negri - revolution retrieved - writings on marx, keynes, capitalist crisis and new social subjects...

8/6/2019 Negri - Revolution Retrieved - Writings on Marx, Keynes, Capitalist Crisis and New Social Subjects (1967-83)

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"We are not inventors of anything. Weare just readers of Marx, and politicalrevolutionary agitators in our time

Toni Negri Trani Prison

November 1980

'Faith sir the book was lost and becausetwas pity so good a play should be lostwe found it and play it

John Marston: The Malcontent


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REVOLUTION

RETIEVEDWritings on Marx, Keynes,

Capitalist Crisisand New Social Subjects

(1967-83)

b Toni Negri


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First pubished in English in 1988 by Red Notes,BPI5, 2a St Pauls Road, London NI England

ntroductory notes by John Merrington

British Library Cataloguing in Publication DataNegri AntonioRevolution Retrieved: Writings on Marx Keynes Capitalist Crisisand new Social Subjects (1967-83)1 EconomicsI. Title330 HBI71SBN 0906305-09-8 Hbk

0906305-10-1 Pbk

Copyigh:T book may be freely reproduced by any tendency in therevolutionary left movement. Copyright prevents it being poached by

capitalists Where material is reprinted we would appreciate if you couldsay where its taken from. Red Notes 1988.

Individual copies of this book can be obtained UK) from Red Notes,BPI5 2a St Pauls Road ondon N1 Please send cheque or moneyorder together with order: UK orders 995 pbk) plus 055 per copypostag; US ordrs $18.00 pbk) plus $300 air mail postage

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to Red Notes at the above addressBookshop sales Copies of this book may also be obtained atCompendium Bookshop 234 Camden High Street London NW1 Tel0-267-1525

Pease Noe f you cannot afford the cost of this book drop us a lie, sendus what you c afford and well'send you one

Typeset in 105 on 12 Times Roman.

Printed by Billing and Sons td, Worcester


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TABLE F CNTENTS

PREFACE . . .. . . . ... . . . . 1

KEYNES AND THE CAITALIST THEORY OF THE STATEOST1929 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

01929 as a Fundamental Moment for a Periodisation of the ModernState0Keynes and the Period 19171929 Understanding the Impact ofthe October Revolution on the Structure of Capitalism Keynes -theShift from Poltics to Scence (1929 the Working Class within Capital) Capitalist Reconstruction and the Social State

MARX ON CYCLE AND CRSIS . . . . . . 43The Problem of Development and the Critical Awareness of Political

Economy Marx's Analysis of Cycle an Development Development and Capitalist Ideologies of the State The Problem ofDevelopment and the Alternatives Offered by WorkingClass Science

CRISIS OF THE LANNERSTATE: COUNIS ANDREVOLUTIONARY ORGANISATION . . . . . 91

The Antagonism of the Tendency according to Marx PresentRelevance of his Analysis 0A Mystified View of the Tendency: theEconomists and the Destruction of the Concept of Capital 0A Disturbing Consequence: the Subjectivists and the Contradiction Seen asResult, as Catastrophe [ Abstract Labour as the Revolutionary

Subject: the Basis of the Communist Programme and ProletarianAppropriation 0The Crisis Ofthe PlannerState the Big Enterprise asthe Articulation of the Tendency and as the Subject of the Antagonismfrom Capitals Point of View Preliminary Reflections on SomeObections Regarding Method: Tendency, Science and Practice 0Against Enterprise Command: the Organisation of Insurrecton withinthe New Composition of the Working Class Wealth" and Poverty"of the Proletariat within the Dialectic of Revolution 0Our ImmediateTask Postscript.

ARX BEYOND ARX WORKING NOTEBOOKS ON THEGRUNDRISSE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149

The Grundrisse,an Open Work: an Introduction.

CRISIS OF THE CRISISSTATE . . . . .. . 177

ARCHAEOLOGY AND ROJECT: THE ASS WORKERAND THE SOCIAL WORKER . . . 199


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Functions and Lmitations of he Concept of he Mass Worker GCaptalis Resructuring: from the Mass Worker t Socia Labour-Power Towards a Criique of the Poitical Economy of the Mass Worker

from Social Labour-Power to the Socal Worker A PoltcalConcepton of Labour-Power heProletarat. Some Probems

DO YOU REMEMBER REVOLUTION? .......... 229 A Proosal for an Interpretation of the Italan Movement of the1970s, by a group of comrades incuding Toni Negri

AN INTERVIEW WITH TONI NEGRI ........... 245 The Aprl 7h Trial Crmnalisng heAutonomia ClosingPotcal Spaces The New Class Layers We Are Readers of Marx

THE REVOLTAT TRANI PRISON ............. 253 A Story of State Bruaty Satements and Accouns

LEER FROM TONI NEGRI .................... 259

NEGRI BEFORE HI JUDGES .................. 261

A BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE ....................... 269

A READING LIST .................... 273


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1

Preface

Ths book s a slcton of key poltca and thortcal artcls by TonNegr, spannng the perod of hs nvolvment n th Itaanrevoutonary lft snce the 1960s. These wrtngs are ssenta for anundrstandng o th poltcal outlook of th Itaan autonomst move

mnt; a movment whch dveoped oneof

the most massiv andcohrnt changs n Europe to th system of austrty poltcs and throle of the stabshd Left wthn t n th 1970s. Ths Ngr essaysprovded a theoretca and crtcal refernc ont for ongong dbats nthe dvlopmnt of ths new class politics of communsm, based on thelbraton f neds and rfusa of th captast systm of work from tsorgns n th "workersm of th 1960s to th movment of autonomy n th 1970s. As such thy are stl mor than rlvant to anundrstandng of today's problms n a rvoutonary class prspctv.

Negr s bst known abroad for th world-wd notorety surroundnghs arrst and prsonment n 1979 along wth many othrs onconspracy charges. Hs tral procss took th form of an attempt tocrmnase and destroy th das and memory of th ntr movement towhch he had contrbutd One am of ths book s to put these deas backnto focus aganst the gnera dstorton to whch they have bensubjctd.

