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2.4 Slave labor and the insurrectional critique

Is it true as Jean Wahl claims, that there is something richer

and more profound in Hegel's analysis of the master-slave dialectic

which escapes the Nietzschean critique? Or, on the contrary, has

Deleuze already provided us with the weapons for an adequate

Nietzschean attack? Let us try to test Deleuze's Nietzschean

challenge by bringing it onto Hegel's own terrain. Hegel's slave does

not reason "the master is evil therefore I am good"; instead, we can

pose Hegel's slave syllogism as "I fear death and I am constrained to

work therefore I am an independent self-consciousness." The logic of

this syllogism takes two routes, one implicit path in relation to the

master and one explicit path in relation to the object of the slave's

labor, which are linked together as a progression to describe the

education of the slave. The implicit path is founded on the slave's

confrontation with death, "the absolute Lord": in this encounter the

slave undergoes the negation of everything that is solid and stable in

its being. "But this pure universal movement, the absolute melting-

away of everything stable, is the simple, essential nature of self-

consciousness, absolute negativity, pure being-for-self which is

implicit in this consciousness." [Phenomenology 194] On a first

consideration, the implicit process seems to develop the following

logic: the initial self-consciousness of the slave, a simple being-

for-self, is negated in death and then resurrected as an affirmation

of life and as a pure being-for-self. However, we cannot understand

the logic of this passage unless we note that this "melting-away of

everything stable" is not properly speaking an absolute or total

negation, because it preserves the "essential nature" of the

consciousness under siege. The death of the slave would not serve

Hegel's purposes: he wants to destroy all that is inessential in the

slave, but to stop at the threshold of essence. This partial

aggression, this restraint of the destructive force of dialectical

negation is what allows for conservation: it is a negation "which

supersedes in such a way as to preserve and maintain what is

superseded ...." [188] Now, assuming we do accept that it is the

opposition (albeit partial) with death which affirms the life of the

slave, we can already venture a Bergsonian response to this implicit

process: if the difference which animates life is its opposition to

death, that is if the difference of life is absolutely external, then

life appears as merely unsubstantial, as a result of chance or hazard,

a "subsistent exteriority". Furthermore, when we pose death in

general as a contradiction of life in general, we are dealing in terms

too imprecise and abstract to arrive at the singularity and

concreteness of the difference which defines real life and

subjectivity. In effect, life and death in their abstract opposition

are indifferent. Therefore, the affirmation of life which the slave

attains "in principle" through the confrontation with death can only

be abstract and hollow.

Hegel, however, immediately follows with a response to this

challenge. "This moment of pure being-for-self is also explicit for

the bondsman, for in the lord it exists for him as his object.

Furthermore, his consciousness is not this dissolution of everything

stable merely in principle; in his service he actually brings this

about." [194] Here, the slave no longer faces "the absolute Lord",

abstract death, but he confronts a particular master and is forced to

work. This explicit negation takes two forms which are linked

together in a progressive movement: a formal negation in the slave's

relation to the master and an actual negation in the slave's relation

to his labor. In the master, the slave is confronted by an

independent self-consciousness which negates him. However, the slave

cannot gain recognition from the master, and thus this form of

opposition can only give him "the beginning of wisdom". The second

explicit relationship reveals the slave's essential nature allowing

him to become "conscious of what he truly is." [195] The slave comes

out of himself by engaging the thing as object of his labor; he loses

or negates himself and finds himself in the thing; finally, he

retrieves the essential nature of himself through his negation or

transformation of the thing. Through his forced labor, then, the

slave negates a specific other (the aspect of himself which has gone

out of himself) through working or transforming it, just as the master

negates the object of his desire in consuming it. The primary

difference between these two negations (master desire and slave labor)

lies in the fact that the object of the master's desire appears as a

dependent, transitory other and therefore can provide only fleeting

satisfaction; the object of the slave's labor, however, resists his

negation and thus appears as permanent and independent. "Work ... is

desire held in check, fleetingness staved off ...." [195] Master

desire, like death, is too thorough in its negation for Hegel's

purposes: it is the total destruction of the other and the end of the

relationship. Work, however, like the near-death Hegel posits in

fear, is a "dialectical" or partial negation which allows the

"essential nature" of the other to survive and thus perpetuates the

relationship. We can see this entire complex process, from the

initial implicit relationship to the final explicit relationship, as

the progressive education of the slave. The first moment, the slave's

confrontation with death, dissolves the fixity of his life and

focuses his attention on the universal. [Taylor 155] This

educational fear prepares the slave for his work. Thus prepared, the

slave is able to achieve in the second, explicit moment of labor his

true self-realization: he becomes "conscious of what he truly is".

