From Industrial Chains to Blockchains II

 “From Factory to Metropolis,” Essays (1996 to 2018) Vol.2 by Antonio Negri, 2018

(Continued. Part II of the review.)

Negri softens his absolutist assertions on the dominant role of ‘immaterial’ city-based white collar work in these later essays.  He understands Fordism (assembly-line methods) still exists parallel with ‘the beehive metropolis’ - but claims that the latter dominates in the OCED countries. The OCED includes U.S., Canada, all of Europe, but also Mexico and Chile, along with wealthy countries in Asia – Japan, South Korea, New Zealand and Australia. Facts like Amazon being the biggest employer in the U.S. might have made an impression.  Amazon’s fulfillment centers are nearly all ‘Fordist’ except its headquarters in Seattle. Or that Bill Gates is now the largest owner of agricultural land in the U.S.  Or that countries outside the OCED exist!

I think this is still a reach, even in these countries.  I see the world capitalist work-force in more of a pyramidal structure – a white collar top, a precarian, peddler and blue collar ‘middle,’ an agricultural / marine base.  All create value and profits in different ways. World-wide most people now live in a city or in urban sprawl, which is a first in history and should refine left tactics.  

THESIS

Negri’s main contention is that the site of ‘post-modern’ profitability has moved from factories to the city-based metropolis, replacing the ‘old’ working class with a ‘post-modern’ multitude in the city.  The web of rents and physical commodity production; unpaid and paid labor within the home; real estate speculation, utility costs, intellectual property, loans and debt; service, government, education and health work; urban farming, transport, criminal activities and mercantile profiteering off precarian, blue collar and white collar workers in the metropolis makes it the new center of capitalist profit.  Whether the city has always played this role is not addressed.  This switch is happening as the ‘old’ industrial economy of physical commodity production and mining stagnates in the OCED … and is relocated. 

This complexity is why Negri cannot estimate metropolitan profitability, forms of value and even has trouble being more concrete.  He says that ‘cognitive labor’ predominates all these forms in the metropolis, playing an organizing role. Because of this he does not think rents and gentrification will primarily inhabit the cities.

Negri’s contention is that this development actually weakens the capitalist class, as they no longer can discipline or control intellectual labor power, which is autonomous and cooperative within the metropolis. It reflects Marx's concept of a rising 'general intellect' that capital now requires to function profitably.  As part of this he rejects the phrases ‘intellectual capital’ and ‘the creative class,’ though his reasons are not clear.  But certainly his rejections are justified.

NEGRI’S TERMS

One aspect of theory is terminology.  Marxist terminology has been relatively clear for years.  While somewhat basing himself on Marx, Negri in this book is an ideologue of high-end white collar labor, taking what might be understood as a left syndicalist approach, a self-described ‘humanist communist’ approach.  To me some of his terms are nonsensical, repetitive or needlessly abstract, while others are useful.

Negri’s terminological definitions or points, some based on ideas from Michel Foucault: 

Bio-politics – A term that would seem to indicate a connection between biology and politics, but instead is a quasi-biological term used to describe the State’s ‘social and political power over life.’  Which of course makes no sense as a separate term, as politics already includes that.  Also related:  ‘Bio-power.’

Post-modernism – A thoroughly negative term that used to mean opposition to any systemic thinking.  Now re-christened by him to mean anything after ‘modern’ – usage of which is an empty negative.

Multitude – Used to mean many people, now means to him ‘all the people or denizens of the metropolis.’  Substitutes for working class, which almost disappears. 

Right to the City – A ‘right’ of the dwellers in a city to control it. Negri disagrees with Harvey’s theory, which he sees as old-fashioned.  He thinks it substitutes a ‘rights’ argument for seeing the city as a complex production site for capital.  Later he praises Harvey for seeing the city as a site of capital reproduction too.

