.m:2

4.4 The Keynesian State of planned equilibrium

Up to this point, however, we have merely posed this phenomenon,

the expansive tendency forced on capital by the workers' struggles, in

general and abstract terms. In "Keynes and the Capitalist Theory of

the State post-1929" Negri attempts a more specific analysis which

describes the conditions which led to the union of juridical and

economic forces in the interventionist State. Negri claims that 1917

marks an important turning point in history, when the working class

forces capital to restructure its form of rule. "The truth already

demonstrated in 1848 -- the possibility that the working class can

appear as an independent variable in the process of capitalist

development, even to the extent of imposing its own political autonomy

-- now achieved its full realisation, its Durchbruch ins Freie." [10]

The October Revolution (considered in the large sense, to include not

only the external threat of the Russian Bolsheviks, but also the

parallel internal threat of the workers' movements in Europe and the

US, such as the Factory Council movement and the IWW) revealed the

autonomy of the workers and their antagonism not only to the

individual capitalists, but to the State and the entire capitalist

society. The antagonism posed by the workers' movements irrevocably

ruptured the social equalibrium posited by the liberal economic and

juridical theories. "It marked the historic end of the Rechtsstaat,

understood as an apparatus of State power aimed at formally protecting

individual rights through the bourgeois safeguards of 'due process'

... [it marked] the final burial of the classic liberal myth of the

separation of State and market, the end of laissez-faire." [13

modified] The workers' struggles altered the frameworks in which

capital and the State could operate and forced them to restructure the

relationships of rule.

John Maynard Keynes, Negri argues, was the economist who best

understood the terms of this crisis and thus the most penetrating

theorist of the capitalist reconstruction. What Keynes recognized,

above all, was that the power and the threat of the working class must

be contained within capital. To deal with this threat, then, it was

necessary first to recognize the specific character and form of the

organization of the working class. The representative worker

subjectivity of this period is what Negri calls the "professional

worker": the highly-skilled factory worker who filled the leadership

role for the entire working class. The hierarchical relationship of

workers in the factory provided the conditions for the hierarchical

union and party organizations, led by professional vanguards: the

organization of production provided the seeds for the organization of

its subversion. "The experience showed itself to be homogeneous; both

where the movement took the form of workers' councils (1918-26) and

where it was more straightforwardly trade unionist, the common

reference point was a certain type of class vanguard and the demand

for self-management of production." [15] The maturity of the

professional worker as the subjectivity of the working class and its

international homogeneity posed a real threat both to capitalist

relations of production and to the social and political organizations

of the State. The general capitalist response to this threat was to

restructure the economic terms of rule: not only was there extensive

use of violence against the workers and large-scale firings of the

militants, but more importantly capital embarked on a project of

technical innovation to transform the production process. "The

workers' councils and the powerful current of revolutionary

syndicalism of the early 1920s were defeated -- or rather were denied

the possibility of any revolutionary dialectic between the class

vanguard and proletarian masses, which had been their organizational

basis. They were simply undermined by the recomposition of the

workforce in key sectors: by new techniques for rationalising labor,

by deskilling and the mass assembly line." [18] Here we have an

historical example of the Operaisto thesis that the working class

plays the "leading role" in capitalist development. The emergence of

the professional worker, the mature subjectivity of the working class,

forced capital to restructure and develop through technological

innovation. The capitalist massification of production destroyed the

factory organization which provided the basis for the professional

worker.

The genius of Keynes, however, was to recognize that this

economic solution, the reorganization of the factory and the

massification of labor, was not a sufficient response. Keynes

understood that the threat of the working class was not only economic

but also political and therefore had to be addressed in both domains.

Capital needed a new model of constructed equilibrium which would

effectively contain the antagonism of the working class. In Keynes'

interpretation of the crisis of 1929, Negri finds a warning to capital

and a demonstration of the insufficience of the purely economic

strategy. The events of 1917 were certainly not the principle and

immediate cause of the crisis of 1929, but Negri argues nonetheless

(with the Keynesian analysis to bolster his position) that the

capitalist economic restructuration, the massification of production,

which was forced by the workers' struggles of 1917 contributed

significantly to the unstable conditions leading to the crisis of

1929. (8) Keynes' political writings are filled with his

preoccupation that the growing workers' movements would lead to

economic and political instability: he considered the organized

working class the "Party of Catastrophe". In Keynes' economic

writings, though, we find his more insightful political analysis.