We should take a moment here to clarify the terms of our reading

of this passage. There is a great deal of slippage and ambiguity

regarding the level of abstraction and the register of Hegel's

argument which leave it open to a variety of interpretations. It is

not clear exactly where we should look to locate the master and the

slave--in real individuals?, in social classes?, in the logical

movement of Spirit? What is unclear is the nature of the contents we

should attribute to the agents of the drama. Should we read the

master-slave dialectic in personalist terms or rather as an impersonal

logical drama of being? An Hegelian might immediately object to the

form of these questions, insisting that Hegel's analysis spans the

different registers and effectively unites them in the movement of

historical being. Spirit, which is always embodied, is simultaneously

the individual subject, the socio-historical subject and the essence

of being; thus, Hegel's argument slips comfortably between personal

and impersonal references, and between microcosm and macrocosm. On

this basis, many interpreters invoke a personalist reading to pose the

master-slave relation as the affirmation of a liberal ethics of mutual

respect which spans both the personal and formal registers: "men seek

and need the recognition of their fellows." [Taylor 152] (8) However,

when we refer back to the argument, it is clear that the personalist

hypothesis provides certain difficulties for a consistent reading of

the text. It is the master term which presents difficulties because

in effect it can only successfully fit into a personalized mold for

brief sections of the analysis. In the implicit half of the passage,

the master moves to the extreme extension of its role: "the absolute

Lord" is death. This should already indicate to us that the master

cannot be read in personal terms. Later in the text, however, the

slave discovers his other in the object of his labor and through his

interaction with this object the slave gains the necessary self-

recognition. If we read this section as the human need to gain

acknowledgement from another human, how could the slave possibly find

satisfaction through his relation to the object of his labor? The

working slave gains a reflected image of the himself from the thing,

but never gains acknowledgement from a human or personal other.

Indeed, we can only maintain the coherence of the passage if we

attribute no contents to the master role and read it an impersonal

logical role or as an objective other. The question remains, however,

whether we should read the slave's drama in personal or impersonal

terms, as a development of a personal, human consciousness

(individual or collective) in an objective world, or as a purely

logical development. Let us explore these two possibilities in turn.

If we read the text from a strictly logical perspective, the

master-slave drama illustrates the conflict between two forms of

negation: the master negation is the villain of the drama because it

totally destroys its object and ends the relationship (the master in

its desire/consumption or death against the slave); in contrast, the

slave negation is the hero because it operates a partial destruction

and perpetuates its object (the slave in its labor). Master negation

does not hold back its powers but attacks with full force, while the

slave negation is the model of restraint: "desire held in check,

fleetingness staved off ...." This is where Deleuze's Nietzsche can

finally enter the discussion. Master negation is simply destructive

force carried through to its logical conclusion, a force inseparable

from its manifestation. Slave negation is force "held in check", ie.

restrained from full expression. This is the "fiction" at the essence

of slave power. Nietzsche recognizes that this slave negation is the

reflective moment of self-consciousness, it is the interiorization of

force: "whatever the reason that an active force is falsified,

deprived of its conditions of operation and separated from what it can

do, it is turned back inside, turned back against itself." [127-8]

This is perfectly coherent with the Hegelian argument. The essence of

the slave which emerges victoriously from the dialectic is the

universal essence of being: pure self-consciousness. Interiority is

the essence of Hegelian being. Here we can see Hegel and Nietzsche on

the same terrain, marching in precisely opposite directions. Both

seek to locate essence in the movement of being, but Hegel discovers a

force reflected back into itself (self-consciousness or interiority)

and Nietzsche proposes a force which emerges unhaltingly outside

itself (the will to power or exteriority). The discussion comes back

once again to the nature of power. If in both cases the essence of

being is power, they are two radically different conceptions of power.

