Labour Power: Virtual And Actual In Digital Production [1st Edition] 3030708616, 9783030708610, 9783030708627

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Lecture Notes in Morphogenesis Series Editor: Alessandro Sarti

Roberto Ciccarelli

Labour Power Virtual and Actual in Digital Production Translated by Emma Catherine Gainsforth

Lecture Notes in Morphogenesis Series Editor Alessandro Sarti, CAMS Center for Mathematics, CNRS-EHESS, Paris, France

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/11247

Roberto Ciccarelli

Labour Power Virtual and Actual in Digital Production Translated by Emma Catherine Gainsforth

Roberto Ciccarelli Department of Education Roma Tre University Rome, Italy Il Manifesto Rome, Italy

ISSN 2195-1934 ISSN 2195-1942 (electronic) Lecture Notes in Morphogenesis ISBN 978-3-030-70861-0 ISBN 978-3-030-70862-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70862-7 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Labor is not the source of all wealth. (Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme) Fin du travail, vie magique Rennes, graffito, 28 April 2016 Ain’t got no home, ain’t got no shoes Ain’t got no money, ain’t got no class Ain’t got no skirts, ain’t got no sweater Ain’t got no perfume, ain’t got no beer Ain’t got no man Ain’t got no mother, ain’t got no culture Ain’t got no friends, ain’t got no schooling Ain’t got no love, ain’t got no name Ain’t got no ticket, ain’t got no token Ain’t got no God Well what have I got? I’ve got my life And nobody’s gonna take it away I’ve got my life. (Nina Simone)

Contents

1 About Labour-Power. A Philosophical Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1 The Problem with “Power” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 Spinoza and Marx and the Theory of Labour-Power . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1 1 3 6

2 The Theory of Labour-Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 The Dark Side of the Digital Revolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Brand New Future or Golden Age . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 Human, Too Human: Capital . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4 Genealogy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.5 The Fifth Estate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.6 Intersection and Multipositionality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.7 The Faculty of Faculties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.8 Actual and Virtual . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

9 9 10 12 14 16 19 21 24 28

3 What Is Labour-Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 Labour-Power Does Not Grow on Trees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 Arbeitskraft/Labour-Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 Arbeitsvermögen/Capacity to Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4 Living Personality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.5 Use . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.6 Cooperation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.7 Reproduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.8 Against Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.9 Abstract Labour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.10 Living Labour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.11 The Hypothesis of Communism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

31 31 33 37 39 43 47 50 53 57 61 63 66

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4 (Dis)obedient . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1 Untameable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 Gladiators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3 Self-employment Has No Friends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4 Freelance Workers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.5 Flâneur . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

69 69 74 78 83 87 89

5 The Dwarf of History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1 Amazon Mechanical Turk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2 Californian Ideology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3 The Myth of Automation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.4 Unmanned Cars and Other Stories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.5 Human Services in the Gig Economy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.6 Digital Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.7 The Role of Platforms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.8 Total Mobilisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.9 Work Has Not Ended, It Has Increased . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.10 Beyond Surveillance Capitalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.11 The Struggles for Rights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.12 Right to Existence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

93 93 96 98 101 106 109 113 116 121 124 127 129 135

6 The Entrepreneurial Self . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1 Becoming Startup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2 Lifelong Managers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3 Valuto Ergo Sum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.4 As You Wish, Master . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.5 Psychological Contract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.6 Human Capital . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.7 Liberation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

143 143 145 148 150 152 156 159 164

Conclusions: What Can Labour-Power Do? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173

Chapter 1

About Labour-Power. A Philosophical Approach

The theory of labour-power intertwines two different concepts: potency and power. In the Western political and metaphysical tradition potency, with respect to act, has been considered as the place of possibility, faculty and capacity, as well as that which precedes the accomplished realisation. Power has been considered as the realisation of potency and consists in reducing it to the mechanical chain of causeeffect relations established by those who exercise power in the world. This book will expose the groundbreaking Marxian insight on labour-power which considers the contradictory relationship between potency and power on the same plane of immanence. The potency of labour-power is immanent to the body and the mind of everyone living and working in a capitalist society. Power is the actual realisation of a virtual, collective and cooperative faculty which cannot be reduced only to its transformation into an object, a good or a commodity. Labour-power is the common potency exceeding its reduction to the capacity to do or create something, the will to impose or to encourage action and the authority requiring obedience. Labour-power as individual and collective potency is the power of those who sell their capacity to work in order to survive in a capitalist society and the faculty to govern themselves in a liberated society.

1.1 The Problem with “Power” The way I will use the concept of labour-power in this book should be clarified immediately. Labour-power is the English translation of Arbeitskraft, the concept used by Karl Marx to refer to working women and men. However, this translation is too reductive. Kraft can be translated with power, but it means at least six other things: strength, in a physical sense; effort, in a biological sense; potency, in a metaphysical sense; energy, both in a physical sense and as it is used in Aristotelian metaphysics; power, in the political sense of the term; faculty, in the Kantian sense. The English power does not convey the rich German polysemy of Kraft. However, © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Ciccarelli, Labour Power, Lecture Notes in Morphogenesis, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70862-7_1

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it also is polysemic. It is force in a physical and political sense: it is the strength and effort required to do something (work) or the political force necessary to impose or legitimate power. Also, power contains the invisible concept of potency. The difference between power and potency can be appreciated in the original Latin which distinguishes potestas (power) from potentia (potency). In French these terms are translated with pouvoir and puissance. In Italian, potere e potenza. The difference is: potestas needs a subject to dominate or to be dominated to express itself; potentia is the force to create all uses of the world and the capacity to strive and exist in life. By labour-power (Arbeitskraft) I intend the multiple relation between the power to conduct ourselves in an autonomous and collective way within and against capitalist society and the potency (potentia, puissance, potenza) to create values, relations, practices and ideas which feed the energy of labour-power and also exceed the capitalist power to alienate the labour-power. Potentia and potestas are entrenched in the same concept of labour-power within which I will differentiate labour-power as a faculty or potency and labour-power as a capacity to work. As we will see in the second chapter, those concepts correspond to the Marxian distinction between labour-power as Arbeitskraft and labour-power as Arbeitsvermögen, “capacity to work”, “capacity for labour” or “labour-capacity” in English. The same polysemy of Kraft/Power characterises the concept of Arbeit/Labour that can be translated, depending on its use and contexts, with work, job or gig. In this case the German and English language allow to distinguish the movement within the activity carried out by labour-power, while the Italian language does not distinguish what is active and what is passive in the concept of work. In German and English werk/work—the result of work—and arbeit/labour—the operation or process it produces, the ability to carry out work—are distinct concepts. In Italian they are reduced to a single word: lavoro (work). The difference between labourpower and the capacity to work cannot be grasped in forza lavoro (labour-power). Nor does this Italian expression have the complexity of the German Marxian concept that distinguishes Arbeitskraft from Arbeitsvermöngen. As in English, the result is the loss of the difference between the faculty or the potency to create use values and the capacity for labour. This means that labour-power is conceived only as an alienated capacity for work, that is to say commodified work. This problem actually occurs in all languages and it is created by the original capitalistic operation, which defines commodity as a subject and simultaneously reduces the subject to a commodity. If we consider this process starting from work in itself we can say that work is considered only as a result and not also as the process that produces a commodity. This is how work loses the characteristics of a built object and is never considered as a contingent manifestation of a much larger and always ongoing labour-power. Its value is attributed by the utility that the recipients of work recognise in a commodity, not by the worker who has materially conceived and realised it. The value of labourpower is incorporated into the commodity and is used for purposes that are not those determined by the worker. In this perspective, the owner who buys the work counts, not the one who has created it. The great mutability of all these concepts depends on the social and productive relationship between capital and labour-power. This is the heart of what Marx called

1.1 The Problem with “Power”

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capitalist alienation of labour. These are the main principles that have led me to develop the theory of labour-power exposed in this book, the first of a trilogy.1 From now on I will use the concept of labour-power and I will indicate, case by case, its specific meaning.

1.2 Spinoza and Marx and the Theory of Labour-Power I will extend the concept of power (potency) used by Marx in the Aristotelian sense to Spinoza’s conception. The key to this reading lies in a reconsideration of materialism, one that views Spinoza as precursor and Marx as successor.2 It should also be said that the relationship between the German philosopher and the Dutch philosopher is not a strong one, apart from some important early notes by Marx on Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise.3 Rather than searching for continuity, or attempting an academic comparison between different lines of thought, it is a matter of developing a Spinozist critique of the Marxian concept of labour-power and a Marxian critique of the Spinozist theory of power in a materialistic perspective on immanence in which both thinkers occupy a prominent position.4 According to this definition it is possible to go beyond the Aristotelian definition of motion understood as actuality of a being in potency towards the articulation of becoming as being animated by living forces. Already Leibniz went from a model where form disciplines matter in potency to a conception according to which forms emerge from matter and are shaped in ever-changing ways (modes).5 If capitalism hollows out power, forcing it to be the actuality of commodities, a theory of labour-power views this model as being invaded by the living and by the ways in which it can express itself in the single act. The potency of labour-power is not only possible, it is individual, collective and cooperative, it expresses its essence at all times. In other words, it is historical. Its power is neither an action of an individual moral consciousness nor the effect of an abstract will separated from social and productive relationships. It is embodied into the conatus which is the tendency “to endeavour to persist in its own being.”6 Conatus is the active and living force of each thing, not the manifestation of will, the expression of consciousness or a productive power extraneous to the life of the subject. Labourpower is not potential being, rather, it is an eternally actual potency where the principle is not separated from its effects and the substance from its modes. In this process there is no Subject or Being, while individuals contribute to the creation of capital (God or substance), of which they are also the product (creature or mode), with 1 See

Ciccarelli [1, 2]. Matheron [3, 353–382]. 3 See Marx [4]. On Spinoza in the history of the labour movement see Tosel [5, 515–525]. 4 See Ciccarelli [6]. 5 See Deleuze [7]. 6 Spinoza [8, 283]. 2 See

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their activity. This thesis is incomprehensible for the Cartesian-Kantian philosophical rationality, although it can be traced to Aristotle, who thought of nature in terms of immanence.7 However, the power of being to its fullest degree, the actuality of power, is not to be found in the movement of nature but in God. With respect to this version of immanence, it is a question of reversing the heights of transcendence and reuniting the virtualities of an ontological power with the potential of the labourpower: its right to existence. Power is actual when it is expressed in both the ontic and the ontological. This is possible starting from the concept of immanent cause. Substance is self-generating, as are its modes. Power is expressed both in singular things, through the attributes that constitute the essence of the substance, and in the substance that is self-produced in an open and unlimited way.8 To maintain, however, that substance, like capital, is the cause of itself means that every affirmation of power reproduces the structure of capital, the Total Individual that Spinoza speaks of. It is the same difficulty faced by Marx elsewhere, when he demonstrates that labour-power is not capital, but that labour-power cannot but generate capital in that it is destined to become a commodity. It is possible to react to this difficulty by suggesting that the structure of this total order, both substance and capital, is given by connections that change according to the relations they determine. Each connection is a modality of the same power and is composed of infinite multiplicities that are assembled together in becoming. At the centre of which is not substance, but an anonymous force in which what counts is not only form, or its functions, but the capacity to be affected or to affect another force. The system is defined by the modes it acquires, and these modes are the expression of the conatus. Capital searches constantly for this power, which it attempts to redirect towards the system, but this does not mean it has always been in possession of all its manifestations. For the same reason workers remain in possession of the faculty of labourpower, regardless of its objectification in a commodity. This aspect emerges when one considers the meaning of power as conatus. The principle of self-preservation (conatus) is a fundamental principle of the law of nature generally attributed to the stoic idea of horm¯e (´oρμº), primary inclination, impulse or appetite. Present in Roman and Christian philosophical anthropology, conatus and appetite are considered as being synonymous starting from Cicero.9 Spinoza uses conatus as a synonym of force (vis)10 and establishes immanence between the physical and ontological expression of potentia: when the power to act is expressed, then the power of a life is expressed. His thesis is: life is the power to exist.11 This power is to be understood in terms of physical force and energy, it is power that makes things persist in their own being12 and power through which God perseveres in his being. When referred to the mind, conatus is called will (voluntas); when referred to both body and mind it 7 See

Chatelet [9, 45 ff]. Bove [10], Del Lucchese [11], Negri [12]. 9 See Wolfson [13]. 10 B. Spinoza, The Ethics, II, 45, scholium, 270–271. 11 B. Spinoza, The Ethics, I, 11, dem., 222. 12 B. Spinoza, The Ethics, III, 6, 462. 8 See

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is called appetite (appetitus). Conatus is called desire (cupiditas) when individuals are conscious of their appetites and exercise them consciously.13 There are three distinct modes of power connected to a different capacity for action and linked to the awareness of the use of the power to act. The use of power is common to all individuals, who have the choice of which means to use to favour self-preservation and the creation of a greater capacity for action than the initial one. Conatus is not an act of free will, the will of an individual or of God, of a physical or natural necessity. Divine power is identical to the existence of all things, and vice versa. Both affirm the actual essence (essentia actualis)14 or the given essence of something that is opposed to the ideal essence.15 All affections of body and mind, as well as their activities, are considered on the same immanent plane as other living forms, from the vegetable to the animal world. Thus the separation between human and animal, as well as the separation between dianoetic (discursive or pertaining to knowledge) and ethical (practical) virtues, are understood in a new doctrine of parallelism based on the power of action in which the perseverance of self-preservation of life is expressed. The intersection between the Marxian definition of labour-power and Spinoza’s definition of conatus allows us to explain the interpenetration of the physical principle of energeia, the metaphysical principle of dynamis and the anthropological principle of conatus in the definition of labour-power. Conatus is the affirmation of power in finite life, while potentia is the affirmation of conatus in its modes of historical, technical and ethical individuation. In contrast to capital, where the process is without subject because it is an actually existing abstraction, labour-power is an actually existing potency that affirms a right of every mode of its being: “(every man) always endeavours as far as in him lies to preserve his own being (…) since every man has right to the extent that he has power.”16 The actually existing abstraction and the actually existing power should not be understood in a distinct way, but on the basis of the immanence of labour-power, where subjectivity and its historical, productive or political position are shaped. The constitutive duplicity of labour-power must be understood in this dialectic between different and conflicting principles. This is all the more true in the case of labour-power which has no other property than that of selling its capacity for labour. Being without property does not mean being without quality or power. In capitalism a singular reversal takes place because what is not-yet is more important than what is-already, and possibilities act both in actions and in an imminent being-otherwise. Establishing a right over this power in a manner that is in line with Spinoza’s conception means identifying the priority of “corporeity”—of the “living personality” of labour-power—in a process that alienates these qualities from the subject who possesses them. In the movement that always begins with the act of

13 B.

Spinoza, The Ethics, III, 48, dem., 302. Spinoza, The Ethics. I, 8, 219. 15 Spinoza [14]. 16 B. Spinoza, Political Treatise, II, par. 8. 14 B.

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selling labour-power, what has priority is a labour-power imbued with virtualities that move labour and capital. The majority of ways in which labour-power is identified are absorbed by the abstraction of capital. In this case—it is the norm of contemporary life—the Spinozist definition of labour-power makes it possible to distinguish the abstraction lacking the singularity of the labour-power from its differentiation with regard to the commodified totality of existence. Abstraction exists because of differentiation, not the other way round. Both are the result of an immanent cause where the subsumption of labour-power corresponds to the affirmation of a power that is individuated in a different way. Labour-power, as faculty of a living personality, is one of the modes of such power. Capital tends to conceal it, and to replace it with an abstraction, so as to make it impossible to identify labour-power and power. Such an abstraction cannot exist without the actually existing power that generates the system and its modes. Spinozism allows a theory of labour-power to recover the richness of an autonomous and intelligent form of life in an experience marked by alienation, violence and expropriation. The continuous search for the expression of the power to act in these conditions makes it possible to clarify a decisive aspect of the Marxian discourse: labour-power does not only pursue the reproduction of life—“its selfpreservation” which coincides with its being commodified. It is the expression of a potency that depends on the exercise of a certain use of labour-power as a faculty of the faculties available to life, independently of the idealistic morality of transcendence, the reproduction of hierarchies and the glorification of the sacrificial morality of labour.

References 1. Ciccarelli, R.: Capitale disumano. La vita in alternanza scuola-lavoro. Manifestolibri, Rome (2018) 2. Ciccarelli, R.: La vita liberata. Inchiesta sulla catastrofe e la liberazione, forthcoming 3. Matheron, A.: Appendix 1: interview with Laurent Bove and Pierre-François Moreau. In: Lucchese, F., Maruzzella, D., Morejón, G. (eds.) Politics, Ontology and Knowledge in Spinoza. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh (2020) 4. Marx, K.: Marx/Engels Gesamtausgabe (MEGA), IV Vierte Abteilung: Exzerpte Notizen Marginalien Band 1. Dietz Verlag, Berlin (1976) 5. Tosel, A.: Des usages “marxistes” de Spinoza. Leçons de méthode. In: Bloch, O. (ed.) Spinoza au XXe siècle. Puf, Paris (1993) 6. Ciccarelli, R.: Immanenza. Filosofia, diritto e politica della vita dal XIX al XX secolo. Il Mulino, Bologna (2009) 7. Deleuze, G.: The Fold. Leibniz and the Baroque. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis (1993) 8. Spinoza, B.: Ethics, III, 7. In: Complete Works. Hackett Publishing Company (2002) 9. Chatelet, G.: Les Enjeux du mobile. Mathématiques, physique, philosophie. Seuil, Paris (1993) 10. Bove, L.: La stratégie du conatus: affirmation et résistance chez Spinoza. Vrin, Paris (1996) 11. Del Lucchese, F.: Conflict, Power and Multitude in Machiavelli and Spinoza: Tumult and Indignation. Continuum, London and New York (2009)

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12. Negri, A.: Spinoza et nous. Galilée, Paris (2012) 13. Wolfson, H.A.: The Philosophy of Spinoza: Unfolding the Latent Processes of His Reasoning. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA (1934) 14. Spinoza, B.: Political treatise, II, par. 2. In: Complete Works. Hackett Publishing Company (2002)

Chapter 2

The Theory of Labour-Power

Labour-power is the faculty that in-futures itself starting from the here and now in every material and intellectual act, in the production and reproduction of goods, relations and uses. The relationship between being like this (alienated) and otherwise (liberated) of labour-power is to be understood in terms of a dialectic between actual and virtual.

2.1 The Dark Side of the Digital Revolution Editors of TV programs sometimes ask me to provide them with a human case. Some author has read about today’s “slaves” in the paper. The word is an idiomatic expression used as a synonym of extreme poverty, lack of rights, poor work. And so a reporter sets out in search of a “story”. In some cases he or she comes to me, because, as a journalist, I deal with issues relating to labour. I refuse to name names, I say I don’t know any slaves, I have no “human case”. Which is also how the people in question answer. To be defined as slaves, subjects without freedom, things without a will, is an offense. Especially when slavery is used as a metaphor that turns personal vulnerability into social stigma. The ancients conceived of slaves as talking animals. Contemporaries as personal human cases to be interviewed. This representation of labour-power can be found in talk shows, newspapers and in the publishing industry alike. Research on the titles of books that have come out in recent years shows how recurrent the term “slaves” is. In second place we find the term “temporary”, or “precarious”, always used with a victimising connotation. Avoiding this is healthy. Once a journalist who was concerned about the increasing number of self-employed and freelance workers being refused work explained her way of reasoning: you have to strike below the belt and shock the viewers. It is best if the human case resembles an unemployed son, father or mother. The problem will sound familiar to the television audience. This approach, however, is questionable. It might have shocked audiences years ago. Today we have an understanding of the situation, © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Ciccarelli, Labour Power, Lecture Notes in Morphogenesis, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70862-7_2

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we know who those responsible are. Repeating the same pattern means separating the suffering caused by alienated work and reducing it to a biographical or generational fact. Victimisation strengthens the perception of a widespread subalternity, it does not increase the knowledge of the causes that produce it, nor does it reverse the perspective. The widespread discourse on the digital revolution causing a decline in human work contributes to this outcome. This revolution was supposed to guarantee greater autonomy, but it ended up extending the already existing dominion over bodies to the brain, the psyche and affects. Despite this, there is no end of labour in sight, and the replacement of humans with machines will be a distant prospect also in 2025 or 2050, when this transition is supposed to take place. Already today automation is forcing the labour-power to work more with increasingly lower wages. The scarcity of jobs and the incessant transformation of professions are not, however, caused by robots, but by a series of social, economic and productive factors that bring about a profound transformation of labour-power and its productivity, something that is still very much overlooked. Workers are twice as powerless: not only have the “old” jobs left them unemployed in a land where the dawn of a new beginning never occurs, they will also be unable to determine the work of the future, when the prophecy of the augurs of the techno-apocalypse will be fulfilled. The tale of the ongoing digital revolution has an ancient origin: it is the illusion of unmanned work, a direct emanation of Capital. Like the German ideology, which Marx and Engels wrote about in 1846, also the Californian ideology of the Silicon Valley of the twenty-first century removes the material conditions of life and the faculties of living individuals in contact with machines and the digitalisation of the world. Today labour-force is the dark side of the digital revolution. This book proposes an alternative to futurology and to the compassionate narrative of labour. It elaborates a philosophy that acknowledges a nameless centrality—that of labour-power—and restores the conditions for a critique grounded in the history of flesh and blood individuals engaged in a productive activity which involves wake and sleep. This philosophy is neither apocalyptic nor Luddite, it affirms a philosophical materialism and investigates the possibility of a Spinozist ethic. The question it poses is not what is labour? Rather, it asks the more concrete and powerful question: what can labour-power do today?

2.2 Brand New Future or Golden Age Never before has the concept of labour been used in such a totalising way. Never has the value of labour-power been so negligible. A shared meaning of labour has been lost, the name of what we are has become obscure: labour-power. This situation is reminiscent of the Baron of Münchhausen who manages to pull himself out of a swamp by his own hair. In the same way it seems that labour produces itself, commodities mysteriously appear in our homes, money is the embodiment of the mathematical will of an algorithm. Workers, who despite this continue to work, are

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told that their activity has no meaning beyond mere execution. It is up to the masters to find meaning, servants are denied the very sense of work that comes from working. It is employers who decide what their labour-power is, and what it is not. Employers exercise the power to give or deny a name, in addition to establishing tasks and salary. This is the score being played everywhere: labour is deprived of its force, it has no flesh and blood subjects. The only subject is the abstraction of work. This reversal is subtle, like all metaphysics, and has imposed a specific order of discourse: today we talk about labour without talking about the conditions that make it possible, i.e. labour-power. Labour-power is understood as a materially operational ghost.1 It has been suggested to use the image of the “labour black box” to describe this condition.2 The association is suggestive; however, it is only a metaphor. A black box records data or conversations between pilots, it withstands shocks, fire and high pressure. Its “work” allows to reconstruct the causes of a catastrophe and thanks to its objective memory to retrospectively re-establish responsibilities. This is what labour will do once it has disappeared: it will retain a memory of what has been. Labour-power, instead, is the faculty that feeds circuits and automatisms in real time, it is the capacity that allows to produce a commodity and its value. The association between a black box and labourpower, however, remains valid at a time when the material conditions of production and reproduction of this labour-power are removed, when it is comforting to imagine that cars will one day, perhaps, drive themselves without the decisive contribution of a human being. It seems we must inevitably admit that labour-power is the outcome of the interaction between machines, while on the contrary it is the condition that allows such interaction to take place. Labour-power has evidently not disappeared in the automated and silent flows governed by algorithms. Women and men continue to work, hours are increasingly longer and conditions are increasingly worse. Also in the face of a structural excess in the demand for employment, labour-power is never idle. Whether it is included or discarded, banned, underestimated or persecuted, it is an always active faculty. This forces the multitudes that live in the gray zone between work and non-work to move, to cross borders and to become hostage to a cognitive trap: despite the aspiration to paid and secure employment, this labour-power is perceived as a working mass, as mere manpower to be employed, not as a social and collective individual. The resurgence of unthinkable conditions, at least in capitalist countries, of material deprivation and marginality, reinforces this perception and, in addition, subjects the reproduction of labour-power to binding trajectories that severely impact its material and ethical existence. The disciplining, the transfiguration and removal of labour-power—its invisibilisation—are the result of a cultural hegemony so powerful that workers themselves believe they are invisible. Despite being labour-power, these workers act as if they were not seen. The reversal of perception, and the inability to give a name and a face

1 See 2 See

Marvit [1]. Irani [2], Scholz [3].

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to this ghostly condition, is the effect of a violent backlash caused by the transformation, the downsizing, of the two main labour cultures of the twentieth century. The Marxist culture, which considered labour-power as the primordial ground of both antagonism and cooperation between individuals, conflict and solidarity. And the liberal culture based on the employment contract, which has been replaced by a continuous reformulation of paid work on the basis of the commercial needs of companies. What is left is, one the one hand, a series of prophets announcing a brand new future, on the other those who are nostalgic for the golden age of labour, the function of which was supposedly to allow workers to meet their needs and secure a dignified life. These are two opposite idealisms: the first preaches about the shortcut that will turn everyone into entrepreneurs, in the hope that capital will become newly incarnate in individuals; the second delimits the struggles of mass labourers that took place at a specific time in the twentieth century (1945–1973) viewing them as the moment of truth in History. On this basis they preach about the return to angelic labour, thanks to which people will regain their dignity, an ideal state far from exploitation, as if labour itself were not exploitation. On the one hand, subjectivity is bound to the Enterprise, the regulating idea of our existence; on the other hand, Abstract Work is made to precede the women and men who labour concretely. In no case is labourpower considered as a faculty, part of a life that is free to express itself beyond capitalist rationality. Labour-power is imprisoned by a paradox. There are those who want to free it by evoking a subjective relationship with “creative” work, or by viewing professional activity as something sacred, a work of art. Yet the work of labour-power is viewed as an archaeological residue, something it is impossible to identify with. The condition of contemporary workers oscillates between a moral injunction to subjectivity and the instrumental management of their labour-power. Their life is paced by two symmetrical polarities: overwork and underemployment. Aside from unemployment and absolute poverty, these are the centripetal and centrifugal forces of an only process of subordination.

2.3 Human, Too Human: Capital Education, labour and the art market, rights and politics are immersed in human capital, the cornerstone of a hyper-market society. Labour-power is not recognised as a faculty that produces wealth for those who own, sell or lease it—i.e. workers. This faculty is identified with capital, to which a higher instance of being is attributed: humanity. The humanisation of capital is the premise for loving the world. Aspiring to profit means acting in the name of what is Good. This discourse implies the naturalisation of the idea of enterprise and its transformation into a tale with a philosophical background. Enterprise is both a hierarchical organisation and a moral imperative guiding social and productive activities of the bourgeois and capitalist individual. The performative morality and the spirit of neoliberal capitalism have combined the first

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meaning with the second to induce labour-power to embody the enterprise understood as a moral imperative, and manage all its activities as an enterprise understood in hierarchical terms. This operation is based on an impossible psychological, social and economical identification. Enterprises composed of multiple individuals, properties and trade sectors cannot be identified with a single individual. Owning capital means managing funds, organisations, infrastructure and coordinating people, not incorporating the abstraction of a humanised capital by impersonating its ideal features. Workers are not business-(wo)men, nor owners of enterprises. They are obliged to sell their labour-power to survive. On the contrary, in the neoliberal fiction of “human capital” they are forced into wishing they possessed what they will never have. They do not possess what they have— labour-power—but identify with the property of others—capital—believing it is what most belongs to them, and furthermore that it is human. To become subject-enterprise is today the paradoxical injunction that has blocked all possible identification, fixing the subject in a process of mourning by which it can fully realise itself (labour-power) only by means of what negates it (capital). Very few people in the world can enjoy identifying with their enterprises. They are owners, and can say that they are their own human capital. Slightly more people believe that one day they will become entrepreneurs, but today they manage their own self-exploitation. All, however, must come to terms with one fact: it is only thanks to the labour-power of women and men that companies exist, not the other way round. Labour-power is the only faculty that enterprises cannot possess. Entrepreneurs can buy it, fire it, discipline it, but they never possess the faculty of workers, not even with theories on human capitalism. The neoliberal spirit of capitalism is the effect of a reversal by which the characteristics of contemporary labour-power are transformed into their opposite. Freedom is affirmed formally, together with autonomy, cooperation, self-determination, desire. These elements materially coincide with self-exploitation and self-subjugation. The desire to be free and autonomous in leading one’s life translates into voluntary subordination to an imperative that denies its power. The optimisation of human capital should produce the happiness of the subject and the liberation from labour in the age of automation. Instead, it leads to political, economic and affective misery. In order to attempt to break free from the vicious circle that feeds this passive revolution, it is necessary to restate a double distinction. Labour-power and work are not the same thing, and neither are labour-power and human capital. Today these words are used interchangeably. Labour-power (potency) is the faculty that belongs to the individual regardless of the work actually carried out. It preserves, creates, increases value and is produced by flesh and blood women and men. Labour-power, as “capacity to work”, renders this faculty extrinsic to the labour-power itself in a commodity that belongs to those who purchase it. In a capitalist society, the activity of the “capacity to work” is aimed at the production of commodified work. However, this is not the only possible way to employ labour-power as a faculty that can be used to affirm life as a means for itself and not only as the object of a contract, as instrument of work and human capital.

