Value
and affect
In the polemics
that since 200 years have accompanied the development of the theory of value in
political economy, I think that we still have not managed to decouple value
from labour. Even the marginalist current and the neo-liberal schools (that as
a vocation are used to operating this decoupling) are forced to reconsider that
relation (and its basis: mass living labour) everytime they are confronted with
political economy in concrete. In the neo-classical elaboration, the analysis
of market relations whether enterpreneurial, financial or monetary rejects in
principle any referral to labour: in fact, it silences it. It is not by chance
that when neo-classicists are faced with political decisions, the labour theory
of value comes back, exactly in the place where the founders of the discipline
had located it: the place of conflict (and eventual mediation) of the economic
relation as a social relation, the ontology of economic theory.
However, what has
irreversibly changed, since the times of the dominance of classical theory of
value, relates to the possibility of developing a theory of value in terms of
economic order, i.e. to consider value as measure of concrete labour, both
singularly and collectively. The economic consequences of this difficulty are
as important as are its anthropological and social assumptions. It is on the
latter that our analysis will dwell - on this novelty that transforms the
theory of value from (the) below of life.
Throughout the
centuries of capitalist modernisation (in the passage, to say it with Marx,
from manufacturing to large-scale industry), the possibility of measuring
labour (that had more or less functioned during the period of accumulation)
increasingly disappears.
1)
firstly because labour - becoming more qualified and more complex, both at the
individual and at the collective level - could no longer be reduced to simple
quantities;
2)
secondly because capital - becoming more finance and state-like
[finanziarizzandosi e statualizzandosi] - made the mediation between different
sectors of the economic cycle (production, social reproduction, circulation and
division of wages) more and more artificial and manipulable, hence, more and
more abstract.
But all this is
pre-history. In the global market, in the postmodern, the problem itself of the
measure of value cannot be found [e introvabile].
It is true that in
the period of passage to postmodernity, in the phase of anti-imperialist and
anti-colonial struggles, the theory of value-labour seemed to re-emerge
in macro-economic terms, as a theory of an international division of labour, of
unequal exchange, of post-colonial exploitation. But this reemergence
appeared to be illusiory as soon as it become evident that the complexity of
productive processes, as well as being immersed in the multi-nationalisation of
industrial activity and in the globalisation of finance, was also intensified
by technological processes of computers and communication, and by the
employment of immaterial and scientific labour. This does not mean that the
international division of labour and post-colonial exploitation have ended. On
the contrary, they have extraordinarily increased [accentuati]. But at the same
time they have lost their specificity (and hence the possibility of
reactivating in a concrete case the theory of value), because that type of
exploitation has itself become global, it has submerged metropolitan
territories, and the measure of exploitation is definitely dispersed.
In the economy of
the postmodern and in the territories of globalisation the production of
commodities occurrs through command; the division of labour is given through
command; the articulation of measures of labour is defeated in global command.
Having said this, our theme, value and affect, has not been touched upon yet if
not through the suggestion of re-considering the problem of value from below.
In fact, then one looks at things from the standpoint of political economy,
i.e. from above, the theme of value-affect is so integrated in the
macro-economic process that it appears as invisible. Economic science ignores
the problem without any scruple [resipiscenza-?-]. When the problem presents
itself to it, it does not grant it any importance. Two cases, amongst others,
are exemplar in this respect.
1)
The first concerns domestic labour of women and/or wives/mothers. In the
tradition of political economy, in no way this theme can be posed outside of
considerations of the wages, whether direct or indirect, of the worker (male,
father); or, in more recent cases, outside of the disciplinary techniques of
demographic control of the populations (and the interest of the State -
capitalist collective - in the economic regulation of demographic development).
Value here is assumed by being taken away (torn away) from labour (of women,
wives or mothers), i.e. from affect.
2)
A second example, at the opposite extreme, i.e. no longer around the
traditional paradigms of classical economy, but considering a theme not at all
postmodern: the so-called attention economy [leconomia dellattenzione]. By
this I mean the interest/ will to include in economic calculations the
interactivity of the user of communication services. In this case too, despite
the evident effort to absorb the production of subjectivity, economic science
ignores its importance. It rather dwells on the calculation of audiences, it
levels down, controls and commands the production of subjectivity on a
disembodied plane. Labour (of attention) is here subsumed by being taken away
from value (of the subject), i.e. from affect.