According to Keynes the 1929 crisis was due to the economic

developments of the 1920s, "a broadening of the supply base" which

"was not accompanied by a change in the relationship of supply to

demand." [23] Keynes attacked those capitalists who continued to

maintain the autonomy of supply and refused to recognize that the

recent massification of supply must be matched by an equivalent

massification of demand. The economic order could no longer depend on

a "natural" equilibrium because of the unstable political and economic

environment. To an extent, the Keynesian focus on demand is an effort

to take into account the economic power of the working class:

variations in demand, or the propensity to consume, are essentially

dependent on variations in income, measured in wage-units, for a given

level of employment. [29] In this sense, then, demand accounts for

the economic needs of the working class. Negri, however, wants to

read "demand" in a larger sense, to include the political needs of the

working class: "to refer to "demand" is to refer to the working class,

to a mass movement which has found a political identity, to a

possibility of insurrection and subversion of the system." [24]

Negri's point, which we should be careful not to overstate, is simply

that when Keynes recognizes that capital must discover a new economic

equilibrium (between supply and demand) he also recognizes that this

requires too a political equilibrium -- and further that these two

equilibria are not separate but one in the same. "Keynes' position,

against the classic liberal separation of politics, was a generic

insistence on the interiorisation of the political element within the

economy." [18] The balance which Keynes is striving for is a

comprehensive politico-economic equilibrium.

The thrust of the Keynesian project, then, is to protect against

the contingencies of the future in both the economic and political

domains. The only mechanism which can insure stability on such large

horizon is the intervention of the State: "the State must extend its

intervention to take up the role of planner, and the economic thus

becomes incorporated in the juridical." [25] State planning is the

Keynesian means of projecting the future from within the present, of

protecting the present from any future catastrophe. However, Negri

insists that State intervention not only involves guaranteeing the

economic environment, but it also involves an active participation in

production: the State becomes a major economic structure, a productive

subject. "In guaranteeing the convention that links the present to

the future, the State is still a structure at the service of

capitalists; but when it poses itself directly as productive capital,

the State seeks also to overcome the structural frictions which a

market economy and its indirect relationship with individual

capitalists may bring about. Thus it becomes a new form of State: the

State of social capital." [26] The Keynesian solution to the crisis

is the creation of a new State-form, the "planner-State": a State

which creates stability by incorporating the economic dynamic of

society within its own juridical structure. The planner-State has to

suppress the desires of individual capitalists in favor of the

coherent project of collective capital.

We should keep in mind the stimulus that is driving Negri's

research. His study of Keynes and the mechanisms of planned

equilibrium is set on discovering how to sabotage these mechanisms: if

the capitalist State wants a plan of equilibrium, the workers'

movement wants to invert this in a plan of disequilibrium. We are not

prepared for this project, however, since we have not yet amassed all

the critical elements on the scene.

4.5 Labor and constitution: the transformation of juridical formalism

At this point we should turn back to the other genealogy which

Negri is mapping: the juridical theory of the State. We have seen,

through Negri's reading of Keynes, that capital has been forced to

abandon its liberal separation from the State and appeal to juridical

means in order to insure social and economic stability. The social

State or planner-State, as the agent of collective capital, must

develop a juridical structure capable of containing the antagonism of

the working class and thus capable of perpetuating the capitalist

relations of production. This intervention in the creation of social

and economic order requires a significant transformation of the

liberal juridical conception of the State. In order to carry out the

Keynesian project, capital has to take on a new career: in addition to

its vocation as an economist, capital must become a jurist and

transform juridical theory. Negri's thesis is that this

transformation is accomplished principally through the

constitutionalization of labor -- that is, through the adoption of

labor as the exclusive criterion for valorization, as the unique

source of norms. In this way the capitalist State manages to pose a

comprehensive material and formal constitution which effectively

absorbs the antagonism and power of the working class.

To understand this transformation, Negri seeks to consider it

from the juridical point of view and trace the genealogy of juridical

theory which makes the new State-form possible. We have seen though

our discussion of Keynes that in the beginning of the 20th century the

growing threat of the working class struggles and the responses of

capital to contain them put an increasing pressure on the State. In

effect, class struggle has invaded the domain of juridical theory. As

the object of capitalist control progressively spills outside of the

factory into the domain of general social production, as the workers

organize in more clearly political terms and attack the State, the

economic domain of capital and the political domain of the State tend

increasingly to coincide. The two systems of order must merge to form

the social State: "nello Stato sociale ... la costituzione politica e

giuridica tende a ripetere la costituzione economica della societ…,

nella misura in cui la dimensione materiale della produzione sociale

identifica Stato e societ…." [46] The role of the social State, as

opposed to that of the liberal Rechtsstaat, is no longer merely the

guarantor of political and social order for the external and

independent economic forces, it is rather the manager and organizer of

social capital. If in a previous stage there was a relative autonomy

between political and economic order, in the social State that

autonomy can no longer be afforded.