H s now lvng n x n Franc havng ben sntncd to 30 yearsmprsonmnt n Itay for hs poltcal actvts. Almost all of the

orgna chargs aganst hm hav snc ben droppd at th appea stag(Fbruary 1987). Aftr eght yars of exle and/or mprsonmnt, hs codfendants n the tral hav bn acquttd It s now gneralyrcognsd that the Aprl 7th tral was a poltcal nquston from start tofnsh usng "terrorst labls to ncrmnat movements of theopposton outsd and aganst the stablshd poltcal systm. Negr, n


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Reo/uton Retrieved

hope for the future: social revoution in a working-cass an communistsense.

London, February 1988


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3

Keynes and the Capitalist Theory /the State post-2(1968)

Introducton

The rst two articles in this selection of Negri's writings werepubished in the theoretical review Contropano (this transates asAnti-Plan"), in successive issues ofhe oual, nos 1 and 21968. Thisoual was un by a group of leading exponents of the Italianworkerist" (operaita) movement in the 1960s-Tonti, Cacciari, Asor

Rosa, Negri and others. Negri ef the review with the second of thesetwo articles, over the issue of tactica entrism into the Italian CommunistParty a party which Tronti and others joined at this point

Both these aticles shoud b placed in the context of a broadercollective research project in which Negr was invoved at the time asprofessor f the Institute of Social and Political Sciences at theUniversity of Padova. They were orginally contrbutions to a series ofresearch seminars at the Institute in 1967 for the half centenary of theOctober Revolution. They were eventually repubished, aong with the

other seminar papers, in Opera e Stato (Fetrinei Milano 972 ananthoogy which became a bestseer in the Left movement, runningto numerous editions. Despite their appaenty academic form theseartices were a key point of reference for the poitics of the worker andstudent militants who were formed in the mass strugges in factories,schoos and universities in 1968-70, and especiay for the newrevoutionary group Potere Operaio (Workers' Power") in whichNegri was to pay a leading role. Hence their incusion in this volume.

The reader can gain some idea of the scope of this proect by asummary of the maor contents of this 1972 anthoogy The full title is:Workers and the State: Workers' Struggles and the Reform of theCaptalst State from the October Revoluton to the New Deal. Apartom the two Negri articles translated here it includes essays on theworkers' council movements, by Sergio Boogna (transated in Telos,


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4

Keynes and the Capitalist Theory of the State post-1929

increasingly unified as "social apital; its unity was no longer derivativefrom competition. Advanced capitalism was not only "pannabe buthad coe to represent Marxs own prognosis of a capitalt socialism.This theme had been developed earlier in the 1960s by Raniero Panzieri("Surplus Value and Planning Notes for a Reading of Capitatransated in Labour Process and Class Strtegies, CSE and Stage OneBooks London 1976) and Mario Tronti (especially in "The Plan ofCapital translated in Telos no. 17 973)

Negri's contribution was to show how the panner-state (studied herethrough its major theorist Keynes) recognises and assumes workingcass antagonism within the accumulation process through the wage

variable and seeks to reguate tis dynamically as the central pivot inthe panning of development thus te working cass becomes in theplanner-state the "motor of capitalist development. This analysis hadimportant politica impliations for the workerist movement Itindicated the specific basis of reformist and revisionist labur poiticswhich lay witin the framework of "the plan and saw developmentpoicies as a progressive alteative to an unregulated capitalism. Theestablished Left "Marxist or otherwise was basically Keynesian.Secondly it indicated the key poitical potentia of the wage struggle as

the specific terrain of antagonism and recomposition of the workingcass, ouide and against the plan Once the wage struggle becomesindependent from prouctivity it becomes the vehicle for a new unity ofpolitical demands for income "more money ess work the decisiveterrain on which the class becomes recomposed and politicalyautonomo

This perspective in which class autonomy as an independent forceoutside of and against development takes the form of the separation ofincome from wage-work provided a key for understanding the natureand impact of the struggles that were to put the system into crisisinteationally in the period that followed.


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5

Keynes and the Capitalist Theory of the State post-1929

1 1929a afundamental moment for a periodisation of the modestate

Fifty years have passed since the events of Red October 1917. Thoseevents were the climax of a historical movement that bean with theJune 1848 insurrection on the streets of Paris when the modernindustria proletariat first discovered its clas autonomy, its independentantagonism to the capitaist system. A further decisive turning point was

again in Paris, with the Commune of 1871 the defeat of which led to thegeneraisation of the sogan of the party and the awareness of the needto organise class autonomy poitically

184871 ; 18711917. This periodisation seems to provide the onlyadequate amework for a theorisation of the contemporary state. Sucha definition must take into account the tota change in relations of casspower that was revealed in the revolutionary crises spanning the latterhalf of the nineteenth century The probem imposed for politica

thought and action by the cass chalenge of 1848 led to a new criticalawareness mystified to a greater or lesser degree of the centra roenow assumed by the working class in the capitaist system. Unless wegrasp this class determinant behind the transformation of capital and thestate, we remain trapped within bourgeois theory we end up with aformalised sphere of politics separated from capital as a dynamic classrelation. We must go beyond banal descriptions of the process ofindustrialisation" our starting point is the identification of a secularphase of capitalist development in which the diaectic of exploitation

(the inherent subordination and antagonism of the wage-work relation)was socaled, leading to its extension over the entire fabric of poiticaland institutiona relations of the modern state. Any definition of thecontemporary state that does not encompass these understandings islike Hegel's dark night in which all cows appear grey.

1917 is a crucial point of rupture in this process: at this point, history


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Revolution Retrieved


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marginalist economics is a denunciation of rationaity in general. As Robertsonnoted as eary as the 1920s, it is a readiness to accept the irrational resuts of thecontemporary isms" 70 On the whoe question cf A. Emmanue, Le Taux de Proit et les

Incompatibilits Marx-Keynes" in Annales, ESC 21 , 966, pp 1891211.71 This interpretation of the American crisis of 1937 is ofered by H.W Arndt, op.cit , pp 68-70 In general, on the rhythym and infationary trend of the economiccrises of contemporary capitalismcM. Dobb in Tendenze de Capitalismo Europeo(Trends of European Capitaism" Symposium organised by the GramsciInstitute Rome), Editori Riuniti, Rome 966, pp. 2336.