Immaterial labor – Which seems to indicate that this kind of labor actually doesn’t exist.  Negri defines it as intellectual / emotional / social / artistic labor, where knowledge is a commodity.  Related are:  ‘cognitive capitalism,’ ‘post-industrial,’ ‘cognitariat,’ ‘collective intelligence,’ etc.  He contends he was ‘mocked’ for this phrase 20 years ago, but now ‘everyone’ recognizes it.  He links this to the idea that capital must capture workers’ subjectivity in order to control them.  Simple discipline is not enough.

Metropolitan social unionism – A description of a way to organize workers in the metropolis across traditional boundaries. 

Abstract strike - What seems to happen when white collar knowledge workers either plan to slowly take over production or withdraw their labor like blue collar ‘material’ workers.  The word ‘abstract’ is abstract.

Reappropriation of fixed capital – It means that intellectual workers now are owning their own means of production in a limited way.  Especially if they work from home or because they are relatively ‘autonomous’ and work together outside of capitalist control.  He mentions algorithms created by programmers as an example.  This phrase seems to ignore most of actual fixed capital.

Poor – First defined as the working poor, then includes all white-collar knowledge workers. Typical of his playing with terminology.

Urban entrepreneuriat – Peddlers? Small businessmen?  Also related to: Public entrepreneurship and political entrepreneurship – which might mean the privatization of the state.  He seems to put a neutral or positive spin on these terms, which is odd.

Accelerationist – Negri uses this term in a Manifesto, unaware that nihilist right-wingers in the U.S. believe in ‘accelerating’ the collapse of society and are called ‘accelerationists’ for it.  His use of it is vague and undefined.

IT Workers - the Bosses Don't Know What They Know

Negri once mentions the presence of a large group of upper middle class managers, profiteers and business owners - and even ruling-class figures - in the cities, considering them marginal.  They are not.  That is why a social and geographic ‘metropolis’ is actually a cross-class geography.  Who is to prevent these groups from weighing in as part of the metropolitan beehive?

SOLUTIONS

Negri’s main transitional demand in these conditions is a universal basic income (UBI) applied to everyone in the metropolis.  Even in the banlieues, the favelas, the ‘ghettos,’ the shanty-towns, the working class suburbs full of the precariat, the unpaid, the unemployed, the peddler, the migrant and the ‘poor’ - all still work and produce some kind of value.  He links this demand to the Marxist feminist demand for ‘wages for housework’ and care-work.   

He also pays attention, at least verbally, to the issue of organization, advocating an ‘assemblage’ of ‘hyper-segmented’ groups working together for the post-capitalist future.  This seems to piggy-back off of current spontaneous and multiple forms of organizations – so it’s not a new idea.  No mention of revolutionary organizations or united fronts, mass organizations except abstractly, anti-fascism, unions, demands beyond UBI or democratic proletarian power in the form of assemblies, councils or ‘soviets.’  All are evidently old fashioned.  He once mentions the city as a ‘commune’ (in Italy they are still called communes…) but gives it no content.

Negri’s constant and needy repetition of concepts; opposition to some Marxist ideas like the dictatorship of the proletariat or the reserve army of the unemployed; conceptual over-abstractness, contradictions, renaming and terminological spaghetti seems a sign of philosophic desperation.  He is too eager to be some kind of new Marx.  Even he has a phrase for it: “an excessive abstraction from reality.” Whoever his audience is (academics, other French philosophers and sociologists...), many white collar tech workers would be confused by this. 

I think he has a major point on the role of the city as a bigger and bigger site of key capital formation and production, especially with the development of financialization and the reliance on 'fictitious capital.'  The growing power of ‘knowledge’ workers and the leading role of computerization are also significant points.  But this does not wipe out prior concepts at all – it just enhances them.  After all financialization, rent, labor power and intellectual property are not that new.  Changing terminology to a ‘new capitalism’ does not actually change the basic character of capital and class society.

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left: “From Factory to Metropolis” (Part 1); “The Unseen” (forward by Negri);  “Wageless Life,” “In Letters of Fire and Blood,” “The Precariat” (Standing), “Rebel Cities” (Harvey). 

And I did not get it at May Day Books!

Red Frog

April 14, 2021