: we can recognize
it, for
example, in the critical focus on labor and alienation or in
the
phenomenological analyses of consciousness and political economy.
We will
return to the question of standpoints later.) Now, if
critical
Marxism is distinguished, on one side, from other forms of
critical
theory by its standpoint, it is also distinguished from other
forms
of Marxism, on the other side, by its conception of development,
by its
approach to the project. The
critical endeavor sees itself as
progressive
in that through the negation of the present state of
affairs
it creates the possibility, the freedom of developing a new
social
arrangement. Indeed, many would
claim that this is the
necessary
approach for any progressive proposition. [cf., for example,
Reason
and Revolution vii-xiv] Following
the approach of critical
Marxism,
then, the project is subordinated to the critique. In other
words,
the positive proposition of proletarian power can only arise
subsequent
to and as a result of the negation of capitalist society:
the
progression is necessarily dialectical.
Therefore, we use
critical
Marxism to designate theoretical endeavors which not only
involve
a critique of capital on the basis of the standpoint of the
working
class, but those which propose that any positive proletarian
project,
if it is to be actualized, must arise through the negative
movement
of the critique. The full sequence
suggested by critical
Marxism,
then, in its most schematic form, is standpoint -> critique
->
project. Or in other terms we
could pose the sequence as
proletarian
affirmation -> negation of capital -> more powerful
proletarian
affirmation. The goal of the
critical Marxist project,
then,
as we have posed it here, is to pass through the critique of
capital
in order to arrive again at the affirmation of the proletarian
foundation.
Operaismo takes
advantage of some of the most powerful elements
offered
by this critical approach. The
paradoxical position of the
working
class with respect to capital is indeed one of the major
strengths
of the critique. The working class
has to be recognized
initially
as a force within capital: the salaried worker is created by
capital
at its dynamic center as its material productive source. The
worker
is the locus of productive force, but only insofar as the
worker
is situated within capitalist relations.
This is true not only
for the
individual worker, but also for the class as a whole: "Anche
il
movimento organizzato della classe -- nelle sue forme storiche, nei
suoi
sindacati, nei suoi partiti --, quando nasce, nasce dentro lo
sviluppo
del capitale, delle sue istituzioni politiche ed economiche.
E non
pu• nascere che qui." [La forma Stato 33-4] However, even
though
the working class resides within capital, it lives within as an
other
posed against capital, as its contradiction. Insofar as the
production
of the working class is expropriated by capital, insofar as
its
labor is alienated, the working class is situated objectively in
opposition
to capital. The conditions of
capitalist production are
the
very same conditions of capitalist exploitation and thus they are
the
foundation of opposition. Within
and against: this is the paradox
which
characterizes the relationship between the working class and
capital
and which constitutes the basis of the Marxist critique. The
standpoint
of the working class serves as a foundation for the
critique
of capital in a complex way: insofar as the working class is
independent
of capital it provides a material standpoint with a
critical
distance from its object, but at the same time insofar as the
working
class is within capital its standpoint provides the basis for
an
immanent critique. The paradox
here is simply that insofar as the
working
class is within capital its opposition to capital is an
opposition
to itself: "Per lottare contro il capitale, la classe
operaia
deve lottare contro se stessa in quanto capitale...." [Tronti
260] This paradoxical perspective provides
Operaismo with the
capacity
to conduct an immanent and total critique of capital.
Up to this point, we
have posed the working class and its
standpoint
as a contradiction within capital in static or synchronic
terms,
but we also need to recognize the contradiction in diachronic
terms,
as critique of capitalist development.
This diachronic focus
makes
more clear and concrete the real power of the working class in
its
relationship with capital. The
salaried worker is created and
recreated
by capital as part of an historical dynamic and, in turn,
the
workers' labor-power continually creates capital. On a diachronic
plane,
then, the working class is within capital in the sense that the
two are
linked in this reciprocal causal dynamic.
This relationship,
however,
is driven by an inherent antagonism.
In this regard, June
1848
represents a fundamental moment: the working class presents
itself
in history as an independent social force organized against the
capitalist
relations of production. In
response to this externality
and
antagonism of the working class the capitalist dynamic of
development
must be articulated as a dialectic.