The advent of the social State, then, or rather the need for

capital to merge with the State, necessarily constitutes a crisis for

the tradition of juridical formalism: the juridical problem presented

by capital is that of the material constitution. Capital, as we have

noted, faces the task of containing the antagonism of the working

class and organizing its productive force within the order of

capitalist relations of production. Therefore, when juridical theory

is faced with the pressures of capital, it can no longer afford to

maintain a distance between the system of norms and the material

dynamic of society. For capital "il problema non Š quello di

proiettare sulla realit… quanto la scienza ha autonomamente deciso,

bens¡ quello di fondare nella realt… ogni effetto creativo, modificato

o estintivo di norme giuridiche." [58] This sends us back, once

again, to the thematic of the sources of norms. A positive and formal

theory of right does produce a system of norms but this production takes

place only within the science of jurisprudence; the established

juridical system is projected, according to Negri's characterization,

over the material social reality. Capital, however, can never evade

the confrontation with material social forces. "La crisi del

positivismo pu• essere quindi correttmente descritta come crisi del

domma dell'esclusivit… della legge." [63] Capitalist juridical theory

cannot pose a purely legalistic foundation of value, but rather must

refer to the dynamic of social production and to capital's own process

of valorization; it must incorporate the material social forces in the

production of the norm itself. The social State, therefore, must be

founded on a unification of the capitalistic production of value and

the juridical production of norms.

The crisis of juridical positivism, then, does not merely lead to

its simple negation (and a revival of natural right theories), but

rather it gives rise to a more complex positivism which poses the

merging of the formal positivity of right and the material foundations

of economic order. [62] According to Negri, the introduction of the

social pressures faced by capital effects a transformation of the

tradition of juridical theory and what results is a "ristrutturazione

del positivismo, sua nuova strumentazione positiva nell'ambito della

costituzione dello Stato social." [63] The formal constitution of

society must match its material constitution. Negri presents the work

of Hans Kelsen as a significant development of the tradition of neo-

Kantian formalism and as a midpoint in this theoretical passage from

the liberal Rechtsstaat to the interventionist social State. Kelsen

manages to transform the formalist analytical tradition while

maintaining the unity and self-determination of the normative system.

His major contribution, according to Negri, is his proposition of the

"basic norm" [the Grundnorm] which centers and supports the entire

juridical structure. Kelsen, like the other neo-Kantian jurists,

begins with a focus on the systematic character of legal order: the

validity of any norm in the system is dependent on the fact that it

can be derived from a superior norm. This analytic of validation,

however, does not fall into an infinite regress, because in the final

instance every norm in the system derives from a single basic norm

"the validity of which cannot be derived from a superior norm."

[Kelsen, General Theory of State and Law 111] The positivity of the

entire system depends precisely on the fact that all norms can be

produced on the basis of the Grundnorm. "The basic norm of a legal

order is the postulated ultimate rule according to which the norms of

this order are established and annulled, receive and lose their

validity." [113] The pure and formal system is constructed and

justified through a scientific, technical procedure of the generation

of norms.

The strength of Kelsen's system is clearly that he provides a

scientific basis for formalism and that he isolates the boundary

condition which marks the totality, validity and absolute coherence of

the system to one single element: the Grundnorm. In certain respects,

Kelsen pushes the neo-Kantian effort for normative unity and purely

scientific validity to its extreme point. Within the bounds of the

system, law is not a question of morality or justice, it is simply a

question of the correct application of scientific techniques. "Per la

prima volta era posta l'idea che l'intera normazione sociale potesse

derivare, essere dedotta e convalidata da una norma fondamentale che

in s‚ tutto unifacava." [82-3] The obvious weakness of the system,

however, resides in the question of the production of the Grundnorm

itself. It is very difficult to pose a basic norm in the form of a

commandment which could prove sufficiently generalizable: Kelsen

suggests "You shall love your neighbor" and "Live in harmony with the

universe" as examples of possible Grundnorms [110], but it is unclear

that any such commandment could generate an entire legal order.

