Re: AUT: An interesting critique of Negri

["Chris Wright" <cwright@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Pardon how long this is, but Rowan's post is excellent.
> > Rowan
> >
> > DIALECTICS
> > I will try and clarify what Negri's take on dialectics is first. As I
> > understand it,   there are two versions of the dialectic:
> > 1.'Positive dialectics', that of the2nd International, where there is a
> > teleological and deterministic progression thru history, where each
stage
> is a supersession of the last until arriving at the unity of communism.
> > 2.'Negativedialectics', that of the German Critical Theory tradition,
> > where dialectics is strictly the process of negation, an account of
which
> > you provided in your posting. Negri's critique of 'Positive dialectics'
is
> > something that most of us probably share  it denies the self-activity of
> > the working class, its ability to change history. However, his critique
of
> > 'negative dialectics' is a little more fiddly.
I would just add that on the one hand, negative dialectics is also Marx's
dialectic, and on the other the Frankfurt School never gets as far into
dialectics as Marx did, as thoroughly.  It may seem odd, but they do not
sufficiently grapple with Hegel.

> > NEGATIVE DIALECTICS
> > Negri is not just concerned with the constitutive power of the multitude
> > he is very much concerned with the negation, the destruction, of
capital.
> > His critique is similar to Deleuze's in that he is concerned that the
> > dialectic can not entirely reject capital  Michael Hardt quotes Hegel
> > saying that the dialectic is a negation 'which supersedes in such a way
as
> > to preserve and maintain what is superseded, and consequently survives
its
> > own supersession'. For the nondialectical tradition that Negri situates
> > himself within, the negation that is required is that that can totally
> > destroy what is before it and then build on the ground that has been
> > cleared.
Assuming you are correct, Rowan, then this seems utterly unhistorical.  What
does it mean to say this?  If the future is not contained in the present, if
the future is not always-already posited in what exists, then where does the
future come from?  I think this is exactly the kind of statement that puts
Negri into a situation of seeing "multitude" as pure subject, as autonomous
in its entirety from "Empire".

This is why he separates out labour and capital, potentia and
> > potenza, multitude and empire  what we will be will owe nothing to
capital
> >  we will not retain our experience of capital and carry it through to
the
> > new society - this, I think, means that for Negri if there are any
> > tendencies of capitalism that seem good, then they aren't capitalist
> > tendencies, they come from the multitude.
Again, Negri (or rather, your take on Negri, which so far does gel with what
I have read) is totally unhistorical.  What we will be we will owe to the
capital-labor relation in very definite ways.  Posing the question this way
simply implies that we could have reached the possibility of communism
without capitalism, without the massive development of the human productive
forces capital unleashed.  Otherwise, it is simply an accident that human
liberation is posited now rather than 500 years ago.

At the same time, the idea that dialectics keeps us from breaking with
capital completely seems absurd.  Rather, dialectics poses exactly how we
can break our internal relation with capital without pretending to be
outside (with reifing or fetishizing the social relations of exploitation.)
The idea of aufhebung not only sees the outcome as resulting from the
internal dynamic of the contradictory forces, it posits their absolute
negation.  Hanging on triadic aspects of Hegel without grasping the negation
of the negation, negation as absolute (but not teleological, not necessarily
meaning progression), as the destruction of both terms.  To be crass, public
transportation will not be destroyed by communism, but its class character
will be.  Labor will not cease to exist, but alienated labor will.  The
means of production created by capital lay the foundation, but only in so
far as communism means the destruction of the separation of the producer
from what is produced, only in so far as things no longer dominate people,
but exist for us, only as use values.

Posed abstractly, Negri's point seems ot have merit, but posited
historically it falls apart.