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Intoduction

Marx on Cycle and Crisis(1968)

This essay was rst publshed as was the previous one on Keynes, inthe journal Contropiano, Rome, 1968 It was reublished in the sameanthoogy, Operai eStato Feltrinelli Milano 1972 as a direct sequel tothe first, and takes up many of the same themes It also marked Negrisdefinitive split with some of the leading exponents of the Italian"workerist opposition around the central figure of Mario Tronti with

whom Negri had colaborated continuously, on highly influentialournals such as Quadei Rossi 19613 and Classe Operaia 19667,since the early 1960s

The basic issues leading to this split are referred to in the latter partof the article Section 4), where the "illusions that define the reationbetween working-class struggle and capitaist development as an"infinite paraelism in terms of a "permanent dual power model, arein facVa direct criticism of Tronti's position (albeit without naming him)The article ends, in its origina Contropiano edition, with the

announcement of Negri's resignation from the editorial collective,owing to his "substantive differences with the political positions of theournal .

Since "workerism in Italy had distinct and different connotations tothose current in the Englishspeaking Left, this needs some elucidationAs Negri indicates frequently in these articles the earlier work ofTronti, Panzieri and others as of key importance in the 1960s, layingthe foundations for an independent mvement of workers autonomy inItay, outside established Left organisations Particulrly important was

their recovery of Marx as the theorist of the working class struggle as anactive force of antagonism within production and accumulation, and ofvaue seen as a class relationship; their systematic critique of theobectivised and economistic categories of orthodox Marxism, of its so


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Revutin Retrieved

of debate later in the 1970s (see Archaeology and Project" below) This


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of debate later in the 1970s (see Archaeology and Project below). Thisis covered in egri and Tronti The Soial Fatory, Foreign Agentsseries Semiotexte ew York 1986. Last but not least, we must refer tothe pioneering essay by Raniero Panzieri The Capitalist Use ofMachinery Quaei Rossi no. 1, 1961 which was basic in providing acritique of the objectivity of technology and productive forces. This isoften cited, indirectly in these Negri texts - for example at the end ofSection 1 of this article An English translation of this seminal essay is inthe anthology edited by P. Slater and M Reinfelder Outlines of aCritiqe of Technology, Inklinks London 1980 now reissued by FreeAssociation Books, London 1986.

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Marx on Cycle and Crisis

1. The Problem o Developmen and he Criical A wareness oPoliical Economy

Let us look at economic development as both the project of and theproblem for capitalist power today How is development characterisedin relation to its fundamental antagonism, which is working-classstruggle? What are the strategic points to which capital must direct itsaction within this relationship? And how reciprocally, is working-classstruggle to be extricated om the repressive mechanism the trap of

capitalist development?In what follows I obviously don't claim to give exhaustive answers tothese fundamental problems. I simply outline some thoughts on (a)political economys concetion of development; then (b) a critique anda claricaton of that conception, arising from Marx's analysis of thecycle and (c) finally I shall try o define the repercussions of thatconception on modern ideologies of the caitalist state and to see whatpossible alternatives working-class science has to offer.

I hardly need to point out that the problem of develoment has

become central to present-day capitalist ideology: the role ofdevelopment is so much to the fore as to be self-evident Development,control of the ccle, and control of economic crisis since the 1930s thesehave been the sole preoccupations around which the capitalist viewpoint(if punto di vista del capitale) has expressed itself. And they all threeconverge around the poblem of stability which today paradoxicallythe sharp thrust of working class struggle has turned into a problem ofthe very survival of the system

"The contradictions inherent in the movement of capitalist societyimpress themselves upon the practical bourgeois most strikingly inthe changes of the periodic cycle through which modern industrruns and whose crowning point is the universal crisis!

Thus wrote Marx in his postscript to the second edition of apital.


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85 Cf notes 69 and 70 above One can hardly overstate the value and effectivenessof the Leninist method which is characterised fundamentallyby a correct utilisationof the analytical indications offered by Mar, and a direct politicisation - as afunction o organisation -of the anaytical context thus identified A revival of thismethod nowadays woud be an organisational fact in itself.

86. The activity of Walt W Rostow, or exampe, can be located within this culturalcircuit In general, as regards capita's growing awareness of the links betweend l d i i hi S fE i G th L d 1958


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development and crisis see his Stages ofEconomic Growth, London 1958.

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Intruct

Crisis o/the Planner-State: Communismand Revolutionary Organisation

(1971)

In this essay Negri brought together for the first tme perspectives thatwere to remain central in his writngs a a Marxist militant throughoutthe 1970s. Unlike the other essays in this volume t was written as anorgansatona intervention, as a dscussion paper for the 1971conference of Potere Operaio This was one of the maor newrevolutionary extraparliamentary organisations that arose from thewave of factory and socal struggles that swept Italy in 1969. Negr was

a leading member of Potere OperaoThe article was frst published n the organisaton's joual (Potere

Operaio, no 45 September 1971) and was subsequently republishedwth the addtion of the Preface and Postscrpt by Feltrnell (Mlano1974). It has been published in several editions outside Italy (FrenchGerman etc).

The value of the essay for the movement lay in the overall problemsand anticipatory perspectves it raised rather than in any specificorgansatonal solutons. Its scope - the "updatng of Marxstvocabulary to analyse the orignality of the crisis the new level ofantagonism reached and the new class subect -ensured that it would bea focus for debate well beyond P.O. as such.