Moreover, in keeping with the spirit of juridical formalism, the task

is not to invent a Grundnorm which might function in an hypothetical

or future society, but rather to discover the actually existing

Grundnorm in a specific legal community. In Kelsen's argument,

however, this issue does not receive extensive treatment: it is an

issue which is outside the scientific field of jurisprudence.

With this view of Kelsen in mind, we can appreciate Negri's

enthusiasm when he proposes that labor serves the central function in

the capitalist constitution, that labor is the Grundnorm of the social

State. Here Negri believes to have found the most coherent solution

to the conflicting pressures posed in developing a juridical theory

adequate to the capitalist State. On the one hand, insofar as labor

is the concrete productive force which extends throughout society, it

provides an adequate material foundation for a capitalist

constitution; and insofar as it is put to use by capital as a process

of valorization, labor provides an adequate normative framework for a

formal legal order. According to Negri, then, the juridical project

of capital is to found the social State on labor, unify the productive

and valorizing aspects of labor in one comprehensive constitution of

society, equally on the formal and the material plane. It is not

immediately evident, however, how labor can serve as the Grundnorm for

a capitalist juridical system: indeed in its living essence labor

cannot function as such a norm, but only when it is abstracted in the

capitalist production process.

To appreciate this aspect of Negri's discussion we have to keep

in mind the specifics of Marx's analysis of the capitalist process of

valorization. According to Marx, the production process, considered

in itself, "is composed of the labor process and the process of

creating value [Wertbildungsprozess]." [Capital I, 293] In other

words, the labor process is aimed at the production of use-value; the

new use-value created in the production process is precisely the value

of the labor-power expended. When the capitalist purchases labor-

power, however, he cannot be satisfied with this simple creation of

use-value. The capitalist process of production, then, as distinct

from the production process in itself, is composed of "the labor

process and the process of valorization." [304] The key to the

capitalist perspective is expressed by Marx's terminological

distinction between the simple creation of value and the process of

valorization: "the value of labor-power, and the value which that

labor-power valorizes [verwertet] in the labor-process, are two

entirely different magnitudes ...." [300] The "value of labor-power"

is the amount a capitalist must pay to purchase the labor-power for a

fixed period; this amount corresponds to the cost of the reproduction

of the worker over this period. The "value which that labor-power

valorizes", however, is the amount which has been added to the product

by labor-power in the production process. "If the process is not

carried beyond the point where the value paid by the capitalist for

the labor-power is replaced by an exact equivalent, it is simply a

process of creating value; but if it is continued beyond that point,

it becomes a process of valorization." [302] The defining

characteristic of capitalist valorization, then, is that the value

which labor-power valorizes is greater than the value of that labor-

power. In other words, valorization is not just the creation of

value, but also and more importantly the creation of surplus value in

the production process. In Marx's analysis, surplus value is the

keystone which supports capitalist order and the relations of

production which it implies; it is the link which unifies the

productive and normative capacities of the capitalist labor process.

The valorization process abstracts labor from its specific

activity and presents it in the form of a norm, as the affirmation of

surplus value. Negri's proposition is that the normative capacity of

labor in capitalist production is developed and expanded in the social

State so as to form the basis for its entire juridical order. The

"constitutionalization of labor" is the term Negri uses to describe

the expansion of the valorization process across the breadth of social

relations. It is the process whereby the State not only locates labor

as the exclusive source of right but also juridically organizes the

process of valorization in a formal constitution and socializes

abstract labor in a series of hierarchical relationships in the effort

to project or create a capitalist material constitution: "il lavoro,

come produzione sociale capitalistica, si palesa come lavoro astratto

a livello sociale, e quindi determina tutta la serie dei rapporti di

subordinazione che sono impliciti alla sua natura." [39] Negri

insists here on the alienation inherent in the valorization process.

According to Marx, when one considers the purchase of labor-power from

the perspective of valorization, that labor-power must be abstracted

from its specific activity. We consider the material activity of the

worker only insofar as it creates value. Thus, for example, the

concrete labor of the cotton-planter, the spindle-maker and the

spinner is indifferently unified as abstract labor-power. [Capital I,

296] Now we need to extend this alienation or abstraction to a social

level as we move from valorization to constitutionalization. The

social State adopts labor as its own constitutive category to the

extent that it can organize labor-power as abstract labor within the

framework of capitalist relations of production; in other words, labor

provides the material basis of the constitution, but only insofar as

it can be formalized in the form of abstract labor. This abstraction

makes labor a suitable Grundnorm for capitalist constitution.