We need to start
off from this ignorance of political economy in order to define the theme of
value-affect. And we need to define it starting from an apparent paradox that I
would like to define in this way: the more the measure of value becomes
ineffectual, the more the value of labour-power becomes determining in
production; the more political economy silences the value of the labour force,
the more the value of the labour force is extended and affects the global and
biopolitical plane. On this paradoxical rhythm labour becomes affect, or
rather, labour finds its value in affect, in so far as the latter is defined as
power to act [potenza di agire] (Spinoza). The paradox can then be expressed
also in these terms: the more the theory of value loses its reference to the
subject (measure was this reference, as the basis of mediation and command),
the more the value of labour resides in affect, i.e. in the living labour that
becomes autonomous from the capital relation [lavoro vivo che si autonomizza
dal rapporto di capitale], and expresses -through all the pores of the body,
singular and collective - its self-valorising power. [potenza di autovalorizzazione]
Deconstruction.
The first thesis,
historical and deconstructive, is that it is impossible to measure labour -
hence to order it and refer it back to a theory of value - when the labour
force is no longer either outside or inside the command (and the capacity of
structuring command) of capital. This is the situation today. In order to
clarify it, we assume two cases:
First case. Labour
power (force), i.e. the use-value of labour power (force), is outside of
capital.
This is the
situation in which the theory of value was constructed, the classical epoch
when, being outside, the labour power had to be brought inside of capital. The
process of primitive accumulation consists in bringing inside of capitalist
development (and control) that labour power that lived outside of it. The
'exchange value' of labour power is hence rooted in the 'use-value' that is
constructed, largely, outside of the capitalist organisation of production. In
what does this outside consist? Marx has written a lot on this. When he talks
about labour power as 'variable capital', he alludes to a mixture of
independence and of subjectivities that organised themselves:
a) through the
independence of 'small criculation' (the link with soil, family economy, the
traditions of 'gifts, etc);
b) on the values
typical of 'proletarian cooperation' as such, i.e. on the fact that cooperation
constitutes a surplus of value that preceeds, or is irreducible to, capitalist
organisation of labour, even though it is recuperated by it;
c) on the ensemble
of 'historical and moral' values (says Marx) that are constantly renewed, as
needs and desires, by the collective movement of the proletariat, as well as
produced by its struggles. The struggle for 'relative wages' (strongly insisted
upon by Rosa Luxemburg, according to the particular interpretation she provided
of Marxism in the perspective of a production of subjectivity) represents an
extremely strong dispositif on the part of the outside. The 'use-value' is
rooted then, fundamentally, even though relatively, outside of capital.
A large
historiography (from E. P. Thompson to the italian and european operaisti of
the 70's, amongst whom we also find the work of indian 'subaltern
historiography') describes this situation and translates it into militant
language.
For a long
historical period, then, capitalist development has experienced a determination
independent from the use value of the labour force, a determination that was
posed -relatively- outside of capitalist command. The price of 'necessary
labour' ( necessary to reproduce the proletariat) is presented then, in this
period, as a natural quantity (and/or historical) -in any case as external-
that mediates between the effective productivity of the working class and its
own social and monetary inclusion.
The Marxian
specificity, in the translation of the classical theory of value for
revolutionary purposes, is also founded on a consideration of (relative)
extraneity of the quantity of the use-value of labour power with respect to the
unity of capitalist command on the development of accumulation. One can add
that, for Marx, measuring value was using a unit of measure that was formed
outside (or in any case laterally) of the capitalist process of production and
reproduction of society.
Second case. Labour
power, or rather its use value is inside the society of capital.
In its development,
capital has always reduced/relead labour power within its command, it has
progressively eliminated the conditions of reproduction external to the society
of capital, hence, it has always managed to define the use value of labour
power in terms of exchange value - no longer only relatively as in the phase of
accumulation, but now absolutely.
'Arbeit macht
frei'. One doesn't need to be a pstmodernist to realise how this reduction
(subsumption) of use value to a costrictive and totalitarian regime of exchange
value occurred, beginning in the 30's in the US, in the 50's in Europe and in
the 70's in the Thirld World.
Certainly there are
still, in the Third World as in the First, situations where important forms of
independence persist in the formation of proletarian use value. But the
tendency to reabsorb them is irresistible. The postmodern describes a
continuous, impetuous and rapid tendency. Correctly. One can affirm that,
differently from what was happening at the time of marxian analysis, today it
is impossible to think of a definition of use value that, even partially, can
be given independently from exchange value.