In the first moment
the
structure of capitalist relations of production pose the
conditions
of the existence of the working class; but these same
conditions
engender the workers' antagonism to capital, the refusal of
the
relationship itself. In a second
moment then, insofar as the
working
class expresses itself independently, external to capital, it
destructures
the relations of capitalist control.
Consequently, in a
final
moment, capital is forced to restructure the relations of
production
to reassert its control and reincorporate or recuperate the
working
class within itself through a dialectical Aufhebung. The
scope
of capital development, then, is to control and contain the
antagonism
of the working class within the elasticity of its
dialectical
progression: capitalist structuration -> proletarian
antagonism
-> capitalist restructuration.
It is important to
recognize
here that the dialectic is driven by the power of the
negative:
in other words, even if in some sense the initial
construction
of the relationship must be accomplished by capital,
nonetheless,
once the relationship has been established, the working
class
fills the role of the stimulus of development, the creative
force
which pushes forward capitalist innovation. Therefore, we
should
not conceive of the social relation as based on capital's
imposition
of its will which is subsequently met by a working class
response;
rather, once the working class has emerged as an independent
force,
we should conceive of the dynamic in terms of proletarian
action and
capitalist reaction. Capital
appears as a conservative
force
which is only stimulated toward development and innovation by
working
class antagonism. "A livello
di capitale socialmente
sviluppato,
lo sviluppo capitalistico Š subordinato alle lotte
operaie,
viene dopo di esse e ad esse deve far corrispondere il
meccanismo
politico della propria produzione." [Tronti 89] Once
capital
has successfully constructed the relationship in its mature
form
(at the level of the entire society), there is an inversion of
struggles
and the working class takes the dynamic role. We can call
this
proposition the "leading role" thesis. It is not the
entrepreneurial
spirit of capital, but rather the antagonism posed by
the
working class, the workerist refusal of capitalist relations of
production
which constitutes the motor driving the development of
mature
capitalist society. The
"leading role of the working class" is
not
merely the slogan of a future communist society, but it is already
the
fact within capital itself. Once
again, in this developmental
form of
the critique, the position of the working class within and
against
capital appears as a paradox, but it is precisely this
paradoxical
position which makes the perspective of the working class
and the
antagonism it comprises the most effective analytical key for
a
critical reading of capitalist development.
At this point we can
propose the principal theoretical tenets
which
form the foundation of Operaismo.
1) On a methodological plane,
the
"leading role" thesis tells us that we must begin the critique of
capitalist
development from the point of view of the working class
struggles
because these constitute its essential dynamic. "Unless we
grasp
this class determinant behind the transformation of capital and
the
State, we remain trapped within bourgeois theory ...." [Negri,
"Keynes"
9] Thus, the theorists of
Operaismo attempt to locate the
theoretical
point of departure for the critique in the contemporary
workers'
struggles. 2) This methodological
point leads directly to a
strategic
proposition: we should not focus revolutionary energies (of
the
critique and subsequently of the project) on the "weakest link" of
the
capitalist system as Lenin suggested, but rather on the strongest
link of
the workers' movement. The
"strongest link" thesis derives
directly
from the thesis of the primacy of workers' struggles and
their
leading role in development.
Capital is not predestined to
catastrophe
and it never enters crisis of its own accord; only the
maturation
and organization of the workers' movement has the power to
bring
on a real, definitive crisis and break the dialectic of
capitalist
control. 3) These theses lead to a
tactical proposition:
the
"refusal of work", the rejection of the capitalist relations of
production,
in its various manifestations, is the central means by
which
the working class can break the cycle of capitalist control.
This
"refusal" can refer to direct actions against capital, such as
organized
strikes, slowdowns, riots, direct appropriation, sabotage,
etc.,
but also indirect actions which reject the terms of capitalist
relations
of production, such as absenteeism, drug use or mass
emigrations. The analytical purpose of this term is
to grasp the
generality
of the various workers' actions which reject work: workers
do not
reject their own productive force or creativity, but rather
they
reject the work relation which defines their production in a
framework
of capitalist control.
Now, while these
theses do identify Operaismo as a particular
form of
critical Marxism, they do not yet explicitly grasp its
distinctive
character. Operaismo is based on
one further tenet, a
global
principle which informs each of the others; that is, that there
can be
no dualism between the standpoint of the critique and the
actually
existing composition of the working class. No dualism means
that
the critique must aim toward a rigorously materialist foundation
in the
concrete practices of the working class; it means combatting
any
abstraction in the critical process which departs from the daily
experiences
of the workers; it means attempting to locate all
theoretical
discourse directly on the shop floor.