For Negr and for Potere Operaio the mass struggles had gonebeyond the Keynesan regulaton of the "plannrstate and beyond theclassc "productivist perspectves of socialism (the realisaton of the"value of labour). The egalitariansm of the struggles ("equal wagerises regardless of productivity) had undermned the wagework

relation and the hierarchies of the divsion of labour n the factory; hestruggle for ncome and aganst the enforcement of work was nowextended to the "social factory as a whole Slogans such as the "refusal


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47

Cisis of th Plann-Stat: Communism and Rvolutionary Oganisation

tendencies (Section 3 - and specifically with those who advocated anelitist militay vanguardism separated from the mass strugglesOrganisation, like insurection, is defined as apce arising from andintrinsic to the mass movement of struggles. He also citicises, on theother hand individualist forms of utopian prefiguration ofcommunism common in post-1968 movementist" ideology (Section8); as well as those incurable optimists" (Section 9) for whom nothingb i ll h d h d d h b li d h i i li i l f f


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basically had changed, and who believed that existing political foms ofmediationculd still be adequate from a workerist class viewpoint Thisis again a reference to Tonti and other leading workerists of the earlierperiod who were by now in the Cmmunist Party.


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Conens:

Preface

Bibliographical Note

1 . The Antagonism of the Tendency according to Marx PresentRelevance of his Analysis

2. A Mystified View of the Tendency the Economists and theDestruction of the Concept of Capital.

3 A Disturbing Consequence the "Subjectivists and theContradiction Seen as Result as Catastrophe

4 Abstract Labour as the Revolutionary Subject: the Basis of theCommunist Programme and Proletarian Appropriation.

.The Crisis of the Planner-State: the Big Enterprise as theArticulation of the Tendency and as the Subect of the Antagonism fromCapital's Point of View

6 Preliminary Reflections on Some Objections Regarding MethodTendency, Science and Practice

7. Against Enterprise Command: the Organisation of Insurrectionwithin the New Composition of the Working Class.

8. "Wealth and "Poverty of the Proletariat within the Dialectic of

Revolution9. Our Immediate Task.

10 . Postscript.

(Frst published as: ri dll Stat-Pia cmuim rgaizzazirivluziaria in Ptr Oprai No 45, 25 Septemer 1971.)

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Author's Preface

The essay that follows was first published on 25 September 1971 as asupplement to issue No 45 of the monthly journal Ptere Operai. Itwas one of the preparatory papers for Potere Operaio's thirdconference on organisation" .

The form of the essay reflects the urgency of the situation in which itwas written (in August 1971 immediately following theNixon measures

on inconvertibility of the dollar). Hence its conclusionsmay on occasionappear imprecise, being directed as they were, more to promotingpolitical discussion than to providing complete and definitive positions.For this reason I have decided to add a Ptrpt to this reprint of theessay This aims briefly and explicitly, to provide the reader not somuch with sources for the article (which are intimately tied up with theauthor's experiences of political activity) as with some bibliographicalsuggestions for further reading in the areas examined it also suggestssome topics around which moving on from this initial set of embryonic

definitions, discussion and analysis might be taken further.These topics are becoming increasingly central in terms both of

polemic and of political analysis in discussions within the revolutionarymovement in all countries with a high level of workingclass struggle.The fact is that the struggle against ideology through the militantcritique of political economy cannot rest content with rehearsing, forwhat it is worth the underlying theme of the anti-marginalist polemicwhich we still find being rehashed in the more orthodox schools of

Marxism; sharper lines of thinking have emerged under the pressureof

struggle from the bourgeois side in an attempt to confuse and mystifythe working-class science of subversion into a new fetishism of politicaleconomy Nor from the workingclass point of view, can the strugglefor

Revoion Retrieved

the party remain trapped within the confines of traditional thinking: ithas continually to renew its thinking and to come to terms with the givenpolitical composition o the working class and o its struggles. Thus ourtask is to win back Marx's theory, in order to practise it in ways which

increasingy match the given - and diverse needs of the class struggle- in both its aspects as a critique of political economy, and as a theory h


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o the party.This is especially true when at both levels of analysis, we can observe

undamentl changes taking place deep in the heart o productionrelations and class relations Marx made certain predictions regardingadvanced capitalist development; he described lucidly the moment inwhich the law of value would come to be extinguished and labour wouldbe no longer subsumed but ormally suppressed within capitalist

command. All this is now present reality. The working class has imposedthis on capital, and at the same time poses a demand or organisationwhich forces our analytic endeavours onto a quite new terrain. It isaround this transition - rom the formal suppression of labour withincapital to the rea abolition of capital's command - that we havecollectively committed ourselves to action.

I should stress that the indications contained in this artice seek theirverification only within an overall activity of revolutionary practice It ispossible that the weaknesses of this essay - the fact that it is too

immediately related to problems of organisation and that it is perhapstoo polemical and summary in its attempt to stay close to thecontingencies o political discussion - may turn out to be virtues if it istrue that organised revolutionary practice is not only the only way tounderstandreality scientiicaly but also the only way to bring it closer

AN.August 1972

Quotatons in his essay are taken from:

Karl Marx, Grundrisse: Foundatons of the Crtique of Poltca Economy,translated by Martin Nicolas, Harmondswort Penguin 193.

V.I. Lenin, Phiosophical Notebook.

Mao Tse Tung, Seected Work.

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Crisis of the Planner-State: Communismand Revolutionary Organisation

1 . The Antagonism of the Tendency According to Marx: PresentRelevance of his Analysis.

Towards the end of the Chapter on Money, the rst part of theGrundrse (op. cit. pp. 227-8), Marx gives us an outline plan of hisentire project indicating the necessary steps in the argument. This mustproceed, he says from the analysis of money in its role as equivalent tothe definition of relations of production "the internal structure of

production; thence to the concentration of these elations in the state;and finally to the study of the world market the level at which thedialectic of the parts and of the whole allows all the contradictions tocome into play, and at which the destructive violence of crisis ismanifested as the general symptom pointing beyond thepresupposition and the urge which drives towards the adoption of a newhistoric form.