> > POSITIVE DIALECTICS
> >
> > Negri suggests that the very nature of capital is dialectical (in its
> positive sense), that it seeks to mediate between the multiplicities of
the
> world and thus deny their differences,'seeing them from only one side', as
> Marx said,as exchange value the mediating force is totally selfserving,
> forcing labour to maintain this mediation, to maintain the power of
capital
> this mediation tends towards stasis but the explosive power of the
multitude
> negates it.
> > The proletariat is still formed dialectically, but this represents the
> victory of capital, so for Negri each stage of the recomposition of the
> working class throughout the twentieth century began with the non-
> dialectical efforts of the multitude, with the force of productive labour
> attempting, once and for all,to throw off the weight of capital however,
> when capital recuperated this force( such as through  Fordism or through
> Post Fordism)Negri sees it as a dialectical recuperation that is,what was
> being negated has been preserved and maintained. So the multitude acts
> autonomously but is reigned in by capital.This then leads us to the
problem
> of pure subjects.(This, I has ten to add, is only my understanding of
> Negri's take on dialecticsi don't know enough to say if this is a fair
> critique.Certainly it may be acrude caricature of the Frankfurt School one
> never gets the impression that Negri has read the likes of Adorno,but I
> could be wrong.)
If your read of Negri is correct, then again the problem of "multitude" as
pure subject is raised, but moralistically.  The "multitude" is everything
"good", "empire" everything "bad".  Negri negates and loses sight of the
fact that capital is constituted as the alienated subjectivity of labor, of
labor in and against and beyond capital.  Where does capital come from if
not from us?  Who creates it?  By using the term "Empire", Negri elides the
interconnection of capital and labor, of labor as constituting capital even
as it ruptures it.  Saying that this offers us a notion of autonomy, of
absolute negativity is actually false because how can we negate what we are
not a part of?

The result is a reconstituted 'militantism', with Negri's 'saint'.  The
multitude is the saint, but who among us are saints?  This is the return of
the professional militant, of the knowing subject outside "Empire", contrary
to Negri's desire to constitute the subject within.

> >
> > SUBJECTS (LEADING TO NEGATIVE DIALECTICS AGAIN)Addressing your poin
> tnumber 4, I get the impression that there can be a confusion with the
> notions of subject as human individual and subject as historical
> force(forgive me if I'm wrong).If the multitude were to be seen as a group
> of individuals then this would indeed succumb to your accusation that
Negri
> posits the multitude as a pure subject. However, I believe that we must
see
> the notion of the multitude in relation to Negri as a student of
Althusser,
> Foucault and Deleuze&Guattari.That is,he rejects the notion of the whole
> human individual as being the agent of history. This is the humanism that
> Althusser rejected and duplicates the errors of' positive dialectics' in
> that history'becomes the organic unfolding of human nature' as such, there
is
> no history for all is contained within the human essence. But unlike (at
> least the early ) Althusser Negri doesn't believe that we should dump the
> notion of the subject. Rather, the subject,the multitude,is a force,a
> current that runs through human individuals,a set of dynamic,creative and
> multiple social relations that are intertwined with the contradictory
social
> relation of capitalism that also runs through human individuals.
Again, i am curious how the relations of the "multitidue" run intertwined
with capitalist relations?  Where do the separations exist?  Again, the
"multitude" exists as outside in so far as the relation to capital is purely
external, causal.  Again, the use of terms like "empire" serve to cut-off
any kind of relationship between producers and produced (reifying,
fetishizing, the relation), any kind of actually immanent relation.  I will
ask again where "empire" comes from, if not from our subjectivity alienated,
from our creativity in the mode of being denied?  Does "empire" just exist
as an Althusserian structure?  Where does that structure come from?  We then
posit a metaphysical structure that exists out of any kind of immanent
relation with "multitude".

The
> capitalist social relation is not autonomous to the multitude its
existence
> depends on the multitude,as you say'capital is nothing other than the
> metamorphosis of doing which denies its own basis in doing'.So we can that
> Negri's formulation (at least as I understand it)is not simply that of
boss
> vs worker it can take into account how capital is within us as human
beings,
> how we let it entwine, entangle and constrain our productivity how we let
> ourselves become the boss, the boss of ourselves.
> > But I think that Negri raises the separateness of these two forces to
> high light that the multitude,the creative force doesn't need the
parasitic
> force of capitalism.Perhaps we need not see the two forces as being
separate
> but we must see the POTENTIAL for the multitude to separate from
capital(and in doing
> so,destroy it).
Ok, Negri may throw this in, but he has failed to show the relationship.
How can "empire" be constituted by the "multitude", and yet be totally
separate?  The notion of intertwining relations again assumes their ultimate
independence, much as one can intertwine two ropes, but they remain two
ropes.  This movement also seems to assume that separation from "empire"
frees the "multitude" to be its true self.  I may be wrong, but I see that
contained in Negri in so far as the "multitude" can be the source of all
good things already.  Marx posited the working class as revolutionary
subject not as it already exists, but as what its absolute negation could
mean: the end of labor, the end of class, the end of exploitation.  The
notion of "multitude" as already autonomous, as the sole "good guy" assumes
that we have already gotten there or that some inner force will guide us,
leading back to exactly what Althusser thought he was critiquing, humanism.
I don;t think we are there yet, or that we can get to communism as we are,
but only through the negation of what we are.  Not through realizing the
"multitude", but through realizing the negation of labor, of the working
class.  No stronger concept of negation exists.