In this sense, the
Marx of
Operaismo is primarily the Marx who so enthusiastically
responded
to the uprising of Parisian proletariat in June 1848 and to
the
formation of the Commune in 1871; it is the Marx who joyfully
studied
the movements of the masses and synthesized their
intelligence. This is the Marx that Operaismo claims
as its lineage
and its
proponents go to extraordinary lengths to bring a real
materialist
critique to actuality through the wisdom and power of the
working
class.
The characteristic
which most clearly sets Operaismo apart from
other
forms of critical Marxism, then, is its insistence on the
working
class standpoint, in its effort to read a powerful
subjectivity
in the practice of the masses. The
issue of the subject,
however,
highlights the tensions which Operaismo discovers in the
critical
approach -- it pushes problems inherent to the critical
endeavor
to an extreme point, to a point of rupture. The tradition of
critical
Marxism (the Frankfurt School in particular) has made
enormous
contributions to our understanding of the ways in which we
are
constituted through the complex mechanisms and apparatuses of
capitalist
society. The resulting theory of
the subject has proved to
be a
very rich one, but we should note that it is nonetheless limited
in that
it principally grasps the subject in its receptivity and
plasticity,
rather than in its spontaneity.
The subject grasped by
the
critique is the subject of exploitation, of alienation, not the
subject
of power; it is principally the subject constituted by society
rather
than the subject which constitutes society; it is the subject
of natura
naturata, not the subject of natura naturans. (2) This
difference
is perhaps more clear in terms of the tri-partite structure
we
proposed for the critical process.
If the first moment of the
critical
process, the affirmation of the working class standpoint,
does
present an active, spontaneous subjectivity in the complex of
needs,
desires and practices of the working class, the second moment
of the
process, the critique of capital, inverses the focus and
presents
a subject which produced capitalist society. Finally, the
third
moment, the proletarian project, if it were to come about, would
point
back to the spontaneous subject of the standpoint, this time in
a more
coherent form, with a proposition for a new society created
through
its power. This schema, of course,
is very reductive, but the
central
point is simply that there are two conceptions of the subject
implied
in the different moments of our model: the tension between
these
two subjects brings into focus the disequilibria at the heart of
the
critical project. Operaismo, with
its insistence on pursuing the
standpoint
of the actually-existing working class throughout the
critique,
brings out the tension between the dual subjects in perhaps
the
clearest way.
Here, however, we
have only posed the outlines of critical
Marxism
and the fundamental propositions of the Operaisto critique in
their
most generic form. Now we need to
enter into the heart of the
matter,
examine the specific arguments in their complexity and test
their
analytical and practical validity.
In order to facilitate the
exposition,
let us consider these premises for the moment as
hypotheses
which we will bring into question and verify later in the
text.
4.2 The split personality of the critical
project
Antonio Negri emerged
as one of the central figures of the
Operaismo
experience and his work during the early 60s in many
respects
exemplary of the movement as a whole.
Many years later, when
Negri
was in prison charged with political crimes, several judges and
journalists
went back to study this period of his life and found it to
be
central to his subsequent development.
These authors were very
hostile
to Negri and their analyses are clearly marred by inaccurate
information,
unfounded hypotheses and an unwavering zeal for criminal
condemnation,
but nonetheless, in spite of their intentions, through a
heterogenesis
of ends, we find some very suggestive perceptions in
these
studies. (3) What is most striking
is that all of these authors
locate
the principle problem for analysis in the wide and diverse
scope
of Negri's activity in this period: as they try to piece
together
a coherent history of his work, they are troubled by two
disparate
figures which they cannot manage to reconcile within the
life of
a single man. In caricatured and
sensationalized terms, each
author
comes to pose the central question, who is the real Toni Negri?
They
portray one Toni Negri who is an intelligent and sincere scholar
in the
most formal and traditional sense, who at a very young age has
already
secured himself an illustrious university career in Padua. In
keeping
with the most prestigious Italian academic tradition, he has
worked
extensively on classical German philosophy from Kant and Hegel
to
Dilthey and the historicists. This
is Negri the pure intellectual
who is
fascinated by "intellectual gymnastics" and by "adventures in
ideas".
