AUT: Re: empire, multitude & class ...

["Chris Wright" <cwright@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

they seem to me
> pretty clear that what they are claiming is that the
> notion of the working class centered on the "mass
> factory worker" is the problem, and that by
> "multitude" they are merely emphesizing that the
> working class is (a) multi-various and complex
> subject(s), not that "capital as Subject should not be
> confronted by a Working Class Subject, but rather we
> confront it as a multitude of subjects". that is: to
> understand the proletariat-as-revolutionary-subject
> you have to understand it's multi-nodal, complex
> nature. you have to understand that it is a
> "multitude". and that, by extension, it is (in part)
> thru this complexity that the working class is a
> threat to capital.
> =====
> commie00

Coming from a more Hegelian strand of Marxism, I just wanted to make a note
on this (I think pretty accurate) understanding of Negri and Hardt's notion
of 'multitude' in relation to Marx.

Marx's formulation of the relationship between the individual, the working
class as Particular and the working class as Universal seems to me to be
derived from Hegel's discussion of the Unique, The Particular and the
Universal. (Please bear with me and my limited grasp of Hegel.)  At one
point, Marx makes the point that the individual is the real subject of
humanity.  At the same time, the working class is posed as both a particular
expression of capitalist social relations and as the Universal class.  All
of this only makes sense if we see the Universal as finding expression
through the Particular, and vice versa.  In other words, while the working
class may be a particular of humanity, it contains within it the (possible)
realization of the Universal becoming-for-itself of humanity.  In being the
particular realized in the universal and vice versa, the working class as
self-negation (our liberation is the liberation of humanity from class
society, from exploitation/oppression/domination), it also means the return
of the individual to his/her rightful place as the subject of humanity and
history (true individualism, true freedom.)  The realization of the
particular (in this case, the working class), means also the simultaneous
realization of the universal and the unique.

In less cryptic terms, Marx sees this as possible because the working class
is situated as the first class which has no fundamental ties to the society
which exploits us.  In that sense, the working class is absolute negation
for Marx, not a class, but an anti-class whose historical realization would
mean the abolition of all classes, and therefore the impediments to the full
realization of the individual.  This possibility is located in the absolute
alienation from property, the absolute alienation from nature, the absolute
alienation from indivdualism (Marx wrote about alienation at multiple
levels, not simple alienation from production, a common misconception
fostered by post-Marx Marxism, as well as most Left anti-Marxists, though
not all.)  Capitalism simultaneously creates the social and material
preconditions for the negation of scarcity and alienation.  Exactly because
the social relations of capital reduce the working class to a non-class, a
negative class which has no means to become a new ruling class, it can
become the universal class, which is class negated.  Therefore, the
complexity of the working class is less the issue than its consitution as
the wholly alienated, absolute negation of property, privilege and power.
Complexity and multitude in this case read like diversity and identity to a
multi-culturalist, rather than the working class to a Marxist.  That should
be no shock when one hinges onesself on Foucault and his descendants.

Negri and Hardt don't really grasp this movement because they reject Hegel
and a large part of Marx.  Their notion of the multitude seems a regression
from Marx.  And this notion of the multitude depends on (or rather extends)
the notion of the 'social worker', the next stage from the 'mass worker'.  I
think Steve Wright ably critiques the 'mass worker' notion as a retreat from
the specific composition of the working class to a kind of bad abstraction
and ultimately grounded in Negri's own disappointment with the failure of
the 'mass worker' struggles in Italy in the 1970's (I hope that is an
accurate assessment.)  I agree that we need to understand the transformation
of the conditions of labor due to computerization, without losing sight of
the ways this penetrates and changes the composition of the class.  But i
think Empire over-extends itself to once again try to give a General Theory
Of, a Grand Theory (which is, quite interestingly, at odds with the
dialectical notion of totalization.)  This is something I will try to flesh
out in my article.  I promise.  In the process, Negri idealizes the
transformation of labor so that labor becomes absolute, unmediated struggle
against capital.  This disjoining of labor from capital, which flows from
Negri's notion of 'immaterial labor', loses the contact with labor as in and
against capital, labor as both source of capital/value and revolutionary
Subject.  This analysis may smell too 'dialectical' for Negri, who reduces
dialectics to an 'A versus B' contradiction (the result of rejecting
totalization, which sees a field of contradictions which interact, trade
places, and interpenetrate, not a simple polar binary.)

In the process, Negri and Hardt offer 'the multitude', which has an academic
ring that seems awfully reminiscent of 'the people' or 'the masses' from
Leninism/social democracy/populism.  Lenin had a complex notion of the
working class as well, and a very complex notion of the peasantry.  it also
happened to be objectivist (disjoining the subject-object relationship),
which dovetailed not accidentally with his voluntarism and belief that the
working class could only attain trade union consciousness.  Negri and
Hardt's move is different, but in degree, not quality.

This I write briefly, knowing the book deserves a more thorough treatment,
and that I am not doing justice to many of their points.  More than
anything, i hope it sparks a continuation of commie00's good opening.

Still in my flame-proof jammies,
Good night comrades.
Chris Wright



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