Therefore, labor represents "non solo la chiave di volta

dell'interpretazione del nesso tra produzione e societ…, ma anche il

valore secondo cui tale nesso viene fissato, organizzato, nella forma

rovesciata in cui l'apparenza capitalistica lo propone: l'esculsivit…

del lavoro come valore produttivo si fissa nell'apparenza della

totalit… del lavoro come criterio di valorizzazione sociale." [40]

The constitutionalization of labor is a social process of

valorization, it is the socialization of abstract labor-power and its

formal subsumption within the capitalist relations of production.

4.6 The labor theory of right and the socialism of capital

Through his analysis of the constitutionalization of labor as the

project of capital, Negri believes to have founded the key to reading

the Italian constitution. The Italian State is indeed founded on

labor -- the State is founded on abstract labor insofar as it is

productive through the capitalist process of valorization, insofar as

it produces surplus value. This statement does mark Italy as a

reformist State, but certainly not one which is directed by the

interests of the working class. Its reformism is directly in line

with the capitalist restructuration heralded by Keynes and made

possible as a juridical project by the work of Kelsen. The analysis

of these two genealogies of thought (the interventionist economic vein

and the formalist juridical tradition) which coalesce in the social

State or the planner-State form the groundwork for Negri's social

critique of capital. He reads each theoretical tradition "in light of

its own functions and capabilites" through the work of its proponents.

Negri is following faithfully in the tradition of critical Marxism,

but where in this entire procedure is the standpoint of the working

class? At best, we could say that the power of the working class is

present in the tenets which form the point of departure for the

discussion and which remain throughout as an antagonistic force, a

threat of destruction posed against capital. This threat, however, is

only present in the work of capitalist writers, such as Keynes, in

abstract terms. In fact, even though Negri's central point is that

Keynes has recognized that the antagonism of the working class and the

class struggle is a fundamental element of the capitalist economic

system, it is clear that when we are moving on Keynes' terrain we are

already abstracted from the concrete field of social forces and class

struggle, on a constructed formal plane.

Keynes and Kelsen merge so easily in Negri's conception of the

social State, because Keynes' theory develops a model of economic

formalism which we can see as compatible with the tradition of

juridical formalism. Negri reads Keynes' General Theory as an effort

to define a global balance of forces in a system which presents a

circular interdependence of all the internal parts. [29] For example,

"the equilibrium corresponding to a given stage of effectively

realised demand will be that value at which the level of working-class

employment determines the price of aggregate supply of output and the

entrepreneur's expectation of gain." [29] The interdependence of the

various elements in the formal model means that "every quantity must

be capable of an indefinite variability, while remaining contained

within the model." ["Crisis" 52] Keynesian theory provides a basis

for centralized planning by presenting a total economic system

composed of a set of verifiable and fixed internal relationships

which is transparent to scientific analysis. Like the formal

juridical model which constitutionalizes labor, Keynes' formal

economic model is based on the fundamental recognition of the impact

of the working class, but here too labor in incorporated as an element

in the model only insofar as it is abstracted from its real living

form.