[Bocca 64] Toni Negri il buon
professore. They portray
another
Toni Negri, though, who was a militant and agitator with the
workers
of the chemical plants at Porto Marghera near Padua. This is
the
Toni Negri who discussed politics at the factory gate before the
morning
shift, who led a special study group on Marx's Capital with
the
workers and who reportedly had an enormous map of the Montedison
factory
on his wall at home so that he could memorize the arrangement
of each
of the work groups and develop closer personal ties to the
workers. This is Negri the militant, the angry
and spiteful
subversive
who advocates sabotage as a strategy to subvert capital and
the
State. Toni Negri il cattivo
maestro. Certainly, these accounts
paint
us two romanticized figures which are blown well out of
proportion,
but even when we deflate the rhetoric the central question
persists. Are there two Toni Negris? Anyone considering Negri's
theoretical
and practical work during this period must indeed come to
terms
with a dual existence, an academic career in the university and
a
practical political life in the factory -- a split personality. The
judges
and journalists understand this schizophrenia as either a
tragic
personality trait (in the case of Bocca) or an elaborate and
sinister
deceit (in the case of Palombarini): the virtuous appearances
cast by
Negri the intellectual serve to mask the real life of the
seditious
conspiritor. The drama and
adventure, the Jeckle and Hyde
mystery
painted by these accounts is tantalizing, but we find a more
adequate
characterization of Negri's work when we recognize that this
"split
personality" is not particular to him, but rather it is a
general
phenomenon at the core of Operaismo and indeed of the entire
endeavor
of critical Marxism. The dual
nature of Negri's work, then,
does
not distinguish him from other critical Marxists; rather, his
work is
original (or better exemplary) principally in that he puts
pressure
on the slippage inherent in the critical project and brings
it to a
point of extreme tension.
The split personality
of critical Marxism follows from the gap
between
the critical standpoint and the critique itself. The
development
and articulation of the standpoint of the working class
unfolds
principally as a sociological endeavor to understand and
describe
the composition of the working class and the real problems,
needs
and desires of the workers. Every
example of critical Marxism
must
involve some elaboration, projection or at least assumption of
this
standpoint. The critique, however,
is conducted on an altogether
different
horizon. Critical theory,
according to Marcuse, "is
supposed
to analyze existing societies in the light of their own
functions
and capabilities and to identify demonstrable tendencies (if
any)
which might lead beyond the existing state of affairs."
[Liberation
3, emphasis mine] Along these
lines, the critique of
capitalist
society would be carried out with respect to its "own
functions
and capabilities" on the basis of logical inference and
rational
development; the critique would bring out the contradictions
of
capitalist society through a rational projection of capital's own
terms. Following this conception, there is a
considerable gap between
the
standpoint of the actual working class and the standpoint of the
critique.
(4) The workers, considered in
concrete and subjective
terms,
in flesh and blood, seem to be completely absent from the
critical
horizon. In what sense, then, is
the standpoint of the
working
class the standpoint of the critique?
Critical Marxism, faced
with
two disparate conceptions of the standpoint, is built on a
divided
foundation. This problem is of
central importance because
locating
the critical standpoint in the materiality of the working
class
is the principle feature which distinguishes the Marxist
critique
from the Hegelian tradition of social theory and which
distinguishes
a materialist from an idealist dialectic.
Negri, like many of
the other partisans of Operaismo, sought to
realize
the Marxist critique in its fullest sense and thus he was
forced
to pursue a dual strategy, investigating the actual composition
of the
working class as one endeavor and conducting a critique of
capital
as another. Negri's "split
personality" is, in this sense,
exemplary. The principle operaisto technique for
investigating the
standpoint
of the working class is the "inchiesta operaia" (the worker
inquiry),
or rather the "inchiesta calda" (the hot inquiry), which
involves
the study of the practices, needs and desires of the workers,
conducted
with the direct participation of workers in order to
determine
the class composition and the workers' subjectivity. (5)
The
inquiry is "hot" in the sense that it is carried out within the
factory
from the workers' perspective, not from the "cool" distance of
the
university. The purpose of these
studies was to gain an adequate
understanding
of the Italian working class from the inside out.
