The "commons" between reality and utopia
Luigi Cavallaro * - October 11, 2010
must be grateful to Toni Negri and Michael Hardt for taking their last substantial effort to the theme of "common" [1] . Recently, in fact, we have witnessed the establishment of a substantial intellectual and popular resistance front around the defense of certain 'public goods', such as water or the environment, which has tried to put up a barrier to the fury rages in privatized industrialized societies for over three decades. It is a very composite face political culture of belonging, but it is recognized in the belief that the "common good" would constitute a tertium genus able to circumvent the opposition considered outdated between 'public' and 'private'. It is therefore welcome any attempt to give these claims adequate theoretical system: test its plausibility is the only way to verify the reasons (or possibly completely wrong) to argue that the opposition between public and private is what today prevent the development of a truly cooperative and shared water management, knowledge, health, energy and cultural heritage. We see then in detail. The term "common", Hardt and Negri mean, first, "the common wealth of the material world - air, water, fruit land and all the gifts of nature - that in the classical texts of political thought in the Western world is often characterized as the heritage of all mankind to share together. " In this sense, we read from the first pages of the ponderous volume, "the language, the emotions and human expressions are most common." But there is another meaning that Hardt and Negri attribute to the "common", "A" common "- in fact, they say - is to be understood, more precisely, all that is derived from social production."
is worth pointing out that the equivalent postulated between these two meanings lies the real novelty of the reflection of Hardt and Negri. Traditionally, in fact, with the first meaning of the term "common" goods that are designated as the lawyers call "free": not only because they do not belong to anyone, but especially because they are not - to their essence or statutory restrictions - which may appropriation. The air we breathe or the language that allows us to communicate are the most classic examples.
Different speech, however, true for goods (and of course the service) products. Each production presupposes a working process and the latter - in the words of Marx - not necessarily imply 'ownership of natural elements for human needs " [2] , which in turn implies a prior distribution of the means of production according to figures the social relations and the subsumption of individuals working within specific relations of production , that concern is agents of production that the material means necessary to it. And if it is true that every work process uses standard goods that strictly speaking are not susceptible of appropriation (such as air or the language, in fact), is no less true that a profound difference between the remaining ones and the others means assets that are common in the "free" are not in fact be produced through work, so that even those transformations that they undergo in dependence of the human frame in their "natural history"; goods producible by labor are appropriated by specific relations of production and can be "common" if only one being the social form the latter makes them 'not rivals' and 'non exclusive', ie such that their enjoyment by Tom does not prevent a similar enjoyment by Caio.
Evoking Marx intended to suggest that the distinction we have just mentioned has a long tradition and solid theoretical reasons: its primary objective is to escape those idealistic conceptions of social work inspire not only the humanistic illusions of those who see the work as "pure creative activity," but also the modern treatment of the neoclassical economists about the supposed public goods "by nature" (which, well understood, serve to say that everything what is not "naturally the public" should not even be) [3] . But if this is true, the semantic equivalence postulated by Hardt and Negri between the two meanings of 'common' can not be taken in descriptive terms: an analysis should rather legislation, namely, that proves that, even if it was so far, so it should not be.