The question remain however: how does the formal structure of the

social State negate or contain the concrete antagonism of the working

class in real practical terms? Negri attempts to read the

institutional experiments of the New Deal as an an effort to put some

of these frameworks into practice. "In fact, we could say that, in

relation to changing State-forms, only the experience of the New Deal

makes explicit what we have seen as a fundamental characteristic of

Keynesianism: the recognition of a changed relationship between the

economic forces in play, and a matching restructuring of capital's

hegemony in this new context." [34] The new institutions of the

social State during the New Deal, in response to the antagonism of the

working class, seem to represent a transformation of capitalism

towards socialism through a greater social participation. The goal of

these institutions is to pacify the social conflict which centers

around the economic relationship; in other words, the capitalist

process of the integration of labor-power must account for and contain

the conflict presented by the working class. "Contestazione e

consenso sono ... le due facce della socializzazione e della

constituzionalizzazione capitalistica del lavoro." [67-8] Conflict is

inevitable in the capitalist mode of production, but capital must

configure the conflict in such a way that it can be mediated within

the capitalist framework. The real conflict which continually arises

from the exploitation and subjugation of the working class must be

abstracted from its specific manifestations and recuperated within the

institutional system, within the juridical framework of capitalist

relations of production. The central example of this institutional

mediation which Negri discusses is the collective contract. In the

bargaining process the representatives of the working class,

abstracted from the concrete conflicts born in labor processes, enter

into negotiation with capital on an equal basis in order to come to an

agreement of parity. Collective bargaining provides an on-going and

bilateral procedure whereby the conflict can be mediated and

transformed into consensus. Labor rights, or more generally the

contractual determination of economic norms, represent the formal

resolution of the social conflict. With this consensual juridical

production it appears that we have done away with all legalistic

residues, with any foundation of raison d'Etat; the institutional

incorporation of labor into the constitution seems to have effected

the withering away of the State. This is capital's version of

socialism.

This bargaining procedure, however, tends to take on a fixed

normative character: "il contratto collettivo Š da un lato contratto,

dall'altro legge." [73] In other words, the tendency of the

collective bargaining is to eliminate all privatistic and

particularistic residues of the contract process. Gradually,

collective bargaining is transformed into an indefinite contractual

procedure which takes an institutional form, abstracted from the

particular points of conflict. "Alla contrattazione collettiva si

sostituisce un amministrazione collettiva che rende permanente il

processo normativo: e, a garantire quest'ultima, si istaura una

giurisdizione collettiva della conflittualit… industriale, sicch‚

l'unificazione dei poteri in un processo normativo continuo Š ormai

piena." [69] In this developed procedure we can see the

generalization of a formal "giuslavorismo", the labor theory of right.

The bargaining process presents a superiority of society over the

State, it demonstrates the social accord as primary over the law; yet,

through a juridical institutionalization of the contractual procedure,

capital constructs a stable normative structure. The collective

contract is an effective response to the antagonism of the working

class. Capital poses the process of juridical production in terms of

the conflict between the classes, as its continual mediation, the

thereby constitutionalizes labor-power, that is integrates it within

its formal structure of rule. "L'ipotesi socialista del deperimento

dello Stato, perduta la prima condizione del rifiuto operaio della

subordinazione generale, Š trasfigurata fino a diventare l'utopia

capitalista di una gestione dell'accumulazione affidata al puro

consenso sociale." [68] The institutionalization of the collective

contract as a basis of juridical production is a central example of

how the the social State manages to pose a formal model of stability

which adopts the image of socialism and at the same time quells the

destructive power of working class antagonism.

4.7 The dialectic of capitalist development

Negri is aware, however, that the antagonism of the class

struggle cannot be pacified in a static institutional structure. The

constitutionalization of abstract labor cannot hide the destructive

power of concrete labor. He knows that the proletarian refusal of

work will continually sabotage the capitalist relations of production,

that the social State cannot effectively repress the rebellious spirit

of the working class. His practical political work in the factories,

his real contact with the workers assures him of this fact. Yet this

recognition cannot fit directly into the framework of the critique.

If Negri is to pursue his intuitions, he must frame them in the

context we originally proposed: a critique of capital "in light of its

own functions and capabilities."

Negri returns to the point of view of capital, then, and

discovers that the Keynesian model of production is not an adequate

solution to the crisis even in capital's own terms because it does not

deal sufficiently with capital's need for development. In "Marx on

Cycle and Crisis" Negri attempts to develop a Schumpeterian critique

of Keynes in order to complement his analysis of the project of

capital and the social State. Even though Schumpeter's work predates

that of Keynes, Negri argues that his perspective highlights the

shortcomings of Keynes' formal economic model. Schumpeter regards the

cycle and the crisis as fundamental elements in the functioning of the

capitalist system, as the principle stimuli for development; from this

perspective the Keynesian strategy to plan for stability, to pacify

the disruptive forces which could bring on crisis, is the negation of

capital's own vital dynamic. According to Schumpeter, if we maintain

a formal economic system of balanced forces, "if we follow it by

respecting or promoting only the tensions internal to the reciprocal

and formal equilibrium of the magnitudes involved, then, at best, we

shall necessarily end up with a general levelling-off of the process,

a routinisation." [54] The Keynesian proposal of a solution to the

threat and antagonism of the working class in a general economic

equilibrium blunts the innovative force of the capitalist relation and

leads to economic stagnation: the negation of the crisis would be the

negation of capitalist development itself.

The fundamental insight which Negri takes from Schumpeter, then,

is that capitalism thrives on conflict. Development cannot be

conceived as capitalist rule within a static framework of control,

rather the key to development lies in capital's use of the crisis.

