The Beginning of History , livre ebook

The Beginning of History
‘The Beginning of History challenges Hardt and Negri’s view in Empire that postmodern capitalism is a total system with no “outside”. For De Angelis the “outside” is alive and well in spaces of sharing, conviviality and communality that are continually created by struggles throughout the planet, from women farmers in Third World villages protecting the forest commons to the internet activists creating “free” software and “anti-copyright” licenses. The Beginning of History brings this creativity to the center of anti-capitalist thought and through it provides new meanings to the concepts of anarchism, socialism and communism.’
—Silvia Federici, author of Caliban and the Witch
‘Massimo De Angelis has developed a reputation as the most brilliant of the new generation of autonomist thinkers – in the tradition that has already produced figures like Negri and Virno. Now, we can see why. The Beginning of History is a kind of intellectual revolution in itself, both rigorous and exciting.’
—David Graeber, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Yale University
‘Massimo De Angelis’s The Beginning of History is a breakthrough book in anti-capitalist theory. De Angelis brings together concepts like commons, enclosure, autonomy, and social reproduction to illuminate how capitalism survives and accumulates in the face of struggles against it. At the same time, he defetishizes the objectified concepts of Marxism like value, primitive accumulation, and capital and uncovers their living essence. He creates a Marxist theory useful for twenty-first century thought and action. The reader closes this book with a rich and vivid critique of the anti-globalization movement’s slogan “Another world is possible”, for De Angelis shows that other, anti-capitalist worlds are already in existence.’
—George Caffentzis, Professor, Department of Philosophy,
University of Southern Maine
THE BEGINNING OF HISTORY
Value Struggles and Global Capital
MASSIMO DE ANGELIS
First published 2007 by Pluto Press
345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA
and 839 Greene Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48106
www.plutobooks.com
Copyright © Massimo De Angelis 2007
The right of Massimo De Angelis to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Hardback
ISBN-13 978 0 7453 2036 6
ISBN-10 0 7453 2036 8
Paperback
ISBN-13 978 0 7453 2035 9
ISBN-10 0 7453 2035 X
ePub
ISBN-13 978 1 7837 1658 6
Mobi
ISBN-13 978 1 7837 1659 3
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Designed and produced for Pluto Press by
Chase Publishing Services Ltd, Fortescue, Sidmouth, EX10 9QG, England
Typeset from disk by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd, Chennai, India
Printed and bound in the European Union by
CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables and Boxes
Preface
1
The beginning of history
Other dimensions
Front line and alternatives
Emanating antagonism
False polarities
Structure of the book
PART I ORIENTATIONS: CO-PRODUCTION OF LIVELIHOODS AS CONTESTED TERRAIN
2
Value struggles
Temporary time–space commons
The market as an ethical system
Positing the outside
Value struggles
3
Capital as a social force
Capitalism as subsystem
Capital
Telos , drive and conatus
4
With no limits
Capital’s boundlessness
Global M-C-M′: a classic illustration
5
Production and reproduction
Circuit coupling
Waged and unwaged work and the realm of the invisible
6
Production, reproduction and global loops
The front line: the articulation between conati
International division of labour
PART II GLOBAL LOOPS: SOME EXPLORATIONS ON THE CONTEMPORARY WORK MACHINE
7
Enclosures and disciplinary integration
Generation and homeostasis
A conceptual map
Governmentality
8
Global loops
Neoliberal globalisation
Globalisations
9
The global work machine
Global production networks and TNCs
Disciplinary trade
Spatial substitutability and ‘class composition’
PART III CONTEXT, CONTEST AND TEXT: DISCOURSES AND THEIR CLASHING PRACTICES
10
Marx and the enclosures we face
Capital encloses
Marx and the continuous character of enclosures
Continuity, social conflict and alternatives
11
Enclosures with no limits
Enclosures as a front line
Types of enclosure
12
The ‘law of value’, immaterial labour, and the ‘centre’ of power
Global markets and value practices
What is the ‘law of value’?