vain, however, the reader searches in over four hundred pages of the book. Far from explaining the extent to which new relations of production should conceive of the allocation of the labor process and its products in order to move us "beyond the private and the public," Hardt and Negri confine themselves to tell us that the 'biopolitical' process work was the "common" not only as a productive force, but also as a 'form in which wealth is produced' place 'work is increasingly biopolitical self "from the state capital, there would only need to fight in defense of "freedom of the labor force biopolitics" (Make a "guaranteed minimum income at a national or global) and to ensure the world's peoples 'physical infrastructure' which they lack, beginning with a" physical platform (allowing access to wired communication networks in and wireless) "to continue with the" logic (protocols and open source code) "and another" rich in content (the works and scientific research, intellectual and cultural). "
case, however, this amounts to assume what we need instead to prove. The 'autonomy' in fact relates to mode of work and for itself can not tell us anything about the form that takes its product. The very considerable autonomy enjoyed by every manager of an undertaking, for example, does not prevent qualify the product of his labor as a commodity , as well as the autonomy enjoyed by a public official does not preclude recognition of the difference is ch 'is the product of his own activities. The same goes for the character 'commune', ie social, labor process, which is no coincidence that Marx recognized as a typical capitalist industry and we may well report also to the employment by the public sector. After all, if Marx himself spoke a 'capitalist communism' in relation to the process that leads to the partition of the mass of surplus value and the genesis of the average profit [4] , could we not evoke a similar "community of official authority" to refer to the way in which these actually have made it possible to make certain goods and services do not exclude, not rivals? What else should we report what Hardt and Negri call "the town that serves as the basis of biopolitical production 'and who denounce be acquisitive strategies of capitalism? The "dismantling of the institutions of public education," the "privatization of primary education and the drastic reduction of funding for secondary school "may not refer to the destruction of that form of Communism that we have experienced from the economic activities of public authorities?
We do not believe to be wrong if we say that assimilation is typically between capitalism and socialism sessantottino face veil here (and it is a film very often) to the discussion of Hardt and Negri. Claiming that "the" real socialism "was an extraordinary machine of capitalist accumulation," which allegedly used the "tools of Keynesian capitalist powers that had been adopted only in times of cyclical crises," means not only ignore the fact that it was Keynes to be guided in the preparation of the USSR General Theory (and not to copy the Bolsheviks) [5] , but also completely misunderstand the meaning of the 'Keynesian revolution' which just moves from the conviction that the development of our society has given rise to certain needs (such as' urban planning 'or' the conservation of the natural environment, "to repeat his two examples) such that" it is impossible for the individual, even if it wanted to, take the necessary steps "to satisfy them: indeed, "even though he embarks on those undertakings, would be in no position to reap the benefits." Only "if adopted and used strong central governing authority, may spread enormous benefits the entire community [6].
You can add that attribute to the 'biopolitical labor' ability to generate cooperation in a "self" is likely to make an apology to the head of those who coordinated and continuous Minister Sacconi has taken as an archetype for the rewrite of the Statute workers. It is clear that autonomy can be easily declined MISUSE utopia of a society of "free independent producers", which follows that of the Walrasian vision of the perfect competitive market: is not a coincidence that Aldo Bonomi, who first wrote about the "triumph of the many" [7] has finally arrived to assume the role of EDA small business and self employment on the pink pages of the newspaper of Confindustria .
Conversely, if we take seriously the "reforms" requested by Hardt and Negri, it is easy to conclude that entail the nationalization of much of the productive [8] aim is in fact or bend the existing industrial facilities non-capitalist logic of operation, or to organize production for export in order to obtain the necessary transfers technology from abroad (just the manner of the first Soviet Five-Year Plan).
Needless to say, In either case we would not at all 'over the private and the public, "as claimed by Negri, Hardt and other theorists of' common goods' [9] , but firmly within or the other: the market or the state, to call a spade a spade. In this respect we recall the words of polished PJD Wiles, "those who want to de-Stalinized a particular type of economic activity should let the free market, as the Yugoslavs have discovered, as well as those who despise the laws of supply and demand must Stalinized sectors who wish to reform. There is no third way. The economy as a whole can be mixed, but each activity should be the one thing or another. The function of the vast economic Stalinist bureaucracy is to do administratively what the market does this automatically, or the consumer and profit to the producer say what to do (with or without the help of competition between producers) or tell him the central planner. The allocation of resources is made at the periphery or the center, with the market or not. These (four) words show that the dichotomy, command economy or market, is a logically exhaustive " [10] . And if the real radicalism looking rather to recognize that these are still the terms of the alternative?
0 comments:
Post a Comment