Capital cannot lay idle. The entrepreneurial process must continually

combat routinisation. "There cannot exist a concept of development

which is neutral, or which is sublimated within some formalist

perspective of equilibrium. Development is struggle; it is a

restructuring of power-relations; and it must necessarily pass via a

moment of direct conflict -- the crisis -- to end with capital's

victory over its opposing forces." [55] In other words, Keynes is

absolutely correct in his recognition that capital must contain the

force of the working class to avoid catastrophe; but it cannot merely

flatten the pressure of class struggle, it must employ the stimulation

of working class antagonism within its own dialectic of development.

"In a completely Schumpeterian sense, then, innovation is a healthy

force, provoking crisis, and thereby reactivating the economic

process, over and against the action of antagonistic forces bent on

the destruction of profit." [55] Innovation provokes a reorganization

of forces within capital, but it is also an effective weapon against

the power of the working class. Technological changes, such as the

massification of production in the 1920s and 30s, serve to destroy the

organization of the working class. (9) The project of capital, then,

has to be conceived as a dialectical process: crisis - innovation -

development. In Keynes, development was posed as the aggregation of

economic forces within the stable formal framework of the system;

orderly development was an alternative to crisis. The Schumpeterian

view, as read by Negri, includes crisis within development and uses it

to further the cycle. "The cost of development is the continual

disaggregation required in order to be able to reaggregate." [56]

Capital pays the price of periodic crises in order to keep alive and

expand its innovative powers.

Negri does not develop this Schumpeterian critique in order to

negate the Keynesian vision of the planner-State, but rather to

complement it. Keynes seemed to propose the impossible task of

eliminating the antagonism of the working class in a stable and

general consensus. Appealing to Schumpeter's understanding of crisis

and cycles, Negri recognizes the more feasible task carried out by

capital, that is engaging and containing the working class in a

dialectical struggle. The elasticity of the capitalist dialectic can

account for and accomodate the antagonism of the working class. This

dialectic of crisis and innovation not only proposes workable

solutions, but also it sets the planner-State in motion, giving the

project of capital a dynamic of development.

4.8 The internal tensions of the critical project

Throughout these various essays we can discern a growing tension

in Negri's work. Negri has conducted a critique of capital and its

juridical structures in keeping with the method of the critical

Marxist tradition, that is on the basis of capital's own terms and

functions; he has read Kelsen, Keynes and Schumpeter to delimit the

project of capital and its new State-form. Negri's practical work,

though, constitutes a firm reference point which pushes him

continually to pose questions which reveal the limits of the critique.

The split personality at the center of the critical project, the

dualism between practice and theory, between the standpoint of the

working class and the critique of capital, has become increasingly

charged and the tension within the project is approaching a point of

rupture. What has become of the "standpoint of the working class"

which was thought to serve as a foundation for the critique? At what

point will we see the critique give way to a positive and synthetic

proletarian project? These questions seem to haunt Negri's work: how

can we grasp the power of the working class not as an abstract force,

not as a variable in capital's model of control, but in its living

actuality with all its anger and desires? How can he bridge the gap

and bring his theoretical work in line with the needs and hopes which

arise from his contact with the workers? The pressures of these

questions are not easily accomodated within the framework of the

Marxist critique, rather they strain its theoretical limitations.

Nonetheless, Negri continually attempts to bring the theoretical

discussion back to the affirmation of the working class, even when,

considered strictly in its internal logic, the analysis provides no

real basis for these declarations. Each essay ends with a claim that

the capitalist structure of control cannot contain the power of the

working class, that the political composition of the working class

will destroy capitalist command, but these claims do not follow

directly from the economic and juridical analyses of capital which

precede them. The declarations of workers' power appear in the texts

as disruptions of the theoretical procedure, as voluntaristic

outbursts. From a strictly scholarly perspective, these are certainly

the weakest passages of Negri's work. He has betrayed the critical

code by allowing his unbounded "optimism of the will" to infect the

"pessimism of the intellect." This slippage can be seen most clearly

in Negri's treatment and application of the dialectic. When

considering the political scene from a practical perspective Negri

proposes that the central task is not to discover a new proletarian

dialectic, but merely to break the capitalist dialectic which

continually recuperates and contains the power of the working class.