Certainly as individuals,as groups of individuals,we struggle
> against ourselves,but within ourselves is our ontological 'essence'(but a
> plastic essence)of productive and multiple labour fighting against the
mediating, exploitative and oppressive force of capital.
Marx's dialectic is anti-ontological.  Engels may have posed an ontology of
"Materialism", but Marx' materialism was anti-ontological in so far as we
have no essence outside of our practical-critical, thoroughly social,
practice.  Just to be clear, consider Theses 1 from Marx's Theses on
Fueuerbach:
The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism - that of Feuerbach
included - is that the thing, reality, sensuousness, is conceived only in
the form of the object or of contemplation, but not as sensuous human
activity, practice, not subjectively. Hence, in contradistinction to
materialism, the active side was developed abstractly by idealism -- which,
of course, does not know real, sensuous activity as such.

Feuerbach wants sensuous objects, really distinct from the thought objects,
but he does not conceive human activity itself as objective activity. Hence,
in "Das Wesen des Christenthums", he regards the theoretical attitude as the
only genuinely human attitude, while practice is conceived and fixed only in
its dirty-judaical manifestation. Hence he does not grasp the significance
of "revolutionary", of "practical-critical", activity.

This has nothing to do with Spinoza, Foucault and Negri's "ontology".

this seems to be an
> ontology that you share when you say that'our doing is the sole
constitutive
> power'but you say that this is denied well yes it is,but also as your work
> on the Zapatistas showed, it is also affirming. Negri is very careful to
> declare that this ontology is plastic, multiple,not fixed in a sense it is
> mere ly life that he talks about,the continuing process of creation it is
not
> an ontology stuck in time,a reified notion of being rather,Negri reworks
> being AS doing.(Sometimes I think that this maybe as leight of hand of
> Negri's part?)
Sleight of hand indeed.  From Marx's clear formulation, he proposes to
re-dip into metaphysics.

> > NEGATIVE DIALECTICS This is where we arrive at  another factor in
Negri's
> dislike of negative dialectics in that he understands it as refusing to
give
> a ground to the development of new values.  the negation is fine for the
> destruction of capitalism but what are we to put in its place(a question
> that was raised many times at last May'sAnti Capitalist conference in
> London)?  By suggesting an ontology that is dynamic and creative,he wants
to
> focus on what will be going after what values do we seek to develop,what
> practices do we choose to valorise as practices that liberate us?I think
> that this approach can be useful as it provides a framework to identify
> what in the class struggle is being generated that can create the new
> society, not just the negation of the old one.
Negativity, even absolute negativity, does not imply the failure to create
something other.  but how do we understand any other which fails to rupture
the capital-labor relation?  Capital can assimilate anything but its own
destruction, and as such, any development which becomes static, which ceases
to negate capital, ceases to be revolutionary.  Strucutres are struggles in
the mode of being denied, struggles which have become fast frozen as the
finalized, and therefore dead, outcome of a struggle.  Absolute negativity
is unyielding struggle which gives rise to all kinds of new human relations,
new forms of struggle, but one which also can give up on those which have
become a dead weight.

To say that negative dialectics does not posit this is to only see negative
dialectics in the Frankfurt School.  Marx and many others have constantly
posited new forms arising from struggle, creative human relations and
choices.  So did Marxist-humanism, the Situationists, and others.  They also
recognize that no form of human relation cannot be subsumed once it attains
a positive form within the context of the capital-labor relation.