Hence, economic
calculation, whether of classical or marxian origin, that entails an
independent unit of measure (an outside) at the basis of capital's dialectic,
has no reason to exist anymore. This lack is real, the theory of a measure of
value has then become circular and tautological: there is nothing outside that
can give it a foundation. In fact - and here again one doesn't need to be a
postmodernist to realise it - since the 60's (as far as we are concerned) every
use value is determined by the regime of capitalist productin. And also every
value that according to the theory of accumulation was not posed inside an
immediately capitalist regime (such as the social power of reproduction, the
productive surplus of cooperation, the 'small circulation', the new needs and
desires produced by struggles) is now immediately recuperated and moved within
the regime of capitalist (global) control.
Hence, if (in order
to exist in the classical sense) the theory of value has to determine a
criterion of measure, it can only find it today inside the global constitution
of exchange value. Now, this measure is money. But money, in fact, is not a
measure nor a relation of use value, but rather -at this stage of development-
its substitution pure and simple.
In conclusion, the
rationalising (as well as foundational) function of the theory of value for
political economy has come to an end. It exits capitalist development at the
threshold of postmodernity, is transfigured in monetary theory - constructed on
the horizon of globalisation, organised by imperial command. One dollar is one
dollar'. Money is no longer the product of a regime of exchange (between
capital and a labour force more or less subjectified) but the production of a
regime of exchange. The theory of value is trivialised as utensil of monetary
theory, of the order of money.
But the value of
production is extint. When it is no longer retraceable to measure, it becomes
dis-measured [s-misurato]. I want to underline here the paradox of a labour force
that is no longer either inside or outside of capital. In the first case, the
criterion that allowed, through measure, control, was its relative independence
(that today no longer exists: the labour force is 'really subsumed'); in the
second case, the criterion that allowed, despite the fall of measure, command
on the labour force consisted in its absorbtion into the monetary regime
(keynesianism, to mention the most sophisticated technique of control). But
this criterion too has ended in so far as monetary control has become
completely abstract. We have to conclude then that the labour force that one
finds in the postmodern (in teh global and/or imperial system of capitalist
economy) is situated in a non-place with respect to capital.
How do we define
this non-place?
In order to
introduce the debate, firstly we need to identify the theoretical deplacement
that globalisation of capitalist exploitation determines. Now, when one
mentions globalisation, one refers to it in a two fold way: extensively, as the
world-enlargement of the productive fibre/texture through markets; intensively,
as the absorption of the whole of social life in capitalist production. In the
first sense the labour force is presented in aggregates (or subjectivities)
that are mobile and interchangeable, material and immaterial, and whose
productive power is organised according to dispositifs of mobilisation (and/or
segregation, segmentation etc.): productive force is here declined from
circulation. In the second case the labour force is presented as social
texture, as population, traditions and innovation, etc/ -in other words, its
productive force is exploited within processes of social reproduction.
Production then becomes coextensive with reproduction, in a biopolitical context.
(When we talk about 'biopolitics', we define a context of social reproduction,
that in tegrates production and circulation, and the political dispositif that
organises them. It is not here the place to dwell on this problematic: let us
just here introduce the term).
The non place of
the labour force is therefore negatively defined by the dissolution of the
separation between forms of realisation of capital -such as the classics and/or
Marx had transmitted them. It is positively defined, at the same time, by tyhe
intensity of the mobilitation and the consistency of the biopolitical nexus of
the labour force.
So far we have come
to some conclusive remarks:
a) that the measure
of value-labour, based on the independence of use-value, is impossible today;
b) that the rule of
capitalist command that is imposed at the threshold of globalisation,
annihilates the possibility of measuring, even monetary;
c) that the value
of labour power is today posed in a non-place and that this non-place is
immeasurable [smisurato]. This means that it is out of measure but also beyond
measure.[oltre misura]
To go back to the
theme of value-affect, we suggest to look into one of the many themes that was
mentioned in the introduction to the discussion: the nexus/link between
production and social reproduction; and to do it following the indication that
research suggested: 1. from below; 2. in the immeasurable non-place.
In order to do it
however it is necessary to avoid the simple path that is immediately presents
itself to us: that of reintroducing the Marxian categories of use-value,
pretending to update them to the new situation. How do the philosophers and
politicians who place themselves in this perspective operate? They reconstruct
a fictional use value that they nostalgically oppose to the growing
globalisation; they oppose, in other words, to globalisation a humanist
resistance. In reality, in their discourse all the values of modernity are
brought back to light, and use-value is configured in terms of identity. One
example: the workers unions resistance to globalisation. In order to determine
it they reassume territoriality and identity of the use-value of the labour
force and insist upon them, blind in the face of the changes in productivity,
desperate, unable to apprehend the new power (potenza) that the immeasurable
non-place offers to productive activity. This path is then impossible. We need
to find a different one.