Critical approaches to the ‘law of value’
The ‘centre’ of power
13
The valuing and measuring of capital
Measuring and feedback
Commodity values
Measuring and struggles
14
Market freedom and the prison: Hayek and Bentham
Orientations
Market order
Panopticism
Market and panopticism: two overlapping orders
15
The fractal panopticon and ubiquitous revolution
The market order and panopticism
Beyond panopticism
PART IV ‘BY ASKING QUESTIONS WE WALK’: THE PROBLEMATICS OF DECOUPLING
16
The ‘outside’
The beginning of history
The ‘outside’
Enclosure, dispossession and the outside
Very brief detour on imperialism
Detritus – conatus
17
Commons
The production of commons
Freedom, community …
… and commons
Anarchism, communism and socialism
Notes
References
Other Web Resources
Index
List of figures
1
Boundless accumulation
2
The articulation between conati of self-preservation
3
Stylised global linkages between production and reproduction
4
Capital’s loops and class struggle
5
The ‘flying geese’
6
The formation of socially necessary labour time (SNLT)
7
Homeostatic processes and SNLT
8
SNLT of ideas and affects
9
Plan of the panopticon
10
The fractal panopticon
List of tables and boxes
Table 1
A taxonomy of new types and modes of enclosure
Box 1
Market and Panopticism: Two Overlapping Orders
Preface
In 1969, more than a year after the mythical French May, and about the time of the Italian Hot Autumn, I was sitting at my desk in my fourth grade during one of those short breaks conceded to us by our teacher. I was nine years old, and growing up in Milan. I was diligently sticking the little picture cards of my ‘history of Italy’ collection into the album, making sure that the right card matched the right caption. Suddenly, I remember very vividly, I could not believe it: in my hand I held the image of a man dressed in a large white shirt who seemed to be shouting. In his hand was a banner, and on it, written in clear capital letters, the word ‘SCIOPERO’, strike. The caption that matched the picture said ‘1908’. I looked up, and, pointing at the picture, with all a child’s wonder I asked my teacher, who was walking up and down with a grim look on his face: ‘But then, there were strikes before?’ He looked down at the picture, briefly nodded, made a low sound in his throat and continued his inspector’s walk.
I did not know then, but that was perhaps the first time I encountered what in this book I call ‘the outside’. As a child, I grew up believing this myth I heard repeated that the strikes, demonstrations and protests that were mushrooming in the late 1960s and early 1970s were something new, something that ‘was not like it used to be’. And yet, from the second floor balcony of the small apartment where I was living with my family, I could hear and often see the demonstrations, with their slogans and the red colours of the marchers, before they disappeared around the corner. During our family Sunday walks in the park, I was puzzled by these older youths with long hair and flowers in their mouths, sharing ice creams and playing guitars. They looked quite ‘cool’ to me. Before going to bed after ‘carosello’ – the packaged entertainment ads that signalled for most Italian children the approach of the time to retire from the world of the grown-ups – I often thought about the alarming reports of the newsreader about the world out there. But I was told, all this is odd, and new, and it should not be happening. Hence the discovery of that picture dated 1908 was indeed revealing.
I would soon be going out into the world to find out for myself what all that shouting, and long hair, and faded blue jeans, and guitars, and little red books, and ice creams passed around in the park was about. I felt somehow comforted by the fact that all this had a long history; hence it was pretty much normal. Indeed, it soon became normal to me.
During much of the 1970s, Italy was bubbling with revolutionary ideas and practices. I was lucky to grow up in that period. In high school, we were on strike every other week (if not every other day) for every imaginable reason: in protest about a classroom roof leaking, in solidarity with the nearby factory workers on strike, against hikes in the transport fares, against a despotic teacher, as part of a general strike, or, simply, because it was a nice spring day. We were learning to take decision making into our own hands. And we were also studying: pamphlets, leaflets, revolutionary books and magazines, arguments and theories confronted, debated, ridiculed and promoted. No ministerial curricula were allowed to envelop our imagination: students from technical schools were studying Hegel and those from classical schools were studying technical issues of solar energy. Studying what you were not supposed to became one of many subversive activities. When in Britain, a few years ago, during the protests against the war in Iraq, outraged voices were raised in the press about high school students ‘daring’ to skip class and so getting the convivial education of the streets, I was bemused: what had these kids been losing all this time, putting their energy into the national curriculum, rigidly measured by pervasive exams