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Labour-power is like a coffer containing power, it is the most important faculty of active life. For capitalism it is the most valuable “commodity”. Its origin is not the commodification of labour-power as capacity to work, but the potential being of a life which is included in labour power. Labour-power as an expression of the individual and collective body-mind is the assumption that provides the starting point to return to question Karl Marx’s groundbreaking intuition.

2.4 Genealogy Labour-power lives between and within the bastions of subordinate employment, of self-employment and of enterprises. Long identified with paid work, it has acquired plural, and even opposing modes that coexist asynchronously in the course of a lifetime. The traits of bourgeois individualism alternate with those that have emerged in the history of the working class, while we witness the revival of disturbing forms of servitude, the “vagrancy” of the self-employed, poor and migrant workers. This book carries out an in-depth analysis of the history of self-employed and subordinate labour and attempts to trace a genealogy capable of shedding a light on the present condition. It identifies conceptual characters such as freelancers, who are mercenaries, selfentrepreneurs, on the one hand; gladiators, contractors, employees, on the other. These figures belong to different stories: the first to self-employment, the second to subordinate employment. Their paths show that the traditional distinction made between subordinate employment and self-employment is not original; rather, it is the result of a historical process in which the meaning of labour, and the judgment on individual activities, have changed based on production, dominant morality, material cultures. This is all the more true today, at a time when the transformations underway render the boundaries between the macro-categories of labour, recorded by Western jurisprudence, uncertain. In the context of the fifth estate, a worker can play opposing roles and develop attitudes that overlap in a contradictory way in the course of one lifetime. Self-exploitation coexists with the desire for freedom, contracts alternate with the VAT code of freelance workers, work with non-work. In the continuous trespassing of different identities, activities and temporalities, the common denominator remains that of labour-power. Genealogy allows to understand the contemporary nature of non-contemporary conditions in a new system of relations. Its objective is not to reconstruct the global history of labour, or the origin from which everything descends, but to identify the premise for historical and political action in the present.3 Genealogy is a philosophical method that intersects traces of different temporalities into a single experience: anachrony.4 It allows today’s freelancers and employees with a contract to see themselves in a history, to free themselves from the passivity of the resentful or reactionary 3 See 4 See

Foucault [4]. Loraux [5], Esposito [6, 13–24].

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identities shaped by the dominant representation, construct alliances in a world that views them as exiles or orphans. To experience anachrony also means breaking with the temporal order of production and reproduction, thus opening up history to leaps and connections from one temporality to another, in past or future directions. Between the nineteenth and twentieth century, the exercise of this historical perspectivism was materially achieved by labourers who interrupted the rhythm of the industrial production cycle and identified a path of historical subjectification open to new possibilities—not confined to corporate or State identities.5 Today the same experience should be attempted with respect to the tendency to extract absolute surplus value from the labour-power employed around the clock by free work, which is carried out in locations other than those where physical production takes place. Those who experience this anachrony, like the current labour-power, experience their time not in a retrospective way, but as futur antérieur: life is projected towards that which is other than itself by itself in a common horizon. To grasp this possibility, casting aside the heavy armour of neoliberalism, is the ethical exercise I performed while writing this book. Anachrony is the temporality that characterises the lives of those who make up labour-power: the coexistence of the actuality and non-actuality of power (potency) is its generative mechanism. Karl Marx’s concept refers to an immanent duplicity: on the one hand, it means force and faculty (Arbeitskraft); on the other hand, it means capacity for labour that actualises power (potency) (Arbeitsvermögen). The act of production (labour-commodity) never resembles the power it actualises. Its actualisation in a commodity does not exhaust potency, but produces a difference with respect to the temporality of production. The non-actualised potency of the labour-power is a nebula that surrounds the capacity for labour, ready to actualise itself in a way that cannot be determined in advance.6 Freelancers, employees with a contract and the other characters of contemporary labour-power are the expression of a pattern that shifts continuously. They are taken notice of only when they put up resistance against what prevents power from asserting itself. The usefulness of resistance today is questioned by its own actors. However, genealogy shows how effective it is, and shines a new light on labour-power, in a system which claims it can do without it. The choice of this method discards the debates that interpret it only as a contractual, economic problem, or one pertaining to human capital management. Genealogy re-establishes the priority of labour-power over alienated labour and affirms the possibility of a new beginning, which would otherwise remain unknown in a present where no alternative seems to exist.

5 See 6 See

Rancière [7]. the third chapter of this book.

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2.5 The Fifth Estate This book explores the new condition of labour-power: the fifth estate.7 A reflection on labour-power allows to understand its link with the transformations that have profoundly changed the social composition in the last quarter of a century. For example, the crisis has greatly affected the classes of labourers and of the bourgeoisie. The gray zone where the precarisation of the former and the proletarisation of the latter intersect has involved self-employment, freelance and ordinary work equally. Today it is not enough to be labourers to belong to the working class, just as it is not enough to be employed, or to be employed in the service sector or the State, to be “bourgeois”. Being unemployed does not allow to claim one is without work, the same way employment is not enough to prove one is not in a precarious condition. This permanent asymmetry between a class membership and a working condition is part of an experience that cannot be described by constructing a taxonomy of social classes, professional statuses, a list of old and new professions. Only recently have official statistics begun to argue that the relation between income, social belonging and professional status has become disconnected. There has been an effort, which under many aspects makes sense, to understand a general condition in relation to the representation of the social order. A philosophy of labourpower is not interested in restoring this order. Rather, its aim is to understand the potential of this new condition. Such potentiality is rooted in labour-power, understood as a singular faculty that is common to all, viewed not only as the ability to perform tasks in a productive organisation. Between the nineteenth and twentieth century, the discovery of the centrality of the labour-power allowed to identify a vector of subjectification that intersects capitalist production and the socio-political organisation, which is also able to modify its structures and bring about a potentially autonomous subjectivity. Due to the characteristics of the post-Fordist mode of production, and of the neo-liberal organisation of society, labour-power occupies a position that is even more central today than in the previous phase. The most topical cultural representations hardly capture the particularity of this condition and tend to separate it from subjectivity in a process that assimilates life to human capital. In doing so, the main discovery of the theory of labour-power is linked to a scenario of irreversible alienation, often articulated in terms of victimhood and understood in generational terms, and to a renewed proprietary conception of the world. The removal of the inalienable specificity of labour-power generates phantasmatic identifications with archaic remnants, philosophical or statistical abstractions such as the categories of “people” or “neet”, “inactive”. These are fanciful sociological formulas used for generalised anomie (“generation X” or “Y”, for example) that aim to hypostatise the disappearance of the previous order by means of elusive transcendental categories, which make no attempt to convey the point of view of those who experience this new condition. The fifth estate does not refer to a predetermined subject, but to a condition brought about by changes in labour-power that follow a pattern of inclusion and exclusion. 7 See

Allegri and Ciccarelli [8].

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This pattern was already present in Marx’s definition: the class is a non-class. It is not composed of owners, but of a labour-power that must sell itself to make a living. The non expresses a durable statement: the class is this, but it is also that, both this and that, this against that. The identification of the (non) class is a process that calls into question what can be done, not what is owned or what is lacking. The affirmation is the result of the combination and disjunction of heterogeneous elements (social, professional, economic, cultural, racial, gender) that manifest themselves starting from labour-power, that connect or clash with norms and institutions, the market and society. “Class is a social and cultural formation which cannot be defined abstractly, but only in relation to other classes (…) Class itself is not a thing, it is a happening.”8 Class is not a sociological subject, nor is it determined on the basis of income. It is a political-social formation of the labour-power and is created by a disjunctive synthesis shaped by historical, economic, moral and political elements. The process restarts continuously. It includes negation when it opposes an externally imposed purpose (class for itself); it expresses an affirmation when it establishes what the heterogeneous has in common (class in itself). The definition of these categories is affected also by the patriarchal culture that has influenced the workers’ movement. This is visible where Marx makes the industrial proletariat fall under the category of wage labour excluding women, as well as non-subordinate work. Today, inclusion and exclusion have changed, starting from the role of women: work has become “feminised”, in the sense that it now produces relations, not only commodities, something that does not, however, prevent exclusion and violence. The frontier moves between two poles: between those who circulate capital and those who are mobilised by capital: migrants. In between there is an unclassifiable intermediate zone subject to differential inclusion.9 Class does not undergo individuation, it is not constituted by singularities that are fixed and organised in convergent series, it is not composed of individuals who are determined once and for all. Rather, it is an “aleatory point” where possible processes of composition converge, shaped by different practices.10 In this “aleatory point” power is overturned, belongings are dislocated, alternative norms are invented, but it is also where syntheses are disrupted and where their reactionary reterritorialisation takes place. The determination of becoming by which the class is formed, and of the synthesis that shapes the conditions of the fifth estate, is political. The fifth estate has been defined as equivalent to temporary employment, that of young people who lack guarantees, freelancers and immigrants. Together they supposedly form a “social stratum” alongside the clergy, the bourgeoisie, labourers and economic rent.11 However, temporary employment does not constitute a separate class, because temporary workers are present both in the bourgeoisie and among workers and immigrants. Moreover, the fifth estate is not a heterogeneous group 8 Thompson [9]. For an updated reflection on class and “precarious” labour refer to Standing [10], Foti [11]. 9 See Balibar [12, 371–381]. 10 See Deleuze [13]. 11 See Ferrera [14].

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composed of the excluded who join the social pyramid. It is a socio-political condition, that of the labour-power, which cannot be reduced to the possession or lack of an employment contract, or to nationality. The fifth estate is multidimensional: it is transversal to all categories and groups, but cannot be identified with one of their strata. It cannot be placed in a hierarchy, although it can be found among the parts composing it. It brings together stateless citizens in their homeland, who are deprived of social rights, and extraterritorial foreigners residing in a State who are not allowed citizenship. Together these subjects form the community of those who are without a community, a community that possesses only labour-power. For this community to become a class these subjects must recognise and share this collective faculty which can, if organised in a conscious way, around solidarity, set itself the objective of socially producing its existence by cooperating with all the living beings on the planet. In order to understand the conditions of the contemporary labour-power in terms of a fifth estate, it is no longer possible to give precedence to the critique of labour exploitation over the critique of gender, sex or nature. Defining labour in the light of gender and racialised relationships, interpreting sexism and racism as expressions of social violence perpetrated by the same power means breaking the existing hierarchies and combining conflicts in a “class” that is subjected to multiple forms of oppression and capable of many forms of possible resistance. To consider these dimensions in a common political horizon means to envisage a co-revolutionary becoming between different subjects. The way they intersect and share the same conditions characterising this class demonstrates that politics can extend and go from protesting the private ownership of the means of production to contesting biopolitical power relations, to fighting against the exploitation of the living. These ideas have long oriented the trajectories of feminism,12 political ecology13 and Marxism.14 A similar approach can also be found in the more than secular history of the concept of fifth estate. Since the nineteenth century it indicates the women’s emancipation movement,15 the search for freedom and equality by temporary, wage and autonomous workers, the establishment of mutualism and cooperation that do not depend on the State or on the market, alternative to productivist, patriarchal and anthropocentric culture.

12 Crenshaw

[15], Davis [16]. [17]. 14 Harvey [18], Hardt and Negri [19]. 15 Alesso [20]. 13 Audier

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2.6 Intersection and Multipositionality Labour-power is the faculty that in-futures itself from the here and now of every material and intellectual act, in the production and reproduction of commodities and relationships, of their uses and contradictions. It stems from resistance to a process of exploitation and it is the expression of a political mode in the context of a capitalist economy and society. The main thesis of the theory of labour-power is: what comes first is the faculty that drives a subjectivity and allows it to use the world. The organisation that puts it to work, exploits it, and violates it follows. Faculty and organisation, labour-power and relations of production necessarily imply each other. Between them no agreement is possible. Conflict is permanent in a capitalist society. The choice to give priority to the labour-power over capital depends on the political point of view guiding one’s life, through which one interprets the process of value production and its exploitation. This choice derives from a reversal and reflects a political, ethical and economic priority. Without considering this priority of labour-power, we risk representing exploitation as a totalising and unsurpassable dimension and the subject as an individual completely identified with the oppressed, the exploited, the repressed and the alienated. Labour-power is the manifestation of the possibility of being different from what is. This possibility is not a theoretical option, it is not will, or a norm. It is a difference that manifests itself in a multiverse of power, class, race and gender relations. As a political faculty of subjectivity, the labour-power is to be understood by looking at the intersection of legal, economic and social norms that cause subjectivity to develop in a subordinate form which is expressed in the multipositionality of subjects with respect to themselves and the world.16 The difference between intersection and multiposition consists in the fact that the former considers social relations as being isolated and fixed, while the latter considers positions in historical and dynamic terms, in perpetual evolution, as objects of continuous renegotiation. Subjectivity is the result of the relation between the intersection of dominion and the multipositioning of liberation inside the conflicts in which it is inserted, and of which it is the product. The contribution of the theory of labour-power in this feminist political debate is potentially decisive: there is no main contradiction, and no secondary contradiction, between class, race and gender. Among the individual situations in which the labour-power finds itself there is a disjunctive synthesis in which a contradiction is always the main contradiction when it manifests itself in a specific situation of exploitation, violence or gender and racial discrimination. However, exploitation and violence are the results of a multiplicity of positions occupied by subjects in the relations they find themselves in, in which they do not suffer, but in which they act. Interpreting gender and race in terms of class, and defining class in the light of gender and racialised relations, allows to evade the logic of pure dominion and to address the issue of resistance and revolt. Labour-power, understood as a faculty, is 16 On the debate on intersectionality and its relationship with the theory of multipositionality in feminist theory see Dorlin [21].

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placed at the intersection of the positions that comprise the subjects and expresses the possibility of its transformation in multiple directions which have not (yet) been anticipated by the exploitation system. Labour-power, as Arbeitskraft, can be defined in the following terms: • it is a faculty that is removed and yet is present; • it is an invisibilised faculty, yet it has an agency; • it is an expropriated faculty, yet it generates other potential uses of the self together with others. The synthesis between these contradictions—each one applies in itself, but comes to life in the disjunction and recomposition with the others—characterises the multipositional subjectivity of labour-power. On the one hand, this means that the dominated can be the dominators of others—the woman exploited at work may well be the exploiter of an immigrant woman working for her family; on the other hand, the dominated are such with respect to a specific condition—the immigrant woman can be exploited both as a woman and as a migrant. Multipositionality indicates the possibility of overturning these relations of dominion, freeing the subject from one or the other. Labour-power is an open field of struggle. It is always possible to overturn a position, overcome the contradiction and reach the definition of a new contradiction. This is indicative of the fact that life is transformed and is complicated in the process of constituting itself differently from what it is at a given moment. Difference is what gives birth anew to labour-power; it is what is affirmed in the life of those who are subjected to an extraneous and binding power. When the dominated, the subaltern and the exploited understand their difference, • they break free from the identity dominating them and begin a process of individuation by which they become other than themselves; • they understand they are not only what they are now but can be something other; • they understand themselves as other than what they are now, and can already be other. This rebirth—I am exploited and I am like this, but I am simultaneously other—can be explained on the basis of the double character of labour-power: • active subjects comprise a productive force at the disposal of capital; • they also constitute that which can contrast exploitation. This duplicity emerges when labour-power uses all its faculties and enters into contact with the powerful agency it embodies—both physically and mentally. It is an open process that frees its potential and thus becomes what cannot be anticipated at the beginning. This process is not only individual, it is also collective. In fact, labour-power, understood not only as the capacity for labour but also as a faculty, is social and cooperative. This means that when it begins to act politically, it resonates, and this manifests itself when actions are carried out in concert, regardless of whether these actions are consonant or dissonant. In concert is collective and organised action. Just like a concert, it can express itself in organised or unforeseeable forms. Thus “political” means musically performing the power of being both this and other.

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2.7 The Faculty of Faculties The absence of an investigation into labour-power continues to weigh on the philosophical debate. The problem has always been understood in a partial and never specific way. The critique of labour has been removed from a philosophical enquiry based on transcendental norms according to which social justice derives from a fair distribution of primary goods.17 What this approach ignores is the problem of the production of these goods and its contradictory relationship with the subjectivity being affirmed in a production which alienates its main faculty: labour-power. Little, or nothing, has been said about the relationship between labour-power and contract and obligation theories that have regulated subordinate or autonomous work agreements since ancient times and that, through Roman law, became embedded in the dispositif that still allows us to talk about work. The field of analysis has been largely ignored also by the theory of democracy, which understands the division of labour, and the power relations that underlie it, solely in terms of unequal distribution of resources, thus excluding the latter from discussions on the polis. The fact that the labour-power is invisible in the eyes of an influential philosophical debate is a result of the lack of questions regarding the conditions for the emancipation of labour and the liberation of subjects.18 The problematisation of concepts such as “socialism” and “communism” has turned into a project for the administration (governance, management) of residual social safeguards by which conflict and social justice are understood merely as a problem of distribution of fewer and fewer resources which are increasingly less available.19 This philosophy has failed to analyse the creation of new forms of dominion over lives that are ruthlessly put to work, nor does it explain how subjectivity can avoid being captured by taking advantage of a faculty that cannot be reduced to its capitalist use. In the work that inspired the analysis of biopolitics Michel Foucault did not look at labour-power through his concept of life (bios).20 With some notable exceptions,21 the elaboration that followed did not grasp the relationship between the government of labour-power and the neoliberal dispositif . This led to consider politics as a dispositif that destroys life (thanatopolitics), while the specificity of labour-power identified by Marx—a “special” commodity, in that it is a faculty that develops the potentiality of a life—disappeared as this interpretation reduced the concept of life to a biological fact. The different articulations of Foucault’s work, however, include a theory of subjectivity that acknowledges the characteristics present in the theory of labour-power. The non-linear relationship between Foucault and Marx, which 17 See

Rawls [22]. Stiegler’s observations on the absence of philosophers in the debate on labour, in Stiegler [23, 31]. 19 See Trentin [24], Honneth [25]. 20 See Foucault [26]. 21 For a different philosophy of labour see: Tronti et al. [22], Finelli [23], Macherey [24], Berardi (Bifo) [27], Bologna [25, 26], Virno [10], Hardt and Negri [28, 29], Marazzi [12], Fumagalli [13], Monnier and Vercellone [30, 117–120]. 18 See

22

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founds a critique of contemporary subjectivity, allows to rescue the labour-power from “neoliberal governance”, which is treated as an expression of human capital. This objective is shared by a broad range of contemporary philosophies, from critical theory to the Spinozist critique of affections, to the various articulations of postoperaism or Marxism of the abstract, from psychoanalysis to the psychodynamics of labour.22 The absence of a theory of labour-power in the theoretical and critical debate is even greater, if possible, in the political debate. Today we have gone back to repeatedly speaking of “labour”. This rediscovery coincides with an alarming worsening of inequalities and with the impoverishment caused by living a life that is precarious, indebted and unprotected. “Labour” is thought of as the lever to boost productivity, demand and consumption in a capitalist cycle that rendered it first temporary, then invisible. Provided it is possible to re-establish the centrality that waged labour acquired in the Fordist cycle, which cannot be taken by granted, this narrative of labour loses sight of the freedom of subjects. The right to work, whatever the employment is, counts more than the right to choose an employment. From the opposite ends of the spectrum, the neo-socialist and neo-liberal perspectives converge at least on one point: human beings must be put to work because it is thanks to productive activity the people are able to give meaning to their life and feel they are economically useful. Only to discover that this same employment, viewed as a means of redemption from a state of need, is an activity that determines the proliferation of occasional occupations that are paid increasingly less. Digging holes and covering them up again, or forcing a person to enrol in programmes put in place by active labour policies in exchange for an income, are policies of dominion, not liberation. This type of labour does not lead to redemption but to poverty, voluntary servitude and frustration. The very idea that labour-power is an exercise in freedom and self-determination continues to thrive. This narrative stems from an ancient belief: labour, not the capitalist production of surplus value, is a “supernatural creative force” capable of generating all types of wealth. Today more than ever labour is an activity that denies the source of labour-power. By not taking into account the political and conceptual difference between labour-power as faculty or potency to create the use of the world and labour-force as the alienated capacity to work means identifying individuals with the labour that alienates them. The starting point of a theory of labour-power is, on the contrary, the “living personality” of women and men who work, or who do not work, not the conception of labour, be it “commodity”, “people” or “human capital”. This philosophy addresses the constitutive duplicity of labour-power—potency embodied by flesh and blood subjects, and abstraction of the commodities being produced—and formulates the thesis of a right to existence based on the fact that labour-power is inseparable from the potential of human beings, that freedom and rights are inseparable from the power 22 For

an overview of the contemporary debate see: Cukier [14]. Among others see also: Dejours [15], Berardi and Smith [16], Lordon [17], Vincent [18], Clot [31, 32], Renault [33], Deranty and Smith [34], Henry [35, 36].

2.7 The Faculty of Faculties

23

of the many. The right to existence is the struggle to affirm a life on the basis of the faculties that make it alive—intellectual, practical, linguistic, bodily, psychic and cooperative—which cannot be reduced to biological or charitable political identities. The right to existence “exceeds bare life”,23 it does not refer to a sphere of mere survival and should not be limited to a purely redistributive economic dimension. The search for dignity and autonomy is affirmed starting from labour-power, considered as the faculty of the faculties that expresses both the “living personality” of an individual and a universal and common possibility. Labour-power as faculty of faculties sets in motion all the other faculties available to the subject. It should not be understood as occupying the top position in a hierarchy of faculties belonging to human beings, but as the activation of all of them at the same time. Faculties form no hierarchy, but a parallelism that expresses what Baruch Spinoza termed conatus, that is the power (potency, potentia) of life to produce all use values. Simultaneity has been real since capitalism has existed. For the first time in history, all the faculties of human beings are mobilised towards an end that is the opposite of the happiness or beatitude that stems from the knowledge of God, as Spinoza intended it. Faculties are expropriated, objectified in alienated capacities, made to conflict and are often annihilated. This happens in the theories of human capital and, on the opposite side of the spectrum, in the workerist theories of labour, which are different modes of alienation of the labour-power. In the first case the expropriation of these faculties occurs through the anthropomorphosis of capital, that is, the humanisation of capital and the capitalisation of what is human. In the second case it manifests itself in the contradiction of the (employment) contract that protects individuals and, at the same time, establishes their subordination in a relation of power.24 The theory of labour-power subverts these forms of (self-)exploitation. It frees the labour-power from the teleology of labour and from the totalising effects of capital. It affirms the possibility of a becoming not contained in the work one does or in the capital one is forced to be. This possibility is the outcome of an exercise, a practice and an ethical disposition, of the experimentation of the political capacity that has the attributes of unpredictable, irreversible and immeasurable action, in the relations between human beings, non-human beings and events in a world that is both finite and unlimited.25 Hannah Arendt’s philosophy of action views political action as the ability to initiate something that is unforeseen, that exceeds the organisation driving and driven by individuals. This beginning cannot be represented as origin, nor as principle or foundation. It is what makes the difference, it is also what differs from difference itself. The action of difference with respect to itself is differentiation, a movement that implies and is implied in an action. The beginning never occurs once and for all, it involves the assemblage of other beginnings within all the dimensions that constitute our existence. This movement does not point to a transcendental dimension of action, but to the immanence in which it takes place and is carried out, 23 See

Rodotà [37, 233]. the sixth chapter of this book. 25 See Arendt [23]. 24 See

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like a fold that folds on itself or a loom that weaves the thread by tying together the fabric of events, actions and discourses. Politics is not only generative action, it also responds to a rigorous order of causes that are open to new differentiations. In this perspective labour should not be understood only as the ability to manufacture objects or produce goods (praxis), nor can politics be only the virtuous ability to create new beginnings (poiesis).26 This distinction has been reformulated by labourpower, because the faculty of creating value maintains a conflicting relationship with the ability to produce goods. Productive activity should not be reduced to the capacity of alienated work, just as creative activity should not be separated from the economy in which it becomes a technical procedure or a singular aesthetic performance. Labour-power, understood as the faculty of faculties, is the hybridisation of praxis and creation that allows labour-power to use life the way it does, distancing it from the roles imposed by itself and others. From this difference emerges the possibility of transforming labour-power and its employment through political action that is not only individually, but collectively exercised in concert with other human beings. Cooperation in the political sphere is the basis of the labour activity itself. One is not reduced to the other, both interact with the power (potency) of labour-power.

2.8 Actual and Virtual When one thinks of labour-power, one tends to grasp only its actual aspects, a capacity for labour that is objectified in a price and exchanged for a salary. Such capacity coexists with the faculty of labour-power to produce a surplus value that persists in a virtual form and does not cease to actualise itself in a relation of production. The surplus value is the unpaid labour carried out by the labour-power and expropriated by capitalists. Its virtuality is as real as what appears in the immediate form of the production of a commodity. In order to understand it, one must not start from what is actual, but from its implication with what is virtual and expresses itself in a way that is concealed as much as it is determined. The dialectic between actual and virtual in labour-power overturns both the hylomorphic pattern that distinguishes between matter and form, and the transcendental one that distinguishes possible from actual. Hylomorphism is based on a relationship between an overlying subject and an inert object linked by an operation that creates a form from the outside while matter is shaped by an extraneous technical or creative operation. In this case what is overlooked is that matter is always the outcome of processes that have formed it, the same way the subject is the result of an identification shaped in a predetermined model or according to a preformed idea.27 The transcendental, on the other hand, occupies a paradoxical position: it is outside experience and, at the same time, inside it; it is empirical, but also theoretical; it faces the world, but is not part of this world. “Every time we pose the question in terms of 26 See 27 See

the third chapter of this book, the paragraph titled “Use”. Simondon [38, 141 ff.].

2.8 Actual and Virtual

25

possible and real, we are forced to conceive of existence as a brute eruption, a pure act or leap which always occurs behind our backs and is subject to a law of all or nothing”.28 The dialectic between actual and virtual overcomes both models in the direction of a plane of immanence that “contains both actualisation as the relation between virtuality and other terms and actuality as the term with which virtuality is exchanged.”29 Labour-power moves in a cloud of actualising virtuals, which are not, however, exhausted in this process of actualisation. It has plunged into a reservoir of powers (potencies) and a nebula of differentiations that surround the present without reaching actualisation and that allow the present to determine itself continuously. The virtual differentiates itself in itself and thus achieves actualisation, it is not the actual that actualises the potential of an ideal virtuality.30 Indeed the virtual is not achieved, it is actualised. Its becoming does not resemble anything, even though it is limited by the conditions in which it is affirmed and in which, while it actualises, it continues to differentiate itself. “The actualisation of the virtual, on the contrary, always takes place by difference, divergence or differentiation. Actualisation breaks with resemblance as a process no less than it does with identity as a principle. (…) In this sense, actualisation or differentiation is always a genuine creation. It does not result from any limitation of a pre-existing possibility.”31 In this perspective the alienation and exploitation of labour-power—i.e. its being actual—is a way of being otherwise—one of the expressions of a multiplicity. It is therefore not the actual that shapes the virtual, as capital demands, which binds all the expressions of labour-power to the achievement of its guiding principle, profit. Rather, the opposite is the case: the actual mode of labour-power does not exhaust the virtualities that can be actualised by its faculty. Even when reduced to a commodity, labour-power does not exhaust the power (potency) of its being otherwise. If this were not the case, its commodification would not be possible either. There is no labour-power destined to be alienated forever. Alienation is a process that reduces the virtualities of labour-power to a commodity. Exploitation is not irreversible, even though its effects can be so drastic as to render it unassailable. A damaged life is still able to affirm a disproportion, which cannot be fully quantified, or reduced to a single value that is valid forever, through which it can differentiate itself in another way. This disproportion is difference in itself (dispars),32 it is not the essence of human beings, nor of any other ideal that precedes this becoming. This difference is affirmed in labour-power, through its relation with capital, it is the reverse of the relations of power, dominion and exploitation in which it is implicated, and starting from which another way of living, cooperating or producing can be experienced. The simultaneity, contemporaneity and co-presence of this difference

28 Deleuze

[39, 211]. Deleuze and Parnet [24]. 30 See Massumi [40, 97 ff.]. 31 G. Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, 212. 32 G. Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, 57. 29 See

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from what exists and may be, in between actual and virtual, is what characterises the condition of labour-power. Historically capitalism has been able to understand this condition better than others and has reduced it to a phase of its process of accumulation. In so doing, it has identified the virtual with its actuality, the power of being otherwise with what cannot be modified. Those who have tried to free the labour-power from the grip of capital have understood how this kind of attempt is always tied to the forces that organise themselves to overthrow it or at least moderate it. Not even this operation exhausts the multiplicity of the virtuals that can be expressed in an actual relation. Such a dialectic can be seen in class struggle, which is the reverse of the dialectic of capital. If capital is the mover of wealth, its cause is the labour-power. When the cause is denied, class struggle reaffirms it. Its purpose is to break the circle and inaugurate new beginnings. Class struggle shows that the capitalist order is not based on natural laws, but on economic exploitation and on the political power of the few over the many. Class becomes a political entity when labour-power overcomes the division between the parts constraining the many, when it accesses a freedom that cannot be reduced to meritocracy and property, and affirms everyone’s equality with others. Such freedom makes it possible to find the courage to challenge the fundamental injustice caused by the uneven allocation of profits, roles, status and knowledge, and that can lead to the creation of unforeseen connections that close the divide between rulers and ruled, owners and non-owners. A possibility that is neither given, nor acquired once and for all, because this also is one of the forms acquired by power relations. The dialectic between actual and virtual also makes it impossible to isolate labourpower from nature. This, in fact, is not possible both because capital is a relation to which also nature is subjected, and because the dialectic between virtual and actual is intertwined with the evolution and history of all living beings. In the multiplicity of relations between human, animal, vegetable or mineral species, successive, simultaneous and divergent lines intertwine that create assemblages between the actual and the virtual in an infinite number of ways. This condition goes beyond the dualism that opposes nature to that which is human, and opens up to what Marx described as a metabolic relation.33 Labour-power is the centre of this relation, in fact: “Labour is, first of all, a process between man and nature, a process by which man, through his own actions, mediates, regulates and controls the metabolism between himself and nature. He confronts the materials of nature as a force of nature. He sets in motion the natural forces which belong to his own body, his arms, legs, head and hands, in order to appropriate the materials of nature in a form adapted to his own needs. Through this movement he acts upon external nature and changes it, and in this way he simultaneously changes his own nature. (…) We presuppose labour in a form in which it is an exclusively human characteristic.”34 The natural eternity of which Marx speaks does not refer to a pantheistic conception, but to the social relation between human beings and nature, which is changeable according to circumstances 33 See

Bellamy Foster [41, 11]. [42, 284].