This indication of Marxs procedure should be regarded as basic foran understanding of Marxist methodology. It allows us to develop our

analysis correctly in terms of historical materialism, and to confront theproblems of crisis the state and revolutionary organisation in terms ofthe critique of political economy. Moreover it allows us to do this in sucha way that the prime importance of what Marx defines as the basictendency in the development of contradictions not only gives us generaltheoretical guidelines but also helps us to dene specific contradictionsof capitalist development today, as they present themselves from aworking-class viewpoint.

Besides, Marx's treatment ofthe problem of money in the first part ofthe Grundrisse already shows the inextricable link between the critiqueof the economic category "money and revolutionary politics. Analysisof the money form develops the irrepressible contradiction of the


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disposabiity of surplus value on the part of collective capita and itsstate then vioence is seen as the fundamental characteristic of thismanagement; the state presents itsef as mere violence and asarbitrariness The organisation of the mass worker, in the period of reasubsuption of labour within capita, has acted as a force determiningcrisis through the continuous creation of upheava in the equiibrium of

incomes (wages) within the system Today, the new tendency that is extending the appropriative pressure of the proetariat and thestrength of the aternative now being ived as a revoutionary need means that the mechanism of re-equiibration can now only be entustedto a relation of domination. Thus the distinguishing mark of revoutionary cass organisation today is that it takes up the strugge againstthe relationship of domination in its entirety The probem of organisati n d l f n t f nt t t k th t l f nd n


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tion develops for us on two fronts, two tasks that are equaly fundamenta: to ensure the effectiveness of movements of reappropriation ofsocia weath by the masses and at the same time to strike with vanguard vioence, in equa and opposing measure, at the bsses'mechanisms of command The law of value, in the process of its extinction, is replaced by the reguation of expoitation according to the wiofcapita; it entusts the reguation of subversion to the will of the vanguards. The theory of organisation today entails the matera definitionof the leves upon which there must be consoidated and of the formswithin which there must interact, on the one hand, movements towards

mass appropriation by th masses and the invention-power that the process of the stugges brings about and on the other, the urgency of anarmed force of the proetariat that wil attack and destroy capitaistcommand; a command that, now more than ever, is vountaisticsubjective and precise in its wil to dominate over the extinction of thelaw of value.

Finding bibiographic references in this area is not just difficult it isimpossibe This is a new word through which we have to trave, and inorder for us to get our bearings we shall need more than Blanquism or

its critique, more than insurectional theories of the Third Internationaor their opposite more than Causewitz and more than Mao. Onlyexperience courage and true revoutionay miitancy can help usresolve the new theoretica probems that face us

75

Marx Beyond Marx: Working Notebooks on the Grundrise(1979)

"


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Introduction

This is the introductory lecture in a series of nine seminar classes thatNegri taught in Paris, at the Ecole Normale Suprieure in 98 Thenotes for these classes were written up and published as Marx OftreMarx Fetrinelli Milan 1979. An English translation of the completetext is published in the United States: Marx beyond Marx - Lessons onthe Grundrse, translated and introduced by Harry Cleaver MichaelRyan and Maurizio Viano edited by James Fleming; Bergin andGarvey Massachussetts 1984 This text is not an easy read given the

fact that it represents Negri's "working notes on what were, afer all,Marx's own working notes; and this edition is at times hard going for theEnglish reader owing to an excessively "talo-English translationHowever it is well worth working through preferably in a readingcollective and in conjunction with selective readings of the Grundrisseitself to gain a fresh understanding of Marx in the light of capitalistcrisis and restructuration today

For Negri the Grundrisse answers many of the problems raised in thecontemorary "crisis of Marxism and this is the underlying argument

of these seminar notesThe fact that these classes were held in Paris, at the invitation of LouisAlthusser and others is important since they aso represent anintervention in the structuralist and poststructuralist debates thatdominated the French intellectual Left Negri was confronting in Paristhe phenomenon of "post-Marxism that was on the ascendant inFrance Coming from the experience of the Italian workerist andautonomist movement gave him a certain vantage point in this debateForthe Marx that the French "new philosophers sought to criticise was

the orthodox narrowly prodctivist and sociast Marx that the Italianworkerists had reinterpreted and superceded years before As Negri


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Reolution Retrieved

political context of the Grundrsse, see the seminal article by SergoBologna referred to n Neg's text, "Money and Crss: Marx asCorespondent of the New York Daly Tribune", Prmo Maggio 1974,available as a mimeograph from Red Notes.


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77

Marx Beyond Marx: Working Notebooks on the Grundrisse


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Introductory Note

"We would be the last to deny that capital containscontradictio Rather our task is to develop them tothefull.

Karl Marx, Grundrisse

Formysters and brothers in pron

n the Notes that follow, have collected the materials that I used as the basis for

my course on the Grundrse at the Ele Normale Suprieure Rue d'Ulm, Parisin Spring 1978 My thanks are due, first, to Louis Althusser, who invited me to teachthe course; also to Roxanne Sielberman, Yann Molier, Daniel Cohen, PierreEwenzyk, and Danielle and Alain Guillerm, without whose frateal help I wouldnot have been able to carry the course through. Which were the more important my own observations, or their critical comments I am unable to say. Suffice to saythat I swallowed down everything on offer, and have now recast it in the form of thisbook. During my stay in Paris, I had many other discussions both prior to andfollowing the course, which were most useful. have to acknowledge a debt ofgratitude to Flix Guattari for all that he gave me (and it was a lot thanks are alsodue t the comrades with whom worked at the University of Paris VI (Jussieu.

Finally, I also have to thank those sundry blockheads who forced me into exile inParis for a while, and gave me the opportunity to gather my thoughts in a situationof far greater calm than had been possible previously.