Interestingly,this is what i
> perceived you to be doingin your essay on' Dignity',outlining one part of
> the values that we should be developing in this sense i saw this essay as
> delineating not just the processes of negation but in the positive sense
in
> which I see Negri operating, i.e.there is something going on in this
> particular moment of the class struggle, the Zapatistas, where people are
> developing communities,creating a community,not simply negating
capital.This
> makes me think that you and Negri are perhaps not so far a part from each
> other,in that your'no'is already a'yes'in some respects that is,in that
> the'no'is a scream,as you describe it,it is life,it is creative.
The community is nothing if not a negation of capital.  The community they
are attempting to create seeks to be not-capital.  It has no positive
existence in the sense that it must be against capital, for to give that up
would mean reassimilation.  And I hardly think that the Zapatistas have
surpassed capital.  Unless very poor peasants in Chiapas can suddenly have
communism in one impoverished region.  They may posit some kind of
alternative in struggle, in negation, but it is also a struggle which must
be negated, which must be superceded.  It cannot remain in the Lacondan
jungle and live indefinitely.  It must reach out and negate capital.

But Negri makes the point that struggles no longer have an interconnection,
something I find important to this discussion.  In his flight from Marx's
critique of labor power, of alienated labor, of the so-called labor theory
of value (which he falsely understands as quantitative, when it is
qualititative, delineating the form of the separation of doing from done, of
the producers from the means of producing), Negri flees from that which
links every struggle.  The red thread, if you will, that links all
struggles, is the exploitation of labor power, the specific way in which
capital pumps surplus value from labor.  Without that thread, we have a
Foucauldian jumble of localized, non-interconnected or externally connected
struggles.  That is Negri's conclusion in his attack on negative dialectics.

> > EMPIRICISM & KNOWLEDGE The danger with Negri's approach is that it does
> point to a certain empiricism.He understands the ontology of living labour
> to constitute particular subjects at particular moments in the history of
> the class struggle,eg the socialised worker.This is where Negri differs
from Foucault and Deleuze and Guattari, in that he doesn't necessarily see
every struggle as having equal value.
Do you think he should?  Never mind that positing the question this way is
again moralistic, as if we might offend someone by saying this or that
struggle gets at something more fundamental than another struggle.  Some
struggles defetishize our existence more than others, even though we cannot
always say in advance which struggles those will be.

He says 'i think that this particular are a of struggle is the most
important,
> both in terms of the attack on capitalism and its ability to develop a new
> society'. This is contentious of course it brings up all those tricky
issues
> of strategy versus the autonomy of different sectors of the class.
> Furthermore if Negri's empiricism succumbs to the tendency to reify then
he
> would be just like any other leninist who refuses to acknowledge new sites
> of struggle.Negri tries to straddle the two reifying dangers that of what
is
> and that of what will be. he tries to see what's moving without stopping
it
> in its tracks,if you see what I mean.Whether he does that is a different
> kettleoffish,of course.

With regards to your rejection of realism don't we
> all talk about the real world aren't we all realists in that we attempt to
> talk of concrete processes that are happening now?I agree that we must
> remain awareof the critique of knowledge,of who certain viewpoints
serve,and
> the danger of allowing such knowledge to ossify.
realism in this sense is about making a fetish of what really is, without
questioning what might be, what I would call the negation of what is.
Movement, dynamism, only exists in the negation of what is, in the what
might yet be.  Again, Negri offers nothing special in his approach to
thinking in terms of what might be.  That is, in a sense, just good
dialectics.  We also look to that which is not within struggles, that which
exists in the mode of being denied.  realism denies the existence of the
not-yet, where as we see struggle as necessarily existing in the not yet, as
ek-static.

That has nothing to do with being grounded in the material world.  it is
just that practical-critical activity is always both: practical and
critical, i.e. socially grounded and thoroughly negative.  We recognize what
exists only in so far as we seek to negate it, because what exists is shit.
No "multitude" already exists, giving us "good things".  Rather, labor in
and against and beyond capital exists, but only as movement, as
contradiction, as negation.  We do not look to what is great about the
working clas today, but what is possible in its self-negation tomorrow that
lives within its struggle today (hope that is less rambling than it sounds.)

But I don't necessarily see
> how Negri is guilty of fetishism by ascribing a positivity to labour and
> suggesting that this takes different formsat different times.Sorry,I had
> visions of the above being organised and nuanced but its   rambling as
> usual.
See above.

Anyroad, it's late.Cheers Rowan

Indeed it is Rowan and now it is my turn to bid good night.

Cheers,
Chris



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