34 Marx

2.8 Actual and Virtual

27

and permanent in the history of both. Together, labour, capital and nature coexist on a plane of immanence marked by a succession of “metabolic rifts”, where the inalienable right to existence of all living beings is reaffirmed. The metabolic condition is changeable. Metabolic derives from μεταβoλη´ (metabolé), which indicates what is subject and object of change. What changes is the relation between labour-power and capital, between capital and nature, as well as the individual terms of each relation. The disproportion, and the contrast, between these disparate elements should not be understood in an oppositional way, but in terms of co-implication in a given historical conjuncture. Social and natural being can be described in one and the same sense, that of a metamorphosis in which everything that is becomes in what is different. This aspect has been grasped by the ecosophical debate when it is said that a metamorphic zone is where nature is not the expression of a natural law and the subject is not the grand engineer who has designed the universe. In metamorphosis the unity of what is different takes place, the connection of the heterogeneous, the becoming of separate series. This ´ idea is the opposite of anthropocentrism. It is physismorphism: movement—μoρϕη, morphé—of force—σις, ´ physis—which means both “nature” and “force”.35 In this debate there is no reference to labour-power, which is considered only as a synonym of commodified “labour”. However, the force of labour and the force of “nature” share the same movement. When we speak of a metabolic relation we mean a differentiated movement between distinct terms that share the same conatus, that is, the tendency to endeavour to persist in one’s being (conatus sese conservandi).36 If, therefore, a metamorphosis exists between labour-power, capital and nature, then this means that the latter are involved in a relation between forces projected outside themselves which are not imprisoned in a steel cage. This generative aspect of Marxian materialism has not been fully grasped by ecosophy, which speaks of the force of the “Earth” or “Gaia”. When it comes to identifying a political force capable of opposing the destruction of the planet and ecocidal capitalism, this perspective does not go beyond the evocation of a people of “terrestrians” who oppose a common threat.37 The theory of labour-power goes beyond such generic references and allows to reunify the issues without cancelling their differences, in a conflicting relation with capital and offering a perspective of political action carried out in concert by individuated historical subjects. Unlike capital, which belongs to the few, labour-power is the faculty of the many, proper to each human being and their relationship with nature. For these reasons labour-power belongs to everyone, to every individual and to all peoples, it must be protected and liberated, reinvented, cared for and included. Its right to existence must be made effective through universal basic income, freedom of speech and expression, freedom from need and fear, love for oneself, for others, for the earth and for the humanity of the future.

35 See

Latour [43, 165 ff.], Stengers [25]. [44, 283]. 37 See the analysis of Danowski et al. [26]. 36 Spinoza

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References 1. Marvit, Z.: How crowd-workers became the ghosts in the digital machine. The Nation, 5 Feb 2014 2. Irani, L.: Difference and dependence among digital workers: the case of Amazon Mechanical Turk. South Atlantic Q. 14(1), 231 (2015) 3. Scholz, T.: Think outside the boss. Cooperative alternatives to the sharing economy. Seminar, Civic Hall NYC, 10 Mar 2015 4. Foucault, M.: Nietzsche, genealogy, history. In: Bouchard, D.F. (eds.) Language, CounterMemory. Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews. Cornell University Press, New York (1977) 5. Loraux, N.: Éloge de l’anachronisme en histoire. Espaces Temps 87–88, 127–139 (2005) 6. Esposito, R.: Anacronismi. In: Filosofia politica, 1. Il Mulino, Bologna (2017) 7. Rancière, J.: Le concept d’anachronisme et la vérité de l’historien. L’inactuel 6, 67–68 (1996) 8. Allegri, G., Ciccarelli, R.: Il quinto stato. Perché il lavoro indipendente è il nostro futuro. Ponte Alle Grazie, Milan (2013) 9. Thompson, E.P.: The Making of the English Working Class. Victor Gollancz, London (1963) 10. Standing, G.: The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class. Bloomsbury Academic, London (2011) 11. Foti, A.: General Theory of the Precariat. Great Recession, Revolution, Reaction. Institute of Network Culture, Amsterdam (2017) 12. Marazzi, C.: E il denaro va: esodo e rivoluzione dei mercati finanziari. Bollati Boringhieri, Turin (1998) 13. Fumagalli, A.: Bioeconomia e capitalismo cognitive. Carocci, Rome (2007) 14. Ferrera, M.: Il quinto stato. Rome-Bari, Laterza (2019) 15. Dejours, C.: Travail vivant I and II. Payot, Paris (2009) 16. Berardi, F., Smith, J.E.: The Soul at Work: From Alienation to Autonomy. Semiotext(e)/Foreign Agents, London (2009) 17. Lordon, F.: Willing Slaves of Capital: Spinoza and Marx on Desire. Verso, London (2014) 18. Harvey, D.: The Enigma of Capital: And the Crises of Capitalism. Oxford University Press, Oxford (2011) 19. Hardt, M., Negri, A.: Assembly. Oxford University Press, Oxford (2017) 20. Alesso, I.: Il quinto stato. Storie di donne, leggi e conquiste. Dalla tutela alla democrazia paritaria. Franco Angeli, Milan (2012) 21. Dorlin, E. (ed.): Sexe, race, classe: pour une épistémologie de la domination. Puf, Paris (2009) 22. Tronti, M., Broder, D., Wright, S.: Workers and Capital. Verso, London (2019) 23. Arendt, H.: The Human Condition. University of Chicago Press, Chicago (1958) 24. Deleuze, G., Parnet, C.: Dialogues. Columbia University Press, New York (1987) 25. Honneth, A.: The Idea of Socialism: Towards a Renewal. Polity Press, Cambridge (2018) 26. Foucault, M.: The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–1979 (Lectures at the College de France). Palgrave MacMillan, New York (2008) 27. Berardi (Bifo), F.: Quarant’anni contro il lavoro. DeriveApprodi, Rome (2017) 28. Hardt, M., Negri, A.: Empire. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA (2001) 29. Hardt, M., Negri, A.: Assembly. Oxford University Press, Oxford (2019) 30. Monnier, J.M., Vercellone, C.: Le capitalisme cognitif, nouvelle forme de capitalisme? In: Problèmes économiques, Documentation française, Hors-serie (5) (2014) 31. Clot, Y.: Travail et pouvoir d’agir. Puf, Paris (2008) 32. Clot, Y.: Le travail sans l’homme? Pour une psychologie des milieux de travail et de vie. La Découverte, Paris (1995) 33. Renault, E.: Souffrances sociales. Sociologie, psychologie et politique. La Découverte Découverte, Paris (2008) 34. Deranty, J.-P., Smith, N.: New Philosophies of Labour. Work and the Social Bond. Leiden, Boston (2011) 35. Henry, M.: Phénoménologie de la vie, I. De la phenomenology. Puf, Paris (2003) 36. Henry, M.: Marx. Gallimard, Paris (1976)

References 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44.

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Rodotà, S.: Il diritto ad avere diritti. Laterza, Rome-Bari (2013) Simondon, G.: L’individu et sa genèse physico-biologique. Puf, Paris (1964) Deleuze, G.: Difference and Repetition. Columbia University Press, New York (1995) Massumi, B.: Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation. Duke University Press, Durham (2003) Bellamy Foster, J.: Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature. Monthly Review, 11 (2000) Marx, K.: Capital: Volume 1: A Critique of Political Economy. Penguin Classics, London (1992) Latour, B.: Facing Gaia: Eight Lectures on the New Climatic Regime. Polity Press, CambridgeOxford-Boston (2017) Spinoza, B.: Ethics, III, 7. In: Complete Works. Hackett Publishing Company (2002)

Chapter 3

What Is Labour-Power

Labour-power is twofold: on the one hand, it is productive labour-power (the workforce); on the other hand, it is the generative force of surplus-value, a singular and universal faculty that creates the use of all values, not only of economic values. Labour-power is the most precious commodity for capitalism, for the workers it is not only a commodity to sell, it is also the power that creates the value of capital.

3.1 Labour-Power Does Not Grow on Trees Labour-power is the historical product of an activity that can be described in terms of a social relation. This relation includes the one between an employer and a worker; between the State and a person with a temporary contract or who is unemployed; between the market and the legal forms of subordinate work or self-employment; between digital platforms, suppliers, clients and workers. The social relation expresses a relation of power. There is a relation of conflict with the subjects who employ and govern the labour-power: in the case of an employment contact we have power and, on the other hand, subordination; in the case of selfemployment, we have a subject who has an obligation to carry out work or perform a service for a client who has the power to pay for this work. Digital automation is not alien to this relation: in the case of digital work, the labour-power is subject to the immense power of platforms that can disconnect them with a click. A similar asymmetry of power also characterises the mechanisms by which entrepreneurs are in charge of evaluating, controlling and certifying their own performance. All these areas that we have mentioned are characterised by a common labour-power shared by heterogeneous types of activities, jobs and subjectivities, in all productive and non productive fields. This commonality is the result of the daily exercise of the faculty of faculties, which is common to all human beings, independent of nationalities, present in the social relation of capitalist production, which we call labour-power.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Ciccarelli, Labour Power, Lecture Notes in Morphogenesis, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70862-7_3

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The labour-power is a prism that reflects the relations between the State and the market, governments and subjects, employers and employees, purchasers and clients, subjects and the urban space in which they live. The connections can be infinite and apply to all types of work, autonomous or subordinate. For these reasons labour-power should not be understood only in terms of work, but as an activity whose meaning, name and value change according to the social relations implied in its conception and execution. Labour-power should not be considered in terms of jobs because it is also expressed in forms other than stable employment regulated by contracts with public or private employers: in self-employment, for example, where employment is disconnected from the workplace and is not regulated by a subordinate contract, or in businesses in which labour-power is equally expressed, albeit in a manner opposite to that of subordinate or freelance employment relationships. Neither is the labour-power to be understood only as a commodity. Rather, it is to be understood in terms of production that mobilises heterogeneous elements and subjects in a network of relations between human beings, machines, infrastructures, codes and symbols. As a historical product, labour-power is not an irreversible fact. What constituted work in the past might not today. What did not constitute work in the past, today has become work. What had a moral value in the past, today might not, and vice versa. And, finally, what today is viewed as “productive work”, tomorrow may be “unproductive work”.1 The integral historicisation of the concept of labour-power allows a political relation to emerge: workers—whether slaves, servants, contract workers, or freelancers—are forced to take charge of their own subsistence and that of the owner of the means of production: be it an “Etruscan theocrat, a civis romanus, a Norman baron, an American slave-owner, a Wallachian boyar, a modern landlord or a capitalist.”2 The situation is embedded in a legal relation that regulates the exchange between work and compensation. It seems that time and work are entirely paid for by the owner of the means of production, but this is not the case. Work is paid increasingly less, while working hours are increasingly longer. This reversal constitutes the social nature of work as a commodity, the expression of the political relation between capitalist and worker. Marx first identified it as the “twofold nature” (zwieschlächtig) of the labour-power: on the one hand, labour in the sense of Arbeitskraft produces usevalue, useful labour; on the other hand, there is labour in the sense of Arbeitsvermögen that produces exchange-value. A similar twofold nature is present in labour-power in a physiological sense—as investment and expenditure of energy—and in an abstract sense because it constitutes the value of goods. The specificity of this relation is at the origin of contemporary subjectivity and shows that surplus-value does not derive from the intentions of capitalists, from the circulation of goods, from the purchase and sale of labour or from automation, but from the labour-power of those who have no name and have no part.3

1 On

labour as history or “modern invention” see Gorz [1]. K. Marx, Capital, 344. 3 See Rubel [2]. 2 See

3.1 Labour-Power Does Not Grow on Trees

33

It is the men and women who work in a political and economic context, not work itself, that define what labour-power is. It is activity that establishes the meaning of work, not the superimposition of an abstract notion of work on the action and power relations it produces. This activity is not an unilateral and voluntary exercise on the part of the subject, rather, it is part of a political relation between subordinate and dominant subjects and of a procedure that regulates an exchange between those who work and demand a salary and, on the other hand, those who purchase a commodity and set a price.

3.2 Arbeitskraft/Labour-Power We mean by labour-power, or labour-capacity, the aggregate of those mental and physical capabilities existing in the physical form, the living personality, of a human being, capabilities which he sets in motion whenever he produces a use-value of any kind.4

With the concept of Arbeitskraft Karl Marx considers labour-power as a faculty of labour and as the capacity to work (Arbeitsvermögen) on the same level. The or indicates an inclusive disjunctive synthesis.5 Faculty and capacity are different elements of the same property. Marx uses Kraft in terms of force, faculty and capacity. Their co-presence indicates the existence of a faculty that makes it possible to exercise the different functions of the body, of reason, of imagination; the force or disposition to act or think with respect to a purpose and in the light of a motivation; the capacity to freely make a choice or apply a rule or command. This conception of labour-power allows to indicate both a condition of possibility and a specific capacity “for labour”. Labour-power comprises the faculties implied by productive practice and life: sensitivity, intellect, reason, judgment. It is the faculty of faculties that puts into action all the others with respect to a purpose—production—and with respect to the constitution of a broader subjectivity than that of an individual worker. This faculty is the expression of the notion of “living personality of a human being” that produces “use-value of any kind” and is capable of activating all the faculties available to a subject. This production stems from the relation between the intelligence of bodies and the corporeality of knowledge. The content of what Marx defines as “use-value” is given by bodily intelligence and the intelligent corporeality of labour-power. Its value does not depend on the exercise of knowledge itself, but on the exercise of the labour-power which produces new knowledge and capacity for action. The twofold nature of labour-power, as faculty or labour-capacity, must be understood in the sense of a new kind of materialism, that of immanence. Labour-power is, at the same time, as a faculty the possibility of acting freely, and a capacity to 4 K.

Marx, Capital, 270. G. Deleuze, The logic of sense.

5 See

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work, which is the content of this act. This possibility is not embodied in a transcendental and subjective principle independent of experience, but in a body, in its force and capacity. Labour-power is not a principle, it is “physical form”. With this expression Marx means the whole of human, physical and intellectual experience. Corporeality is a materialistic relation between the intellect, knowledge, needs and actions that subjects develop in the course of their life. The production of value—of all values—does not start from the application of a principle, but from the exercise of “mental and physical capabilities” existing in a “physical form”. The body is not the support, but the agent of the production of value. Labour-power (Arbeitskraft), understood as faculty to generate all use-values and labour-capacity (Arbeitsvermögen), understood as the capacity to bring an effort to its aim, belong to the body and mind. They take shape in a commercial exchange and are transformed into a relation with the commodities they produce. They are constantly modified because they respond to the material condition of subjects and are inseparable from their historical individuation. Commodification is one of the consequences of the way labour-power is used that modifies the relation between individuals, their faculties and value. This use is part of a process that Marx places at the heart of the capitalist economy which, for the first time in history, consciously employs the faculties of human beings and their capacity to work. Aspects of intellectual and practical life are mobilised by the uses of labour-power. Capitalism captures the results of this production because it appropriates the faculty that activates all faculties and creates use-values starting from individual bodies. Labour-power exists only as a capacity of the living individual. Its production consequently presupposes his existence.6

Labour-power is not a principle of capital, it is the expression of a faculty of living individuals who temporarily transfer a certain labour capacity. The heart of the system is not commodified labour, but a potential faculty not yet objectified. Labour-power becomes a commodity only after it has sold itself , it is not a commodity in origin. It is by definition a faculty to be used by its owner. The political quality of the accumulation process is grounded in this difference. The proprietor of labour-power must always sell it for a limited period only, for if he were to sell it in a lump, once and for all, he would be selling himself, converting himself from a free man into a slave, from an owner of a commodity into a commodity. He must constantly treat his labour-power as his own property, his own commodity, and he can do this only by placing it at the disposal of the buyer, i.e. handing it over to the buyer for him to consume, for a definite period of time, temporarily. In this way he manages both to alienate his labour-power and to avoid renouncing his rights of ownership over it.7

If it were permanent, the sale of labour-power would be slavery and would not have the characteristics of what is transferred voluntarily. Such a transfer is not free, but subordinated to need and to the obligations imposed by the power relations exerted by those who have money. What is sold is the abstract capacity to perform a job, 6 G. 7 G.

Deleuze, The logic of sense, 274. Deleuze, The logic of sense, 271.

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35

which is inseparable from the living personality of the performer, not the life of this performer. Labour-power, as Arbeitskraft, exists in the exercise of life—in the living body or personality of the person who uses it—not only in its sale and transformation into merchandise. Labour-power is such on condition that: The possessor of labour-power, instead of being able to sell commodities in which his labour has been objectified, must rather be compelled to offer for sale as a commodity that very labour-power which exists only in his living body.8

This process operates simultaneously on two levels. On the one hand, we have labour-power (Arbeitskraft), the faculty granted temporarily by a worker in exchange for a salary; on the other hand, we have capacity to work (Arbeitsvermögen), which puts a potential to work in a productive activity that is beyond the worker’s control. The distinction between actual force and potential force is subject to progressive conjunctions and disjunctions that bring the individual terms closer and further away. A clear analysis allows us to understand the polysemic range of these expressions in the light of the uniqueness of a process embodied physically and mentally by labour-power. In the transition from one level to another, Arbeitskraft as faculty of labour-power becomes a productive capacity, deprived of the specific characteristics of the “living personality”, subject to the rules that allow to evaluate, measure and model its use. Labour-power is exploited twice: as Arbeitskraft—because-value is measured as the amount of work needed to produce labour-power—and as Arbeitsvermögen— because value is measured by the amount of labour it can produce.9 As Arbeitsvermögen, however, labour-power does not lose its potential to express itself otherwise in the actual production activity. This virtuality becomes intelligible when resorting to a inclusive disjunctive synthesis, the logical form of the twofold relation between faculty and capacity to work. Productive labour-power is not the same thing as potential labour-power, their relation persists in every single action of the subject as in the labour relation. Labour-power is shaped in the dialectic of a disjunction that includes or an inclusion that separates. Labour-power is as much an actual power that excludes the potentialities available as a potential power that includes existing acts. This difference is also visible in the separation of labour-power from its personality. Commodification separates the natural carrier of labour-power from its user who makes a profit in the form of surplus-value (Mehrwert). This profit is not included in the salary, but is present in the working day and, in general, in the free activities carried out by the worker looking for a job. Surplus-value is concealed from workers who are forced to give a part of their working day, together with all the activities that are not part of the employment relationship, but that are equally productive, to those who pay for only a part of the surplus of the labour-power. The frontier between labour and surplus-value, between actual and potential force, cannot be identified in any of the capitalist labour relations and weighs on the quantification of the compensation of surplus labour. 8 G.

Deleuze, The logic of sense, 272. Macherey [3, 145–212].

9 See

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Capitalists disconnect labour-power from its action and do not include the exercise of the faculty with that of power. By separating subjects from their living personality, life from its potential, the regime of wage-labour reduces labour-power to what it already is, while the use of power—what it is not yet—is not reserved to the owner of labour-power, but to those who have rented it and who use it for their own profit. If labour-power were an apartment, this operation would lead to the eviction of the tenant. In this case, however, it legitimises a system in which landlords not only have what they do not own, they also have the power of another person. The twofold nature of labour-power, its being both Arbeitskraft and Arbeitsvermögen, expresses an activity. Insomuch as labour-power is a productive power it retains the value of the means of production, while as potential power it creates new added value. The fact that the surplus-value is no longer owned by labour-power is the condition for value to exist. The logical order is reversed: surplus-value precedes value, a faculty is understood as what it is for its potential, not for what it does at a given moment. The reproduction of the value of the means of production is not possible without a “living personality” that produces new surplus-value. Yet this personality is alienated from the production of surplus-value, while its surplus labour is not paid for. This continuous reversal translates the intrinsic conflict of labour-power. Its logical expression is the category of inclusive disjunctive synthesis. Workers, expropriated of the value produced by labour-power, can carry out an operation that is the opposite of the capitalist synthesis: disconnecting its labour-power from the productive force and including its potential force in the labour capacity. Labour-power is first of all a generative force—not a productive one—and becomes so when it is asserted as a potential power in action. Capitalists intensify their grip on power and control over actions, while workers affirm their power and try to free it from their control. For capitalists, labour-power is a productive power, while for workers it is a generative power. In the midst of conflict these definitions fade and intertwine, while the definition of labour-power is enriched by new contradictions. This dialectic allows to explain the act of selling labour-power as a political relation and not only as a commercial exchange or a contractual agreement. This sale does not alienate the “living personality” of the subject, but its commodified and abstract identity in which this personality is also expressed. As a faculty, labour-power affirms its force to exist also when being sold. The power (potency) of labour-power can be alienated, but not lost, if not with death. It is a use of life and can be understood as resistance. The sellers of labour do not relinquish the ownership of what makes them human, responsible and capable of action: the capacity to create, govern or change their lives. Even in the case of enslavement, or of the most brutal forms of exploitation, this faculty remains a living memory and potential agent in a life that has been deprived of everything else. Labour-power is the expression of the conflict between whoever is separated from the ownership of the means of production, but possesses the labour-power as a faculty, i.e. workers, and whoever owns such means, but lacks labour-power, i.e.

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37

capitalists. This is the political engine of capitalism. It can be found in the definition of labour-power, not only in that of capital. Those who are without ownership—the proletariat—produce an incalculable value for property itself—labour-power. Marx’s idea subverts the hierarchies of power in an alienated world: the faculty, or potency, of labour-power is worth more than an objectified asset. The value of the former is the basis of the accumulation of the latter, not the other way round. This reversal occurs when life is put to work and deprived of all ownership. Wealth is produced by the “living personality” of labour-power, the one that creates surplus-value.

3.3 Arbeitsvermögen/Capacity to Work Also in Arbeitsvermögen—“capacity to work”, the power to do something—what can be identified is a potential, or dynamis, the principle of motion or of any transformation into any other thing that we have seen in Arbeitskraft.10 The capacity to work expresses what is “potentially” present in the faculty of labour (Arbeitskraft) and is destined to be “actual” in work (Arbeit). Capitalists are interested in this potentiality, what is not yet but can be determined as a commodity. The transformation of this potential into actuality occurs through the exercise of a capacity for labour in matter, body, thought. This way the labour-power actualises one of the potentialities present in human activities that become real when this change is effective. In Arbeitsvermögen there is a potential which actualises itself, albeit in the manner shaped by the capitalist. This potential is the Arbeitskraft which does not have a predetermined content, it acquires it according to the historical, political or productive disposition of its subject. It is the result of the transformation of this potential into actuality, a process that can be defined only when virtual forces become agents in commodities. However, the status of this potential continues to be that of something that “almost exists”, suspended between being and not being, and is characterised by a profound ambiguity. Labour-power, in fact, is where a difference arises between what is actuality and what is not. Marx maintains that power exists, though it is not actual: it is what is not present, and is fundamental for capitalist production as production of use-values.11 The experience of the labour-power can therefore be described as the use-value workers have to offer capitalists, which they have to offer others in general, which is not materialised in a product, and does not exist apart from them at all, and which therefore exists not really, but only potentiality, as their capacity. Capitalists actualise labour-power (Arbeitskraft in an alienated “capacity to work” and in its exchange-value, while actuality coincides with the production of a commodity. Labour-power (Arbeitskraft) is reduced to commodified work from which a predetermined value is extracted. Labour is separated from its power and the life of the workers participates in a process that radically transforms them into 10 See 11 See

Aristotle [4]. Virno [5].

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subjects that have neither force nor power. In this way labour-power (Arbeitskraft) is not embodied in any “living personality” except when it transforms its labour-power into a commodity. The labour-power is reduced to an already formed individuality that actualises itself into a commodity and is not considered from the point of view of the singularity of its actualisation. On the contrary, labour-power is the result of a production process that takes place prior to the production of labour-power as a productive force. Its status as power (potency) halfway between actuality and potentiality, renders capitalists free to buy or reject it, transforming it according to their objectives. The condition of the labour-power is an unstable one, and the reason of this instability is to be found in the absence of a defined grounding or foundation. Labour-power can be described as being in a state of permanence in perpetual transformation, it is flexible in an indefinite way, ready to become one thing or another, one thing and another. This transformation takes place inside and outside the work relation and it is at the origin of the production of that which is new. Its plasticity does not allow to define a predetermined essence of human beings once and for all, nor an exclusive use. It tends towards something that is never determined once and for all. Capital, on the other hand, forces the labour-power to be virtually productive with a view to commodification. It reduces it to a single model, to an illusory value that coincides with the mute value of commodities. On the contrary, labour-power is endowed with a virtually infinite power (potency) embodied physically and mentally by workers able to affirm themselves following a different trajectory: that of a variable and continuous modulation of a power (potency) that is moved by intensive differences and potential differences. Labour-power is neither a support nor a pure form. The actualisation of its power takes place in a dispositif that is broader than its commodification. Power crystallises in actuality in different ways according to social relations which change according to the becoming they are inserted in. Instead of treating one term as an absolute with respect to another, it is possible to convey this motion in its duration without binding it to an already existing norm or model. The same dispositif for the extraction of surplus-value is not the expression of an absolute power, but of an instrumental and relative power the ratio of which is based on a number of changing practices. Just as labour-power cannot be found in nature, power also consolidates in the process of its realisation, while the relations between dominant and dominated change on the basis of the transformation in which they are involved. Labour-power is the connection between the material principle (physical force, quantitative power), the immaterial principle (qualitative power, metaphysicalontological principle: potency), and the technological principle (machine, production). The capacity to work (Arbeitsvermögen) is one of the ways in which labourpower (Arbeitskraft) is expressed. Secondly, it is the result of a production that occurs before production, i.e. it is the generation of labour-power, embodied in a life imbued with power, not a tabernacle in which the breath of capital blows. On this basis Marx speaks of the possibility of the subjectification of labour-power, which is different and opposed to the process of its expropriation.

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39

This possibility becomes real on condition that power is not understood on the basis of a metaphysics that reduces it to the actualisation of the labour-market. Individualisation is becoming, it is not a process undergone by something that is already formed. It determines the labour-power as a potentiality whereby the capacity to work (Arbeitsvermögen) is one of its determinations, not the only one, together with reproduction, creation, cooperation, language or other human activities that are expressed in labour. An alternative subjectification, opposite to the commodification of the labour-power, is real if it originates in the inversion of an identification oriented to its consumption as a mere productive force. This possibility is present in the labourpower itself and is immanent to the mechanism of inclusive disjunctive synthesis of Arbeitskraft/capacity to work and Arbeitsvermögen/the faculty to use potency.

3.4 Living Personality The owner of the labour-power perceives himself as “free proprietor of his own labour-capacity.”12 The worker does not give up his person, but his capacities, limited to the task required: “In this way he manages both to alienate his labour-power and to avoid renouncing his rights of ownershipover it.”13 The transfer is voluntary, but not free, because the means of production of the owner of labour-power have been expropriated—provided he has ever been in possession of them. His condition is that of who “must rather be compelled to offer for sale as a commodity that very labour-power which exists only in his living body. (…) he is free of all the objects needed for the realization of his labour-power.”14 Deprived of everything, the worker remains in possession of a single, and anomalous, property: not a thing, nor a good that can be measured in terms of value, or price, but a faculty, a capacity, a power. The statute of this “property” coincides with life as such: the living “personality” or “individuality” is the most intimate quality and the one most sought after by those who have the money to acquire it. Marx identifies “person” and “life”. The “property” individuals possess is the capacity to live, to act and to produce, by selling the most active part of themselves. The ownership of labour-power cannot be traced back to Roman law, in which person designates a legal status distinct from life. In this case the person is owned by the subject, it is not the subject. Person is a property that can be bought and lost.15 Also labour-power is a “property”, but it is not a “person” in the abstract and legal sense. It is a “living personality”, not a thing, nor a subject, but a becoming. Becoming belongs to itself and does not obey an intention, it is not at the disposal of any property, not even that of humanity.

