AUT: Ghostly Demarcations and Labor

[Alvaro Reyes <areyes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

	Sorry for the confusion folks I must have read Angela's post
asking for reactions to the new book called Ghostly Demarcations which
is a series of essay about Derrida's Specters of Marx and assumed it
originated from this list when it was actuall posted on the toninegri
egroup list. Anyway,


Paul,

	I am sorry I should have been more careful.  What I said was that
labor had been dispersed and "APPARENTLY" (it appears as though)
disappeared as the source of social wealth.  In order to save a bit of
time I would like to quote Hardt and Negri  at some length in order to
explain this "dissappearance." To give a little background Hardt and
Negri relate the apparent disappearance to Marx's conception of the
capitalist shift from a society based on the formal subsumption of labor
to capital to a society based on the real subsumption of labor to
capital.  Having explained what formal subsumption is Hardt goes on to
explain real subsumption

	"Capital tends, however, through the socialization of production
and through scientific and tecnological innovation, to create new labor
processes and destroy old ones, transforming the situations of the
various agents of production.  Capital thus sets in motion a specifically
capitalist mode of production.   Marx calls the subsumption of labor
real, then, when the labor processes themselves are born within capital
and therefore when labor is incorporated not as an external but as an
internal force proper to capital itself.
	As we move to the phase of the real subsumption, Marx explains,
labor processes evolve so that, first of all, production is no longer a
direct and individual activity but an immediately social activity.
"Direct labor as such" Marx writes, "ceases to be the basis of
production, since in one respect, it is transformed more into a
supervisory and regulatory activity; but then also because the product
ceases to be the product of isolated direct labor, and the combination of
social activity appears, rather, as the producer. (Footnote here to The
Grundisse Vintage Books pg.709).  Furthermore, this socialized
labor-power itself seems to disappear as it is displaced from its
position as the source of capitalist production.  "This entire
development of the productive force of socialized labor, and together
with it the use of science, takes the form of the productive power of
capital.  It no longer appears as the productive power of labor.  In very
brief summary, then, Marx identifies a three-stage shift in the apparent
source of capitalist production from individual labor to social labor and
finally to social capital. In the specifically capitalist mode of
production, that is, in the phase of real subsumption, productive
labor-or even production in general-no longer appears as the pillar that
defines and sustains capital social organizations.  Production is given
an objective quality, as if the capitalist system were a machine that
marched forward of its own accord, without labor, a capitalist automaton"
(Hardt, The Withering of Civil Society in Deleuze and Guattari, New
Mappings in Politics, Philosophy, and Culture Ed. Eleanor Kaufman and
Kevin John Heller, University of Minnesota Press, 1998)

What does this have to do with the State? Negri and Hardt explain,

"In recent years, the dialectic between the State and institutional labor
and also the mechanisms of collective bargaining have gradually faded
from the scene.  In the society of the real subsumption this dialectice
no longer holds the central role, and capital no longer needs to engage
labor or represent labor at the heart of production (My own text: as it
had in the welfare state).  Social capital appears to reproduce itself
autonomously, as if it were emancipated from the working class, and labor
becomes invisible in the system.  What is subsumed is really a simulacrum
of society, produced by the State itself.  The State no longer has a need
for mediatory mechanisms of legitimation and discipline: antagonisms are
absent or invisible and legitimation has become a tautology.  The State
of the real subsumption is no longer inerested in mediation but
separation, and thus the institutions of civil society as sites of social
dialectic gradually lose their importance.  Not the state, but civil
society has withered away!" (Hardt and Negri, Labor of Dionysus pg. 258)

	
	As for the state being reduced I don't totally understand what
you are trying to say? I did not intend to say that the State has been
reduced at all. I simply meant to say that its function as the police man
guaranteeing the reproduction of capital can no longer be denied.  If you
are an anarcho-marxists (for lack of a better term) this idea will seem
like nothing new to you (i.e. the state has always served this function).
What is helpful about Negri and Hardt's analysis however is that they
challenge
the social democratic Marxists head on by showing that even if the
welfare state was at one time a ground upon which the antagonism of labor
and capital could be mediated (already a questionable proposition) the
structure or mode of production no longer makes that possible.

	Last, I know your friends have gone home for the day but you
should be careful not to think that their "work" is done only during
waged office hours. When they head home their second shift as non-waged
workers in child care, intellectual labor, and consumers has just begun
and it is becoming just as important for Capital's reproduction as the
work they are doing in the office.  Lets also remember the work done
by those who never go into any formal workspace, or receive a wage.
(Maybe this will clarify what I mean by work has been dispersed)

Sorry again for my lack of clarity in the first post, I hope this helps
clear things up.

Alvaro



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