"La dialettica Š finita. Hegel Š morto. [...] La critica operaia

non Š oggi la restaurazione della dialettica, bens¡ la scoperta del

terreno e della forma dello scontro." ["Il lavoro" 110] It is

difficult to know how to interpret this affirmation, though, because

in Negri's theoretical developments the dialectic still has a long and

important future ahead. It seems that the practical Negri who feels

the hope and power of the workers wishes the dialectic were dead, but

the theoretical Negri who maintains his critical distance knows that

he cannot continue without it.

On the practical horizon, however, the opposition to the

dialectic is a coherent project. Break the dialectic means destablize

the plan of capital, push its recuperative mechanisms to the point of

rupture. Operaismo translates this into practical terms with its

political strategy to employ revolutionary reformist struggles.

Consider, for example, the wage struggles that were conducted at the

Porto Marghera chemical factories in the 60s under the slogan "cinque

mila per tutti." The strategy was designed not only to unify the

working class with uniform demands, but also to destablize capital's

equilibrium through calculated incremental pressures. In other

words, the object was to gradually raise the pressure through

"reasonable," reformist demands in order to reach the threshold of

rupture where it would be impossible for capital to recuperate control

of the relationship. From the capitalist's perspective, we might call

this "bad faith reformism:" the workers' tried to find the limit of

flexibility and go one step too far. Behind traditionally reformist

tactics (such as wage struggles) they maintained an insurrectional

strategy -- a wolf in sheep's cloathing. It is in this practical

context that Negri suggests the new parola d'ordine, "from

contradictions to antagonism": he argues that we should no longer

focus on the contradictions in the structure of capitalist society

(which were thought to promise its dialectical supersession), but

rather on the antagonism of the working class and its autonomous

expression of power. "From contradictions to antagonism" means the

intervention of the subject. This is a political rejection of the

dialectic, a rejection which advocates practical rather than

theoretical, and subjective rather than objective foundations for the

political agenda.

Negri does have a basis for his affirmations of workers' power in

the growing workers' movements throughout Italy's industrial belt. He

believes that the increasing agitation of the workers urgently calls

for organization in a revolutionary project, a project which the

critique fails to provide. At the end of his article "Marx on Cycle

and Crisis", Negri adds a note announcing his resignation from the

editorial board of the journal and his political split with the other

proponents of operaismo. The tension is growing to a point of

rupture, both within Negri's work and within the project of critical

Marxism as a whole. The scene was set for an explosion. The crucial

steps, though, will not be played out on the theoretical terrain.

"Come si concluder… la vicenda? Non sta a noi, qui, dirlo. ...

Nell'oscurit… del compito, solo la critica rivoluzionaria della realt…

oggi pu• aiutarci. La critica dal di dentro delle cose e degli

eventi. E la lotta rivoluzionaria." ["Il lavoro" 110]

Notes

1 - In the 1960s Italian Marxist studies constituted a rich

theoretical scene composed of several well-developed Marxist

traditions. As yet no study has appeared that adequated treats this

period of intellectual history. We could identify the most

influential tendencies as 1) a Gramscian tradition carried on

principally by Palmiro Togliatti in the theoretical context of the PCI

and by Norberto Bobbio in a liberal, Christian Democractic form; 2) an

Hegelian Marxism centered around Lucio Colletti which bore certain

similarities to the elements of the Anglo-American New Left such as

Frederick Jameson and Paul Piccone; and 3) a conservative anti-

Hegelian Marxism centered around G. Della Volpe. Operaismo grew out

of this context. The foundations of the movement center not on a

single thinker but rather on the theoretical experience of an

influential journal, Quaderni rossi (Red notebooks). Among the

central figures in Quaderni rossi were Raniero Panzieri, Romano

Alquati, Mario Tronti, Antonio Negri and Alberto Asor Rosa. I use

operaismo to refer to the movement which grew out of the Quaderni

rossi experience, without attempting to account for the important

differences which separated the members of the group.

2 - I would readily admit that, at this point in the text, the

distinction I am making between the subject of critique and the

subject of the project, or rather the subject of exploitation and the

subject of power, has not been given a very sound foundation.

Nonetheless, it should be sufficiently clear that we are dealing with

distinction conceptions of subjectivity which are effectively linked

to different theoretical approaches. Consider, for example,

Horkheimer and Adorno's analysis of "mass culture" [Dialectic of

Enlightenment 120-67] and Negri's proposition of the "mass worker"

(which we will consider in detail below). Both are analyses of the

subjectivity which arose as a result of the massification of social

and industrial production which began in the 1920s and 30s in Europe

and the United States, ye