12 Marx,

Capital, 271. Capital, 271. 14 Marx, Capital, 273. 15 See Esposito [6]. 13 Marx,

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The reference to “corporeity” is decisive: the body is the disturbing element in the relationship between person and thing. Labour-power belongs to “corporeality” and is anything but an individual biological body. It indicates the materiality of a becoming that is usually concealed in the contradiction between thing and person. The “living personality” emerges in a condition in which a person is turned into a thing— a commodity—while the thing is personified—in money. Instead of merely taking note of this antinomy, Marx identifies this concept—a synthesis of two opposites, of naturalism and philosophical personalism—as becoming, which is affirmed in what is alive—“living”—both in the person and in the thing. “Living personality” indicates an actual power that goes beyond the subject and occupies a position in an economic process by which things and people are transformed into exchange-value. The “property” of the living personality is peculiar: it reproduces itself also in loss, not in ownership legitimised by law. The transfer of this part is not identical to the definitive alienation of the living personality by the owner of the labourpower. Its economic value is contingent because it is determined by “the means of subsistence necessary for the maintenance of its owner”.16 Value does not exhaust the value of labour-power because an incalculable element persists in the latter: the “necessary requirements, and consequently the habits and expectations with which, the class of free workers has been formed. In contrast, therefore, with the case of other commodities, the determination of the value of labour-power contains a historical and moral element.”17 This element characterises the “living personality” and depends on the political history in which needs, and the same exchange between labour, commodities and money, have different values which cannot be measured in the same way. There is no way to objectively determine the value of labour-power. It does not consist in an exchange between equivalents, from which the capitalist extracts a higher value than that invested which allows to make a profit, nor the definition of a price or a tariff, not even a flexible one, by means of a contract or a law. Value changes according to what is enhanced and has an effect both on the surplus-value obtained by the capitalist who has acquired the labour-power, and on the labour-power and on the employment of the capacities that produce it. In the dialectic of capital the value of labour and that of labour-power as a commodity are indiscernible in the exchange with money. The fact that value is determined by a number of historical, cultural and social circumstances, as well as by individual creation and cooperation in work and society, is irrelevant. The “living personality” is reduced to being identified with the commodities that workers need, or those produced by their labour. The value of labour-power can be resolved into the value of a definite quantity of the means of subsistence. It therefore varies with the value of the means of subsistence, i.e. with the quantity of labour-time required to produce them.18

The value of labour-power is reduced with the increase of its productivity. Work is paid increasingly less and late, while surplus-value is extorted by the owners of 16 K.

Marx, Capital, 275. Marx, Capital, 275. 18 K. Marx, Capital, 276. 17 K.

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41

the means of production. This experience is what drives capitalist competition, its main illusion: the movement of capital seems to ground existence, while in fact it is the “consequence—the form of appearance” in which the necessity of economic laws “realizes itself”. “Competition therefore does not explain these laws; rather, it lets them be seen, but does not produce them.”19 The immanent cause of this movement is the socially necessary time for production. The “living personality” is expressed in this time: time that is materially experienced and labour time necessary for production and reproduction. Time of life and time of production are closely connected, they are distinct in the same unit of movement. This does not prevent the establishment of a priority, which should not, however, be understood in chronological terms, but in ontological and, ultimately, political terms: what comes first is necessary time, in which the “living personality” emerges and consciously enacts the capacities and faculties available. Time is impersonal, open, unpredictable, but it can be measured on the basis of the social relations that objectify it, in which subjectivities are formed. Without the employment and consumption of this social time capital cannot be set in motion nor is there any production of labour “which represents no more than a definite quantity of the average social labour objectified in it.”20 The conflict is between the length of life of labour-power and the abstract time of capital. The “living personality” experiences these temporalities differently: in the former it is affirmed, in the latter it is denied. Labour-power is therefore this ongoing contradiction that stems from the materiality of duration and the abstraction of time: Capital asks no questions about the length of life of labour-power. What interests it is purely and simply the maximum of labour-power that can be set in motion in a working day. It attains this objective by shortening the life of labour-power, in the same way as a greedy farmer snatches more produce from the soil by robbing it of its fertility.21

Labour-power is not the union between an individual and legal personality. Its “living personality” does not tend towards the unity of the person, nor towards respect for the commandments of reason. It is given in the duration of a living process. Practically nothing remains of this way of representing thought in Marx. To claim that a faculty can be sold and bought is indicative of a break with transcendental philosophy—the parody of every possible philosophy. Marx’s thinking is not only an act of desecration: it is an immanent critique of the limits imposed by Reason, a permanent conflict against the tribunal that legitimises the exercise of violence on subjects forced to sell their labour-power in the name of a partisan rationality, not of universal reason. The obligation to obey this reason is neither natural nor rational: it is an act of subordination. The “living personality” is to be found where the subjects and their objective identity in a person or in a commodity do not coincide. Alienation drives subjects to self-criticism because they cannot recognise themselves in what does not belong to 19 Marx

[7, 552]. Marx, Capital, 274. 21 K. Marx, Capital, 376. 20 K.

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them, nor can they form an idea of themselves on the basis of an object that is totally alien to their ownership. In this context the faculty of criticism matures. The owners of the labour-power criticise their own commodified condition, the conditions and presuppositions of an alienated existence. This activity is immanent to the length of life and is the source of individual autonomy. This critique introduces the unrest of extraneousness, in what is the apparent normality of a given fact. On the basis of its own experience it demonstrates the violence of subordination to command and reinforces the refusal to obey those who diminish the freedom of its “living personality”. Labour-power is a critical faculty which aims at the self-determination of life. This is achieved by thinking against reason, understood as a theological unity between legislator and transcendental subject, a unity that, according to Marx, lies in the abstraction of capital and its rationalisation. This critique is a revolt against the indictment to obey reason, a way of distancing the identity established by law. In labour-power, obedience is based on autonomy.22 The labour-power is potentially free from relations of domination, also when it accepts these in order to survive. Because of this capacity for criticism, labour-power comes into contact with an element that actualises its potentiality. The exercise of criticism allows subjects to distance themselves from the alienation determined by the exchange between labour-power and salary. The distance is created in the social relationship between capital and labour and is the result of a critique that has imposed alienation on this same relation. This exercise is based on individual and collective autonomy and develops a faculty possessed by labour-power. This critique will be all the more effective the stronger the social, intellectual, economic and political autonomy of those who exercise it. The development of labour-power as a faculty and productive capacity is initially imposed from outside, by capital. Marx speaks of an irreversible moment characterising communism—which is fundamentally political, it cannot be identified in connection to a specific economic conjuncture—in which “productive forces” will not need an “external” prompt and will view capital as a “barrier” to free development.23 (...) labour also therefore appears no longer as labour, but as the full development of activity itself, in which natural necessity in its direct form has disappeared; because a historically created need has taken the place of the natural one. This is why capital is productive; i.e. an essential relation for the development of the social productive forces. It ceases to exist as such only where the development of these productive forces themselves encounters its barrier in capital itself.24

This development is what the “living personality” of labour-power can bring about. It has been said that this point represents the utopian aspect of the doctrine of homo faber. Rather, it is correct to say that Marx formulated a theory that takes potentiality to its extreme consequences. In a theory of labour-power, work no longer 22 See

Foucault [8, 32–50]. Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy, 325. 24 K. Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy, 325. 23 K.

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presents itself as work: communism is the liberation of labour-power insomuch as it is liberation from work.25

3.5 Use The faculties of labour-power are expressed in an ethic that transforms life put to work: they generate the infinity of its potential in the heart of the finite. Unlike morality, which makes subjects dependent on an obligation established by a law of their conscience, on the moral or religious imperative “do not kill”, “do not harm the life of others”, on the power over what life must be, ethics views life as dependent on the singular use of life and on the capacity to self-affirm itself as a means for itself. Use is a central category in the theory of labour-power. In Marx use generates values, including the exchange-value of a commodity. It is living activity that allows to define production (poiesis) and political action (praxis).26 Life is available for every possible use and it is here that the “living personality” of labour-power emerges. It is the condition of all other possible uses, not only of the life of a subject, but also of objects, machines, algorithms, political and legal decisions or procedures.27 As an activity, use combines the categories of praxis and poiesis, it allows to adhere to life and expresses an original ability. Adherence is indicative of a use that is effective, which allows to lead one’s life following the rules of a singular kind of control. Use is ineffective when this control is abused, when one obeys the prescriptions of others independently of the knowledge one has of oneself and others. The list of these forms of abuse includes the expropriation of the value produced by the labour-power obtained by imposing a conduct or a form of dominion. Also in these cases the possibility of a different use persists, based on the exercise of the available faculties and abilities: production (poiesis), political action (praxis) and technical action (techne); the faculties of intellect, judgment, practice. All the faculties available to the subject are part of one single life. In capitalism this life presents itself as labour-power, the faculty in which all faculties act in concert. The combination of faculties depends on the conditions in which life is used. It is not always possible to use all the capacities available, and hardly ever is autonomy achieved by using the available faculties. This, however, does not prevent them from being reactivated in the course of a struggle against the abuse inflicted on a specific faculty, which makes the subject a victim, but also a protagonist—out of necessity or choice. Conflict occurs when a faculty is expropriated, it arises in the relation between a subordinate life and a life that aspires to be potentially free. Subjects of this use constitute themselves in this conflict and mature an awareness regarding a different use of this life. Also when life is employed mechanically to perform tasks, when it is viewed as a human service at the orders of an algorithm, life retains its 25 See

Negri [9]. Virno [10]. 27 Virno [10]. 26 See

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power (potency). The exercise of this power (potency) allows to access a sphere of indeterminacy between law and command, between use-value and exchange-value, between labour-power and labour. This is the condition for action in which a potential present in all the activities that compose a life, not only labour, is achieved. According to Aristotle, poiesis is action that pursues a purpose beyond itself; praxis is the action whose purpose is itself. In the theory of use this difference no longer exists. Labour-power is both production (of a commodity, for example) and action (based on one or more faculties). Together, production and action, poiesis and praxis, create the conditions for the self-production of their subject. Technique (techne) is not extraneous to action, it is immanent to the relationship between poiesis and praxis. This does not mean viewing all production as practice. The theory of labour-power is not absolute idealism, it does not believe that subjects decide the modalities of life. The material ground of this dialectic is not a speculative element (consciousness), or a theological or moral one (God), transcendental (the people) or political (the State), but the material, historical-technical and ethical nature of labourpower. Labour-power is a common faculty, therefore it also belongs to workers who do not originally act as a class. Workers become a class in certain political circumstances which cannot be taken for granted. Labour-power comes before the working classes, which are always plural. Just as classes come before capital.28 The political constitution of labour-power viewed not as a commodity, but as the conscious use of power (potency), depends on the use of a life, not only on the mode of production in which this life is formed and expropriated. The way in which the power (potency) to act is actualised is political. The commodification of labour-power and the use of the self are distinct and intertwined modes of the power (potency) to act: on the one hand we have the self-constitution of the labour-power; on the other, the self-valorisation of capital. The first is based on the concerted action of faculties and capacities and generates use-values; the second on expropriation through the imposition of surplus labour and the extraction of surplus-value. What comes first is labour-power. All forms of production, practice and technique depend on its self-constitution. According to Hannah Arendt, Marx theorised homo faber, he who transforms matter into commodities.29 This interpretation views production as the result of an action which is that of an artisan, of a worker-demiurge (i.e. poiesis), who applies a pre-ordered scheme to matter in order to obtain a form. A will that is extraneous to things manifests itself in doing, which is capable of transforming them, mastering technique and history. However, the Marxian concept of production cannot be reduced to simple “doing”, nor can it be considered in the perspective of a metaphysics of will. The idea that men “make their own history”, as Marx wrote in a famous passage of The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, does not mean that

28 See

M. Tronti, Workers and capital, where he speaks of “working class” referring to wage mass workers. 29 See Arendt [11].

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history is the product of “free will”, but that it depends on the use of the circumstances that are “existing already, given and transmitted from the past”, which men “immediately find before them, determined by facts and traditions.”30 “Doing” is not the act of a single author. There are many factors that cooperate in its realisation. “Doing” is the expression of a historical movement that implies the transformation of the actors who transform the circumstances in which they find themselves. Clearly the purpose of this activity cannot be reduced to the production of a commodity or to the affirmation of a capitalist mode of production. The latter are part of a movement that neither follows a preordained will nor responds to a command that determines its purpose. The meaning and the value of the very concepts of production, action or technique are constituted in this movement. This acting in concert is not guided by technological support, economic structure or free will, but by a movement that cannot be superimposed on its results. As acting in concert of praxis-poiesis-techne, labour-power acts in given conditions and, at the same time, on the conditions themselves, transforming them through action. It feeds on the assemblages of individual elements, but remains autonomous as a faculty: it is both what lies outside of them and the most intimate bond that unites them, in the distance separating them. Labour-power is the living connection that precedes the terms in which production is expressed, and it is also the result of their interaction, which transforms the circumstances in which this interaction takes place. It can only be understood in the movement that develops between an action that embraces it and another in which it is embraced. Its movement is the result of a conflict between the conditions of the reproduction of labour-power and its alienation. Conflict is the symptom of a new use of life, by which labour-power begins to make its own history. Labour-power alienates its life as a means of its own life. Here alienation does not only mean commodification of life and dispossession of the ownership of labourpower, but transformation of life and affirmation of its power (potency). The way this concept changes can be observed in Marx’s Capital and Grundrisse. Alienation no longer indicates only the ontological process of objectification: it also means the use of labour-power through which life constitutes itself in its relation with capital. Alienation is the transformation of one way of life into another: it is becoming. Becoming is not determinable a priori or a posteriori, but a praesenti, that is, in the moment there is movement. Labour-power responds to becoming and depends on the moral, social and political constitution developed in certain circumstances. It does not obey only the teleology of an action that has a purpose (the sale of a commodity, the production of an object, exchange for money) because it is the means used by its owner to achieve becoming, which does not obey an external purpose, but life in the process of achieving itself. One of the possible ways in which labour-power can use (or abuse) itself is to treat itself as a commodity, but there are many other uses that compose an endless activity that is expressed before, during and after the sale or consumption of labour.

30 K.

Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.

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Marx described this use of life in terms of a self-referential negativity, an indeterminate power (potency) capable of all determinations. Labour-power is this power (potency)—the “living source” of value31 —which denies itself in order to assert itself: it denies what it is—the property of others—and affirms what it becomes—a different use of its own existence. Life in use is intertwined with potential life in an inextricable relationship that takes shape in the individual and collective exercise of labour-power. In this context, alienation means “becoming other”: “Real alienation concerns reality, that is, the praxis in itself, subjectivity, life.”32 This idea of alienation is given in the process, or becoming, in which production, the practice and the ontology of potency, although distinct from a theoretical point of view, are part of a dialectical process that constitutes life in its making. Labour-power as a faculty of the working subject is one of the expressions of this process which constitutes life, to the point it acquires its main characteristic: that of opening up towards what is outside, negating what alienates it, in contact with the becoming that transforms it.33 This dialectic has an ethical and political implication. Labour-power acts as if it were in a territory alien to the proprietary order founded on the division of the world into masters and slaves; as if its life could experience the possibility of overturning the social relationship between subordination to a law and the autonomy of a right to existence. The as if it is the temporal and existential modality of a political ethics that makes it possible for those who are subordinate to affirm their vulnerability by acting in a way that has a real effect on power relations. The use of life fosters a possibility, which is always within reach, despite how distant it may be because it is powerless (adynamia, without potency), of overcoming limits and overturning dominion that uses men and women as means and not as ends. This possibility belongs to all living beings who, because of this being, are endowed with power. A worker, a pianist or an actor may not use this power, but will always be able to exercise their labour-power. The same abuse of power, in the form of alienation and commodification, does not eliminate the power (potency) not to do of labour-power.34 This awareness fuels the struggle over the ways in which power is exercised—what Marx called “the struggle (…) (in which) the mass constitutes itself as a class for itself”35 —in which labourpower becomes subjectivity and is affirmed both in labour and beyond labour, that is, in the life of a living personality. Struggle is the expression of self-activation (Selbstbetätigung).36 Self-activation is the way in which labour-power expresses its power to act and uses its historical, productive and moral conditions in certain power relations. It is activated in those

31 See.

K. Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy, 296. M. Henry, Marx, 603, 801. 33 On the idea of “alienation” as appropriation of self and the world see Jaeggi [12]. On alienation as blockage and connection to the world see Rosa and Trejo-Mathys [13]. In this case, the opposite of alienation is “resonance”, see Rosa and Trejo-Mathys [14]. 34 On the possibility of defining power by not exercising it see Agamben [15]. 35 Marx [16]. 36 See Rubel [17, 773–812]. 32 See.

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who learn how to master movement and consciously perform a continuous differentiation from constituted subjectivity. The bearers of this use do not identify only with what they have been or what they were, they use these circumstances to become, in a multiple series of identifications which take place in the course of life.37 Selfactivation is a process that activates a struggle. According to Marx it is a “class struggle” generated by the historical self-activation of the proletariat, by the experience of workers engaged in a process of subjectification who have developed a project for emancipation: “The emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves.” This is the experience of those who undergo a process of individuation starting from the conditions of the labour-power and selfactivate their own lives. The outcome, however, can never be taken for granted. The use of labour-power is subject to sporadic initiatives that have a changing outcome, it acquires clarity and rationality in the process, success is never guaranteed. This struggle does not yield any results when it is an individual endeavour. Emancipation is collective, it is the result of a political use of cooperation.

3.6 Cooperation Labour-power is a cooperative faculty. It is not locked up in a coffer, it is the common attitude produced by cooperation with capital, nature and machines. Cooperation, the coordinated employment of labour-power in factories and in society, is “the fundamental form of the capitalist mode of production”,38 it is a “specific form of the capitalist process of production”39 and originates from the “simultaneous employment of a large number of wage-labourers in the same labour process, which also forms the starting point of capitalist production. This starting-point coincides with the birth of capital itself.”40 Cooperation is not only a collaboration among workers or the sharing of productive tasks. It is a social relation with nature, between workers and machines, between machines and machines. It is the product of an expansion of labour-power with machines and nature based on co-evolution, not only on causality. Its opposite is the division of labour based on mechanisation, the compartmentalisation of tasks and the hierarchy of powers. The division of labour appropriates cooperation and subsumes it in its organisation. A distinction is made between cooperation in the division of labour and a division of social cooperation. The first case is that of a technical division of labour mediated by the capitalist organisation of the production process; the second case is that of a social division of labour mediated by money.

37 See

Dardot and Laval [18, 202–215]. Marx, Capital, 454. 39 K. Marx, Capital, 454. 40 K. Marx, Capital, 453. 38 K.

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These two models cannot be made to overlap, as in Adam Smith’s economic theory and sometimes also in Marx.41 The technical division of labour refers to a subordinate and dependent labour-power identified by Marx with workers; the social division refers to a free and independent labour-power—i.e. craftsmen or free workers. In Marx the latter can be found in a pre-industrial epoch; the former in industrial times. The distinction is somewhat arbitrary. In the history of self-employment it is possible to trace a technical distinction as significant as that of subordinate work, just as there is a social division of subordinate work. The pattern is valid if it is used to demonstrate that different modes of production are simultaneously employed in the same system, in which it is possible to identify both “mercantile” and industrial, autonomous and subordinate, “feudal” and post-modern relations, in a dialectic between freedom and domination that changes according to the needs of production, the distribution of power and the circulation of capital. First Smith, then Hegel, superimposed the two forms of division of labour. According to Marx it is necessary to divide them into two different social spheres and interpret them dialectically: “Thus authority in the workshop and authority in society, in relation to the division of labour, are in inverse ratio to each other.”42 The technical division of labour is the organisation of productive work in the factory; the social division of labour is the organisation of competition in society. In the workshop the division of labour is a priori and single workers must comply with it; in society it is a posteriori because it follows market prices and interests freely established by the will of producers. Industrial capitalism thrives in the contradiction between the anarchy of competition and absolute power in the factory.43 This gives rise to the illusion that it is possible to organise society like a factory, with the aim of absorbing the anarchy of competition into the capitalist monopoly on command. This illusion seems to recur in Marx’s writings when he analyses the division of labour in manufacturing and speaks of the great mass of workers. Industrial and social relations seem to be subject to a single economic ratio, a uniform structure that governs life in all its manifestations and determines the political and legal superstructure. A well-known definition of Marx can also be interpreted in this key: My view is that each particular mode of production, and the relations of production corresponding to it at each given moment, in short ‘the economic structure of society’, is ‘the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness’, and that ‘the mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life’.44

Factory despotism and social power have different origins, although their relation depends on a dispositif of power that weaves separate spheres into a hierarchy and determines the transformation of labour-power (from artisan to worker, for example) through the use of specialised machines in the factory, while the life of this labourpower is governed by means of disciplinary institutions such as schools or the army. 41 See

R. Finelli, A Failed Parricide, 163–211. Marx, Capital, 477. 43 K. Marx, Capital, 485–486. 44 K. Marx, Capital, 175. 42 K.

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The reverse reasoning is also true. The fact that a huge mass of individuals has been put to work was not something determined from above, by a State power that used industry to produce surplus-value for the few. The process took place through a progressive contamination of processes based on different histories and ratios, both economic, political and legal, which evolved in the direction of a differentiated social integration and a general normalisation of labour-power. Each recognised in the other its own presupposition, and used the technical and social division of labour, as well as the gender and racial division, as a tool to subject individuals to a power that takes the form of obedience and discipline and controls the potential of individuals in the development of their existence.45 In the transition from manufacturing to industry, the Marxian analysis of the relation between labour-power and machines and of the relation between the power of command and the autonomy of labour-power changes. In industrial production, the value of work does not begin with machines, but with “the means of labour”, i.e. the connection between labour-power and machines, with specialisation and increased productivity. What is put to work is the potential of labour-power, not only the subjective capacity of individuals to produce an object. The worker operates a machine that performs work on the object. “The special skill of each individual machine-operator, who has now been deprived of all significance, vanishes as an infinitesimal quantity in the face of the science, the gigantic natural forces, and the mass of social labour embodied in the system of machinery, which, together with those three forces, constitutes the power of the ‘master’.”46 The transformation of labour into a machine splits labour-power into opposing faculties, the intellectual one against the material one, transforming them into the “dominion” of capital over labour. Living labour becomes dead labour: “living personality” is crystallised into mechanical energy, cooperation into hierarchy, knowledge is an element of the central automaton: the most evolved form of mechanised factory. The knowledge produced by cooperation is separated from labour-power and is used against the workers themselves: “It is the most powerful weapon for suppressing strikes, those periodic revolts of the working class against the autocracy of capital. (…) the steam-engine was from the very first an antagonist of ‘human power’, an antagonist that enabled the capitalists to tread underfoot the growing demands of the workers, which threatened to drive the infant factory system into crisis.”47 This is technological unemployment: on the one hand, production and circulation increase productivity; on the other hand, prices of goods are lowered and a company’s competitiveness on the market improves. Machines render labour-power idle and destroy it. “All progress in increasing the fertility of the soil for a given time is a progress towards ruining the more longlasting sources of that fertility. (…) Capitalist production, therefore, only develops the techniques and the degree of combination of the 45 See

Foucault [19]. On Marx and Foucault, see E. Balibar, Foucault et Marx. L’enjeu du nominalisme in La Crainte des masses, 281–304; Legrand [20], Nigro [21, 647–662], Bidet [22], Negri [23]. 46 K. Marx, Capital, 549. 47 K. Marx, Capital, 562–563.

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social process of production by simultaneously undermining the original sources of all wealth—the soil and the worker.”48 This gives rise to the illusion of a technological dynamism created by the “talent of entrepreneurs” or by a “natural” human attitude to innovation that allows machines to live their own lives and replace the necessary relation between labour-power and cooperation. Machines, however, have always worked, transforming men into extensions of their process, relieving them of their effort and increasing productivity. Their intelligence is objectified in an abstraction that seems to acquire a life of its own: the General Intellect, the general productive force of the social brain.49 The creation of this force objectifies knowledge, faculties and science in a dispositif that governs machines and the organisation of labour, reduces the demand for labour in production and the number of people selling their labour-power. It creates a “monstrous disproportion” between the working time being reduced and labour-power that increases in number and power. Automation and socialisation of production forces make it possible to save on wage-labour while allowing people to abstain from selling their labour-power. According to Marx the General Intellect could have led to overcome capitalism with its own means, rendering the role of private property relative since capital works for its “dissolution as the dominant form of production”. Today we know that the process he described did not exactly follow this pattern, however it is correct to say that what Marx identified was probably a trend of the process, not its programmatic purpose. This trend consists in the “real” subsumption of techno-scientific cooperation and development in capitalist production.

3.7 Reproduction In Marxian theory labour-power is embodied by the physical and intellectual attitudes of each person, but not those of women.50 Although Marx established the materialism of the body, he limited the reproductive work of labour-power to its reproduction as a commodity. In doing so, he overlooked affectivity, sexuality, the tasks performed by women in the home and in society, following the patriarchal and authoritarian division of labour. Labour-power reproduces abstract work and the division of labour based on a contract which forces women to sexual reproduction. Workers are able to meet the demands of employers because women provide for their needs, for the care and reproductive tasks, offering sex in exchange for economic protection.51 48 K.

Marx, Capital, 638. Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy, 706. 50 See Federici [24]; see also Dalla Costa and James [25], Fortunati [1]. 51 See Pateman [2], Morini [3]. On women’s “invisible” labour, among others, see Burchi [26], Toffanin [5]. On women’s struggles see Imbergamo [6]. 49 K.

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Here Marx has difficulty imagining other forms of labour that produce value, alongside the production of commodities. He does not believe that women’s unpaid reproductive labour plays a decisive role in the process of capitalist accumulation. He views reproductive labour as the consumption of goods that workers can buy with a salary obtained by producing commodities. He thus validates the fictitious narrative centred on the market according to which the sale of labour-power is sufficient to produce what is necessary for its reproduction. In the case of the proletariat, however, labour income is insufficient to meet its primary needs (clothing, food, rent). In the exchange between commodities and money, the value of the additional work of labour-power is subtracted, while the hours worked increase and wages decrease. The tendency of capital to expropriate absolute surplus labour, make people work more free hours than paid hours and reduce the cost of labour-power, has been contained. On some occasions in which the labour and social conflict is strong it has been reduced to relative surplus labour. In a highly financialised capitalism, the trajectory has been reversed again and from relative surplus labour it has returned to absolute surplus labour. Post-Fordist capitalism puts life itself to work, it overcomes the division between productive and reproductive labour in the new form of biolabour. It is no longer only work, but life as such, that produces the economic, social and cognitive values that can be identified in labour-power.52 In Fordist capitalism the proletarian was pure corporeity put to work; a dehumanised body deprived of its sensitive and intellectual attributes, identified with pure instrumentalism. In the industrial age what counted was biological life, offspring, proles, put to work in factories or used as cannon fodder for armies. The basis of capital is the reproductive biology of the body. In the bio-technological age the “living personality”, its very becoming (individuation, life and death), is reduced to organisms, tissues, oocytes and interchangeable cells, which can be reproduced in a laboratory, transferred signing individual contracts, with commercial and financial operations. Today the sale of labour-power involves the transfer of a capacity, of a faculty and of the plasticity of individual biology. Value is produced both by the actions of labour-power and by its gender. The specific and general singularity of a person is put to work and reduced to its biological being. Originally the concept of “proletarian” indicated someone who did not have the ability to reproduce him or herself. In reproductive labour the same term can be applied to those who use their gestation capacity or genetic inheritance. The “proletariat” possesses the means to reproduce and does so by selling the means of organic reproduction.53 In the Fordist era, the value of the labour-power seemed to depend exclusively on productive work, in particular on male salaried work carried out in factories. Men performed tasks on the assembly line; the women were assigned to the reproduction of family ties, to maternity and domestic care, activities that were not recognised as work because they were believed to take place in a domain beyond the economic exchange not regulated by employment contracts. In the post-Fordist era, reproduction became a form of work, though almost never adequately recognised and paid 52 See 53 See

Fumagalli [27, 12]. Berlinguer [7].

