A World of Work #2
an optimism of effects?
This continues some loose thinking1 around the concept of work, starting from a reading of Communists Like Us by Felix Guattari and Toni Negri.
The idea that work is “collective, rational and interdependent” and that “it generates solidarity” is an odd one2. Specifically, whilst it seems easy to accept that work is, broadly and generally, collective and interdependent, and as such is an important space for any practical thinking concerned with how humans live together, the idea that it is rational and ‘generates solidarity’ not so much.
Here it’s perhaps important to note the historical moment of the text from Guattari and Negri. It’s 1985 and the world of work is undergoing a transformation that, at the time, feels revolutionary but which, in retrospect, presents as the foreshadowing of changes which would have appeared as sci-fi dystopic speculation in 1985. In fact Gibson’s ‘Neuromancer’ had arrived in 1984 and it’s speculations on the role of data, memory, conscious AI and human enhancement tech provided an image of the future about as powerful as Jules Verne’s had a century earlier. Guattari, in particular, seems inspired to think into some version of the future, and his concept of Integrated World Capitalism often reminds me more of Philip K. Dick than of Marx.
In light of this context, perhaps there was a sense of the new forms of work having some kind of need for reason and co-operation and that this was coming to the fore. Those new forms of work, outside and beyond the mass factory, may have offered a sense of hope that appears in their thoughts here.
Even here, though, I’m curious about quite what those new forms of work were. In part new forms of work appear as the category of work is extended into social reproduction and what, broadly speaking, came to be called the social factory, extending from housework and care work to the development of culture and communities. Originally the concept of social factory came from Mario Tronti and marked the way in which the mass factory extended it’s reach, it’s organisational effects, onto society more widely. Later the concept extends into a loose alliance of thoughts about the way the profit motive re-organises social interaction beyond direct paid jobs, sometimes appearing almost as a stand-in for describing the world as capitalist3.
None of this speaks directly to why we might think work has the characteristics of being rational and generating solidarity.
Of course, Guattari and Negri are not describing but prescribing. They’re not telling us how things are but, in a sense, how things need to be in the new social context following 1968.
This can be seen quite clearly when we find the authors locating themselves and their discussion. The text marks 1968 as a tipping point or phase change and tracks a social dynamic that develops from that moment. At one point they describe their sense of the failure of the ruling class to cope with the ongoing changes.
…their time is running out: we are at the threshold between suffering and the moment when history's potential will realize itself. The paralysis of political structures and all the current governmental "difficulties" are both symptoms and specific traits of moribund power formations; they are incapable of adjusting to the movements of society.4
In terms of the so-called socialist states they were right, they only had a few years left and by the time their text came out in English the fall had begun. In terms of France it seems incongruous, as they were in the midst of the rising tide of Mitterand, the supposedly socialist take over of the Fifth Republic of France5. Wages, pensions and social welfare were being extended and workers rights enshrined in law, in quite stark contrast to the war on the miners that was taking place across the Channel in the UK. Maybe this is an optimism of effects, a kind of cultural tone, in which 1968 and all that seem still to be driving forces. In this context the relationship to care as work, and to collective planning as rational, mind give us a sense of how work could be considered rational and conducive to developing solidarity.
One thing we can probably say is that the idea that political structures and governments have been ‘incapable of adjusting to the movements of society’ was wrong. In fact the adjustments that have been made, which are often gathered under the heading of neo-liberalism, are only just beginning in 1985 and 1990 (when the English text comes out).
If, for a moment, work appeared on the horizon as a space of liberatory potential, albeit in a transformed future, the reacapturing of the majority of us in mundane work, of domesticating and pacifying work, has proved to be far more widespread. Often people refer to ideology and other dubious mechanisms as the source of control for mass populations, riffing off of critical theory like Marcuse or power theory from Foucault, but the core dynamic of control is not ideas, but work. Work us like dogs and when do we have the time to think, let alone organise a new Earth and a different world?
Thus it might seem as though the curious idea of work as somehow rational and solidarity producing is something that arises in a particular historical moment. Appearances change. Now work doesn’t appear like that. And consequently we can dismiss Guattari and Negri as little more than a historical text, not of great relevance to our contemporary moment.
Of course, I don’t want to do that.
Both too quick and too superficial, it’s not enough to suggest simply that an idea has lost power because it could only appear at a particular historical moment. In fact we might even go further and claim that all ideas are tied to the time of their appearance. The issue is not that an idea has a context, perhaps even a context specific enough to enable the idea to appear - rather the question is whether the idea touches on something beyond the time of its appearance. Communism itself, as an idea, might be said to be a prime example of an idea that could only apear at a historical moment, but that points beyond any historical moment, beyond the time of its appearance6.
Let’s return to the characterisation of work with this in mind. Is there something in human work, per se, beyond the historical moment, that can be defined as rational and solidarity producing?
to be continued…
By ‘loose thinking’ what I mean is ‘first draft thinking’. The notes and thoughts in these pieces are the kinds of things I write as I’m developing an essay. The order, content and arguments all get re-organised if I take the material forward to form a more coherent essay or text.
This text continues from last week, which ended with a quote from Guattari and Negri “Paradoxical as it seems, work can be liberated because it is essentially the one human mode of existence which is simultaneously collective, rational and interdependent. It generates solidarity”. Citation available in the footnotes of that piece.
There’s an interesting moment in a pamphlet by Big Flame from 1979 (reprinted by Cl@ss War Classix, Autumn 2008). The pamphlet is called ‘An introduction to Big Flame - our politics, history, structures and publications.’ (Snappy!) They explicitly touch on the social factory in a section entitled ‘The basic political positions of Big Flame’. I’ll copy it here:
(3) ‘The social factory’
Just as the working class is wider than the traditional labour movement, so it is also wider than the industrial sector. The revolutionary organisation must locate its activity in the community and social sphere in response to the changing composition of the working class and the structures of capitalism. We have to look further than the factory to have a total politics and reach all sectors of the class, most importantly, houswives. (sic - emphases in the original) You should be able to access a version of the pamphlet here.
Whilst I’m very sympathetic to an approach that might be described as grounded in social factory analysis, the formulation by Big Flame (again, with whom I’m very sympathetic) is wierdly vague and loose. What role does the ‘factory’ have in this formulation? It’s function is, I think, to point to the way in which capital organises the work function, but quite how that is done is perhaps not best understood in terms of factory work anymore.
Communists Like Us: new spaces of liberty, new lines of aliance - with a ‘Postscript 1990’ by Toni Negri, Semiotext 1990, translated by Michael Ryan. Felix Guattari and Toni Negri. The original French edition is called Nouvelles espaces de liberte, published in 1985. P.34
Things are not quite as simple as that. There is a crisis in French government in 1984, as the left decline in elections and the Communists leave the cabinet after political disputes. A year later, 1986, the right regains a large degree of power when Jacques Chirac’s new-ish Gaullist party (usually described as centre-right) gets aenough votes for Mitterand, as President, to have to appoint Chirac as Prime Minister (with mainly domestic policy as his remit). What is perhaps worth noting is that France under Mitterand - ie; in the 80’s and early 90’s - was a pretty volatile regime, with 7 different prime ministers appointed. In volatility, however, there is change and with change hope can appear. Thus the sense of hope in the curious description of work that Guattari and Negri give still seems in many ways to have arisen from an optimism of effects.
The formulation here - that an idea can point beyond the time of its appearance - is being used strategically at the moment. On the one hand it is a way to avoid Badiou and his truth function, on the other it’s a way of drawing from the untimely of Nietzsche. Such strategies are usually hidden, if they prove useful, in finished texts.