In this talian version of my working-notes, the quotations from the Grundrisseare taken from the text edited by the Marx-EngelsLenin Institute in Moscow(MELI: Karl Marx, Grundrisse der Kritik der Politischen 6konomie (Rohenwur1857-58, Dietz Verag, Berlin 1953 cite from the Italian translation by Enzo Grllo a fundamental work in many regards (Karl Marx, Lineamenti Fondamentali dellaCritica dell' Economia Politica 1857-58, La Nuova Italia Editrice, Firenze Vol 1968 Vol I 1970). During the course, we also had to hand copies of the French

translation ofthe Grundrisse ed. Roger Dangeville, 2 vols, Anthropos, Paris 1967)but we found it completely unusable There are useful insights contained in theEnglish translation of the Grundrse (translated by Martin Nicolaus, Penguin,


Harmondsworth 1973). For quotations from Capital I have used the Italian versionedited by antimori, Panzieri and Boggeri Editori Riuniti Roma and for theLetters, the six voumes edited by Manacorda Romagnoli, Cantimori andMeomonti Edizioni Rinascita, Roma

I have drawn heavily on the existing bibliography for the Grundrisse. In the textI cite Roman Rosdosky, Zur Entehungsgeschichte des Marxschen 'Kapital,Frankfurt am Main 1968 [translated into Engish by Pete Burgess as The Making of

Marxs 'Capita/, Pluto Press, London 1980] I also cite the following: Vitaly SVygodsky, Introduzione ai Grundrisse di Marx La Nuova Italia Firenze 1974(An Introduction to Marx's Grundrisse', Moscow 1975; Berlin 1967) Sergiooogna, Mone and Cris: Marx a Correspondent of the "New York DailyTribune [first pubished in Opera e Stato Feltrinelli, Milano 1972 transated intoEnglish and available fromRe Nots]; Isaak I Rubin Saggi sulla Teoria del Valoredi Marx Feltrinei, Milano 1976 Essays on Marx's Theory of Value", Black andRed Detroit 1972] Leningrad 1928; Frankfurt 1973 Walter Tuchscheerer Bevor'Das Kapita/ Entstand die Herausbildung und Entwicklung der konomischeTh i K M i d it 1853 bi 188 Ak d i V l B li 1968


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Theorie von K. Marx in der eit on 1853 bis 188, Akademie Verlag Berlin 1968

Hemut Reichelt, La Struttura Logica del Concetto di Capitae in Marx De DonatoBari 1973 (The Logical Structure of the Concept of Capita in Marx", Frankfurt1970)

I am indebted to many authors on the subject I am especially grateful to all thosecomrades particuary in Germany, Italy and Britain, who have done work on theGrundrse in recent years from many of them I have earned to read the Grundrisseas a revolutionary text

ANMilano, December 1978

78

Marx Beyond Marx

Section One


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The subjectve brth of the text: the "mmnence of crss and the compo nents of the analyss 0 Formal descrpton of the text 0The Grundrisseand the outlne of Capital: "enchantment of method, blockage ofresearch? 0 rom phlologcal consderatons to matters of substance:the two paths or the dscovery of surplus value and the cculaton nexusbetween socal captal/subjectvty/communsm 0The Grundrisse as anopen work supplementary theses towards a readng The "plural un verse of Marxs method: Forschung, Darstellung Neue Darstelluing 0The major nterpreters: (a) the Grundrse as a delrum? (b) Diamatrevved? (c) homologablty wth Capital? (d) "a revoluton from

above? There s no delegaton n theory 0 The Grundrse as thedynamc centre of Marx's thought n ts nternal hstory and n ts revol utonary project 0An outlne for our readng 0 Max beyond Marx?

ic Hobsbawm has descbed the Grundrisse as a "knd ofntellectual personal and often ndecipherable shorthand EnzoGrllo n the Introducton to hs excellent Italan translaton tends toagee wth ths judgement. If anythng, at least as regards the problemsnvolvedn readng and translatng the text t s an understatement TheGrundrisse s ndeed a dffcult pece of work

But t would be a mstake to exaggerate the cryptc nature of Marx'swtng by focussng on the more dffcult sectons The man dffcultywth the Grundrse les n the form of the manuscrpt the hectcprocess of ts producton rather than n the substance of ts argumentThe lne of argument of the Grundrse becomes very clear when weembrace the full scope and densty of Marxs project; t s only partallyobfuscated by the mpetuousness of the writng by the fact that some of

ts attacks are rather specfic to ther perod and some of ts ways ofproceedng rather expermental We should bear n mnd though that


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Rvu Rvd

L of df oul d oul o codd by h uho whch oh ucu of Mx' wok

1) September 1857: ud, p1082) October 1857 ud pp 22783) November 1857 ud p. 264

4) November 1857 ud p. 2755) February 1858: Letter to Lassalle, 22 February 1858, Scdoodc p 96

6) April 1858: Letter to Engels 2 Aprl 1858, ibid., pp 97-98

7) June 1858 ud German edn., p. 855-98) anuary 1859: obuo p 199) FebruaryMarch 1859 ud German edn, pp. 969-78

10) December 1862: Letter to Kugelmann, 28 December 1862, MEWvol. 30


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11 ) January 1863: Tho I, pp. 414-612) uly 1865: Letter to Engels, 31 uly 1865, MEW vol 3113) October 1866 Letter to Kugelmann, 13 October 1866, ibd

14) April 1868: Letter to Engels, 30 April 1868, Scd oodcpp. 191-5.

However my first doubt is in fact philological. I ask myself whetherit is correct to consider Marxs main completed work ie Capita - asbeing a comprehensive and exhaustive summary of his analytic labours.

The accounts of Capita genesis as provided by our worthy academiccomrades are in my opinion vitiated by their presupposition thatCapitarepresents the peak of Marxs analytic efforts. One example willsuffce - Rosdolsky's explanation (op. cit. pp. 61 seq) of the fact thatMarx abandond the separate Book on Wage Labour'. It is certainlytrue that this book - which was outlined in the Grnrisse schema - isnowhere to be found although a part of the materals gathered for it didend up in the first book of Capita. But is this fact sufficient for us to saythat Marx abandoned" it?