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for. Reproductive work can no longer be considered as the realm of “natural” and “voluntary” female activities, segregated in the domestic space of the oikos where the male authority of the husband is exerted. Reproductive work is productive work: society is inundated with a multiplicity of paid, poorly paid, precarious, voluntary care activities carried out by women and men. This transformation has not changed the fact that the power of women is concealed: before it was kept inside the domestic space, now it is publicly exhibited and involves all subjects, regardless of gender, nationality and ethnicity, outside and inside the social and sexual contract. The “feminisation” of productive work indicates another characteristic of reproductive work: it is not treated as an exchange worthy of a salary, its activities are underpaid and considered gratuitous actions, confused with relations of voluntary work and altruism. Work resembles gratuitous actions in a contradictory relationship between freedom and subordination where class relations based on the gender and racial division of labour persist. An example of this is women who hire other women to perform reproductive and caring tasks, or the systematic confusion between paid work and underpaid or unpaid volunteer work. The new position reproductive work occupies in the sphere of production has transformed gender, nature, affects, human biology into objects for the extraction of surplus-value. Reproductive work puts the reproduction of the female body to work. This is the case of reproductive medicine which enhances the body’s capacity for self-regeneration and redefines it at the intersection between new working relationships and biological sciences.54 Regenerative work does not replace reproductive or productive work. This sequence should be understood as a new synthesis of the labour-power and its capacity to generate value. The extension of its potential corresponds to a new commodification of the “living personality”. Regenerative work is the expression of a “need”, the same need that forces workers to voluntarily (but not freely) sell their labour-power in order to survive. It also expresses a potential of the living personality embodied physically. Not taking account of this duplicity means condemning labour-power to an invariant which internalises a relationship of domination. With the practices of regenerative medicine the labour-power recognises a potential: the living processes that constitute it from a biological point of view. The owners of labour-power mature a different conception of the temporality of life in which the exercise of the faculties of labour-power takes pace. This temporality is embodied in metabolism, endocrine cycles, secretions and pregnancy. The result is a broader perception of “corporeity” by the subjects whose material life is transformed into an object of exchange and constitutes, in the cases of poor, migrant, proletarianised women (but not only), a form of blackmail that is degrading, and a violation of their dignity. Corporeality can be alienated into an organic component, which is technologically reproducible and over which women have no control. The reproductive faculty is measurable and negotiable on the market, as is the productive one. To the Marxian relation between labour-power and workers we must also add the contrast between economic freedom and the dignity of the woman who decides to rent not only her labour-power, but her uterus. Also in this 54 See

Cooper and Waldby [28, 29], Cooper [9].

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case it is a “free” worker who rents labour-power and is subsumed in a process of extraction of surplus-value. In regenerative work we rent the power of the living processes that keep us alive as if we were performing casual individual work. This forced choice puts the life and dignity of women at risk. Their liberation depends on the social conditions necessary to affirm reproductive freedom, beyond the imposition of compulsive fertility and the commodification of motherhood.

3.8 Against Work Marx moves in between the anthropology of scarcity of the neoclassical economy and the hypothesis of communism which led him to develop a theory of labour-power. His approach is grounded in the belief that the absolute impoverishment of the working class is the driving element in the construction of a totally different subjectivity. The fundamental lever that enables to take advantage of this condition on the part of the political subjectivity of the exploited is labour, the same commodified activity used to impoverish labour-power, which denies its reproduction. In the early writings of Marx, labour is an “active relation” with nature and the capacity to produce one’s own means of subsistence. This capacity is what distinguishes humans from other animal species, and is elevated to the rank of “supreme activity” because it allows workers to conquer the “kingdom of freedom”. Not only is labour the source of all wealth, it is also an objectified capacity through which men obtain—or regain—the ownership of the same body expropriated by those who possess the means of production. That same labour, which allows to attain freedom, is the instrument of the social and political alienation of labourers. The activity that should guarantee the emancipation of the working class is also the cause of its exploitation.55 Marx initially attributed the same transcendental value to labour as did John Locke, David Ricardo and Adam Smith, according to whom the value of work is the general equivalent of production.56 In this case work is the value of values that makes production and circulation possible. However, specific work cannot determine the value of all work. The foundation of value cannot reside in a specific commodity. An object is never equal to its value, because value is determined on the basis of a price that changes over time. The difficulty of translating value into price is well-known in Marx and could be solved by identifying work with capital.57 It is capital that has the power to establish the value of a practice, to control the means of production, to regulate the social hierarchy it expresses. The problem is that capital is not able to 55 The

contradiction is commented on by Hannah Arendt in The Human Condition, and in the conferences collected in Thinking Without a Banister: Essays in Understanding, 1953–1975, J. Kohn ed. (New York: Schocken, 2018), where the author, however, limits the meaning of Marxian philosophy to this reductive reading, ignoring its further developments. 56 Smith [30]. 57 See Bellofiore [31, 63–117].

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produce the only thing it does not possess, which occupied the central position in production: labour-power. Marx acknowledges that in the eighteenth century Adam Smith was the first to identify a subjectivity that expresses “the true origin of surplus-value.”58 Surplusvalue is the individual and organised labour-power and the driving force of the production of the surplus-value which institutes a difference between what exists and what is produced, between things and commodities created by labour and sold on the market; between the general value of labour and the salary received; between the real and the nominal price of a commodity. These differences cannot be found in the economy as such, they are the result of a faculty that cannot be made to coincide with the exchange and ownership of labour: labour-power. Labour-power affirms itself in a historical and anthropological space that intersects subjectivity, economy, law and is generated by a faculty that is absorbed by commodities and that persists in the life of everyone. The awareness of the duplicity of the labour-power and its non coinciding with the exchange-value is expressed in the Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy of 1857, in Grundrisse. Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy, and in Capital, where Marx radically rethought his early philosophy exposed in The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, the Theses on Feuerbach, and the German Ideology. His is not a theory of labour but of labour-power.59 The antagonist of capital is not labour, but labour-power. The difference can be explained if we look at the 1875 controversy with the German Social Democratic Party. In the first line of his programme Marx argues that “labour is the source of all wealth and all culture”: Labor is not the source of all wealth. Nature is just as much the source of use-values (and it is surely of such that material wealth consists!) as labor, which itself is only the manifestation of a force of nature, human labor power. The above phrase is to be found in all children’s primers and is correct insofar as it is implied that labor is performed with the appurtenant subjects and instruments. But a socialist program cannot allow such bourgeois phrases to pass over in silence the conditions that lone give them meaning. (...) The bourgeois have very good grounds for falsely ascribing supernatural creative power to labor.”60

Marx deconstructs the idealism of labour shared by liberals and left-wing parties, the neoclassical economic school, the same that has been brought back into fashion today by a certain way of intending neoliberalism: everyone believes that work is a creative activity whose aim is to realise the essence of man or the value of all production at the service of which the economy and culture exist. The metaphysics of work removes the reproduction of the material conditions of labour-power, the conditions that allow any process pertaining to work to exist. This approach overturns the power structure inherited from the patrimonialist ideology and identifies labour-power as a power (potency) capable of becoming an 58 Marx

[32, p. 142]. M. Tronti, Workers and Capital; R. Finelli, A Failed Parricide. 180 ff.; P. Macherey, Le sujet productif. De Foucault à Marx, in Le sujet des normes, 149 ff.; P. Virno, A Grammar of the Multitude. 60 Marx [11]. 59 See

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object and transforming the things in which it is immersed and of which it is itself a manifestation. Labour-power has gone from being understood as a juridical and abstract condition to a universal condition embodied in poor bodies that have an agency: labour-power has found a space, a place, a subjectivity, it is the expression of the living personality of those who are active. This subjectivity did not exist before capitalism, which made it possible to understand labour-power in connection to an “anthropological space” and in connection to a concept that allows to grasp how the transcendental functions in the finiteness of human existence.61 A philosophy of labour must be viewed in this context and address the same contradiction that emergein Marx’s early works, where the reproduction of labour-power is linked to the production of commodities, goods and things. The paradigmatic shift from labour to labour-power later allowed Marx to do away with this symmetry. The reproduction of labour-power determines both life and the production of commodities. The thesis complicates the humanistic search for authenticity visible in the early writings of Marx. His later works investigate the use of a life in the social relation with capital, not the expression of a “human” essence supposedly connected to labour alienated by the production of capital. A philosophy of labour believes that this essence is prior to production, to which the labour alienated by the production of capital is linked. It claims that this essence precedes production and should be oriented towards a historical achievement able to free the relation between production and reproduction, production modes and productive forces, from alienation. The problem with Marx is Ludwig Feuerbach and his philosophy of human species (Menschliche Gattung).62 For all his life Marx fought against the grip of the Feuerbachian myth of a strongly fusional and symbiotic humanity transparent to itself. At the early stage of his philosophy of labour-power, for instance in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, labour as the practical activity of transforming the external world is considered as the activity of the progressive self-enlightenment and self-possession of the human species in history. In labour man achieves selfawareness and applies a reality that is already ideally present. So, the struggle against exploitation brings labour to achieve an essence higher than mere commodification. Even though they might not know, the working people (proletariat) are the vehicle of an essence that achieves itself in a fusional and undifferentiated subject. In the young Marx labour becomes both the cause and the purpose of human action. It is cause because it actualises human essence; it is purpose because its teleology, aimed at the achievement of a product, actually expresses the purpose of being. The superimposition of the ontic and the ontological leads to a paradoxical outcome: the achievement of communism—the re-appropriation of the means of production and the expression of social and technological cooperation powered by the redistribution of profits—depends on the instrument of the alienation of labour-power—i.e. labour. The same alienated activity that expresses a certain mode of being in capitalism

61 See 62 See

Foucault [12]. R. Finelli, A Failed Parricide.

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supposedly has the power to allow the human essence to reach its fullest realisation. Thus, what is accomplished is the dialectic of capital, not that of communism. Overthrowing the capitalist production relations that shape social relations on the basis of the division of labour and property—so achieving communism—is the last and fatal ploy of the dispositif that the philosophy of labour is completely immersed in and from which it nevertheless intends to break free. Social Being presents an insuperable contradiction: on the one hand, it is understood as an unconditional and intangible principle; on the other hand, it is the historical and social product of a mode of production. This is the expression of a movement of capital that presents itself in its reversed form, which is totality extraneous to the factual world that encompasses everything, also that which denies it. Marx eventually freed himself from this metaphysics. However, a solid and persistent humanistic interpretation of Marxism has seriously underestimated his battle. This problem is present in the philosophy of labour handed down from this misunderstanding.63 Marx’s “turning point”—the shift from an early workerist period to the communist phase centred on labour-power—brought about this misunderstanding. This, however, does not change the fact that his Capital, and the preparatory writings, present an alternative: (...) the development of the real subsumption of labourunder capital or the specifically capitalist mode of production it is not the individual worker but rather a socially combined labour capacity that is more and more the real executor of the labour process as a whole, and (...) the different labour capacities which cooperate together to form the productive machine as a whole.64

Labour-power is still understood as “collective labourer” of the factory, but there is a clear reference to concrete historical, political and productive subjectivities, not to essences that embody the foundation of human beings. Determinism and Marxian economic positivism that link the theory of labour-power to the theory of “productive forces” or labour productivity weighs also in Capital. The relationship between these factors is contradictory and is behind both the development of capitalism and of class struggle. This development is linked to the strengthening of objectified labour, not to the liberation of labour-power and, consistently with the assumptions of a philosophy of labour, it confuses productivity increased by technology and by the exploitation of labour-power with a stage of the natural evolution of a presumed human essence, represented by the “total man”. This scenario contrasts with the idea of the creation of a labour-power that is “combined” with machines and cooperation, the basis of capitalism and of the possibility of overthrowing it. Constraining exclusively labourpower to the development of productive forces means, instead, eliminating its surplus in the construction of a systemic totality where power (potency) coincides with actuality and where life executes the preordained plan of the economic and political system. This contradiction is reflected where Marx is tempted to explain capitalism with a philosophy of history: which means linking individual and collective life to 63 See

Marcuse [13], Kosík [33], Lukács [34]. Marx, The Process of Production of Capital, Draft Chapter 6 of Capital Results of the Direct Production Process, retrieved at marxists.org.

64 K.

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a rational purpose, whereas this life is in fact affirmed in practice and it rejects any pre-established meaning, in that it measures itself against the real conditions in which the achievement of a project can neither be excluded or guaranteed. In his eleventh thesis on Feuerbach, Marx aspired to transform the world, not just interpret it, thus allowing the human animal to walk on its own legs. This revolutionary turn that goes beyond the idealism of the philosophy of labour not only demands that the dialectic be put back on its legs, but also that its head be cut off so as to avoid attributing purpose to that which cannot have a purpose.65

3.9 Abstract Labour The confusion between labour-power as a faculty and labour-power as a commodity returns in Capital where Marx defines labour-power as the sale of a good, or a commodity, in exchange for salary: “its use-value consists only in the subsequent expression of that power”66 in a commodity. The fact that labour-power is a good or commodity seems to be the cause of its existence and not the consequence of the acknowledgement of labour-power as a faculty. Marx is interested in the analysis of capitalism as an “immense collection of commodities”. Labour-power presents itself as a single and identical commodity, not as a general faculty involved in the constitution of subjectivity and its politics. The concept that exemplifies this reduction is abstract labour. With this expression Marx means labour in general, labour sans phrase, the starting point of the modern economy. The second meaning of this expression is labour relations. Capitalism has transformed these relations into wage-labour. The third meaning indicates the skills of workers, distinct from those of individuals, in a homogeneous and abstract sense. Fourthly, it means the social relation between labour-power considered as commodity and the money that buys a certain amount of abstract labour, regardless of who provides it and who exchanges it for a salary. In Capital, abstract labour is understood as being a synonym of labour-power, the labour of machines or technology. This causes labour-power as a faculty to disappear. Instead, the existence of abstract labour is determined as if it were a natural element available to the capitalist, or material for machines. Abstract labour is “expenditure of human labour-power, of human labour in the abstract (…) of the labour-power possessed in his bodily organism by every ordinary man, on the average.”67 Arbeitskraft, as a faculty, is reduced to a much poorer notion than physical energy. Labour-power is synonymous with the Latin labor, physical and material sacrifice. What has taken place is the naturalisation of a theoretical category—abstract labour—and the ontology of a natural condition—physical force. This is the basis of a philosophy of labour that is different from a theory of labour-power. Marx reproposes 65 See

Castoriadis [35, 80]. Marx, Capital, 277. 67 K. Marx, Capital, 135. 66 K.

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the naturalistic pitfall of neoclassical economy—which considered labour as the objective measure of the wealth produced by capital68 —and the productivist pitfall of Saint-Simon, who believed he had identified the fundamental factors of economic and social relations of production in technological conditions.69 If the “original value”, or principle, determines the use-value of all labour, also alienated labour, then labour-power should not be confused with any type of commodity. This, however, is exactly what happens when workers sell it in exchange for a salary. The principle that is supposed to serve as the foundation of value is identical to the one that reduces labour to a thing. Under these conditions it is not possible to distinguish subjective value from abstract value. A commodity cannot determine the value of all other commodities only because it is the expression of the “creative activity” of labour-power. To use a metaphor of Adam Smith, a needle cannot determine the value of an aeroplane. And vice versa. This vicious circle brought on by the twofold nature of labour-power is repeated in capital. Capital is “objectified labour”: it is the “collection of commodities” produced by labour-power that have been exchanged for money. Capital, however, is also an “abstract universal form”: it is the transcendental principle that determines the value of all commodities. Capital is considered to be the presupposition and the product of its own process. In order to function it needs to add another labour-power to objective labour, one that is not objectified, that still has to be objectified. Once capital has appropriated it, it “consumes” it and initiates its own transformation. It becomes profit and establishes this surplus value as the principle without which labour has no value. Profit is separated from the activity that has produced surplus value, it is an additional value to the primitive state of capital. This does not prevent it from becoming the principle of the labour that created it. Capital is based on the consumption of its producers and on the products that are the result of its action. In this case the presupposition of an action is the result of the same action. The vicious circle has gone from being a logical one to a historical one, creating in the process a perfectly real illogical reality where truth is a moment of what is false. Marx exposed the meaning of this reversal in the dialectic of “place and presupposition”.70 In the 1857 Introduction to Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy capital is presented as “natural”, the presupposition of reality subjectively experienced by all. This is actually the real aspect of a dialectic that transforms reality into a phantasmagorical relation in which the function of labour-power is denied and commodities seem to produce themselves, automatically. Marx demonstrates that commodities are the “place” of a determined practical activity, i.e. they are the product of subordinate work and the manifestation of a labour-power whose faculty cannot be reduced to abstract labour. The reversal of the dialectic between place and presupposition therefore exposes the fact that the central element is not capital but labour-power. Abstract labour is also reality, it is a real abstraction endowed with a materiality in its becoming abstract. Labour-power transformed into a commodity 68 See

Lippi [16], Skillman [36]. Meldolesi [18]. 70 See R. Finelli, Un parricidio compiuto, 113–166. Finelli [19]. 69 See

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does not stop living: its life is reflected in this dialectic. Marx describes this fact in the following way: what previously was potential “becomes in actuality”.71 Its abstraction into a separate product, deprived of ownership, is the product of a power that crystallises in the value of a commodity. Marx does not understand this production as the expression of labour-power as faculty, but only as “expenditure of human labour-power”, as expenditure of “the labour-power possessed in his bodily organism by every ordinary man, on the average.”72 When describing the materiality of the production of abstract labour— because also abstraction is production—he resorts to the idea that necessary labour is only a physical effort consumed like energy. Once it has vanished, abstraction magically takes shape and is valid in itself, while labour becomes abstract and is dissolved. Once this transformation has taken place, labour has nothing to do with flesh and blood workers and their faculties. The salary paid in exchange for the sale of labour-power does not depend on the productivity of labour. Labour no longer belongs to labour-power, nor does it respond to who owns it. It produces value, but it is not itself value. It seems to be generated by an abstraction. How this is possible is not clear, but this is exactly what capitalism does: abstraction, not labourpower, generates labour, income and wealth. This is the fiction that makes the idea of capital without a subject possible: labour-power is the subjectivity of capital. This overturning of reality characterises our everyday life. Marx was not always able to unravel this problem and gave a materialistic and naturalistic definition of labour-power. This problem is not due to a misunderstanding of a concept that the philosopher himself reinvented. On this basis he replicates the misery from which he intends to free himself. If non-objectified labour is destined to become a commodity, history replicates a life marked by scarcity and need. This contradiction does not depend on the concept of labour-power, but on the attempt made by a transcendental line of thought to overcome the disconnections of modern rationalism (body/soul, subject/object) towards a new order of knowledge based on the concept of human nature. This attempt entailed founding human finiteness on a reflection which cannot be an ontology of subjectivity or a philosophy of the absolute. Labour-power is conceived with categories that face a horror vacui: their intention is to represent a phantomatic origin, because what is transcendental is evasive by definition, and leaves behind the negativity of its own evasiveness. In the effort to achieve its own nature, humanness is the mark of this negativity.73 In this context labour-power is understood as subjective energy that applies its power to things that are already individuated. Its synchronic and conflicting movement with respect to capital is described with elements taken from the already constituted individual and confused with others that derive from an individuation in the process of becoming actual. Labour-power thus becomes the manifestation of the objects it produces with its labour, not the other way round: labour exists to the extent that labour-power exercises one of its faculties, not because it is the embodied 71 K.

Marx, Capital, 283. Marx, Capital, 135. 73 See M. Foucault, The Order of Things. 72 K.

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manifestation of an abstract and impersonal principle such as capital, which acts like a spirit breathing new life into motionless matter. Marx criticises the philosophical claims according to which categories have an ontological and ethical–political consistency. Humanness becomes more important than the historical and material life of men, and labour becomes more important than those who work. This inversion becomes real under capitalism, a system in which logical abstraction seems to be more concrete than concrete and sensitive determinations, the manifestation of an abstract and impersonal principle more real than its empirical forms. Marxian materialism maintains that all categories—such as labour—also have a historical existence, as do the entities they intend to represent—the flesh and blood labour-power. Categories and entities are correlative and, together, they constitute being, which is not the explication of that which is One. What results in “being” is the composition of a multiplicity, not the reference to a superior principle. Both form and matter, principles and rules, being and essence, are the product of an interaction between contradictory elements where it is not possible to establish once and for all—so in a-historical terms—the priority of one over the other. Relations change and are determined by specific historical and social conditions. In Marx’s Grundrisse and in the unpublished Chapter VI of Capital, abstract labour and its multiple meanings are understood as a social relation of production. Abstract labour should not be confused with labour-power—what generates use-value—because it is a combination of heterogeneous and coordinated elements necessary for capitalist production and the legal system that ensures its legal political domination: (...) the social combination of the individual labour capacities, in which the latter only function as particular organs of the total labour capacity constituting the workshop as a whole, does not belong to the workers, but rather confronts them as a capitalist arrangement; it is inflicted upon them.74

If this is the perspective of Marxian thought, we may assume that labour-power is a philosophy of individuation, not an economic theory or a sociology of labour. Marx’s work offers many indications useful to define a new kind of materialism, in the guise of a dialectic still inspired by Aristotle’s hylomorphism . Marx uses Aristotle’s categories when he confuses labour-power with labour and defines the latter as the “substance of value”, while value is considered as “form”. In Marx the concept of substance is synonym of matter, used indiscriminately to describe the value and the origin of the production of value. In Aristotle, instead, substance is never “matter”, just as it cannot be form. Form and matter are modes of the substance. Furthermore, Marx does not consider the fact that in Aristotle substance is threefold, not univocal: there is divine substance, and the heavenly and earthly substance hierarchically ordered and dependent on divine substance.75 The multiplicity of modes, and their movement, are reduced to a single substance, the divine one. This substance is not subject to movement. It is the other substances, with their modes, that depend on the single principle that governs movement. 74 K.

Marx, The Process of Production of Capital. Aristotele, Metafisica, IV, 2, 1005.

75 See

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Aristotle’s metaphysics poses another problem for Marx: how can labour be the substance of all values if it is also the product of the power (potency) that creates the value of all labour? The same problem resurfaces in the relation between matter and form: labour-power is understood as a material force that affects passive matter from the outside in order to transform it into form. Force is an energy applied from the outside to passive matter in order to elevate it to the superior state of pre-existing form.76 Categories and entities are, instead, entirely historical modalities that affirm themselves while occurring, without resorting to any ontological presupposition or pre-existing form. These principles represent the gradations of the power (potency) that is expressed in the use and exchange of value, in the intensity of a non-subjectified power or in the expression of subjectivation in motion. In this context the categories of subject and object should also be rethought. Object is not the unchangeable quantity of things or commodities existing in the world the subjects confront, it is the outcome of a movement that constitutes things the way they are at a given moment. Subject is not an individual or his or her reproductive needs, nor the primacy of will, but an ongoing activity of individuation that involves both capital and labour. Labour-power is to be understood according to an immanent line of thought, a perspective that Marx inaugurated and developed, one that he also misunderstood, which he navigated in a singular and erratic trajectory confusing it with the history of philosophy. Labour-power is not only “non-objectified labour” waiting to become a commodity, it is also a power (potency) that is continuously identified in activity itself. If it were not so, the lives of men and women would have only one goal: to be alienated and put to work, subordinated to command, in a capitalist life. As unity of praxis and poiesis labour-power cannot be reduced to the means/ends relation, or described as being mere technical activity, calculation or abstract labour. In labourpower life experiences a beginning which never reaches completion and cannot be defined by a state, nor by a finalised activity.

3.10 Living Labour Labour-power must be viewed in connection to the “living source” of value. This “source” is “living labour”. The association between labour and “living” might appear to be equivocal, as is the association between person and “living”. Following Marx’s reasoning, labour should never be “living”. Labour is a commodity. However, if behind all labour there is labour-power, then the activity of labour-power is a living one. This activity is extrinsic in its transformation into a commodity, but it cannot be reduced to a commodity. The content of this activity is the production of use-values of all kinds. These “kinds” may be broader than their commodified use. The tendency of capital to reduce that which is living to a commodity exists because labour-power continues to generate uses that cannot be traced back to a commodity. In this sense it is 76 On the relationship between Aristotle and Marx, see. DeGolyer [37, 107–53], and J. W. Booth, “Households, Markets and Firms”, in “The Greek Accent of the Marxian Matrix”, 243–271.

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possible to understand that the principle of living labour is not ontologically different from what creates capital, that capital takes possession of from the outside—in fact, it is the activity that allows capital itself to exist. Marx defined living labour as a “the yeast thrown into (capital), which starts it fermenting.” The process of “fermenting” is initiated by a “real activity that creates value, an activity that is productive in relation to capital.”77 This “creative activity” is at the origin of the shift from potentiality—that is, the movement of things as well as people—it expresses the “living personality” of workers and represents the subjective factor of the labour process, the capacity to produce surplus-value. Initially, form “has no object”, then it becomes the object of the process of capital, and labour is objectified in a commodity. Marx writes that the objectivity in which capital exists and the mere subjectivity of labour as pure form must be processed, that is, consumed by labour. What drives this process is living labour, the expression of an activity that has not yet been reduced to commodity, i.e. labour. While labour, because it is directed to a specific purpose, preserves and transfers to the product the value of the means of production, at the same time, throughout every instant it is in motion, it is creating an additional value, a new value. (...) This value is the excess of the total value of the product over the portion of its value contributed by the means of production. It is the only original value formed during this process, the only portion of the value of the product created by the process itself.78

Capital incorporates the “living labour-power”. Like a vampire it sucks the energies of living labour and takes possession of its value. It finally becomes an automaton which begins to labour “as if consumed by love”.79 Once living labour has been rendered bloodless, the automaton is now autonomous: value is produced by parthenogenesis, money produces money, social relations become relations between objects and their real elements are annihilated. It is money that produces things, without passing from invention to material labour. What was alive is reduced to mechanical labour, indifferent to content and separated from its power which has been transferred into things. Labour-power coincides with the materiality of the flesh, nerves, drives or instincts of a body. However, it is reduced to “the use value of capital, i.e. the mediating activity by means of which it realizes itself.”80 Worker are embodied wages. Living labour does not exhaust itself like energy but, as a faculty, it is implicated in the uses of labour-power and commodities—in the form of use of the exchange-values produced by commodities. Labour-power is to be understood as power (potency) in its becoming a thing, the activity necessary to produce an object, which cannot be reduced to the abstraction of capital in that it is what it brought into being and develops together with capital. There is a connection between the value of labour 77 K.

Marx, Capital, I, 282. Marx, Capital, 316. 79 K. Marx, 1007. 80 K. Marx, Grundrisse, 305. 78 K.

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that cannot be measured, i.e. surplus-value, and the loss of ownership by workers; it is the reappropriation of the value in dead labour of fixed capital. Living labour is an activity that creates form linked to the operation of labour and its product, but also to the faculty which is not consumed in its production. It is not possible to cancel the immanent nature of these aspects, giving precedence to one over the other, as is the case with the economic definition of labour-power, which overturns the relation between object and subject, attributes value to capital and identifies living labour with labour-commodity. Living labour must be defined both as the subjective element that creates value—the faculty to produce, to “ferment”—and as abstraction of labour— abstract labour, sans phrase, labour that is pure or “in itself”—beyond particular determinations, independent of the objects produced starting from the amount of labour required. Labour-power is not a superordinate principle in the process, it is not the actualisation of an essence, but the expression of a faculty in a conflicting process articulated in different phases. The outcome is never given in advance, it is shaped in a becoming upon which a single direction cannot be imposed. The economy, like law, imposes an objective value in the name of a natural law governing production. This law is a fixed ideal amount that has no relation to the material reality it claims to measure. There is nothing natural in this at all, everything is the result of a political and legal fiction that conceals living labour under the objective appearance of a process that labour itself has created but from which it is erased. Marx denounced the substitution of natura naturans—labour-power that produces value in a day’s work—with natura naturata—the object of its production. Value is created by the historical element of labour-power and is the expression of the complex relations between antagonistic terms and their becoming: living labour/dead labour; labour/capital; variable capital/fixed capital. This movement is not produced by the “subject” of the modern philosophical and theological tradition, or by the “juridical subject” of the legal one. Living labour does not retrieve any previous essence, it is the creation of another becoming. Subjectivity has no sovereignty over the process, it can use it to strengthen its labour-power, while waiting for other uses to be given, in discontinuity with those that objectify it. Life is immanent and its potential is not exhausted in the given conditions in which it manifests itself. The latter are the expression of the objective order of causes and potentialities in different power relations. In immanence there is no unity that needs re-establishing, but infinite modulations of a power (potency) that must be asserted.

3.11 The Hypothesis of Communism “We call communism the real (effective) movement which abolishes the present state of things (die wirliche Bewegung welche den jetzingen Zustand aufhebt). The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.”81 The movement 81 K.

Marx, The German Ideology, 18.

