AUT: Negri, Hegel, etc

["cwright" <cwright@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This is really long, so I want to say something quick off the bat, based =
on having read this carefully, along with Arianna's defense of Negri.  =
What does all of this have to do with Marx's notion of 'the human'?  To =
quote a friend from something he is working on:

"Marx worked to demonstrate that living humanly, in a manner 'worthy of =
and appropriate to our human nature' (Capital, Vol. 3), would mean a =
free association of human individuals, an association in which 'the free =
development of each individual is the condition for the free development =
of all'. He showed that individuals were 'alienated', dominated by the =
relations between them. A truly human way of life is incompatible with =
private property, wage-labour, money and the state, but is actually in =
accord with nature, and the way that humanity, at whose heart lies free, =
creative, social activity, had emerged from what appears to be the blind =
activity of nature."

=20

Whatever its worth, this debate seems to have lost that thread in =
exchange for a debate over who has a correct theory of how capital =
works.

=20

=20

Bananaman:

I've been following this discussion on a friends
computer and thought I'd intervene.

I think the missing link to make sense of some of
these debates is the role of Spinoza. Althusser
inaugurated (liscensed?) the rediscovery of Spinoza in
60's french philosophy, terming him the 'absent
centre' of the philosophical tradition. His sketchy
work on the philosopher claimed him as only direct
ancestor of Marx, in the sense that Spinoza saw
effects as interior to structure, i.e. structure as
not existing outside of its objects. In the Self
Criticism works, Althusser claimed Spinoza was the
insipiraiton for the infamous 'theoretical
anti-humanism' and we might add the critiques of the
teleology of hegelian dialectics.

=20

Chris:

"effects as interior to structure, i.e. structure as not existing =
outside of its objects." =20

First, one might ask in all fairness where you or Althusser get the idea =
that Marx was interested in "structures." =20

Second, to talk of "structure as not existing outside of its objects" =
assumes that the structure is some kind of acting subject, which for =
Marx was obviously never anything but human self-activity (practice), =
and since that concept had to be historically grounded, in the case of =
Marx he is talking about the self-activity of the proletariat.  Is the =
proletariat a structure?  That would be a stretch unless you want to =
return to very sociological notions of class as a structure, rather than =
as a social relation mediated by things.  The two are simply not =
compatible.

Third, the "teleology of Hegelian dialectics" is a rather overrated =
academic banality, since Hegel can only be accused of teleology if you =
expect that Hegel had a definite end securely in mind as a guaranteed =
outcome.  And yet, Hegel's own work in the smaller Logic (I believe), =
where he talks of the movement from subjective idealism to Kant, ends =
with the possible return to subjective idealism, not to Hegel's system.  =
To claim that Hegel is at least contradictory on this is required, but =
that his work had both a teleological and anti-teleological aspect makes =
your argument unsustainable.

Fourth, one could go even further and say that the teleological aspect =
did not derive from dialectics, but from Hegel's mystified presentation =
of dialectic.  Certainly, this was Marx's critique in his early works.

Fifth, Negri, Althusser, et al conceive of Hegel as working from a =
closed system when one might well accuse Negri of having the closed =
system.  John Holloway in Historical Materialism 10.1 lays out a =
critique of Negri along just those lines in so far as Negri succumbs to =
functionalism.


Bananaman:
Negri thinks outside of these particular paradigms,
but his philosophical leanings appear to be much
influenced by the thought associated with Althusser's
circle - Pierre Macherey (who argued for sturcturalist
interpretation of literature, and went on to be
perhaps number one reader of Spinoza in France),
Alexandre Matheron, Balibar (spinoza and Politics)
aswell as a slightly different tradition in the work
of Deleuze. One can find healthy approvals of a number
of these works in for instance Negri's recent essay,
Spinoza's anti-modernity. One should also consult
Montag's _bodies masses and power.