Our terms are clumsy, but the distinction is clear: on one side,

there is power separated from what it can do, Hegelian reflection or

Ockham's ens in potentia; and on the other side, there is power

internal to its manifestation, Ockham's ens in actu. We have seen

above that a modified Scholastic argument is available to Deleuze to

defend the "efficient" conception of power in logical terms. Here,

however Deleuze follows Nietzsche's argument and shows a series of

negative practical effects which are consequent on this slave victory

of interiority: pain, guilt, sin, etc. [128-31] Once again we can see

why Deleuze might choose not to address Hegel's master-slave dialectic

directly, because the entire discussion is directed toward self-

consciousness, toward interiority, a condition antithetical to joy and

affirmation.

Furthermore, in these same logical terms and in a perfectly

coherent fashion, the "education" of the slave reveals a critical

method of partial negations. The first moment of the critique is the

slave's close confrontation with or fear of death; this moment is the

pars destruens, but it is a limited pars destruens since the

"essential nature" of the slave is spared. This confrontation

purports to free the slave from the fixity of its previously stable

conditions and allow it to operate the second moment of the critique,

the pars construens, through the slave's labor. This second moment,

however, is not properly a pars construens, it is not really

productive, but rather revelatory: the slave is not created or

substantially transformed in this second moment, but rather the slave

"becomes conscious of what he truly is." [195] Taylor's term for

this moment of labor--a "standing negation"--is adequate because it

shows that there is really no progression here. Posed in these

logical terms, then, we finally make good on Deleuze's claim cited

above that it is precisely the errors of the Kantian critique which

lead to the Hegelian dialectic. Like the Kantian critique, the

dialectical critique described by the education of the slave is

neither total nor positive: the partiality of its destructive moment

spares precisely what takes the place of creation in the productive

moment, the "essential nature" of the slave. However, while Kant

"seems to have confused the positivity of critique with a humble

recognition of the rights of the criticised," [89] this Hegelian slave

critique has made the criticised into the hero of the drama. The

triumph of this dialectical critique is that the essential nature of

the slave survives and is revealed in pure form in a stable

configuration of partial, "standing" negations. Only the master's

active negation, the unrestrained attack, the death of the adversary

can lead to a total critique, and therefore to the opportunity for a

positive, original creation. "Destruction as the active destruction

of the man who wants to perish and to be overcome announces the

creator." [178] The differences between the two types of power, then,

are directly related to the two types of critique: Nietzsche's master

power, in which force is internal to its manifestation knows no

restraint and operates a total destruction; the pars destruens can

only be partial once power is separated from what it can do.

All of this we have discovered reading Hegel's argument as if the

slave were an impersonal force playing out a logical position.

However, if we are to emphasize the educational journey of the slave

as the development of a particular self-consciousness, as Hegel does,

it seems that we have to fill the slave with some general personal

contents. What exactly is the "essential nature" of the slave which

survives the onslaught of critical forces and emerges victorious from

the development? Hegel would have us believe that the slave essence

is content-less as pure self-consciousness, and that this essence is

not particular to the slave but it is the very essence of being. The

coherence of Hegel's argument, however, relies on the differential

relationship between the slave and its master. The movement which

defines and reveals essence cannot develop with any actor, but is

dependent on a specific position in the relationship: we see, of

course, that the master does not embody this movement. Since the

logic of the drama turns on the slave's position in the relationship,

the essence of the slave has to involve his servitude. (9) The first

moment of the critique (the fear of death, the relation to the master)

makes the slave more intent on its activity and the second moment

(work) is its pure expression. It is precisely slave labor which

survives and is purified through the critical education. The text

makes clear, however, that the work of the slave cannot be considered

as creative energy or productive force; on the contrary, the slave's

work is fundamentally his role in a "standing" relationship.

The tradition of Marxist thought has known all too many

interpretations which (directly or indirectly) exalt this Hegelian

proposition: the worker occupies an exalted position because his work

expresses human essence. Thus, the history of the worker's struggle

becomes an educational drama which assaults, "melting away", the

inessential character of the worker in order to affirm the essential

nature of work: the worker is liberated in as much as work is affirmed

as his essence. This is the Stakonovist "dignity" of the worker.