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becomes real when a collective, conscious and voluntary practice is organised that gives concrete form to the meaning and content of the abolition of the present state of things. Without organising this practice the movement cannot act alone, nor is it possible to establish what this abolition means politically before it actually takes place. The Marxian definition of communism contains also another meaning: this movement is not owned by a particular subject, but by what takes shape in the course of this movement and is affirmed in its becoming. The “premises now in existence” are the product of an activity of the subjects involved who, in turn, are estranged and enter into conflict with the existing circumstances which impede or neutralise their practice. The difficulty in governing such a movement is twofold: it is necessary to direct it towards an objective and to reproduce it effectively in order to guarantee the continuity of this process for all those who take part. The real movement that abolishes the state of things cannot be reduced to an ontology, which indicates the existence of a being that is equal to itself, nor to the problem of how to transform the institutions of the State or the market, which govern trade or the social pact. The communist hypothesis breaks with the proprietary conception of being and radically modifies the relation between the finiteness of life and the negation through which power (potency) is expressed. Its movement is realised in a political conjuncture rather than in the context of an ontology. Also for this reason Marx defined communism as a “programme of action” to be constructed and shaped in a way that is always to be defined. The programme originates by continuously questioning the premises and outcomes of action and thought. It is the application of the method of experimental empiricism to socio-political relations, conflicts and history. The presumed scientific nature of socialism, provided it has ever existed, is grounded in this intuition, not in the intention to bind reality to respect for the economy or the command of a totalitarian State. This real movement cannot be reduced to the sphere of command. The action to be programmed is hypothetical because it is subject to the multiplicity of ways in which it is affirmed. The hypothesis of communism emerges from the negation of all purposes imposed externally, both those of capital and of ontology or property. According to Marx this negation cannot affirm an essence, that is, the purpose of all purposes. The negation of a negation is an affirmation that takes shape in the immanent lives of those who do not intend to give up their value to a superordinate entity. Immanence is not the product of negativity (“nothing”), it is the outcome of a process through which the labourpower breaks with all forms of ownership (Eigentumslosigkeit), with ideological illusions about the nature of communities and national ties (Illusionslosigkeit). The break cannot be definitive, illusions resurface continuously, while property is always the same, and always different. Labour-power has no nation, no religion or property while experiencing the hypothesis of a critique of its historical, moral, political and technological constitution.82 As the expression of a “movement which abolishes the present state of things”, the theory of the labour-power develops on the opposite side of a proprietary line of thought—i.e. Roman law, law regulating contracts and obligations, political 82 See

Balibar [38, 39].

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economy, ontology. Marx speaks of a movement that constitutes and questions the present state of things based on ownership, on the link between being and property, between obedience and command. Its reality is affirmed in things and among people, it is always operative, it manifests a potential that projects life beyond the limits of ownership, of the present state of things, or of what is lacking. In this sense the movement abolishes the present state of things: it abolishes the sovereignty of things and of being at a given moment, it allows life to open up to experimentation. The communist movement is a hypothesis in which politics has no ends, in which life can be experimented as a means of itself. It is an ethics of power (potency) which does not abstain from reasoning about government and democracy, linking both to a way of experimenting with the use of a common power (potency) that cannot be reduced to the politics of what “ought to be”. Without this ethical stance all regimes, such as those that have called themselves communist, turn into tyrannies. From this suspension Marx also develops a theory of political decision which he defines as dictatorship of the proletariat. A controversial expression that can be explained as the institutionalisation of conflict. It is the dictatorship of a class (the proletariat) which refuses to be classified as the class of “labour” made up of people who live to sell their labour-power. This entails the refusal of the class made up of those who have the necessary resources to buy this labour-power. The class of non-owners abolishes ownership, so the division between social classes and the very notion of “class”. It is paradoxical that the power of such a revolution is attributed to those who own nothing.83 This means that power is accessible to those who have no power and that power is not the exclusive property of a pre-existing subject—the People, the Sovereign, Labour, Class, the Political, the Nation, the Theological, the Market. The real movement tends to eliminate the singular and totalitarian partition that divides the domain of what is possible and to affirm the power of those who have nothing: a part, a role, an income. It is the power (potency) of those who have no part and have the power to abolish the division between the parts. Subjectivity takes shape in this movement, which can begin at any moment, always in the midst of something. The issue is both utopian and concrete: only in the present is it possible to abolish the division of labour, private property and the power that leads to dictatorship. The movement is immanent to this order, it is one of the potentialities that constitute the dispositif that governs it. The communist hypothesis stems from the knowledge, and practice, of such a potentiality. It is the outcome of a politics able to recognise what constitutes reality, that uses it to empower life in the only way possible for men and women: by means of association, cooperation, the power of the many. The movement that abolishes the criterion of the partition of the present state of things enters into conflict with its own principles, that is, with the idea that being consists in ownership, that life is owned by someone or that its origin is different from the one that emerges from the relations that constitute it. A similar conflict is unending, it is subject to both failure and success. Property can also be abolished by decree but it is difficult to change the way people conceive of the ownership of 83 See

Rancière [40].

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goods, things, values and actions. Abolished ownership will only return in a different form, denying what constitutes it: labour-power. Thus conflict is not only against political enemies, it is also against the institutions that define the very movement that abolishes ownership. The communist hypothesis is about abolishing the eternal return with an organisation that modifies the use and value of actions and things in their present state. In this sense it is possible to speak of the institutionalisation of a permanent conflict, distinguishing it from a civil war between antagonistic factions (the “bourgeois revolution” as opposed to a “labourers’ insurrection”) or from the warlike struggle that destroys politics and with it also labour-power. The communist hypothesis is a theory of the state of exception and considers both hypotheses. This analysis later develops and becomes more complicated: in the antagonism between opposing forces the role of politics and labour legislation is recognised, in particular the struggle to reduce working hours and social control over the violence inflicted on individuals in factories. Thus an attempt is made to control violence, which however does not exclude its use, to build a democratic institution. This construction does not take place on the basis of State law, but on the basis of the real movement that leads to the suspension—or abolition—of ownership. The conflict is also over who owns the law, the reasons behind it, who establishes it and its aims. The outcome of this movement is an institution that does not resemble the State, in that it is grounded in self-determination. This achievement, however, is not a definitive one: there will be new forms of ownership to be overcome, more conflict in the present state of things to be created, overthrowing the “parts” to build another institution. Heraclitus’ fragment must be taken literally: “War (polemos) is both father of all and king of life”. If it is the origin of all things, it is also their end. This means that class struggle is prior to classes, it survives their abolition. Conflict, however, does not limit politics and its forms to a clash between pure power relations with uncertain outcomes. On the contrary, it indicates a state of things that crystallises power relations giving them an institutional form and, at the same time, overcomes the hierarchy of powers that such an institution inevitably creates. The theory of the “real movement” is inspired by the tradition of conflictual democracy in which the paradoxical “tribune of the plebs” described by Machiavelli in The Discourses on Livy becomes the political reference of a democratic dictatorship that abolishes all dictatorships. This hypothesis is an open one, it depends on a movement that can take many possible directions, self-destruction or common power. Because it has no teleology, and having abolished all subjects who claim to appropriate the “real movement”, what governs labour-power is the tendency to overthrow the power that establishes what is proper and improper.

References 1. Fortunati, L.: The Arcane of Reproduction: Housework, Prostitution, Labor and Capital. Autonomedia, New York (1996) 2. Pateman, C.: The Sexual Contract. Stanford University Press, Palo Alto (1988)

References 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

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Macherey, P.: Le sujet des norms . Editions Amsterdam, Paris (2014) Aristotle: Metaphysics, book Delta, 12. Oxford University Press, Oxford (1924) Virno, P.: Déjà vu and the end of history. Verso, New York (2015) Imbergamo, B.: Mondine in campo, Dinamiche e retoriche di un lavoro del Novecento. Editpress, Florence (2014) Marx, K.: Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy. Penguin Classics, London (1993) Foucault, M.: What is enlightenment? In: Rabinow, P. (ed.) The Foucault Reader. Pantheon Books, New York (1984) Cooper, M.: Life as Surplus: Biotechnology and Capitalism in the Neoliberal Era. University of Washington Press, Seattle (2008) Virno, P.: The use of life. Multitudes 58(1) (2015) Marx, K.: Critique of the Gotha Programme. Progress Publishers, Moscow (1971) Foucault, M.: The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. Routledge, London (1989) Marcuse, H.: On the philosophical foundation of the concept of labor in economics. Telos 16, 9–37 (1973) Rosa, H., Trejo-Mathys, J.: Resonanz. Eine Soziologie der Weltbeziehung. Suhrkamp, Berlin (2016) Agamben, G.: The power of thought. Crit. Inq. 40(2), 480–491 (2014) Marx, K.: The Poverty of Philosophy. Progress Publishers, Moscow (1955) Rubel, M.: Etudes de marxologie, Auto-émancipation ouvrière et marxisme politique. In: Cahiers de l’I.S.M.E.A., Series S, n° 18 (April–May 1976) Dardot, P., Laval, C.: Marx, prénom: Karl. Gallimard, Paris (2012) Foucault, M.: The Will to Knowledge, vol. 1. Penguin Books, London (2006) Legrand, S.: Marx et Foucault. Puf, Paris (2004) Nigro, R.: Foucault, reader and critic of Marx. In: Bidet, J., Kouvelakis, S. (eds.) Critical Companion to Contemporary Marxism. Brill, Leida (2008) Bidet, J.: Foucault avec Marx. La fabrique, Paris (2014) Negri, A.: Marx and Foucault: Essays. Polity, Cambridge (2016) Federici, S.: Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation. Autonomedia, New York (2004) Dalla Costa, M., James, S.: The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community. Falling Wall Press Ltd., Bristol (1975) Burchi, S.: Ripartire da casa. Lavori e reti dallo spazio domestic. Franco Angeli, Milan (2014) Fumagalli, A.: Bioeconomia e capitalismo cognitivo. Verso un nuovo paradigma di accumulazione. Carocci, Rome (2007) Cooper, M., Waldby, C.: From reproductive work to regenerative labour: the female body and the stem cell industries. Feminist Theory 11(1) (2010) Cooper, M., Waldby, C.: Clinical Labor: Tissue Donors and Research Subjects in the Global Bioeconomy. Duke University Press, Durham (2014) Smith, A.: The Wealth of Nations. Random House, USA (2020). Bellofiore, R.: Per una teoria monetaria del valore lavoro. Problemi aperti nella teoria marxiana, tra radici ricardiane e nuove vie di ricerca. In: Lunghini, G. (ed.) Valori e prezzi. Utet, Turin (1993) Marx, K.: Storia delle teorie economiche, I. Einaudi, Torino (1977) Kosík, K.: Dialectics of the concrete: a study on problems of man and world. In: Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science. Springer, Berlin (2012) Lukács, G.: Prolegomena. Zur Ontologie des gesellschaftlichen Seins. Luchterhand, Darmstadt und Neuwied (1986) Castoriadis, C.: Marxisme: un bilan proviso ire. In: L’institution imaginaire de la société. Éditions du Seuil, Paris (1975) Skillman, G.L.: Marxian value theory and the labor—labor power distinction. Sci. Soc. 60(4), 427–451 (1996/1997)

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37. DeGolyer, M.: The Greek accent of the Marxian matrix. In McCarthy, G.E. (eds.) Marx and Aristotle: Nineteenth-Century German Social Theory and Classical Antiquity. Rowman & Littlefield, Savage (1992) 38. Balibar, E.: Remarques de circonstance sur le communisme. Actuel Marx 48 (2), 33–45 (2010) 39. Balibar, E.: Fin de la politique ou politique sans fin? Marx et l’aporie de la politique communiste. Groupe d’études “La philosophie au sens large” (2008) 40. Rancière, J.: Il malinteso. Filosofia e politica. Meltemi, Roma (2007)

Chapter 4

(Dis)obedient

The possibility of disobeying command is prior to the subordination that establishes a contract. First comes resistance, then obedience. This tension towards resistance and the search for personal or collective autonomy characterises the history of contractualism, as well as that of subordinate employment and self-employment. This means the subordinate subject in a power relationship cannot be tamed, not that it is a passive subject. If the history of subordinate labour refers to the conflict between servants and masters, the history of self-employment is forged in war. “When the rich plunder the poor of his rights, it becomes an example to the poor to plunder the rich of his property.”

4.1 Untameable Political, historical and philosophical thought has ignored the role of the labour contract and its relation with labour-power. Nor has it grasped the way in which freedom arises from the bond of subordination and coincides with the exercise of the general faculty of labour-power. Reflection has been limited to the participation of citizens in the decision-making processes of the polis, while it has tended not to question the conflict with power in labour relation. To ignore the existence of labour-power is to separate political freedom from the problem of obedience and the need for self-government of individuals, problems that are also central to a theory of democracy.1

1 See

Y. Thomas, L’ «usage» et les «fruits» de l’esclave, where the author relates the economic, historical and philosophical analyses of Greek and Roman antiquity by M. Finley (The Ancient Economy), di H. Arendt (The Human Condition) e J. P. Vernant (Mythe et pensée chez les Grecs). © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Ciccarelli, Labour Power, Lecture Notes in Morphogenesis, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70862-7_4

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Such a limited reflection is the result of a liberal approach that has separated political freedom from economic freedom, splitting the subject into a public component—the political and universal one—and a private one—the economic component owned by the dominus who is given the power to decide on the life of workers. This approach legitimises the idea that politics is about representation only and that rights are not acquired in a labour relationship, but in discussions among abstract subjects which take place in the polis. Because of this, the dilemma at the heart of labour-power can go unnoticed— i.e. how do people freely choose to be at the service of others? To hire labour-power is not a natural or automatic decision, it is a violent one that occurs because of certain political, economic and individual conditions and must therefore be understood in terms of both abuse and free choice. This choice means a subject voluntarily accepts the ambivalence that denies his or her freedom. The dilemma becomes more complicated in digital automation because subjects now accept to disappear completely inside the algorithm, they go from being a tool to being human service. In both cases, labour-power is deprived of its public and political dimension. The outcome of this process is a reflection oriented towards understanding the personal condition of exploited workers, not collective life transformed into capitalist abstraction. Labour-power is understood as being victim of its own alienation, or the embodiment of an abstract entity, i.e. labour, not the subject of a power relationship that is pivotal to the process of valorisation. This representation is functional to authoritarian lines of reasoning because it relegates the possibility of emancipation to a transcendental domain where individuals see themselves as part of an organic or territorial community, a “people”, a “State”, “human capital”. In the most progressive scenario, the fate of the labour-power is entrusted to processes of deliberative democracy by which subjects enter into a pact with their opponents after having established a series of common rules. The unreal nature of this hypothesis is evident: for subordinate workers it is no longer possible to reach an agreement on an equal footing, one party must accept the pact and the conditions imposed by the dominus. An employment contract is neither a concession nor the result of a consensual relationship. It is the expression of a power relationship based on the willingness of the subordinate party—considered as a formally free subject—to give up part of his or her freedom and obey the commands of another. By doing this the subject in question hopes to gain a benefit: a salary, rights, personal security. Very often the price paid does not compensate for the sacrifice. A contract aims to protect this vulnerability and offers compensation in economic and social terms, but it remains firm in its assumption: protection is only granted to those who comply with the terms of the pact that established the contract in the first place. Thus rights are granted to those who keep their promise and fulfil the obligations they have voluntarily accepted. Disobedience must be sanctioned because it means a subject has not kept his word, and has in this sense broken the law. If we look at this mechanism from the point of view of labour-power, this situation is reversed. The norm is not established by compliance with the rules of obedience, but by the possibility of complying with them when the norm enhances the autonomy of vulnerable subjects, and of evading them when they deny it. The legitimacy of a

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contract should be measured according to the benefits it guarantees the subordinate party, not the duties this party must comply with in order to ensure its proper functioning, at the cost of putting one’s physical and psychological safety at risk. The possibility of disobeying command precedes the subordination established by the contract. Resistance comes first, obedience follows.2 This tension towards resistance and the search for personal or collective autonomy characterises the whole history of contractualism, as well as that of subordinate and autonomous work. It shows that subordinate subjects in a power relationship are not passive but untameable. A subordinate employment contract regulates this indocility in order to achieve an objective that is alien to the intention of the worker. Conversely, a self-employed worker regulates his or her own indocility with respect to the objectives he or she has committed to by entering an agreement with a client. In both cases, the conflict concerns the autonomy that subjects pursue: it is limited in the case of a subordinate employment relationship; conditional in the case of a self-employed worker who is performing a service for third parties. Autonomy, understood as what the subjects aim to achieve, is the outcome of conflict—which can never be taken for granted—that takes place in a power relationship constituted by a party selling labour-power and another buying it. This conflict emerges in modern law where the subordinate party is granted the possibility of choosing according to his or her own right, that is, of voluntarily choosing to obey the commands of the dominus in exchange for security.3 Without the exercise of this right, there is no contract. It can be argued, therefore, that subjects are forced to surrender this right in order to survive, that they respond to blackmail or violence, and that rights are merely formal conditions of what is actually a form of subjection. However, one cannot overlook the fact that a contract aims to neutralise violence and values the freedom to lead one’s life according to its potential.4 In this sense a contract reflects the desire to “repel all force, take whatever vengeance he pleases for injury done to him, and, in general, live as he chooses to live.”5 Subordinate subjects will never believe that the obligation they have chosen to fulfil is a natural one. They will endure it, and, under certain conditions, try to improve their condition in a relationship of domination that is irreversible because it is sanctioned by the law. For this reason, the desire to lead an autonomous life (“as he chooses to live”) cannot be derived from obedience to the dominus, and certainly not from the contract. Obedience is not the mechanical response to a command, but the expression of a strategy through which subjects mature a way of living in subordination while at the same time claiming their right to exist. In this framework, the voluntary choice, which is not however a free one, to sell one’s labour-power, which determines the subordinate position of those who decide to obey a command in exchange for a salary, is understandable. The only alternative 2 See

Gros [1]. See also Laudani [2]. Supiot [3]. 4 See Romagnoli [4, 477 ff]; See B. Spinoza, Political Treatise. The history of labour law and the history of obedience must be read in the context of proprietary individualism, see Macpherson [5]. 5 See B. Spinoza, Political Treatise, II, 9. 3 See

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the owners of labour-power have is, as Marx wrote, to “choose whether to work or starve.”6 Labour contracts are a way to force the choice between life and death and are at the centre of political and trade union battles to reduce working hours, combat wage theft and introduce rights that may protect against the exploitation of men, women and children. Marx pointed out that the labour contract plays a decisive role in the subjugation of labour-power in a coercive relationship,7 but he did not ignore the fact that contracts are instrumental in the improvement of workers’ lives. It is better to be a wage earner than a slave. The labour contract is an instrument of control. It creates the legal conditions for the exploitation of labour-power by forcing it into an economic relationship of supremacy and subordination—Marx also wrote.8 Its aim is to bring about an equal relationship between the dominant party and the subordinate one, an aim that is however destined to fail. A contract, in fact, is not a neutral instrument. It is the product of a contingent power relationship, and can turn into an instrument of oppression. This leads to the paradoxical situation in which an instrument based on the unequal relationship between the contracting parties is used to fight inequality in the employment relationship. On the one hand, it protects the subjectivity of workers; on the other hand, it pushes them to become soldiers at the service of the dominus, pretending this is what they have freely chosen. In the end, the free subjects of this contract are transformed into impersonated wage. Making the quest for autonomy depend on these paradoxes means turning the political problem of labour-power into the problem of how to govern alienated labour. This misunderstanding is now stronger than ever because the labour contract is considered a bulwark against savage exploitation. To think that contractual subordination is an alternative to the enslavement of people is, however, an erroneous perspective. Having a short or very short term contract—the most common contract on the labour market today—cannot be understood as being an alternative to the miserable precariousness of contemporary work. Employment contracts may well return to their alleged original splendour—that of wage labour guaranteed for an indefinite period of time—, but because of their very nature they will continue to implement the conditions set by the dominus. In the formal hierarchy among equals, employers will still exercise a disciplinary power that employees must obey. Another equally widespread idea is that labour contracts guarantee the freedom of workers. This is true to the extent that contracts confirm subordination. The paradox can be described in the following terms: “The result of contractual freedom, then, is in the first place the opening of the opportunity to use, by the clever utilization of property ownership in the market, these resources without legal restraints as a means for the achievement of power over others. The parties interested in power in 6 See

K. Marx, The Process of Production of Capital, Draft Chapter 6 of Capital Results of the Direct Production Process, retrieved at marxists.org. 7 K. Marx, The Process of Production of Capital. 8 K. Marx, The Process of Production of Capital. See E. Screpanti, “Marx e il contratto di lavoro: dall’astrazione naturale alla sussunzione formale”, Quaderni del dipartimento di economia politica, Università degli studi di Siena, no. 546, October 2008.

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the market thus are also interested in such legal order.”9 What is left of contractual freedom in a situation in which the power of the entrepreneur and widespread social subordination are in force, is merely its name. The alternative to the paradox of subordination is to be found both inside and outside the labour contract, following the search for the autonomy of the labour-power that feeds the conflict with the social power that created—among other things—this same contract. The conflict concerns the conditions of labour-power, not only the type of contract and its rules. Today more than ever it is necessary to keep in mind this distinction because labour-power produces far beyond the perimeter established by an agreement between an employer and a worker. The extraction of surplus-value takes place, as we know, in the domain of life of subjects and in the exercise of their faculties, transforming the search for autonomy into self-subordination. This extension of the subalternity of labour-power could correspond to an intensification of the critical process that reactivates the subjects’ resistance and transforms the balance of the power relations in which it is active. This possibility can be understood starting from a critique of subordination in life, that precedes subordination in a labour relationship. What initiates a process of subjectification is not the power of the dominus, but the existence of labour-power. Its alienation does not eliminate the fact that labourpower has a logical precedence over commodified labour. There can be no alienation without the affirmation of its faculties. This anachrony is repeated in all labour relationships and allows to establish a basic political truth: it is not the power of those who dominate that creates freedom and security for the subordinate party, it is how labour-power negotiates its demands that makes both possible. The pact is not decisive per se, what is decisive is the process that allows to reach an agreement that can evolve—or be dismantled—into a different form. This process expresses the changing power relations and the possible actualisations of power with respect to the infinite virtualities that are available to the labour-power. Also when it becomes obedient, labour-power continues to shape life in its becoming, going beyond the single categories of labour and exceeding the totality of what exists. Obedience is only a single moment of this movement, one of the instruments used by subordinates in a strategy to affirm their right to existence. This strategy is based on the ability to persist in one’s own right—esse sui juris— as opposed to esse alteri juris—being available to the right of others. If autonomy is not to be reduced to a reward for obedience, then esse alteri iuris must be defined as a specific condition of esse sui juris.10 In an employment relationship, subordination is not slavery, but a way of exercising autonomy within the limits of a situation that prevents subjects from freely deciding on their own life. Dependence on the rights of others is one of the possibilities available to subjects seeking to assert their power (conatus).11 In this framework, law is affirmed in the effectiveness of practice, in the conflict over the roles and tasks of a subordinate or autonomous job, not with reference 9 Weber

[6, 730]. Ciccarelli [7]. 11 See Macherey [8, 237–320]. 10 See

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to a transcendental norm. There is no natural, moral or institutional sphere that imposes an insuperable order on the subject. Consent to a specific order does not exclude the possibility that one’s right (sui juris) may be expressed differently in another power relationship.

4.2 Gladiators From a genealogical point of view, the conflict over the autonomy of subordinates in the employment relationship emerged in an institution of Roman law: the auctoramentum, which is the exercise of the right to existence under the most extreme conditions that a human being may conceive: the promise to sacrifice one’s life in order to accomplish a task assigned or imposed by another person. It consisted of an oath to enlist in the army (auctoramentum militae) or to be recruited for a specialised job such as grape picking.12 The formula of the oath became famous when it was adapted to the act of leasing gladiators by the impresario, or lanista, who trained them: “I will endure to be burned, to be bound, to be beaten, and to be killed by the sword, and to endure whatever else you order against my will”, reads the text of the oath.13 The genealogy of the auctoramentum shows that the modern separation between self-employment and subordinate employment, sanctioned by the Napoleonic code and today transposed into civil law, is not original, but conditioned by historical and subjective factors. The distinction between self-employment and subordinate employment depends on an act of auctoramentum through which subjects embody their subalternity and overcome it at the cost of losing their life. The decision of the labour-power on how to employ this life can be so radical that some interpreters of Roman law have spoken of the derivation of (subordinate) employment contracts from the subject’s freedom, that only with great difficulty could be given a legal, moral and religious form.14 This thesis can be applied also to self-employment: gladiators were freelancers, self-employed combat professionals who decided to endure the discipline of subordinate employment. Auctoratus was synonym of “gladiator”,15 and the trade led gladiators to accept a servile condition and the discipline imposed on slaves, when, in fact, the majority of these employees of the Roman entertainment industry were not slaves—officially they were “free men”. Auctoramentum actually involved a wide range of workers. In Cicero the notion of auctoramentum servitutis indicates the subjection of mercennarii to a third party provided for by the locatio sui— by which

12 See

Pliny [9]. Heracleensis, vulgo lex iulia municipalis, I Ira I n. 13, Lin. 112; coll. 9, 2, 2, in M. H. Crawford et al., Roman Statutes, I, London (1996), 355–391. 14 See Diliberto [10]. 15 See Biscardi [11, 109–129]. 13 Tabula

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individuals could lease themselves in exchange for a salary.16 Ever since it has been possible to define work in general terms—work tout court, “abstract work”—there have been untameable subjects not willing to submit to the labour relation and its typologies and that have expressed this in decisions—taken by the labour-power— aimed at affirming life as a means to itself and not as an end at the service of the intentions of a dominus. Auctorare se, auctorari means to enter the service of someone, submit to others. This term has been used in a broader sense when applied to prostitution, to women working as actresses in theatres, to the activities of architects, artists and, in general, to any form of self-employment or subordinate labour. The expression is extensively used in the legal domain as well as in literature and philosophy and indicates the servile activity of those who responsibly decided to honour an obligation to carry out or provide something in return for compensation. In exchange for compensation, someone selling his or her own labour-power accepts work that is risky, humiliating, dreadful. The surrender of sovereignty over oneself was scandalous to the extent that it was traced back to a period that predated the establishment of law and, for a long time, was associated with religious worship. The only reason that could justify a mortal risk was devotion to a god, the belief in an afterlife. Auctoramentum, however, could not be considered as an act of faith because its entailed no religious sacrifice. It was governed by rules that attributed meaning and purpose to a potentially mortal action. Traces of this conception have been found in the Twelve Tables, a set of laws created in ancient Rome in 451 and 450 BC, and in the Tabula Heracleensi, which according to Savigny contained fragments of Caesar’s lex Julia Municipalis, the legal foundation of the municipal constitution of the period.17 Auctoratus was the product of a range of situations of auctoramentum that referred to forms of labour leasing (locationes operarum) and extended the coercive powers of employers. The expression Cicero used to describe the content of these powers is significant: subicere se imperio atque potestatis alterius, to subject oneself to the dominion and power of another. A formula that demonstrates the existence of a political bond that shaped labour relations of all men. Locare se, the specific formula for selling and leasing the labour of free men, was part of the more general relation shaped by the notion of auctoramentum shared by all human beings, free men and slaves, in the acceptance of the social and extra-legal act of voluntary subordination. On the one hand, ius imperandi was the right of whoever commanded mercenarii (employers, pater familias, aristocrats or emperors), a power that extended beyond the sphere of work and regulated the behaviour of citizens. On the other hand there was a broad kind of subordination defined as auctoramentum, the opposite of which was exauctorare, the dismissal of a mercenary, a soldier or gladiator, of skilled workers or anyone who had not fulfilled the duties laid down by the bond of auctoramentum.18

16 Cicero

[12, I, 42]. Heracleensis C.I.L. I 119, lin. 112/113: “Depugnandi causa auctoratus erit”. 18 See De Robertis, Lavoro e lavoratori nel mondo romano, 155 ff. 17 Tabula

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With the oath to the impresario/employer, the auctoratus identified with the purpose of the work, becoming both the means by which the master achieved success and the means by which as a worker he achieved his own emancipation. This narrative was necessary to prevent the auctoratus from changing his mind when confronting the danger and the fear of the challenges he had accepted to face when taking this oath. The employer was used as an extension, as a projection needed to force oneself to comply until the end, to push oneself to where no human being would go voluntarily for fear of injury, of the adversary, of death or, more simply, of the contempt the auctorati inspired. The potestative structure of the employment contract was used strategically: by obeying the command of others, workers upheld their decision. The employer was used to honour a commitment—an obligation towards oneself—necessary to earn a salary, pay off a debt, gain freedom or pursue an ambition. The verbal pact was based on unilateral and unconditional trust. In return, the subordinate party was promised he would regain his freedom, as well as wealth and honours. With the auctoramentum the gladiator swore—before the altar of a personal god or in his own conscience—to go beyond himself. This oath can be viewed as the extreme, inconceivable, exercise of self-discipline of personal freedom aimed at achieving freedom. Auctoramentum cannot be described as a type of work: it is not a form of employment or self-employment, nor is it slave labour. It is difficult to define the auctoratus as a free man (liber in mancipio)19 or as a servus. The act is not comparable to that of personal subordination envisaged by the ancient Romans, just as it is inconceivable for any modern subject of law. The theory of obligation cannot be founded on the paradox whereby a free man sells himself and renounces the most valuable asset he possesses: his will or sovereignty over himself. A right cannot be founded on the negation of its principle. The auctoramentum is indeed a negation that affirms a right to existence. It is an eminently social act that cannot be identified with locatio operarum—the leasing of slaves—or with locatio operis, the leasing of the labour-power of free men. Gladiators, vine growers and peasants, workers, prostitutes and artists, acrobats, all performed a service that cannot be reduced to the salary earned (merces), to a contract (locatio), or to slavery. They embodied something that exceeded social status, deontology or professional ethics. Their conduct was understandable as an act of transgression with respect to their roles, as a break with the present social order. The auctorati broke with family ties, those that allowed the pater familias to sacrifice his children on the altar of his god, as Abraham did with Isaac or Metabus with Camilla in the The Aeneid. Their readiness to sacrifice themselves, required to subvert the relationship of dependence on their master or creditors, broke the bonds by which labour was leased and also those created by slavery due to debt. The decision to work as a gladiator was an autonomous form of addictio sui based on the freedom of the subordinate actor, on his being “available to himself”, which had

19 See

W. Kunkel, Auctoratus in Symb. TaubesHag, III, (1957), 207 ff. and the criticism of O. Diliberto, “Ricerche sull’auctoramentum”, 71 ff.