Where to look for
it? We said: from below. So far we have reasoned on the basis of a Marxian
relation that lead from production to social reproduction and hence from value
to biopolitical reality. In this relation one could include -opaquely - affect
too; it could have emerged as power to act at the low limit of the definition
of use value. But this end of the deduction of the conditions of value did not
determine important effects, except when it was assumed abstractly as the
element of unity of calculus. Now we need to change the sense of reasoning, and
avoid deduction, to work with induction - from affect to value - as a line of
construction.
This line of
construction has been tested with good results - they are not sufficient
however to prove the potenza of affect in the radicality and extension of the
effects that now, in the postmodern, we expect. I refer here to the
historiographical and dialectical schools mentioned earlier (from E. P.
Thompson to the European operaisti of the 70s to the subaltern
historiography). Now, in this theoretical perspective, affect is assumed from
below. Moreover, it presents itself in the first instance as production of
value. Through this production, it re-presents itself then, in the second
instance, as product of struggles, as sign, as their ontological depository.
Hence affect presents a dynamics of historical construction, rich in its
complexity. It is, however, insufficient. In this perspective the dynamic of
struggles (and of affective behaviours) determines, in any case, the
restructuration of command (technological, political, etc.) of capital. The
development of affect is hence trapped in a dialectics [stretto in una
dialettica] that ends up presenting its own dynamic as circularity. As
dialectics, tout court. And there is not a good against a bad dialectics: all
dialectics are nasty [pessime], they all are incapable of liberating themselves
from historical feasibility and its spell [dalleffettualita storica e il suo
incantesimo]. The dialectics, even a dialectics from below, is incapable of
providing us with the radical innovation of the historical process, the
explosion of the power to act (affect) in all its radicality.
A path of
construction from below must come with a perception of the non-place. Only
the radical assumption of the point of view of a non-place can liberate us from
the dialectics of modernity, in all its figures, even in those that have tried
to develop from below the dialectical construction of affect. What does it
mean, then, to put together an approach from below, the perception of a non-place
and the rupture with any instance of the dialectics in a path that takes us
from affect to value?
Affect can be
regarded, in a first hypothesis, as a singular and -at once- universal power to
act. Singular because it poses acting beyond any measure that power [potenza]
would not contain in itself, in its own structure and in the continuous
restructurations that it constructs. Universal, because affects construct a
commonality/community [comunanza] amongst subjects. In this community the non-place
of affect is not posed because this community is not a name but a power
[potenza], it is not the community of a constriction but of a desire. Here then
affect has no longer anything to do with use-value, because it is not a measure
but a power, and this power does not incur in limits but only into obstacles to
its expansion.
However, this first
definition of affect as power to act opens the way to other qualifications.
Secondly, we can note that if the relation between singularity and community
(universality) is dynamic rather than static, and if in this relation we
witness a continuous movement between the singular that universalises itself
and what is common singularising itself, well, we could then qualify affect as
a power of transformation, a self-valorisation force: which insists upon itself
in relation to what is common and hence takes what is common to an expansion
that finds no limits, only obstacles.
But this is not a
formal process: it is material. It is realised in the biopolitical condition.
Thirdly, we will then talk of affect as power of appropriation, in the sense
that each obstacle that is overcome by the action of affect, determines a
greater force/power of action of affect itself, in the singularity and
universality of its power. The process is ontological, power is ontological,
the conditions of the action and transformation are time after time
appropriated and go to enrich the power to act and transform.