In his essay, Negri argues that the fate of Hegel's
modernity culminates in Heidegger, it results in a
preoccupation with nothingness, whereas that
dialectical tradition had at first seen itself as
resulting in plentitude. Hence the quite inchoate
Althusserian critique of the simple contradiction in
Hegel, and the teleologies of subject centred reason,
have in Negri and others been fleshed out and given a
much fuller articulation in Spinozism. This has
certain affinities with Althusser in the sense that in
his interpetation of Hegel, totality is a result, the
absolute is arrived at and can not be presupposed (see
Althusser's book the Spectre of Hegel)without
historical or logical movement of becoming. The
de-temporalisation of presence, the termination of the
philsophical conception of being in terms of duration,
allowed for what Althusser could not have envisaged in
his wildest dreams, the return of an ontology of
production, of affective determinating behaviour in
the form of singularities. This flys in the face of
much contemporary scholarship, the crude and base
criticsms by Thompson etc, that failed to see in so
called 'structuralism' the basis of a new insistence
on the power of production.



Chris:

The idea that Hegel is preoccupied with nothingness is hard to sustain.  =
Recent scholarship on Hegel's relationship to the Hermetic tradition =
shows quite clearly, although it is already contained in Hegel's work, =
that he starts from the rejection of nothingness as a starting or ending =
point.  Unlike Christianity, which saw creation ex nihilo, Hegel agreed =
with the Hermetics that creation presumed creation as infinitely =
always-already.

As for "teleologies of subject centered reason", this seems like our =
rather specious reading of Hegel again.

Also, Negri and Hardt in practice do not at all de-temporalize anything. =
 The notion of paradigm (and Negri's is certainly a paradigmatic =
approach) is lodged exactly in a notion of duration.  Again, Holloway =
addresses this quite nicely.=20

=20

Bananaman:
As far as I understand it, Negri's critique of Hegel,
in so far as he has one in Marx beyond Marx, is simply
that Marx wrongly chose his particular mode of
presentation, which restricted the exposition of
thought into tight categories that negated the
constitutive role of the subject. Hence Negri's
critique of capital, is implicitly a criqitue of
Althusser as he uncovers the continued reliance on
Hegel in Marx's later works. But Althusser is still
right in the sense that Marx broke with Hegel's
systematic dialectics - Negri is right in that Marx
retained the formal mode of exposition of those
dialectics, and right to criticise him for the
negation of constitutive class subjectivity that
entailed. Althusser was right in attacking the notion
that Marx's dialectics were subjective, historical
dialectics of origin and emergence - Negri implicitly
attacks the objectivism of Althusser's marxism, and
gives it a different ontological materialist
foundation.



Chris:

The idea that Marx's thought was "restricted" to "the exposition of =
thought into tight categories that negated the constitutive role of the =
subject" is laughable.  The failure to grasp Capital as a critique of =
the alienated self-production of the subject into its opposite (living =
labor into dead, use-value into exchange-value, etc.) is a rather huge =
mistake, which Negri shares rather with Marxist economics.

Also, your last sentence seems to be self-contradictory.  If Althusser =
is right to critique the idea that Marx's dialectic was subjective, =
historical dialectics (which Althusser was wrong about, since Marx is =
always concerned with the self-generation of human beings in mystified, =
fetishized forms, which had corresponding mystified, fetishized =
self-understandings; hence Althusser's weak attempt to separate Marx =
into 'early' and 'late'), how could Negri be also correct to attack =
Althusser's objectivism?

Finally, the only thing which is materialist about 'ontology' is exactly =
what Marx spent the better part of the Theses on Feuerbach critiquing.

=20

Bananaman:
Negri returns to Spinoza, because he is a thinker of
plentitude, community, love, unity and fullness of
being, and of subjectivity as effect.

=20

Chris:=20

".and daisies and puppies and polkadot dresses."  Expressed in this =
manner, such concepts are utterly meaningless.  One would think that a =
perusal of Mariarosa Dalla Costa, Leopoldina Fortunadi, Valeria Salonis, =
Silvia Federici, etc. might establish a less uncritical use of jargon.

=20

Bananaman:

He shares with
Althusser the admiration of the concept of adequacy in
Spinoza, where thought is identical with its object.