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nothing to do with the relationship of obligation (obligatio)20 envisaged by civil law, despite its characteristics were similar: if the auctoratus did not respect the terms of the agreement, his employer could claim compensation for damages invoking the ergastula. The origin of auctorare was believed to be the verb augere.21 Augere expresses a quality of power: to approve, authorise, increase the value of an act with authority. The expression auctoritas principis senates means to accept a responsibility or a risk. The verb auctorare is actually semantically richer, it derives from a different verb, the transitive auct¯oror, which means to sell oneself or to sell; to authorise and to commit, to give and to lease. Auct¯oror comes from auct¯oro which, in the reflexive form, means to engage, commit, oblige oneself, offer oneself. Used actively it means to engage, bind, procure or hire in return for payment. Auctoramentum is a form of reflexive life, produced by the activity of knowledge about oneself and the consequent use of life. Reflexivity is, in turn, a form of activity. It is not only the expression of the life of the mind, it is an action in the world. Reflexivity and activity are present in the verb applied to both the labour relation and the power relation. An individual in the role of auctoratus authorises an action and, at the same time, accepts to be commanded, then forces himself to comply with this decision. In doing so, he freely decides to submit to himself in order to enter an asymmetrical power relation with others. Auctoramentum derives from the awareness of being auctor, which indicates he who takes an initiative and produces something new, founds something, guarantees and promotes his own auctoritas or that of others. It is a creative act independent of social hierarchy: auctoritas could be that of a high magistrate, an aristocrat, a gladiator or slave, without distinction. All these figures create value: the success of the games benefited the lanista and his patron, for example. This transformed the auctoratus, a hideous person, into a divinity. The rise and fall could be sudden, in the arena as well as in society. Also, risk did not prevent the actoratus from exercising the fascination exerted by those who live outside the law, where everything seems possible, provided their lives are at stake. Selling oneself, submitting oneself, winning a battle, carrying out a risky job, all constitute a model that was different from that of the wise man exposed by the Stoic philosophy of Cicero or Seneca. In the case of the actoratus we have the opposite: a parody that constituted an ideal-type which drew on the virtues of fighters, the exemplary nature of actors, the sexuality of prostitutes, the ability to occupy different statuses in the course of life. The auctoratus pursued a singular model of life thanks to a legal strategy and a moral, physical and mental kind of training, the philosophical asceticism preached by philosophies centred on wisdom and care of the self. This behaviour gave rise to a technique of life (tekhn¯e tou biou) which challenged the self as an ethical subject of truth and as an object of knowledge. The aim was to “constitute the subject of true knowledge as the subject of right action.”22 20 See

A. Biscardi, “Nozione classica ed origini dell’auctoramentum”, 117. Albanese [13, 406]. 22 See Foucault [14]. 21 See

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The auctoratus practised an art acquired through spiritual, athletic and warlike exercises. With him the world ceased to be only object of thought and was also acted upon. This type of existence was inconceivable for philosophical subjects, just as it is inconceivable for modern rationality which is based on the idea that life is a property of itself. The conduct of a gladiator allowed a subject to constitute himself by spending his own ownership, not by appropriating the wealth of others. This conduct allowed him to experience a range of possibilities unknown to the traditional subject of philosophical or productive life. His disposition was useful in resisting the banishment of a community. According to Roman Stoic philosophy, in fact, work was a servile activity, incapable of accessing true knowledge and therefore excluded from the range of techniques of knowledge of the self and spiritual training. Auctoramentum proved the opposite: life was a test, a demonstration of courage and a way of experimenting various possibilities—as was the case with the free men described by Seneca, Cicero or Epictetus—which did not, however, follow a providential pattern able to establish the worth and purpose of this training. This model applied to everyone: slaves, freemen, workers and gladiators. The motivation in accepting unthinkable challenges was the promise of liberation. From the virtuous use of virtues in combat—from the ability to deliver perfection, even though this might mean killing someone in an arena—these individuals gained respect, honour, glory, in other words, social recognition. In this sense we may say that workers acquired the awareness that they could transform their existence putting themselves to the test, with discipline, a practice regulated through combat. In classical Greek and Roman culture, this extreme technique offered a possibility: also exiles, bandits, the marginalised, slaves, mercenaries could experience liberation. Auctoramentum created a very large extra-juridical sphere inside the legal system in which marginal subjects regained their power by using their life dangerously. This technique was an astounding application of the ancient Socratic motto “know thyself”: in order to know the potential of a life one must reach a sphere where no teleology, moral system or law can justify the most extreme use of subordination, where the subject deprives himself of the ultimate justification to explain the desire to assert his power.

4.3 Self-employment Has No Friends Unlike subordinate employment, which is based on the rules of obedience, selfemployment entails self-determination. Labour-power acts on the basis of a service contract and agrees to carry out work, complete a task or provide a service for a client in the established time and manner. Workers have to fulfil an obligation to achieve a result. In order to achieve this, they provide themselves with an autonomous rule of conduct that enables them to produce a good or a service with their own means and not with those of their client. Unlike wage earners, self-employed workers are not employed by a single buyer. Rather, they works for several employers, continuously or for a limited period of time.

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Self-employment has been linked to locatio conductio operis, a form of consensual contract by which a worker (artifex) transforms a material owned by a lessor into a good in exchange for compensation (merces). What was rewarded was the sale of the work. In the case of the locatio conductio operarum, on the other hand, the employee rented the labour capacity which then had to respond to his directives. In a culture such as the Roman one where labour contracts originated from the renting of things (locatio rei) it was thought that the object being rented (locare) was the thing (res). Later it became clear that the central element was the “person”.23 This person was formally free. The precedence of the person over the thing was considered logically necessary to justify the decision to work for, or be subordinated to, someone. This fundamental element was necessary to conceive of contracts between persons, not between a thing (a slave) and a person (the master). By definition, a thing cannot want anything, and it can certainly not sign a contract. The distinction between thing and person is fundamental in order to recognise one’s autonomy in organising one’s work and that of others. To derive the existence of such a faculty from contract law, which is strongly oriented towards patrimonialism, is an operation that is destined to fail. Something that has been passed on from Roman law to the capitalist view of labour is the powerful tendency to objectify the labourpower. The process that leads to the production of a commodity disappears behind the work and the use that its owner intends to make of this commodity. The value of labour is conceived exclusively as a function of its outcome, and not of the faculties needed to produce it. Labour-power remains a prisoner of the aporia between thing and person and is only considered instrumentally. Self-employed workers attempt to free themselves of this contradiction, in fact they derive their value not only from the work delivered to a client, but from the faculties necessary to produce it. This is possible because the relationship with clients cannot be reduced to a leasing contract, it is provided for also in other forms of contract law. In the case the mandatum, for example, an imperfect consensual contract, a subject (the mandatary, mandatàrius) was obliged to perform a task on behalf of a third party (the client, mandàtor).24 The scope of the mandate was broader than that of the locatio conductio: in addition to manual work such as shopping, cleaning or mending, it included political, legal and commercial tasks. The activities of the mandatary included the duties (officia) of male citizens holding public office. Payment, in the form of remuneration, was excluded. These activities remained free for a long time. With the expansion of the Republic first, then of the Empire, the mandatum established a form of remuneration, an honorarium (honorarium). This term was derived from praetorian law (ius praetorium), and indicated a form of gratitude of the client, not the obligation of the holder of a contract to repay the worker for his services. This honorarium was not a salary (merces), the price of a commodified service established by a contract for the lease of labour (locatio operis). It was a voluntary contribution 23 See Arangio Ruiz [15, 235–237]; F. De Robertis, I rapporti di lavoro nel diritto romano; Almirante

[16, 9]. the mandatum in Roman law, see Marrone [17, 499 ff].

24 On

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linked to the generosity of those who recognised the value of a disinterested activity and was based on the logic of gift, friendship and gratuitum. It ended with the end of the assignment, when the agreement between the parties ceased or with the death of the contracting parties. The honorarium is at the centre of conflict throughout the history of selfemployment. It is never clear whether the mandated action is an action serving a community or an interested action aimed at remuneration. Friendship can be used by a client to avoid paying for the work of a supposed friend. In turn, the mandatary risks confusing the obligation with the friendship that binds him to his client and he may receive a symbolic compensation for his work, not a salary. The confusion between paid and a free work, between a subordinate and a liberal service and, finally, between the obligation to perform a task and the choice deriving from a bond that does not fall under a subordinate agreement is based on a subject’s ability to identify with his work, in the belief it has a general utility for the community. The conflict between reputation (honour) and dignity of professional figures emerged for example in 1602 in France when the rule of absolute gratuitousness in the exercise of the liberal profession of lawyer was established.25 This rule derived from the mandatum of Roman law, which prohibited remuneration for political or public office. In the Paris court, lawyers were required to include their honorarium in the deeds and thus pay taxes. Lawyer admitted to carrying out a commercial activity and this, at that time, was considered to be degrading. Compensation was a gift that could not be demanded, it could only be given. It was not even allowed to go to court for a dispute over payment for officia rendered. Professional morality rejected all relations based on salary, as they were considered to be mercenary, indicative of servile activity. Gifts guaranteed disinterested actions carried out for the common good and were the prerequisite for the obtainment of benefits. This mentality is still common among university students, lawyers, doctors, engineers and journalists. It is seen as necessary in order to maintain autonomy of judgement with respect to the State or clients, and to claim membership of a class that negotiates with power from independent and disinterested positions. This is how professional self-employment gained a role in the ruling class as an intermediary in the market, as social mediator. Professional figures became linked to the sphere of government, not to that of obedience. Their place was next to the prince, not the poor. Independence, which was only possible on the basis of aristocratic or bourgeois landlord status, became the criterion for the separation of the free self-employed from workers. The honorarium is a formula used in professional and artistic self-employment and indicates the existence of a pact between equals—or gentlemen, gentlewomen— based on the exercise of an intellectual, political or human virtue, not on money. It is a relationship based on trust, not on obligation; on prestige, knowledge and authority, not on a contract that settles every single aspect of an employment relationship. However, each of these qualities has its equivalent in money. The calculation of compensation remains an arbitrary operation. There is no objective criterion able to define it. The value of a service is determined by the social power of a class, not by 25 See

I. Botteri, Tra “onore” e “utile”: il galateo del professionista.

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tariffs or rules of conduct. Because of this uncertainty it is the charisma of individuals that ends up being valued, their ability to impose themselves on the market, not the power of the social or professional group that allows these individuals to impose conditions on a client. Charisma has become a mystical quality, acquired by magic or election, not through social selection, and it is opposed to wage workers, those with a contract, mechanical or executive workers. The separation between self-employment and subordinate employment is why Cicero could view the request for a salary in the field of teaching—which is the exercise of knowledge, not an exchange of goods—as deplorable. This aristocratic prejudice that originates with Roman law is a founding element of the professional ideology of bourgeois self-employed workers.26 This ideology also penetrated into wage labour, shaping the specific identity of professional labourers, who are in fact referred as the “working class aristocracy” to distinguish them from simple labourers, employed in executive tasks or as apprentices: these figures constituted a sub-proletariat in the industrial manufacturing world, which reproduced this distinction originally made in the courtly sphere, then exported to the bourgeois sphere, in the working class.27 Self-employment cannot be reduced to a relationship with a client. It has a long humanistic and social tradition that views the exercise of a profession as an intellectual, social and political service for the progress of a community, the well-being of citizens, and the economic and technological advancement of society. These activities cannot be reduced to the implementation of a contractual agreement for the lease and sale of labour, they entail other organisational models, such as societas, for example. In Roman law societas denoted both a type of business and a social body, capable of organising groups according to solidarity and common interest. Societas was structured around a common fund and assets were owned by its members. The agreement between its members, who were free men, allowed different subjects to coexist on an equal footing. It was a model of mutual or cooperative association, broader than the model established by shareholders of a joint stock company.28 The intersection between civil law, commercial law and the political sphere extends the domain of labour to all human actions. The exercise of the faculties of labour-power is the expression of a generalised athleticism that runs through all social relations where it is the agreement among subjects—not the command of one over the other— that regulates rivalry between claimants. Another difference thus becomes evident with respect to the employment contract: in this case, the power relations seeks to neutralise and remove the conflict between the employer and the employee; in the case of self-employment, conflict is understood as one of the forms of a generalised rivalry which is reflected in the competition among formally equal but materially different economic actors. This is the likely origin of the Greek and Roman concept of friendship (philia) and of the saying attributed by Aristotle to Diogenes Laërtius: 26 See

D. Banfi, S. Bologna, Vita da freelance, second chapter. Roth [18]. 28 On the history of types of work and enterprise in Roman law see M. Bretone, Storia del diritto romano. 27 See

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“O my friends, there is no friend.”29 In this framework, self-employment has no specific location, it involves different contractual forms and moral bonds, it acquires some characteristics but not others, starting from its capacity to perform a task in a set time and manner. The criterion for identifying it remains the affirmation of the right to exist beyond an employment contract and its capacity to preserve its autonomy within the limitations imposed by multiple power relationships in which it is an active, not a passive, participant. No doubt this is the history of labour and not of enterprise; it involves social classes other than the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie, where it is possible to recognise processes of emancipation. Self-employment makes it possible to extend the traditional monist Marxist notion of wage labour to the pluralist notion of working classes that include both wage labourers and autonomous forms of employment. Cutlers, tailors, craftsmen, master builders and printers abandoned corporatism and became the protagonists of the first revolutionary wave that swept across Europe in the aftermath of the French Revolution, of the uprisings and insurrections that took place in England and France between 1792 and 1831. These events were made possible by associations that went against the logic regulating contract law and the habit of considering subjectivity on the basis of one’s professional identity. Objectified work is not always the basis of the claims made by labour-power.30 The starting point of this genealogy is elsewhere: subjectivity manifests itself in labour-power through the assertion of autonomy.31 On this basis it is possible to identify a common ground for subordinate labour. The insubordination of the self-employed characterises the history of the struggles of workers who refuse to identify with mechanical labour and claim the right to choose how to work. In both cases we can speak of materialism: workers demand wages and payment to be on time, an increase in salary, and to negotiate compensation.32 These demands serve to reinforce the claim to autonomy against the subordination of those who are forced to work for owners or in servile conditions. What these typologies of work have in common is concealed in favour of an abstract division of labour based on types of contract on which the freedom of workers depends. The distinction between types of contract—and the distinction between self-employed and subordinate employment—is not an original one, rather, it reflects the will not to be dominated. This will goes beyond the contractual status of labourers and is exercised in different, often opposing, conditions, which are often experienced by the same person is different moments of his or her life, in times of intermittent work and income.

29 See

Derrida [19]. E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class; Rancière [20]. 31 On the contemporary trend of self-employment, see Fumagalli and Bologna [21]. On the transformation of self-employment during the crisis, see Bonomi [22]. 32 See S. Bologna, Knowledge Workers, p. 25. 30 See

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4.4 Freelance Workers If the history of subordinate employment refers to the conflict between masters and servants, the history of self-employment is forged in war. This aspect emerges clearly in the case of freelancers: soldiers of fortune, mercenaries of labour.33 Freelance is one of the archetypes of self-employment and today expresses two contractual and professional positions: that of a contractor or independent contractor, who performs a task on behalf of a third party, and that of a self-employed worker.34 Today a freelancer is a conceptual figure that indicates intellectual, artistic or cognitive professions and is often used to refer to the self-employed. It may also indicate a more general condition: a style of life that results from a multiplicity of working roles that alternate over the course of a professional career. The relationship between the singularity of contractual roles and the multiplicity of opportunities is an indication of the fact that labour-power can never be identified with any of the existing contractual identities, with any form of life that does not coincide with productive roles. “Freelance” means “free lance”, originally a soldier holding a lance at the front of the infantry; a freelancer is a knight but also a collective endeavour paid for by a captain of fortune. The expression “free lance” is symptomatic: freelancers constituted a formation led by a captain, or “corporal”, hired as a knight, followed by servants or attendants. The contract with which freelancers were hired also regulated their services: freelancer were professional warriors with two or more servants. Over time, this basic formation expanded: a free lance could mean several knights and a number of attendants recruited by them. “Free lance” is the unit of measurement of an army composed of mercenaries. The history of this military formation is told in Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe, published in 1819. Here, freelancer is synonymous of mercenary, the type of soldier who worked for a general or monarch. In the clash between Richard I and John of England, armies were largely composed of such freelancers. The war between the two factions was fuelled by those who used mercenaries in a civil war.35 The troops of one of the two armies were not considered to be mercenaries, whereas the troops of the second one were. John attracted lawless rogues who had returned from the Crusades, “corrupted by the vices of the East”, who had become impoverished and violent. The definition of freelancer as a soldier fighting in a legitimate army originates from a political decision. These soldiers, in fact, were bandits, but their life changed when they joined a victorious army. A military victory, and the founding of a nation—the epic narrated by Ivanhoe—transformed “men of action” seeking “employment” into regular workers and hard-working citizens of the nascent State. The definition of honourable, productive and legal work does not derive from a contract, nor from the 33 For a history of freelance workers see Bologna [23]; S. Bologna, Knowledge workers; S. Bologna, La new workforce; D. Banfi, S. Bologna, Vita da freelance; Gandini [24]. 34 See Reich [25]. 35 Scott [26].

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mere exchange between a service and wages, but from a decision that changed both the subjects of work and the principle according to which men were recognised as rights-holders. The generals themselves were mercenaries who agreed to enter into a contract with a city or a sovereign. Their obedience was conditional on a contract. The services of these freelancers were free but not gratuitous: this is how the English word “free” should be interpreted. Basically, a general-freelancer was free from the constraints of command, hierarchy or membership except for those regarding the execution of the task set by the recruiter. The latter could be a lord of the landed gentry or nobility—a “franklin”, a landowner who in the English tradition was guaranteed independence from feudal tyranny—36 or an intermediary of armed labour such as the lanista in the case of gladiators. In the history of mercenary armies, these intermediaries were not impresari-entrepreneurs they were among the protagonists of the conflict and alternated between war and politics. Their job was to make troops available to the highest bidder. In Ivanhoe, the role of the intermediary-recruiter is no longer just that of an entrepreneur interested in organising work to make a career. These figures were generals, called condottieri, able to establish a pirate State or a sovereign State. The expression is used in the novel when, during a tournament, John of England talks to one of his knight, “the leader of a band of Free Companions, or Condottieri; that is, of mercenaries belonging to no particular nation, but attached for the time to any prince by whom they were paid.”37 These “free companions” were mercenary troops hired by Louis XI during the Hundred Years’ War, “compagnie franches” recruited among the indebted minor nobility and the outcast sons of the high nobility, conditions that attest to the marginality and socially irregular status of these labour market intermediaries. The condotta was an employment contract that entrusted a condottiero (the mercenary captain) with the task of recruiting subcontracted personnel. The mercenary troops were made up of para-subordinate workers,38 fixed-term contractors whose engagement was similar to today’s’ job on call or staff leasing, as they were hired by an intermediary who worked as a subcontractor for another client. This pattern did not prevent the creation of other armies or mercenary armies made up of freelance soldiers. In the case of the Lansquenets, another mercenary army formed of members recruited among the nobility and peasants, the relationship between the Oberst (the colonel in charge of recruitment) and the recruited soldier was regulated by a letter of commitment which established the pay, the tasks and the duration of the service. Originally this letter was the result of personal negotiation. As armies became bigger and as more armies had to be created, the letter became standard practice. It did not, however, prevent conflict and rebellion, especially among infantrymen. Pay was also commensurate with the risks involved and the fighters’ 36 W.

Scott, Ivanhoe. Scott, Ivanhoe. 38 Para-subordinate workers in Italy are individuals who are legally self-employed but who are often “economically dependent” on a single employer. 37 W.

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abilities. Infantryman who had to fight in the front line or on particularly dangerous battlefields, received double pay (Doppelsöldner). The same applied to musicians who accompanied the troops with drums and trumpets. The pattern is the same as in the Roman auctoramentum: specialised self-employed workers such as infantrymen were entitled to increased wages for performing difficult and dangerous tasks. In return, their employer demanded absolute loyalty even if this meant putting their life at risk. The same law applied to the relationship between mercenary soldiers and their captain. Niccolò Machiavelli tells the story of Castruccio Castracani, a freelance soldier who first became a leader of the Ghibelline faction, then a duke and captain of cities such as Lucca and Pisa. His career as a freelancer was that of a politician who used weapons, cunning and his independence to assert a new power. Born into a powerful noble family of Lucca, the Antelminelli, Castruccio lost his aristocratic prerogative when, in 1300, he was forced to flee by the opposing Guelph faction, led by Bonturo Dati. Thus began his career as a free lance for sale on the market of tournaments and wars of European rulers. Castruccio won the favour of King Edward I of England. During his adventurous life he committed murder to defend his honour. He was forced to flee again and took refuge in France, where he went back to fighting as free lance for Philip the Fair, who needed mercenary troops. He became a cavalry commander and established himself on the battlefield of Arras and in the Flanders War. He returned to Italy after fifteen years and took part in the wars between the Guelphs and Ghibellines in Tuscan cities. Having conquered Lucca and become lord of his city, Castruccio led attacks against Florence without however declaring war. The military honours and power gained through his unscrupulous actions earned him the appointment of “Grand Legate to Italy” and other awards from the Dukes of Bavaria. Pope John XXII excommunicated him because, as a Ghibelline, he did not recognise the temporal authority of the Church. Castruccio’s is one of the exemplary lives of condottieri chosen by Machiavelli to illustrate his political theory: “it was astonishing to find that in a very short time he manifested all that virtue and bearing which we are accustomed to associate with a true gentleman. In the first place he became an accomplished horseman, (…) But what enhanced so much the charm of these accomplishments, was the delightful modesty (…). These gifts made him beloved (…) by all Lucca.”39 In Machiavelli’s portrait what emerges is the desire of the condottiero to transform himself and become a gentleman, capable of using weapons, commanding an army and winning the approval of the people. Another aspect of modern individualism emerges here: the development of a rule of conduct, with which to challenge existing power relations, establishing a system of independent values, based on charisma, uniqueness and prestige. These are values pertaining to the domain of freelance work—what is now known as self-employment—that make the gentleman-freelancer capable of founding a State and being independent of the “powerful”, lords and other States that may have an interest in conquering his territory. The quest for autonomy does not only refer to a professional condition, but also to a political sphere in which 39 Machiavelli

[27, p. 280].

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people “are eager not to be ordered around and oppressed by the noble families, and (…) the nobles are eager to oppress the common people and order them around.”40 The autonomy of individuals is reflected in the desire to govern oneself and not to be commanded by the many. Machiavelli distinguished mercenaries from citizen-soldiers, i.e. those loyal to an idea, a community or a State. This was, after all, the Prince’s project for a “civil principality”, for a “republic” to be achieved with the creation of a regular army by means of compulsory conscription. Machiavelli identified a principle of loyalty and a political vision in the practice of mercenary soldiers. This is an important element that allows to make a fundamental distinction: among freelancers there are those who know how to govern their fortune, express virtues and go from being soldiers of fortune to Princes who “are popular with the people”. Their commitment consists in gaining credit—authority—beyond mere commercial relationships. On the other hand, freelancers who remain mercenaries: (…) are useless and dangerous. If you are counting on mercenaries to defend your state you will never be stable or secure, because mercenaries are ambitious, undisciplined, disloyal and they quarrel among themselves. Courageous with friends and cowardly with enemies, they have no fear of God and keep no promises. (…) Because the only interest they have in you and their only reason for fighting is the meagre salary you’re paying them, and that’s not reason enough to make them want to die for you. Sure, they’re happy to be your soldiers while you’re not at war, but when war comes, they run for it, or just disappear.41

A freelancer becomes a prince when he discovers political virtues starting from his work: frugality, for example. A freelancer must administer his resources without giving the impression he is “miserable”. This is an important rule to follow when governing a State: liberality is paid for by the people, who can retaliate when the Prince’s luxury contrasts with their misery. The rule should also be followed by individuals: the ostentation of wealth, or boasting about what one has achieved, may ruin relations with peers or inferiors needed in future ventures. Machiavelli analyses the use of cruelty and pity. In the case of a condottiero, the former is necessary to govern a “multitude of soldiers”: one “must have no qualms about getting a reputation for cruelty; otherwise it will be quite impossible to keep the army united and fit for combat.”42 The conflict between gentleman and mercenary continued on a different stage: no longer the battlefield, but the court. Waging wars was replaced by the plotting of courtiers. The struggle was no longer an armed one, but a symbolic one, based on class and economy. The gentleman became a courtier who acted according to the rules governing proper and dignified behaviour: etiquette. In his Galateo, overo de’ costumi (1558) Giovanni della Casa established a regula universalissima aimed at suppressing the irregularities and discontinuities of life, which is subject to passions and conflict, and described a way of living that is independent of one’s religious, political, national 40 Machiavelli

[28, 38]. Machiavelli, The Prince, 65–66. 42 N. Machiavelli, The Prince, 67. 41 N.

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and social identity.43 Baldassar Castiglione’s courtier had to embody sprezzatura, i.e. “a certain nonchalance”, feign grace and interpret life according to convenience.44 A courtier articulated aggressiveness according to a code of behaviour balanced between the pursuit of what was useful and his own honour, inspired by “moderation”, “prudence” and self-control. This mentality prevailed in the era of the bourgeois State and constituted the mentality of State bureaucracy and of the bourgeois work ethic. Self-employment had come a long way from its ancient warrior origins. This mentality, however, clashed with material limitations: first of all, income. Like wage earners, these new professional figures were not paid. Throughout contemporary history, these figures have been forced to face the consequences of impoverishment. In 1901 the medical doctor Stefano Noce wrote that “our profession has a noble humanitarian purpose, and if necessary we willingly sacrifice our lives for the health of our neighbours, but alongside our duties, we also have rights, and the sacrosanct right to enforce them. In what way? By imposing ourselves collectively against the narrow-mindedness of the administrations that exploit us, against all those who, taking advantage of our acquiescence and our needs, consider our work to be equal or inferior to that of an illiterate worker.”45 Already at the beginning of the twentieth century, intellectual professions had a problem with income and insufficient professional protection. Deontological ethics, together with the institution of professional orders, introduced protection from society, not only autonomy from the State. Behind the decorum of these professions there are poor and inglorious workers.