Fourthly we can put
together the definitions of affect as power to act in a further qualification:
affect is an expansive power. This is to say that it is a power of freedom, of
ontological opening, of omni lateral diffusion. In reality this further
definition could be regarded as pleonastic. Because if affect constructs value
from below, if it transforms it to the rhythm of what is common, if it
appropriates the material conditions of its own realization, it is more than
evident that in all of this there resides an expansive power [potenza
espansiva]. But this definition is not pleonastic -since it adds another
concept- when through it we insist on the positive tone of the non-place, on
the irresistibility of affect as power beyond measure and on its consequent
absolutely anti-dialectical aspect. (Playing with the history of philosophy,
which is worth nothing more that a game, we can add that whilst the first three
definitions of affect are spinozian, this fourth one recuperates a nietzschean
effect). The omnilateral expansivity of affect demonstrates, so to speak, the
moment that transvaluates its concept, up to determining its ability to sustain
the impact of the postmodern. [lurto del postmoderno]
Since value is
outside of any measure (of the natural one of use-value as much as the
monetary one), the political economy of the postmodern searches for it in other
terrains: those of the conventions of mercantile exchange and of communicative
relations. Market conventions and communication exchanges would then be the
places where productive nexus (and hence affective fluxes) reside surely
out-of-measure, but still liable to biopolitical control. [passibili di
controllo biopolitico]
The political
economy of the postmodern recognises that value is formed in the relation of
affect, that affect has its own fundamental productive qualities etc etc.:
consequently it tries to control it (and mystify its nature) by limiting its
power. Political economy must in all cases put productive force under control,
then it must organise itself in order to demarcate on the new figures of
valorisation (and the subjects that produce it) new figures of exploitation.
We have to
recognise that, by reshaping its conceptual system in this manner, political
economy has made much progress and it has attempted to pose itself outside of
the classical dialectics of capital (without negating the instance of
domination that characterises it but reproducing it in original languages). It
accepts the impossibility to determine any objective (and transcendental, as
in the case of use-value, and again transcendental in the case of money)
measure of labour force productivity. Hence it tests itself on the terrain
marked by the production of subjectivity, i.e. by productive subjectivity.
The latent recognition that political economy grants to the fact that value is
now an investment of desire, constitutes a real conceptual revolution. (Playing
with the history of philosophy, which is almost always a discipline of mystification,
one could note how entertaining [divertente] it is to witness the current
overrating of Adam Smiths Theory of moral sentiments as opposed to The wealth
of nations; in Marx, the early writings rather than Capital ; and Mauss
sociology of gift instead of Max Webers Economy and Societyc). This
revolution in political economy is revealing: it is about dominating the
context of affects that establish productive reality as a superstructure of
social reproduction and as an articulation of the circulation of communicative
signs. If the measuring of this new productive reality is impossible, because
affect is not measurable, this very productive context, so rich of productive
subjectivity, still needs to be controlled. Political economy has become deontological
science. This is to say, the project of a political economy of conventions and
communication is the control of a measured productive reality.
However, this is
more difficult than political economy expects. We have already underlined the
fact that dis-measure means outside-measure but also, and especially,
beyond measure. Probably the central contradiction of the postmodern is
located on this difference. Affect (and its productive effects) is at its
centre. Political economy says: all right, we recognise that what is outside of
measure cannot be measured, we accept that economic science needs to become a
non dialectical theoretical discipline. This however does not entail, political
economy adds, that the out of measure is out of control. Convention (i.e. the
ensemble of the life-styles of production and exchange) and communication (i.e.
the ensemble of interactive relations that forms the market and the
consciousness of the market) provide political economy with the opportunity to
restrict the dis-measurativity [argh, smisuratezza] of value-affect within
control. It is an interesting and titanic effort, that of political economy!
If it wasnt for
the fact that what political economy forgets (and also what tetanises it) is
the other aspect: the value-affect beyond measure. This is not containable. The
sublime has become normal.
In order to start
again from analysis.
An economy of
desire is actual: not only in philosophical terms but also in the
(disciplinary) terms of a critique of political economy -i.e. starting not from
the model as much as the point of view of Marx: the point of view of the
oppressed who constructs insurrection and imagines a revolutionary
reconstruction, a point of view from below that largely constructs the non-place
of revolutionary reality. The value-affect paves the way to a revolutionary
political economy, of which insurrection is a necessary ingredient, that poses
the thematic of reappropriation of the biopolitical context by productive
subjects.
What do we want and
what can we do? To say it scientifically is beyond measure, not simply out of
measure. But it is paradoxically easy to say it in what is common, in the
dialogue between persons and in each social struggle. When events are full of
affectivity. Such is the distance between being and affect. In fact, our social
life, not to mention our productive one, is submerged by the impotence to act,
by the frustration of not creating, by the castration of our normal
imagination.
Where does this
come from? From an enemy. If for the enemy value is impossible, for the value
producer the very existence of a value measurer is unreal. Starting from affect
the enemy must be destroyed. Whilst affect (production, value, subjectivity) is
indestructible.
Translated by Arianna Bove from http://www.deriveapprodi.org/rivista/12-13/negri12_13.html