"The multitude and the machine: Productivism, populism, posthumanism"

by Pitts, Frederick Harry (2020)

Abstract

Abstract There has been a proliferating literature on postcapitalist and post-work futures in recent years, underpinned by policy proposals like the basic income and a reduction in working hours. It has gained increasing uptake within left electoral politics and policy making. The generational potency of these ideas require that we understand their theoretical roots. This article considers the interplay between the work of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri and the new postcapitalism exemplified by the likes of Paul Mason and Aaron Bastani, as well as its relationship with intellectual currents around Corbynism and the wider contemporary left. Through a discussion of their latest book, Assembly, it will be seen that Hardt and Negri both inform, and are increasingly informed by, the postcapitalist and post-work thinking popular on the left today?in particular at its ?posthumanist? fringes. However, this recent work is characterised by a series of tactical redirections that, rather than indicating renewal, reflect the potential collapse of this utopian framework for the future in the face of a rapidly unravelling global political context. Whilst the determinist understanding of social transformation cannot permit these setbacks, this shines a light on more general shifts in left strategy and analysis.

Key Passage

In an adaptation of the orthodox Marxist understanding of the unfolding of capitalist development, the ‘human machines’ Hardt and Negri see as ‘put to work’ in contemporary capitalism represent what might be characterised as the ‘forces of production’ which push against the ‘relations of production’, namely, the property relations that conflict with the common, cooperative basis of value production in the digital age. As Hardt and Negri write, ‘Private property appears increasingly as a fetter to social productivity both in the sense that it blocks the relationships of cooperation that generate production and that it undermines the social relations that are its result.’ Somewhat at odds with the rejection of dialectics elsewhere in their work, this is a classic restatement of the traditional Marxist ‘fetters’ view of history, whereby the forces have an a priori agency, constrained by the imposition upon them of capitalist social relations. The relations are reshaped through the development of the forces as the former become insufficient relative to the latter, such that ‘[c]apitalist developments in logistics are always a response to the rebellious, uncontrollable forces of production’ (p.366)

Keywords

Postcapitalism, Communism, Negri, Hardt, Machinery, Technology, Automation, Posthumanism

Themes

Technology, Employment, Automation

Links to Reference

• https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-923X.12852
• http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-923x.12852
• https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1467-923X.12852?casa_token=cphhVoyGf48AAAAA:QEv9ic-jP13UjklyboCh_vDqUe6U5Qt0ro6xX72MeqdtMQsnYF-56xBIjijIVsVYz1eXzl75E6tLPbo6
• https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/1467-923X.12852?casa_token=tmxBkng5ZP4AAAAA:o28Q9VT6FcmdZnbwyNUDzzxAxRvmVpyacBgUTza9kLW7OsfOjxUg90rik7nhToQ8RHD7Qy8NSxaBpPp8

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