If this frst, philological doubt is then combined with others of a moresubstantial nature, then the situation becomes even more problematical The wage as it is presented in Book I of Capita appearseither as a dimension of capital or as a motor function of the capitalistprocess of production/reproduction The pages dedicated to thereduction of the working day are fundamental in this regard from atleast three points of view: the dialectic between necessary labour andsurplus labour the reformist function of the wage; the problem of the

state being directly involved in the modification/regulation of theworking day. However in the Grnrisse there is a further step which

81

Marx Beyond Mar: Working Notes on he Grundse

HE ORIGINAL PLAN(6 Books)

I ON CAPITAL

a) Capital in general

1) Production Process

THE CHANGED PLAN

CAPITAL' (3 Volumes)

I Production process o capital(Sections):

1) Commodity and Money

2) Transformation of moneyinto capital


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2) Circulation process

3-5) Absolute and relativesurplus value

6 Wage

7) Accumulation Process

II Circulation process of capita

3) Prot and interest , III. Process of capitalist

' I"production as a whole

: 13) Profit and rofit rate

b) Competition ' 1 4) Merchant capital

c) Credit system - - . . i 5) Interest and credit.

d) Share-capita

II ON LANDEDPROPERTY-+ 6 Ground-RentIII ON WAGE LABOURJIV STATE

V. FOREIGN TRADE

VI WORLD MARKET

7) Revenues

Ubr l c w first r b.Dl c w BOOK o apal


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from above launched from within the real movement; it is faith in the"revolution from below; it is the highest potential for destroying alltheoretical and political autonomies existing separately from the realmovement that real movement which the Grundrisse sees (in itsstructure of categories) as a constitutive force

D

Leaving aside Lesson 3 (in which we shall re-read the Einleitung[Introduction] and then 9se a series of methodological problems inthe other lessons I shall progress through the substance of theGrundrse. Lessons 2 4and 5 will follow the process that leads from thecritique of money to the definition of the theory of value; from this, tothe formulation of the theory of surplus value then to the definition ofcrisis and catastrophe as the theoretical conclusion of this irst section ofthe analysis. In Lessons 6 and 7, we shall look at the analysis frealisation and circulation in order to see how the constitutive process ofsocial capital (of the collective power of capital and of its antithesis)


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takes place at this point we shall try to identify a possible schema for the"Book on the Wage Lessons 8 and 9 will draw conclusions from thissecond section of our analysis: we shall move from subjectivity and aninitial definition of communism to a first overall forward shift of theanalysis involving the modification already outlined of a series ofconditions constitutive of antagonism In short my intention is toreconstitute the terms of the thematic of communism in Marx through

exploring the relation between catastrophe (capitalist breakdown) andproletarian self-valorisation

My intention in this first lesson has been to outline hypotheses and tosuggest possible modes of interpretation. What more can I say? PerhapsI have already said too much. But I do like to imagine what would havebeen the reactions of Lenin and Mao if in addition to Hegel's Logic,this Grundrse had aso been available to them. I am certain that theywould have welcomed it enthusiastically It would have given them

much fod for thought in terms of their practice Like bees gatheringpollen from flowers. This is how I like to think of "going beyond Marx .

89

Inroduion

Crisis of the Crisis-State(1980)

This article is the first of two of Negri's writings included in thisvolume from his period of imprisonment As the style suggests it was


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volume from his period of imprisonment As the style suggests it waswitten as a contributon to an anthology on political and economicprospects for the 1980s - Crisi delle Poliiche, Pironti Napoli 1981 Itwas republished, along with the subsequent article Archaeology andProject" in a Negri anthology published by Feltrinelli while he was inail covering the previous fve years of his work: Macchina TempoMilano 1982 This title is best translated as The Machine of Time"referring, by allusion to a neo-Platonic concept of the Renaissance, toNegris main conce in his prison period: the analysis of thecontradiction between separate time dimensions in the conteporarycass struggle and, in particular to the way in which this affects theproblem (rompicapo or puzzle" as Negri calls it) of the transition tocommunism. As the previous tets already make clear, communism forNegri is not a future Utopia in a linear process of stages" of transitionnor simply a present lived" Utopia. It is as in Marxs Grundrisse amaterial antagonism developing between class forces in the present;

hencea

new problem of temporality in the relation between class forces,between the machine" time of the state and capital, on the one handand what Negri calls the constitutive time" of the growth of proletarianautonomy of the self-valorisation of life needs on the other. Now thatthe class struggle is over the whole social working day and is being wagedby a fully socialised proletariat it is impossible to see relations ofreproduction as merely a by-product or result" of production relationsthe contemporary crisis of capitalism requires a further social dimensionbeyond the workerist analysis of the 1960s and eay 1970s thecrisis is

both a crisis of production and of the reproduction of wage workrelations as a whole.


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Reouion Reieved

model of centralised leadership and organisation projected by theinquisitorial logic of Negris prosecutors is in this sense the supremeirony of the whole April 7th" case! (See the judges' early interrogationof Negri in Negri before his Judges" reproduced below.) The udicialprocess itself is fairly etensively documented in the Red Notes andSemiotext(e) anthologies already cited; see also Italy 1980-81: AfterMarx Jail! Red Notes, London 1981; and The Italian Inquisitin, RedNotes London 1982.)

For an authoritative statement of the judicial irregularities of the trialprocess (successive substitution of vague and trumped-up charges toprolong etention for the principal defendants; absence of the key statewitness who was provided with the means to abscond abroad before thetrial, etc see Amnesty Internationals official report of the case: 7thApril TrialItaly, August 1986, available from Amnestys InternationalSecretariat, London. The dramatic events of the trial itself and Negs

escape to France in 1983, following hs election as a Radcal MP hsrelease from prison and the subsequent lifting of his parliamentayimmunity are covered by his diary of this period L'Italie R ge et


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immunity, are covered by his diary of this period: L'Italie Ruge etNire Hachette, Paris 1985.

91

Crisis of the Cris-State

art One

To begin with let us summarise some developments in capitalist andstate policies that seem to characterise the 1980s. These are ustapproximations examples that come immediately to mind:


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approximations examples that come immediately to mind:-

1) the transition from the "welfare state to the "warfare State;

(2) the "negative use of Keynesian economic policy as a means ofreactivating a "positive use of the market;

3 the restructuring of the interstices of the economy the interstitialeconomy), involving a new attack against any element of

homogeneity in the social composition of the class especially in thecritical area that links production with reproduction

(4) the massive political and social relaunching of a "new Rightwhich aims for reasons of consensus and productivity to recomposethe fragmentation of the working class in terms of new institutionaland state values

Given the small amount of information that I have at my disposal [tans:Negri is writing from prison the following comments must be taken asextremly provisional and subject to further documentation. Here aresome comments under each of the four headings listed above.