Marx will have no part of this: leave it to the bosses to sing the

praises of work. What is at issue here is not the description of the

worker's existence in a relationship, but the proposition that this

role constitutes the essence of the worker. Marx makes a perfectly

analogous argument in relation to the State. "Hegel is not to be

blamed because he describes the existence of the Modern State such as

it is, but because he passes off what it is as the essence of the

State." [Marx-source?] This is where we can see Deleuze's Nietzsche

and Marx very close to one another, in an unrestrained attack on the

essence of established values. They both conceive of real essence not

as work, but as a force: power, the will to power, production,

creation. (10) But in order to liberate that force, to provide the

room for the pars construens, the constructive, transformative force,

they must both conduct a radical, total critique, an unlimited pars

destruens, attacking the essence of the established values. If the

worker is to reach a point of genuine affirmation, of self-

valorization, the attack has to be directed at the "essence", at the

values which define the worker as such--against servitude, against

work. (11) In this context, Nietzsche appears in the position of

Marxist workerism: "Per lottare contro il capitale, la classe operaia

deve lottare contro se stessa in quanto capitale .... Lotta operaia

contro il lavoro, lotta dell'operaio contro se stesso come lavoratore

...." (In order to struggle against capital, the working class must

struggle against itself in as much as it is capital .... Workers'

struggle against work, struggle of the worker against himself in as

much as worker ....) [Tronti 260] The worker attacking work,

attacking himself in as much as worker is a beautiful means of

understanding Nietzsche's "man who wants to perish and to be

overcome." In attacking himself, he is attacking the relationship

which has been posed as his essence--only after this "essence" is

destroyed can he truly be able to create. An Hegelian partial

critique is at best a reformism, preserving the essence of what it

attacks: it "supersedes in such a way as to preserve and maintain what

is superseded ...." [Phenomenology 188]. A total critique is

necessarily an insurrectional critique. And only that unrestrained

destruction of established "essence" can allow for genuine creation.

Deleuze's Nietzsche appears as a prophet of what Lenin calls "the art

of insurrection." (11)

Remark: The will to Workers' Power and the social synthesis.

Is Nietzsche and Philosophy an untimely hymn to the workers of

'68? Through Deleuze's reading, we have found a surprisingly strong

confluence between Nietzsche and Marx (and even Lenin) in terms of the

power, the radicality and the creativity of the practical critique.

However, we are not yet prepared to confront the Nietzsche-Marx

question in all its complexity. In this remark I wish only to touch

on the question, somewhat indirectly, by considering Deleuze's

Nietzschean arguments in terms of Vogliamo tutto (We want everything),

a simple, beautiful Italian novel which recounts the story of a worker

at the FIAT plant in 1968 and his involvement in the formation of the

political movement Potere operaio (Workers' Power). (12) What

interests me initially in this comparison is the radical attack on the

established notion of essence as a precondition for change and

creation. In Nietzschean terms, Deleuze often expresses this as the

attack on "man" as a moment in the effort to go beyond man, to create

new terms and values of human existence. [64-5, also Foucault 131-41]

This is the same notion expressed by the workers' "refusal of work"

(rifiuto di lavoro), an attack against their established essence so as

to be able to create new terms of existence. Note that the workers'

refusal is not only a refusal to work (rifiuto di lavorare) but a

refusal of work, that is a refusal of a specific existing relation of

production. In other words, the workers' attack on work, their

violent pars destruens is directed precisely at their essence.

In the first section of Vogliamo tutto, the protagonist cannot

yet pose his desires in such political terms, but nonetheless what he

hates most of all is precisely what defines his social existence and

what is presented to him as his essence; thus, he cannot understand

why anyone would want to celebrate work on May Day. "Ma che

scherziamo la festa del lavoro. ... Non mi era mai entrato nella

testa perch‚ il lavoro doveva essere festeggiato." (What a joke to

celebrate labor day. ... It never occurred to me why work ought to be

celebrated.) [74] Workers who accept the established value of work

appear to him as closed, blocked from what they can do, and it is

precisely this acceptance of the established values as essence that

makes them dangerous: "gente durissima ottusi senza un po' di fantasia

pericolosi. Mica fascisti ottusi proprio. Pci erano pane e lavoro.

