Re: AUT: they remember nothing and understand nothing

["Harald Beyer-Arnesen" <haraldba@xxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Lowe Laclau" <lowe.laclau@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, October 31, 2004 7:20 PM
Subject: Re: AUT: they remember nothing and understand nothing

An immediate, preliminary response to the question of
'commons' versus 'common':

1. They have next to nothing in common, so to speak.

[Commons, btw. still exist as a legal concept ('allmenning') and
as reality, if one threatened, in Norway, outside city limits,  to
this very day, although certainly has not maintained the economic
signficance of old, and may in many aspects today
better be desribed as a collective form of private property, with
some important exceptions; that is foremost in regards free
movement, even in fact when property is privately owned in the
strict sense,  and some other usages as well. ]

2. The 'common' as Negri & Hardt defines, is, as far as I can
see, pretty much identical to the conditions brought about by
dead or past labour, or in other words, the (changing) capitalistic
produced world.
            Apart from the whole question of a mechanical, and
and deterministic, and I would  suggest pseudo-materilalistic,
thought, which it is hard to see any Spinozism can free itself
from  -- the analalogy with Calvinist predestination, sugggested
by some, is not at all far-fetched --, one problematic thing with
this, is their neglect of the whole question of a simultaneous
production of isolation and dyscommunication. This is again
related to the neglect of distinguishing between forms of
communication that may have not much but the name in
common. In the end this 'common', however much materially
real, tends to also theoretically be reduced to some kind of
mechanical processs, largely working 'behinds our backs'. And
in this, 'the commons' of old, whatever their literally speaking
limitations were, can be useful to see as a contrast.  Although,
numerous other more modern real-life situtation may also
be applied for this purpose.
                On all circumstances 'the commons' and 'New
Enclosures* as used by Midnight Notes seems to me as
potentially much richer from socil revolutionary point of view.
However, they really do not address the same. In a way,
'the common' of Negri & Hardt is just a restatement of
Kropotkin and numerous others, that our lifes are increasingly
materially interconnected, which of course is truer
than ever.

        Harald





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