=20

Chris:

Excellent.  Now we can be done with all critique, since thought is =
identical with what it is thinking.  Of course, this kind of =
identitarian thought is at the core of bourgeois ideology and is the =
opposite of Marx's very concept of critical thought.  Now we can throw =
out all of those annoying ideas like fetishism, too, since the identity =
of thought and object takes care of that.  Now we can go back to false =
consciousness and correct consciousness and the imposition of either the =
Party of The Militant with 20/20 vision to lead us along, since they are =
'adequate.'  Even worse, we now find that, with thought being identical =
with its object that we are back to a photocopy theory of consciousness =
as espoused by Engels, Plekhanov and Lenin, and, as I hinted earlier, =
18th Century French materialism.

=20

Note: immaterial labor in Negri's sense tends toward the identification =
of thought with its object.

=20

Bananaman:
But the correct reply to this is to percieve that it
is only when thought its identical with the notion,
with the absolute - in short simple contradiction,
that such a systematic unity could be possible in
Hegel in the first place.=20

What Negri and others find in spinoza, is exactly what
Althusser wrongly claimed to find consistent in Marx:
that he consistently presupposes the material totality
(e.g. in Capital where the specfic object totality
needs to be thought first in abstraction).



Chris:

Marx works from the idea that there is a material totality which =
labor/practice constantly produces but that we cannot ever grasp that =
totality from our positions as singularities.  The existence of the =
totality allows us only to grasp the internal relations between people =
from the point of view of the particular.

=20

Negri is the one who cannot consistently presuppose a material totality =
because of the concept of immaterial labor. Marx makes the subjectivity =
of labor this entity that produces and reproduces the totality. Negri is =
only partially faithful to this idea because of his idea that the =
subjectivity of labor is produced not by capital but by structures such =
as institutions and their discursive practices in a kind of Foucauldian =
move. (Empire,p. 195-6.)  Negri does not make the subjectivity of labor =
the source of totality because capital appears as a separate =
subjectivity, over and against labor, but not constituted by it.  Negri =
opposes the idea that capital is labor's own alienated subjectivity and =
reduces labor's subjectivity to resistance, denying its socially =
generative, rather than simply value-generative, aspect.  Immaterial =
labor becomes a paradigm shift. Instead of recognizing housework and =
prostitution as immaterially productive all along and not a new paradigm =
(see Fortunadi.)

=20

Bananaman:
Both Negri and Althusser's critique of hegel seem to
be critiques of predetermination - and especially in
Negri, the critique of modernity. Hegel leads to a
formal and conceptually external notion of democracy,
whereas Spinoza furnishes us with a one based in the
immanent and immediate power of being, of subjects not
reducible to their concept. Hegel's mediated
determination found a response in Althusser's
over-mediation (and philosophical, not political) that
comes very close to indeterminacy (though that lonely
hour never quite comes). In Negri speaking 'with' not
'about' Spinoza, we come back to a critique of
mediation, (dasein with brass knobs on) that puts the
power of determination right back in the hands of
people as a practical immediate power.



Chris:

What's funny here is the flight from Marx all of a sudden.  Mediation =
has to do with the fact that doing is social and in class society, what =
we as individuals do is also social, but behind our backs, out of our =
view and control.  Our relations with ourselves and with other people =
are mediated by things and by relations between things, so that our =
activity and our consciousness of that activity is never plainly obvious =
to us.  What Negri supposedly leads us to is only Enlightenment =
rationalism and the rational individual.  In the process, we have this =
phony notion of 'practical immediate power', but our power also creates =
our enemy, capital. Concepts such as overdetermination and epistemes put =
capital outside of our activity and deny that we do not have access to =
its products and that the contemplative position is a lie. In fact, =
capital is not something outside us, but our direct creation, our =
self-activity alienated from us.  If this has any validity, and I think =
it does, then the attainment of our practical immediate power is not yet =
here and could only be here if we were to overthrow class society.  =
Negri in effect is calling capitalism communism.  Ooops.