Io che ero qualunquista almeno ero uno recuperabile. Ma quelli

accettavano fino in fondo il lavoro e il lavoro era tutto per loro

...." (thick people obtuse without the least bit of imagination

dangerous. Not fascists just obtuse. The PCI was bread and work. I

was a "qualunquista" (non-ideological, value-less) at least I was

recuperable. But they completely accepted work and for them work was

everything ....) [85-6] Those who accept "bread and work" as their

essence as workers are unable to imagine, unable to create. The

danger they present is that of a forced stasis, of a deadening of

creative powers and a perpetuation of the established essence. In

this context, a "qualunquista" is already in a better position: the

lack of values, of beliefs provides a space on which imagination and

creation can act. From this position, from the recognition of his

opposition to work as a relation of production, the protagonist begins

a progressively more political attack on work itself. Thus far, we

are still on the terrain of Deleuze's Nietzsche, with the total

critique of established values. Here we have a developed example of

the worker attacking work, and therefore attacking himself in as much

as worker, as a beautiful instance of Nietzsche's "man who wants to

perish", the active and liberatory destruction which must be

distinguished from the passivity of the "last man", the pciista who

completely accepts work. [cf. 174]

The protagonist of Vogliamo tutto, however, only gains the real

power to carry out this destructive project when he begins to recognize

his commonality with the other workers. The voice of the narrative

takes on a continually broader scope, shifting from first person

singular to first person plural, as the mass of workers begin to

recognize what they can do and what they can become. "Tutta la roba

tutta la ricchezza che produciamo Š nostra. ... Noi vogliamo tutto.

Tutta la ricchezza tutto il potere e niente lavoro." (All the stuff

all the wealth we produce is ours. ... We want everything. All the

wealth all the power and no work.) [128] The expansion of the

collective expression is matched by an expansion of the will. It is

precisely the wealth of the collectivity which provides the basis for

the violent radicality of critique. "Cominciavano a avercela su a

volere lottare non perch‚ il lavoro non perch‚ il padrone Š cattivo ma

perch‚ esiste. Cominciava a venire fuori questa esigenza di volere il

potere insomma." (What began to come up was the desire to struggle not

because the work not because the boss were bad but because they exist.

What began to come out was the demand to want power, in short.) [128]

The recognition of collective desires goes hand in hand with the

development and expansion of collective practice: the workers strikes

build to the point where they spill outside of the factory as

demonstrations in the streets and violent conflict which involves

large parts of the city. Finally, this collective destructive

expression, this moment of intense violence, opens the possibility for

the subsequent joy and creation. "Ma adesso la cosa che li faceva

muovere pi£ che la rabbia era la gioia. La gioia di essere finalmente

forti. Di scoprire che ste esigenze che avevano sta lotta che

facevano erano le esigenze di tutti era la lotta di tutti." (But now

the thing which moved them more than anger was joy. The joy of being

finally strong. Of discovering that these demands of their struggle

were the demands of everyone that it was the struggle of everyone.)

[171] This is the climax of the novel, the point where the struggle

transforms from a pars destruens driven by the hatred for the bosses

and work to a pars construens of workers' joy, feeling their power.

In this focal point, the struggle is converted from negation to

affirmation: this is the hour of "midnight", Nietzsche's

transmutation. [cf Nietzsche and Philosophy 171-5] The workers'

attack on their essence as workers arrives at a moment when they are

able to "go beyond", to discover a terrain of creation and joy beyond

the "worker".

There are two elements of this workers' transmutation which I

would like to emphasize. The first is that the entire critical

movement is necessarily tied to a broadening movement of the

collectivity. The workers' recognition of their commonality and their

expression in collective action take the form of a spatial or social

synthesis, composing an expansive and coherent body of desire: as the

body of workers expands, their will and power grow. The synthesis

involved in the workers' collectivity is an eternal return of the will

not in time but in space, the return of the will laterally throughout

the mass of workers. It would be a poor formulation to say that the

workers are powerful because they come together: this would imply a

calculation of individual sacrifice for achieving extrinsic collective

goods. Rather, the workers' power and their joy is precisely that

they will and act together. The second element I would like to

emphasize is that the transmutation comes about through the practice

of the workers. When the workers "actualize" their critique, when

they pass into action, in the factory and in the streets is when they

achieve the constructive moment of joy and creation. The

"actualisation" of the workers is a practice of joy. These two

elements give us the terms for the remainder of our study of Deleuze's

Nietzsche: how does Nietzsche conceive a real synthesis of forces and

how do these forces manifest themselves in terms of practice.