[Point 1] By the transition from "welfare to "warfare state I amreferring to the internal effects of the restructuration of the statemachine - its effect on class relations. This produces a much greaterrigidity in the reproduction of the relations of production and in the classstructure as a whole. Development is now planned in terms of ideologiesof scarcity nd austerity. This transition involves not just state policies

but most particularly the stucure of the state both political andadministrative The needs of the proletariat and of the poor are now


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99

Cris of the Cris-State

understood in terms of the total socal working day which - at the levelof real social sUbsumption of labour is the same as lifetime itself Wereturn to AT today for new answers to prove the hegemony andthe majoritarian status (both quantitatively and qualitatively) of themovements of recomposition of the social worker over all other sectionsor strata of the class.

The time has come to break definitively with all those who have

mystifed divided and held back the proletariat above all on the terrainof public spending; to push the schizoid possibilities of public spendingto the limit; to accept with destructive irony the capitalist restortion ofthe market while materially revealing and attacking its ideal utopianand reactionary nature; and to afrm, above all that principle of realitywhich imposes the fundamental structural contradiction against itsfunctionalist distortions In so dOing we can also render ineffective thestates deployment of its military capacities against the class movement.Whileall this will certainly not produce a celebration banquet for us we

can now say finally and definitively It won't be a picnic for themeither!"

Trani Special Prison:N b 1980


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November 1980

100

Archaeology and Project:The Mass Worker and the Social Worker

(1982)

Introducton

This text like the preceding one belongs t Negri's period in prisonand was published in the same anthology Macchina Tempo Feltrinelli,Milano 982 The problematic of these essas is outlined in theintroduction t the article above Crisis of the Crisis-State". Theundelying theme is the need to redefine the class antagonism in


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undelying theme is the need to redefine the class antagonism inadvanced capitalism at a level corresponding to the real totalsubsumption of society, of social labour as a whole, to capitalistdomination. This means as Negri argues here but also in earlierarticles included in this volume that the conception of the woring

class has to be broadened and extended to contradiction and antagonism in the sphre of social reproduction as a whole ie beyonddirect production as such

It follows that the analysis of the Italian workerists of the 960s is inurgent need of being updated in the light of thestructuralcrisis of labourpowera such, the main motive force underlying the present permanentstate of crisis. This change in class composition the recomposition ofclass antagonism at a social level, is the maor issue addressed in thisessay. Here Negri traces the analysis and method of class comosition

from its early exponents in the Italian workerism of the 1960s to thenew problems posed for analysis of the recomposition of the classmovement today, the remaking of the working class at the level ofsocial antagonism which has now been reached

For Negri, in contrast to the various theories of neo-functionalismand post-industrial sociology the new movements of struggle in thesocial sphere represent a new level o class antagonism which cannot bereduced to a mere proliferation of new subjectivities around life-needssignalling the end of any class relation based on the production of valueand surplus value The crisis of the value form seen as a class relation


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102

Archaeology and Project:The Mass Worker and the Social Worker

1 . Functions and Limitations of the Concept of the Mass Worker

In the wake of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of theSoviet Union in 1956 the critique of Stalinsm which developed withinthe Italian labor movement above all put into question the traditionalconception of the trade union This had become an area of key concernI 1953 h h d b di d f f h C i i


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In 1953 there had been a resounding defeat of the Communist union atFIAT in the years that followed there were equallyresounding defeatsin line for the farm workers unions and the public sector unions railwayworkers postal workers etc). The fading (or downright disappearance)of any immediate prospect of a seizure of power and a series of

confusions at the ideological level, meant that the trade unions werebeing undermined as the transmission belt of the system; both theirorganisational form and their ideological basis were thrown into crisis.

But this crisis did not affect the radicality of the working class. Therebegan to appear a mass form of behaviour which was spontaneousmultiform violent mobile and disorderlybut which nonetheless wasable to compensate for the lack of trade union leadership in ways thatwere both original and powerful and while the union leaderships stuk

to a repetition of the old forms the working class reacted in ways thatwere autonomous. The union would call strike action and the entireworkforce would go in to work but then after a week, a month, maybea year, that same working class would explode in spontaneousdemonstrations. The farm workers of the South also began spontaneousstuggles However they had been defeated in the movement to takeover agricultural land they had been sold out by the government'sagrarian reform, which condemned them to the poverty of having towork small holdings. As a result the rural vanguards chose the path of

large-scale emigration. This was a mass phenomenon its causes and


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Revoluton Retreved

brought about by the development of cass composition -sbsmptioto capital realise in the [rmofpermanent cris. Whatwe are presentedwith is the positive emergence of negative labour as an institutionaisedcounter-power acting against work that is subsumed within capital.Whie labour subsumed within capital corresponded to a logic of unityof command and its transcendence negative labor proces instea alogic base on separateness: a logic that operates entirely within, isenogenos to that separateness. The institutionalised forms now

assumed by abour-power as a separate entity also represent its deinstitutionaisation in relation to the present frameworkof economy andpolitics to capita and the state This relation is precisey a negative oneand inasmuch as negative abour has the power ad possibility ofimposing it on the system, the ony unifying logic that remains is one ofduality, twosidedness: a logic that is ephemeral that is reduced to meresembance. In reality, it can only represent a moment in a historiahase of crisis, in which the point of reference for all rationaity orintelligibility is being rapidly shifted towards a fuy soialised labourpower, the new class subject, the socia worker" .

So we have covered in outine some aspects of the formation ofabour-power into a social subject. A very rch phenomenology could beprovided for this transformation, starting fom the mass worker and thehistoy of the mass worker's struggles. I

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