Bananaman:=20
Forgive me, but one of my susbtantial points is that
Hegel can only concieve of philosophy as he does,
because of his idealism, because the absolute and the
(labour of the negative) is essentially the
development of the consciousness of freedom within the
idea, or the concept itself so to speak. Hence being
is not the point of departure, but is a necessary
point of mediation (Hegel in some parts of the Logic
almost apologises for talking of concrete
life!!!)Hegel can formally disregard ontology because
his whole work is one huge ontological claim.



Chris:

=20


Ontology does not do without epsitemology in Spinoza
as you suggest  rather  the whole point of spinoza
was to argue that the dualism between thought and
extension which you mildly restate, was a false
problematic. Hence I refer you back to the question of
adequacy in Spinoza.=20

I don't know what you mean here. Why is it that people
always refer to the first pages of Hegel's logic and
never its broader content - could it be that no one
actually reads the greater logic anymore, or is it
like the great Hegelian concept of Capital where we
can deduce all the nuances of the objective world by
totalising the contradiction between use and exchange
value? You have otherwise misunderstood me, or I have
misled you, Negri is highly critical of Heidegger and
where he took Hegel. Negri defines Hegel's modernity,
his project as the "the peace of the real'  Negri
refers to Heidegger to argue the latter is a
hinge-point opening onto anti-modernity, that is,
opening onto a conception of time as an ontologically
constitutive relation which breaks the hegemomy of
substance or the transcendental, and therefore opens
onto power.



>  Hence the quite inchoate
> > Althusserian critique of the simple contradiction
> in
> > Hegel, and the teleologies of subject centred
> reason,
> > have in Negri and others been fleshed out and
> given a
> > much fuller articulation in Spinozism. This has
> > certain affinities with Althusser in the sense
> that in
> > his interpetation of Hegel, totality is a result,
> the
> > absolute is arrived at and can not be presupposed
> (see
> > Althusser's book the Spectre of Hegel)without
> > historical or logical movement of becoming.=20
>=20
> I would like to see how Spinoza or Spinozism has a
> more elaborate idea
> of contradiction than Hegel !=20

Simply because the contradiction in Hegel is only the
contradiciton within thoughts development within
itself (hence identity and non-identity), whereas the
argument of Althusser was that material reality is a
complex of different levels of contradiction that are
not reducible to a singular narrative of emergence.
This is basic stuff really.I didnt say Spinozas use
of contradiction was more nuanced, it is in fact a
different approach.=20



Chris:

Actually, contradiction is contradiction within Spirit's development of =
itself, but Spirit is us, is humanity, and simultaneously God, of =
course.  That contradiction is about the contradiction of human =
development.

Also, this talk of "different levels of contradiction that are not =
reducible to a single narrative of emergence" needs to be elaborated.  =
How is this not the philosophical expression of the relative autonomy of =
structures/levels?  And what does it mean?  It is the recreation of =
bourgeois sociology, of a multitude of disciplines which recapitulate =
and apologize for the fragmentation of reality by capital.  It is the =
flight from Marx's discussion of labor as the constitutive act of human =
existence and therefore alienated labor as the core of the logic of =
class society, which must necessarily be understood according to the =
particular forms that alienation takes.

> As far as I understand it, Negri's critique of Hegel,
> in so far as he has one in Marx beyond Marx, is simply
> that Marx wrongly chose his particular mode of
> presentation, which restricted the exposition of
> thought into tight categories that negated the
> constitutive role of the subject.=20

The subject is both constitutive and constituted, determining and
determined. Without this Hegelian insight you court spontaneism



Chris:=20

Negri's central point is this correspondence between form of struggle =
and command which he calls the constitutive role of the subject. He =
avoids the subject's self production effecting a gap or an external =
relation between capital and labor that is analogous to a gap between =
metatheory, theory and practice or between appearance and essence, =
subject and object. Then there is this thought identity to its object =
thing which is another gap in this case a void that suggests =
correspondence.



Anyway, that's my very rough thoughts.



Cheers,

Chris



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