However,
for intellectuals like Negri, the effort to go into the
factories
and get to know the workers also had a personal effect which
was
very important but much less tangible.
Paola Negri explained one
project
to one of the journalists: "L'originalit… della nostra
esperienza
fu il contatto reale con gli operai.
Toni, Massimo
Cacciari
e altri tenevano delle riunioni serali a Porto Marghera dove
si
svolgeva questo studio ... di Marx: i professori leggevano un brano
del Capitale
e gli operai lo traducevano nei loro problemi reali."
[Bocca
62] The full effect of this
experience is hard to grasp.
Intellectuals
like Negri recognized that they had a great deal to
learn
from the workers and through this real contact political
activity
took on a very immediate, concrete and practical sense for
them. More importantly, perhaps, for Negri
and many others the joint
projects
with the workers and the personal friendships fostered not
only an
informed sympathy for their cause but also an intense passion,
a
restive desire for utopia and firm conviction of the possibility of
revolution. The principle result of this practical
endeavor is
manifested
in an extreme tension. The passion
for real political
action
places strain on Negri's intellectual work and infuses it with
a sense
of urgency: throughout Negri's writings from this period we
can
recognize how he is continually attempting (without great success)
to
transform the critique of capital into a real proletarian project.
The
fissure at the heart of critical Marxism, the gap between the
standpoint
of the working class and the standpoint of the critique, is
not
lessened; rather, the distance is only felt more acutely.
4.3 The end of liberalism: the State and
capital
We have to abstract
from this practical plane to a certain
extent,
from the real contact with the workers, in order to understand
Negri's
intellectual work during this period.
Negri's Marxist social
critique
of capital proceeds, as Marcuse says it should, by analysing
the
existing capitalist society "in light of its own functions and
capabilities"
in order to be able to recognize subsequently the
tendencies
which might lead beyond it. [3]
The first task of the
critique,
then, is to characterize the project of capital. We should
keep in
mind, however, that even though the status of the critical
standpoint
is in question, the critique is not conducted purely from
the
point of view of capital. The
principle tenets of Operaismo,
which
provide a theoretical foundation for the critique, have situated
the
working class both within capital and in an eminent position in
relation
to capital: the working class is the productive force in the
relationship,
the motor of capitalist social innovation. Confronted
with
the power of the working class, how does capital manage to
contain
working class antagonism and perpetuate its control of the
relations
of production? How do the forces
of reaction prevail? The
force
of this theoretical foundation is to pose the project of
capitalist
control of labor as a problem.
There is, however, a
profound sense in which this analysis is
powered
by the perspective of the working class.
Operaismo's critique
of
capital is animated by a real ansia rivoluzionaria: it is informed
by the
belief that an intimate knowledge of the mechanisms that
maintain
capitalist control and order could afford the opportunity for
sabotage. Like a highly-skilled technician, the
theorist could
recognize
the critical points in the system, at which a small
pressure,
a tiny sabot, could set the entire machine out of kilter.
Operaismo,
in other words, subscribed to a strategy of revolutionary
reformism,
a strategy to target specific reformist struggles that, if
pushed
beyond the threshold of capitalist recuperation, could cascade
from
reformism to revolution.
Therefore, Negri's scholarly approach
to the
critique of capital during this period should not be read, as
Bocca
might suggest, as a pleasant exercise in intellectual
gymnastics;
he does not read Keynes or Kelsen for any enjoyment, but
rather
because he hopes to discover through them the essential links
in
capital's mechanism that would be vulnerable to workers' sabotage.
We
should keep this agenda in mind while reading the works of this
period.
The principle
theorist of operaismo worked to pursue their
critique
of capital in adjacent and complementary fields of research:
Mario
Tronti took the approach of political philosophy; Romano Alquati
focussed
on sociological investigations; Alberto Asor Rosa dealt with
cultural
studies. Negri's research sought
to illuminate the
problematic
through an analysis of the modern State and the juridico-
economic
mechanisms of capitalist control.
He reads a statement from
the
Italian Constitution of 1948 as symptomatic of the entire
problematic:
"L'Italia Š una repubblica democratica, fondata sul
lavoro."
["Il lavoro nella Costituzione" 28] This brief statement is
pregnant
with meaning. This not the liberal
political constitution of
a State
which is independent of the economic domain, but rather it is
the
juridical declaration of an interventionist State. (6) According
to a
Marxist analysis, the modern State is an agent (perhaps a
relatively
autonomous agent) which through exercising coersion and
promoting
consent furthers the hegemony of capital over society. What
does it
mean, then, that the State is founded on labor? (Let us
postpone,
for the moment, the question of the "democratic republic".)
Is the
Italian State proclaiming itself the active agent of the
interests
of the working class? Negri
proposes that the relationship
between
the constitution and labor are indeed profound, but not in the
interests
of the working class; rather, the interventionist State
serves
as the agent of collective capital, he argues, through "the
constitutionalization
of labor", that is through a juridical process
of the
integration and containment of the antagonistic forces of the
working
class. In this way, the State is
indeed founded on the basis
of
productive labor. Negri's
explanation of this phenomenon involves
the
study of two separate veins which coalesce in the modern
capitalist
State: the evolving functions and juridical structure of
the
State-form and the developing economic and social needs and
strategies
of capital. The critique of the
capitalist State, then,
can be
divided into two complementary avenues of research, one which
investigates
the work of juridical theorists to establish a genealogy
of the
State and another which reads the economic theorists to
reconstruct
a genealogy of capital. The
project of capital, then,
which
is the object of the critique, will involve the eventual
synthesis
of these two veins.
Negri locates the
point of departure for his discussion of the
genealogy
of State theory in the analytical neo-Kantian arguments
which
were common components of continental juridical theories through
much of
the 19th century. (7) These
arguments typically present a
combination
of juridical formalism and juridical positivism. Law is
positive
in that it refers not to a transcendental, metaphysical or
"natural"
standard of justice, but rather to actual norms which are
created
in specific legal communities. This
juridical positivism can
be
linked to the skepticism, generalized in this period, that there is
an
objective foundation for value, or rather the conviction that if
such a
foundation were to exist we could never gain knowledge of it.
(Consider,
as a point of reference, the resonances of this position
with
Weber's claim of the heterogeneity of fact and value, of the Is
and the
Ought, in the social sciences.)
However, while juridical
positivism
denies a metaphysical or transcendental foundation for
value,
it does not resort to a simple proposition of State authority,
of
raison d'Etat. Instead, it
conceives of a rational structure of
norms
in a formal juridical system. The
forms, which raise the norm
to the
level of objectivity, are not transcendental to the system but
immanent
in its own structure. The
positivist character of law is
consistent
with its formal character on the basis of an analytical
science
of law, a jurisprudence, which rationalizes the normative
structure. In this way, Neo-Kantian formalism
poses itself against
the
metaphysical basis of natural right theories on one side and
against
the arbitrary positivity of raison d'Etat on the other.
Now, what is
important for our purposes, and for the subsequent
developments
of juridical theory, is that these positivist and
formalist
arguments typically deny or minimalize the role of material
social
forces in the foundation of juridical theory and social norms.
Negri
elaborates this point in terms of the thematic of the sources of
norms,
a thematic which even the most hermetic formalism must address:
"non
c'Š formalismo cos¡ puro che non debba almeno presupporre una
norma
fondamentale materialmente caratterizzata dalla collacazione
storica
dell'ordinamento." [56]
Indeed, the formalist tradition
addresses
the theme of the sources and production of law throughout
its
history, but the question most commonly finds an ideal solution
within
the formal system of law itself.
"A volerlo dire in termini
estremi,
il sistema sembrava inventare le fonti." [57] Here again we
can see
how juridical positivism and juridical formalism merge into a
single
theory: the established law and the objective norm coincide
perfectly. The positive law is posed as the
exclusive determinant of
value,
yet the sources and production of law do not refer to any
historical
or social context but rather remain within the bounds of
the
formal schema. According to Negri,
we find the most coherent
exposition
of this solution in the framework of classical idealistic
philosophies
which make jurisprudence the foundation of right. [57]
Science,
on the basis of its analytical procedure, appears as the
ideal
source of the norm and therefore any reference outside of the
formal
system to the real, material, productive domain is of a lesser
importance,
or even completely irrelevant. The
production of norms
takes
place exclusively on the rational plane, and this affords law an
hermetic
self-relation. The formal
juridical tradition seems to pose
the
problem of sources, then, only to negate the problem itself with
an
idealistic resolution. In this
way, the system of norms is unified
and
stable; it is self-determining through the positive and formal
process
of juridical production.
This positivist and
formalist conception of rule, however, can
only be
maintained when the State is afforded a relative autonomy from
economic
and social pressures. The role of
the State in this period
is to guarantee
the social and political order through the stability
of the
juridical system of right. The Rechtsstaat
of juridical
formalism
is merely the guarantor not the producer of order; it
maintains
a certain distance from the economic domain, allowing the
free
expression and interplay of capitalistic forces. Corresponding
to the
liberalism of the State in this period, there is a similar
liberalism
of capital. Negri takes the
classical economic theorists
as the
point of departure for his genealogy of capital. According to
these
theories, like the State, capital too acts within certain
limits,
confining its central focus on the relations of primary
production
typified by the factory structure.
Furthermore, individual
capitalists
confront labor and compete with each other in an
uncontrolled
environment, free from external intervention. No doubt,
even in
this period there is a certain confluence between the State
and
capital, but there is also an important autonomy which is central
to both
formal juridical theory and laissez-faire economic theory. In
each
case, the central characteristics, and those which define each
theory
as liberal, are both the idea of a separation between the State
and the
market and the proposition that social order is independent
and
self-determining, governed by neither the State nor the market.
Up to this point,
Negri has covered some familiar terrain with a
fairly
standard interpretation. The
principle factor left out of each
of
these formulations, however, is the power of the working class --
this is
the factor which destroys the liberal equilibrium of order and
the
separation between the economic and the political. Let us return
to the
critical tenets of Operaismo. The thesis
of the leading role
of the
working class in capitalist development presents the nucleus of
this
issue from the economic point of view: the form of capitalist
control
in any given period is dependent on and conditioned by the
previous
pressures and constraints posed by the working class. Each
time
the working class asserts its own autonomy and its antagonism to
capitalist
relations of production, capital is forced restructure its
system
of rule. "Il capitale Š
costretto a riassorbire continuamente
i
livelli determinati del rifiuto operaio dell'alienazione." ["Il
lavoro"
33] The process of reabsorbing the
working class back within
the
relational framework of capitalist relations requires two tasks:
capital
must broaden the base of control and at the same time
consolidate
the pinnacle of leadership; it must accentuate its
triangular
structure of rule. The workers'
refusal addresses not only
the
specific relation of factory production but continually spills
over to
the broader horizon of social production.
The seminal
historical
examples are of course the Paris uprising of 1848 and the
Commune
of 1871, but closer to Negri's experience is the worker
uprising
at Piazza Statuto in Turin in 1962.
The important element in
each
example is that the workers' attack was directed not merely
against
the individual capitalist but directly against the State, and
not
merely on economic but also social and political grounds. In
response
to such attacks, the capitalist restructuration must expand
the
base of control to match the social scope of the workers'
antagonism. In other words, the tendency of
capitalist expansion
involves
moving beyond the specific form of factory relations of
production
toward the control of the relations of production across
the
breadth of the social horizon in the form of social capital. "Il
rifiuto
operaio dello sfruttamento capitalistico ha coperto l'intero
ambito
della produzione sociale. Oggi
esso si esercita a questo
livello:
esattamente nella misura in cui il capitale, che aveva fatto
della
fabbrica moderna lo strumento pi£ tipico della propria
accumulazione,
ne estende a questo punto le dimensioni materiali fino
a
coprire l'intera societ…." [34]
As capitalist relations of
production
are forced to extend outside the factory across the entire
social
horizon in order to match the breadth of the workers' refusal,
the
object of capitalist rule progressively becomes the entire
"societ…-fabbrica",
the social factory. At the same
time, however,
since
the level of workers' antagonism spreads in a general form,
capital
must also match this generality with a coherent leadership or
a
united organization of the relations of production. In other words,
on the
part of capital this tendency of consolidation involves the
rejection
of the diverse private interests of individual capitalists
in
favor of the coherent interest of collective capital. These are
the
pressures which force capital to appeal to and permeate the State
as a
form of control, "come organo executivo del capitale collettivo,
come
diretto gestore della produzione sociale." [34] In short, the
expansion
of the base toward the "social factory" forces the
consolidation
of the summit toward the "social State", which emerges
as the
principle agent in the organization of relations of social
production
and in the accumulation of social capital.