4.5 Flâneur The most recent figure to appear is that of the flâneur, the metropolitan wanderer who, around 1840, walked tortoises on a leash through the passages of Paris. Flâneurie is another version of the Roman auctoramentum: when all domains of life have been commodified, subjects choose to lead their existence as a commodity, surrendering to what Walter Benjamin described as the “intoxication of the commodity immersed in a surging stream of customers.”46 The flâneur experiences this ecstasy and matures the desire not to be dominated by himself in the form of a commodity. The protagonist of this transformation is the poet: from aesthete who rejects the market, he becomes “his own impresario”47 who is fulfilled by the market. If the market is the “cosmos” that brings together all individual destinies, the flâneur is a living advertisement and makes a living out of it. At the Paris Expo of 1867, the poet

43 della

Casa [29]. [30, 59–60]. 45 Noce [31, 723–762]. 46 Benjamin [32, 31]. 47 Benjamin [33, 169]. 44 Castiglione

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who sought to be unique as a “creative” worker is hired as a sandwich man.48 He was paid to walk the streets, at fairs or in front of shop windows: Benjamin writes that he is paid to walk, from one day to another his inspection of the market has become a job. The trauma produced by such an occupation in those who believed that the spirit of the world had the rhythm of an hendecasyllable determined the anarchic, mystical and hyper-snobbish character of the literary and intellectual culture between the nineteenth and twentieth century.49 The world has become a brutal place: writing poetry is now a job just like selling sandwiches in a shop or in a passage. Both possibilities are available to the workforce: one assumes that the former is not an alienated activity, while alienation cannot be ruled out in the case of the latter.50 Embodiment in a commodity is part of the spectacle of which the flâneur is an actor. He enters a theatre—the city, the market—and plays a role. He changes it like a dress. He is everything and nothing: he is a living personality that cannot be reduced to the commodity he has chosen to embody and the living advertisement that commodities force him to be. The mask he wears does not eliminate the basic difference between the power (potency) of the labour-power and the identity of the labour-commodity. The actor here conceives a critique of himself as a commodity, he becomes aware of himself as an object of exchange and as use-value. In this sense also a freelancer is able to conceive of himself as labour-power. Flâneurie is a form of resistance. Baudelaire formulates a theology of idleness, a poetics of spleen, he sells “Satanism” on the cultural market. Idleness is not the absence of action. It is an industrious activity, a way of working on oneself, the construction of an attitude, the definition of a conduct. The poet, the student who never stops studying, the collector, the idler who never tires of seeing new things and the grand seigneur devoted to idleness, the gambler and the fencer: these are all characters that deny the economic and religious utility of work. From this perspective, flâneurie is a challenge to the rules that govern life under capitalism and to the division between action and contemplation, autonomy and subordination, rulers and ruled. There is a power (potency) that has nothing to do with what is on offer on the market, with the force exerted by the State, which men cannot renounce. The aim of the flâneur is to “transform Paris into one great Interior—a house whose rooms are the quartiers, no less clearly demarcated by thresholds than are real rooms”, so that the city “can appear to someone walking through it to be without thresholds: a landscape in the round.”51 The flâneur expresses the desire to construct another world within this world. The city is the interior of life, the loom or computer are the brains we work with. “Behind the masks which he used to their fullest extent, the poet in Baudelaire preserved his incognito. (…) His prosody is like the map of a big city in which one can move about inconspicuously, shielded by blocks of houses, gateways, courtyards.”52 48 See

Gentili [34, 21–36]. Fortini [35, 90]. 50 See Ciccarelli [36, 143–160]. 51 See Benjamin [37, 422]. 52 W. Benjamin, “The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire” 61. 49 See

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Anonymity is the premise for constructing the identity of a calculating subject. Unlike the entrepreneur, for whom calculation is the ability to accumulate resources and monetary values, this subject perfects a strategic competence based on producing an effect, a calculated surprise. As a poet, the knowledge that feeds competence is a struggle with the reader or the client—a publisher, the editor of a newspaper. Benjamin writes that he calculates his effects step by step. And he gains an advantage over those waiting for him, presumably in the light, in the theatre, or in a café. He, on the other hand, moves in the shadows and sharpens his wits to amaze his audience. In his wanderings, the flâneur meets another protagonist of metropolitan life: the conspirator. “Baudelaire conspires with language itself”, writes Benjamin, because all poets work with language. If we consider this quote in relation to freelancers the idea of work as conspiracy, as action protected by anonymity, is of extraordinary interest. The conspirator-poet and the conspirator-revolutionary experience the bohéme. Marx wrote that “They are the alchemists of the revolution and are characterised by exactly the same chaotic thinking and blinkered obsessions as the alchemists of old.”53 So was Blanqui, the political leader of the revolution before Lenin. According to Marx Blanqui was “the real leader of the proletarian party”54 and represented the type of politician who anticipated “the process of revolutionary development, to bring it artificially to crisis-point, to launch a revolution on the spur of the moment, without the conditions for a revolution.” We may thus imagine the encounter of Blanqui and Baudelaire: the political leader meets the poet in a tavern, together they form an the alliance, that between the Parisian proletariat, its artists, and the peasants protesting against a tax on wine. Blanqui was the outcome of this protest while Baudelaire wrote the poem Le vin des chiffoniers, published in Les fleurs du mal. In front of a glass of untaxed wine it was possible to recruit day labourers, to build a common enterprise. Entertainment became the occasion to organise the labour-force. The eternity of the tavern in the revolutions. It was in the tavern The Bell that the English Jacobins began to quote Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man. Quotes that were blasphemies against God: “when the rich plunder the poor of his rights, it becomes an example to the poor to plunder the rich of his property.” 55

References 1. 2. 3. 4.

Gros, F.: (Dés)obeir. Albin Michel, Paris (2017) Laudani, R.: Disobbedienza. Il Mulino, Bologna (2010) Supiot, A.: Critique du droit du travail. Puf, Paris (1994) Romagnoli, U.: Diritto del lavoro (storia del). In: Digesto delle discipline privatistiche, sezione commerciale, vol. IV. Utet, Milan (1989)

53 Karl

Marx [38]. Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. 55 E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, 92 ff. 54 K.

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5. Macpherson, C.B.: The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke. Oxford University Press, Oxford (1962) 6. Weber, M.: Economy and Society. An Outline of Interpretive Sociology. University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London (1978) 7. Ciccarelli, R.: Potenza e beatitudine. Il diritto in Baruch Spinoza. Carocci, Rome (2003) 8. Macherey, P.: Introduction à L’Ethique de Spinoza. La quatrième partie. La condition humaine. Puf, Paris (1997) 9. Pliny: Natural History. Penguin, London (1991) 10. Diliberto, O.: Ricerche sull’auctoramentum e sulla condizione degli auctorati. Giuffré, Milan (1981) 11. Biscardi, A.: Nozione classica ed origini dell’auctoramentum. Studi De Francisci 4, 109–129 (1956) 12. Cicero: On Obligations (De Officiis). Penguin, London (1971) 13. Albanese, B.: Le persone nel diritto privato romano, Seminario giuridico dell’università di Palermo. Tipografia S. Montaina, Palermo (1979) 14. Foucault, M.: The Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures at the College de France 1981–1982. Palgrave Macmillan, New York (2004) 15. Arangio Ruiz, V.: Istituzioni di diritto romano. Jovene, Naples (1921) 16. Almirante, L.: Ricerche in tema di locazione. Bollettino di istituzioni di diritto romano LXII (1959) 17. Marrone, M.: Istituzioni di diritto romano. Naples, Palumbo (1994) 18. Roth, K.H.: L’altro movimento operaio. Storia della repressione capitalistica in Germania dal 1880 a oggi. Feltrinelli, Milano (1976) 19. Derrida, J.: Politics of Friendship. Verso, London (1997) 20. Rancière, J.: La nuit des prolétaires: Archives du rêve ouvrier. Fayard, Paris (1981) 21. Fumagalli, A., Bologna, S.: Il lavoro autonomo di seconda generazione. Scenari del postfordismo in Italia. Feltrinelli, Milan (1997) 22. Bonomi, A.: Capitalismo in-finito. Indagine sui territori della crisi. Einaudi, Turin (2013) 23. Bologna, S.: Ceti medi senza futuro?. Deriveapprodi, Rome (2007) 24. Gandini, A.: Freelance. Doppiozero/CheFare, Milan (2016) 25. Reich, R.: Why Were All Becoming Independent Contractors, Huffington Post, 24 Apr 2015 26. Scott, W.: Ivanhoe. Penguin Classics, London (2000) 27. Machiavelli, N.: La vita di Castruccio Castracani. In: Opere, III, a cura di C. Vivanti, Einaudi, Torino (2005) 28. Machiavelli, N.: The Prince. Penguin Classics, London (2014) 29. della Casa, G.: Galateo overo de’ costumi. B.U.R., Milan (1992) 30. Castiglione, B.: Il Libro del Cortegiano. Garzanti, Milan (1981) 31. Noce, S.: Sul codice di deontologia medica. Considerazioni sulla crisi che attraversa la classe dei Medici in Italia. In: Botteri, I. (ed.) Tra “onore” e “utile”: il galateo del professionista. in Storia d’Italia, Annali 10, I professionisti, ed. Maria Malatesta. Einaudi, Turin (1996) 32. Benjamin, W.: The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire. In: Walter Benjamin: selected writings, vol. 4, 1938–1940. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (2003) 33. Benjamin, W.: Central Park. In: Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, vol. 4, 1938–1940. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (2003) 34. Gentili, D.: Cosmo e individuo. Per una genealogia del lavoro intellettuale nell’epoca neoliberale. In: Intellettuali di se stessi. Lavoro intellettuale in epoca neoliberale, Aut Aut, 365 (2015) 35. Fortini, F.: Lettera agli amici di Piacenza. In: Fortini, F. (ed.) L’ospite ingrato. De Donato, Bari (1966)

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36. Ciccarelli, R.: Benjamin flâneur. Per una genealogia del quinto stato. In: Gentili, D., Ponzi, M., Stimilli, E. (eds.) Il culto del capitale. Walter Benjamin: capitalismo e religione. Quodlibet, Macerata (2014) 37. Benjamin, W.: The Arcades Project. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (1999) 38. Marx, K.: review, Les Conspirateurs. In: Neue Rheinische Zeitung Politisch-Ökonomische Revue, no 4, Apr 1850. Progress Publishers (2007)

Chapter 5

The Dwarf of History

Work has not disappeared, it has changed. The future is not driven by digital machines, but by women and men who work and without whom digital capital could not exist. Starting from this assumption we proceed to deconstruct the myth of digital automation. Technology today is viewed as something magic made possible by algorithms whose life is independent of human beings. This is not true: what makes algorithms intelligent is the cooperation with labour-power. The value of such cooperation, however, is removed and alienated to the advantage of platform owners. In fact, labour-power is not an extension of an algorithm, but an active faculty that expresses a living subjectivity in a social and productive organisation. Labour-power is the dwarf hidden inside the puppet of technology that allows capitalism to make the biggest profits in history.

5.1 Amazon Mechanical Turk In November 2005, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announced the creation of the service called Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT).1 Amazon Mechanical Turks are real people who work with algorithms. There are half a million of them and they form one of the largest crowd-worker platforms in the world. They gather on an online cloud to perform a set of tasks. Once the task is completed, the crowd of digital workers breaks up. These crowds come together again when there is a new call for centralised storage of data processing services.

1 See

Silberman and Irani [1]; Orain [2]. On the working conditions inside Amazon warehouses: Malet [3].

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Ciccarelli, Labour Power, Lecture Notes in Morphogenesis, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70862-7_5

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The execution of a task is worth a few cents. Workers can choose what task they want to carry out, while their clients, known as “requesters”, can approve or refuse the job. Only the approved work is paid for. The minority of workers denied compensation is defined as “dissenting” because the task has been completed badly. Mechanical Turks allow technology developers to process huge amounts of data extracted from micro-activities such as transcripts, image classification, the creation of pornographic categories and research support activities. The core of the activity that today fuels digital work is carried out not only by artificial intelligence, but also by legions of men and women sitting in front of personal computers around the world.2 Their dedication feeds an immense computational power. This power is not driven by an algorithm: in fact algorithms thrive on the value produced by labour-power.3 Mechanical Turks know nothing about the larger game played by the algorithms which combine their micro-tasks in a project. Clickwork is the representation of contemporary labour-power: a crowd of task-workers, deprived of human bodies and intelligence, is available for all types of activity, at the service of the direct and unmediated command of the digital infrastructure. Workers are treated like primates who create codes on a keyboard without understanding them. This situation is the result of a new type of evolutionism, in which the shift from a labour-power that uses personal computers to people who have become computers is the final stage of human self-realisation.4 This multitude of Mechanical Turks working for Amazon owes its name to an automaton invented by Wolfgang von Kempelen in 1769 for Maria Theresa of Austria. His Turk was a machine able to play chess. It toured Europe and the world for fifty years as an attraction in courts and fairs and became popular in the United States between 1820 and 1830. It ended its life as a puppet and fairground attraction in the Peale Museum in Philadelphia, where it eventually burned in a fire. Edgar Allan Poe had the opportunity to see it working in 1836.5 The Turk had oriental features, it was dressed in a turban and was connected to a chest inside which there was a small chess master. What the audience never saw during the performances of the automaton was a chess master who could observe the moves of the Turk’s opponent by looking into a series of mirrors illuminated by candles. The smoke they produced came out of a pipe inserted into the mouth of the automaton. The function of this puppet was to create entertainment for the “market” of marvels and curiosities: an inanimate but intelligent machine could beat a human playing chess. Its presence, together with other human phenomena displayed for the pleasure or horror derived from the unusual, spoke of the dream of modernity: a machine that could replace work, revealing the existence of artificial forms of life that are superior to the mortal life of humans.

2 See

Scholz [4]; Fuchs [5]; Cardon and Casilli [6]. Irani [7]. 4 See Howe [8]; Id. [9]. 5 See Poe [10, 336–57]. 3 See

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The theatrical illusion staged by Kempelen’s Mechanical Turk is the same that powers the frontier of the on-demand service economy. Bezos’s Turks, half algorithm and half human, are the mythological reincarnation of Kempelen’s puppet in the Silicon Age. Their role is no longer to play the part of a chess master, able to manoeuvre an automaton and win a game thanks to his skills. The relationship is now reversed: the labour-power is the puppet, while the intelligence of the master, a person in flesh and blood, has been transferred to algorithms. Human beings are things, while new generation machines are bodies. Poe envisaged an artificial mind capable of replacing human intelligence and imitating it perfectly. This vision seemed to come true when, in the late eighties, the computer Deep Blue beat the Russian Kasparov at chess. The computer succeeded not because it knew the game, but because it combined an infinite number of variables without understanding them. The machine was imitating what humans do. Today humans are transformed into codes and are forced to imitate machines. Amazon’s “turker”, a contraction between “worker” and “turk”, is a human automaton whose value is dependent on its online reputation, its psycho-physical ability to feed the algorithm without understanding it, and its capacity to manage accumulated debts to finance the activity requested by a client with its own resources. To be a “turker” means to be paid only after having reached a goal that has been established by an automated evaluation and certification system. Inside both Amazon’s and Kempelen’s mechanical Turk there is a chess master, for the simple reason that “inside” all work there is labour-power. This fact is evident to all, it is embodied in the bodies we move, in the language we speak, in the way we think. Its concealment is not a mystery of faith, but the political dispositif of alienated work. Who came closest to revealing the fiction of the Mechanical Turk was Walter Benjamin who, in his first thesis on the concept of history, interpreted the duplicity of labour-power in theological terms: It is well-known that an automaton once existed, which was so constructed that it could counter any move of a chess-player with a counter-move, and thereby assure itself of victory in the match. A puppet in Turkish attire, water-pipe in mouth, sat before the chessboard, which rested on a broad table. Through a system of mirrors, the illusion was created that this table was transparent from all sides. In truth, a hunchbacked dwarf who was a master chess-player sat inside, controlling the hands of the puppet with strings. One can envision a corresponding object to this apparatus in philosophy. The puppet called ‘historical materialism’ is always supposed to win. It can do this with no further ado against any opponent, so long as it employs the services of theology, which as everyone knows is small and ugly and must be kept out of sight.6

Labour power is not a theology. The dwarf is alive, he is a flesh and blood human being, he guides the Mechanic Turk with intelligent moves and his knowledge of chess. The dwarf is mocked and concealed, his work is not acknowledged, though he forces us to recognise his presence. His is a looming and demonic presence when he manoeuvres the puppet of the capitalist machine. The position of the dwarf is occupied by women and men who work. It is we who power the global Mechanical Turk and make him live in what we have in common: our labour-power. 6 See

Benjamin [11, 253].

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5.2 Californian Ideology The Californian ideology is a mix of free hippie spirit and yuppie entrepreneurial zeal that feeds the imagination of the Silicon Valley.7 The blend of cybernetics, liberal economy and libertarian counterculture is the result of the fusion between the bohemian culture of San Francisco and the new hi-tech industry. This amalgam reflects the belief in the emancipatory potential of new digital technologies, the belief that robotics and digital automation will make work unnecessary. Today it expresses the cognitive frontier where most of the narrative on the “end” or the “future” of work are located. Finally, the Californian ideology affirms a paradigm of automation that removes the existence of labour-power and replaces it with the automatic intelligence of digital platforms. This narrative points to a dystopian future, while in the present it ties living work— the productive experience of living, thinking and doing—to the will of the company that has designed and marketed a technological innovation. Machines function for the subjects they are intended for, but it is not the subjects who incorporate machines on the basis of how they want to use them, the purpose for which they were designed. Now labour-power has a new task: to train algorithms. The more algorithms become artificially intelligent, the more the labour-power is denied human intelligence. Intelligence is aimed at developing infrastructure, not at empowering those who possess it, that is, the women and men who live and work. Its faculty is available to those who buy it, not to those who sell it for a salary. A misanthropic culture has emerged where machines are humanised because they take on the role of the labour-power, while humans are reduced to instruments of service. The subjectivity of the labour-power has been turned into automated support, devoid of desire, investments without object and experience.8 Work is an automated drive intertwined with algorithms whose effect is to control its activity, not its development.9 At the end of a phantasmagorical process, algorithms acquire an intelligence that is superior to the human one. This intelligence is attributed to a machine that acquires a life of its own, while workers are reduced to being automatons. The Californian ideology is inspired by a type of imitation that has turned the modern myth of Prometheus into its opposite. If what this myth speaks of is an artificial creature that acquires human life, of humans that use the power of technology to multiply human power over nature, today humans are thought of as androids and robots.10 They live in a claustrophobic world, freed from all political, physiological and social limitations. It is a paradoxical liberation that leads them to abstains from exercising their potential, to remain hostage to the owners of technological innovation. What is expected of men and women today is obedience, predictability and compliance with the psychometrics developed by evaluation systems and algorithms. 7 See

Barbrook and Cameron [12]; Fumagalli [13]. Stiegler [14]. 9 See Crary [15]. 10 See Mazza Galanti [16]. 8 See

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Machines are in charge of establishing incontrovertible truths, while humans are responsible of their failures. Automation was supposed to redeem them. However, it only makes them passive, eliminating all the ambiguities, paradoxes and undecidable situations that are present in everyday life. Automation is charged with judging the fate of a democracy that wastes no time in defining what democracy is. We expect automation to establish the value of human work, since humans supposedly lack the ability to establish priorities in selecting skills, their life is marred by inauthenticity, error and corruption. Algorithms allow to establish an “objective” social order that social relations prevent. Automation is viewed as a universal mediator of social and productive relations, while in fact it allows to delegate decisions regarding what is true and right to the class of owners of technology, “experts” and “technicians” who govern machines and set the course of progress. Behind the scenes of this technological determinism the fear of automation is the same witnessed in the 1950s and in science fiction films where this fear was also connected to the threat of a Soviet invasion. Among technology scholars and science fiction writers of the time, the belief that factories would no longer need workers spread rapidly. Workers represented a communist “danger”: they demanded wages, organised unions, changed the destination of machines and the pace imposed by the assembly line. The fear of the Soviet enemy was reflected in the fear of a “domestic enemy”. Automation would beat them both, strengthening nuclear competition, allowing to win the race to the moon, eliminating all conflict in factories. Today the front-line of the new war is the reinvention of living labour as a function of business and an accessory of algorithms. What this approach values most is the race for product innovation, not the social cooperation necessary to create such a product. What is alive today is technological commodities, not the subjects that produce them. The Californian ideology is the most recent narrative developed at the time of the end of the “great narratives”, needed to react to productive and occupational stagnation, to the depression induced by the lack of political alternatives, which in turn reflects the idea that history ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.11 While social utopias take refuge in the negativity of dystopias, or in apocalyptic prophecies, conservative utopias invoke a homogeneous community, the “people”, and reactionary utopias a religious paradise to be achieved with death and the massacre of innocent in a Jihad.12 Automation is presented as the Apollonian representation of a revolution founded on the technological industry, capable of unleashing the “disruptive” power of that which is “new” compared to the “old”.13 Unpredictability is brought back into the domain of reality and the otherness of the future is neutralised in the form of a digital product able to shape life by means of constant connection and competition on the market, without incurring in the risk of social conflict. The so-called “fourth industrial revolution” colonises life, it sterilises its potential by 11 See

De Michelis [17]. Roy [18]. 13 See the analysis of “disruption” as the manifestation of “libertarianism”, the American anarchiccapitalist variant of “neoliberalism” in Disruption/Disruzione in Ippolita [19, 91–95]. 12 See

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recoding it in an electronic device, reducing the world to an insurance policy against mortal danger.14 Labour-power has been reduced to a “synthetic intellect”: But what [Marx] couldn’t foresee is that synthetic intellects can also substitute capital for your mind. So the conflict he characterizes between poorly paid workers and highly compensated managers – people against people – cuts the wrong way. The real problem is that the wealthy will need few, if any, people to work for them at all. As bizarre as this sounds, the future will be a struggle of assets against people, as the resources accumulated by our creations serve no constructive purpose or are put to no productive use. […] We don’t need to take from the wealthy and give to the less fortunate because our economy is not standing still; it’s continually expanding, and this growth is likely to quicken. So all we need to do is distribute the benefits of future growth more widely, and the problem will slowly melt away.15

It is an imaginative reconstruction of Marx’s thinking. I quote it only because it clarifies the ideological orientation of the literature produced in the Silicon Valley, which feeds the decontextualised vision of automation and its relationship with work. An elementary analysis of the material conditions of the crisis economy shows that those who are “well-off” will need a lot of people to work, on condition they never name this work, that is, on condition they do not pay for it, which would entail having to guarantee forms of elementary social safety. It is equally true that the activities that are denied the name “work” will continue to be productive, in the sense that they will continue to produce commodities and goods of all kinds, but will not be acknowledged as being the objectification of the faculty of the labour-power. The outcome of this line of reasoning is paradoxical: when people are not needed, production produces itself. The value of such production seems to be the origin of property, wealth is treated like the holy spirit and is separated from its source: the labour-power that produces such value. If commodities produce themselves, and wealth is multiplied by machines that do not need humans, then there is no reason to distribute this wealth to the rest of society, nor to guarantee anyone’s rights. The only argument that justifies this vision of automation—one of the founding myths of capitalism—is the capacity of the free market to govern itself.

5.3 The Myth of Automation Economic stability and the preservation of the market’s order is supposedly guaranteed by the “invisible hand” of God. According to Adam Smith the intervention of this hand introduces providential control over events, as it guides the actions of men and women and the trajectories of planets, while respecting the divine plan of the universe.16 This cosmotheology plays a fundamental role in the myth of digital automation. Nothing can slow down the race of History projected towards a horizon 14 See

Jameson [20]. Kaplan [21, 11]. 16 Bonar [22]. Harrison [23]. 15 See

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where the religious yearning for redemption merges with a capitalist techno-utopia. The fourth industrial revolution, a new stage of progress which is evidently believed to be infinite, establishes a certain direction in a present that has no perspective. Like Moses, automation also indicates the goal to be reached by a dispersed people, albeit in possession of a credit card and able to buy products on Amazon with an iPhone. The myth of automation is fuelled by powerful operations of editorial and political marketing, ideal for a public opinion that has become intoxicated by a sense of imminent catastrophe. It is called hype effect: “noise”, “propaganda”, “advertising”, “fashion”. It is a factor in contemporary politics, so much so it is possible to speak of a hype economy, needed to attract millionaire investments in the market of venture capital. The consulting firm Gartner created a diagram of the “hype cycle” that shows the ten trends of the year. In 2017 the most popular tags were connected homes, virtual assistant, unmanned cars, deep learning and machine learning, the internet of things and blockchain. Billions of dollars will be invested in these technologies over the next ten years, before they are placed on the market where they will eventually prove their productivity. The object of investment is potential, implemented by the hype, in the belief that innovations will trickle down from the cloud of expectations to existing goods and services.17 This theory of technological innovation is based on an economy of promise: the promise of a future driven by the “invisible hand” of machines—the hand of their owners. It is the promise of individual well-being, of prosperity guaranteed by individual value, of individual “excellence” in a context of global competition. Technology is supposed to defeat the fear people have of becoming poor, isolated and abandoned. What technology actually does is delegate the administration of this promised future to “experts”, politicians and platform owners, who govern it on behalf of those who will experience this future. This supposedly objective character of digital technologies relieves citizens of responsibilities and contradictions while waiting for solutions to be developed by algorithms. This “technological solutionism”18 gives technological innovators the exclusive right over the future, and the authority to establish symbolic awards and punishments, desires and castrations, merits and faults on the basis of the bipolar pattern that alternates between depression and enthusiasm. Anyone who wishes to question the prospects of this revolution, or even just highlight the risks as well as its possibilities, is seen as anachronistic with respect to the achievement of the Ultimate Goal. In the world of rationality inspired by theological thought, any sufficiently advanced piece of technology is able to generate a representation of the future similar to magic. Every “like” on Facebook and every search on Google sells a dream in which drones, online services and automatons will satisfy the desires of consumers and help people feel they are as perfect as their God. This fantasy is complemented by machines that guarantee immortality and resurrection, teleportation and the creation of human beings, time travel and telepathy.

17 See

Panetta [24]. [25].

18 Morozov

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The success of this myth rests on the fascination for wonders and curiosities in a world in which natural magic, science fiction and lust for power have been transformed into spectacle. Despite how distant imagery and reality may be, today also science and technology are viewed through a mythical lens, in an attempt to embody what men believe to be invisible in a given era.19 Today these ideas are represented by the digital revolution that has ingeniously transformed the “music hall” narrative of the vanishing Woman, the headless Man and the Automaton and chess-master into an industrial system that governs passions and drives stock exchanges. This myth of automation moves the labour-power away from the digital combined operating machine based on the cooperation between labour-power and algorithms. This is what today is called “machine learning”, the most profitable branch of artificial intelligence production.20 There is an indictment that contributes to the concealment of labour-power: what takes place cannot be explained with the dialectic of capital, but with the notion of destiny. The digital revolution accepts dystopia, a tale that admits to the existence of this dialectic not in the present, but in a future devastated by a catastrophe, by the invasion of aliens or by the revolt of vampires, robots and replicants. The dialectic of capital is intriguing because it allows to explain this imagery as the effect of the mode of production.21 The myth is not “ideology”— false consciousness—nor is it only fictitious. It is a discursive reality that affects people’s lives and the stock market performance of companies that produce automation. This reality is created by hidden labour-power and its metamorphic relations with machines.22 Compared to the past, this interaction takes place in a different context. In the Fordist era labour-power tended to be understood as “variable capital”, while machines constituted “fixed capital”. The value of “living labour” was absorbed by “fixed capital”. Today labour-power can be understood as fixed capital because machines adapt in a variable way to labour-power.23 Work that previously took place on an assembly line, or in an office, is now carried out around the clock. Labour-power is not only sold for a certain number of hours determined by a contract, it is provided at all times. Labour-power in the past had to become a commodity, today this is not always true, in fact it can continue to produce surplus-value through digital platforms. Production activity is not limited to work, because it produces a surplus-value that producers are not even aware of and cannot enjoy.24 These new generation machines are different from what Marx called “machinism”.25 They are the interface of active life and social intelligence inside and outside the workplace. Unlike machines, digital automation does not separate machines from 19 See

Ball [26]. Marx, Capital, cit., p. 512. On the immanent relationship between human beings, technology and machines see Simondon [27, 12 ff.]; Stiegler [28]. 21 See Dyer-Witheford [29]. 22 See Fadini [30, 48]. 23 See Marazzi [31]; Id. [32]. 24 See Pasquinelli [33]. 25 See Ekbia and Nardi [34]. 20 K.

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labour-power, cooperation from the division of labour. It progressively integrates them by enhancing the intentionality of human subjects to the point it becomes possible to imagine a becoming-machine of labour-power and a becoming-labourpower of machines. The digital revolution treats this relationship as a miracle: since labour-power is “outdated”, what remains is machines. The “combined machine” formed by labour-power and algorithms exists because someone continues to sell labour-power and someone else commands it. It is not machines that produce labourpower, it is labour-power that allows machines to operate in a new relation between fixed and variable capital. Everything depends on the purposes for which these machines were built and on the political use of automation. If one wanted to enhance labour-power as a cooperative faculty, overturning the myth of an automated subject, also the way technology is designed might be different. Machines would no longer be functional to the creation of commodities, services and goods, but to the strengthening of the cooperation from which everything originates.

5.4 Unmanned Cars and Other Stories The new promised land will be reached on board an unmanned car.26 Its endeavours are periodically celebrated together with the ability of drones to deliver pizzas. The success this invention enjoys in the media—we are talking about a prototype, not yet a product to be sold on the market—is due to what it promises middle class drivers: to be relieved of the effort it takes to travel to and from the office located at the other end of the city. Middle class drivers will also be able to enjoy the lifestyle of the rich and famous who can count on a personal chauffeur who, of course, is a robot, not a human driver. The universalistic advertising of the Californian ideology—the promise of automation à la carte—stops where inequalities start: the important thing is not to travel with the poor.27 In San Francisco there was a shuttle that competed with public transportation. In exchange for a ticket that cost 40 cents more it promised there would be no surprise stops. The shuttle was designed for the mobility of people from the gentrified districts of the city such as Marina, Alamo Square, Pacific Heights and SoMa and the financial district of the city. There were no routes from popular districts such as Richmond, Bayview and Outer Sunset. Access to technology is not evenly distributed, it excludes the poor, non-whites and women, the majority of the population who cannot afford technology, a credit card and health insurance.28 Automation contributes to the creation of inequalities, not to their prevention. These considerations are based on something that is removed: life on a digital platform is reserved for those who already have a credit card, an apartment and a car.

26 See

McAfee and Brynjolfsson [35]. Spencer [36]. 28 See Kaiser Family Foundation [37]; Ayanian [38]. 27 See

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Unmanned cars on their own have shed light on a decisive aspect of the digital revolution. “The reason Uber could be expensive is because you’re not just paying for the car—you’re paying for the other dude in the car” is the explanation as to why Uber’s prices are high. The “dude” is the driver, the one that Uber pretends not to hire because he or she is an “entrepreneur” who provides the car and the gasoline and who is therefore paying Uber to work. The former Uber CEO and founder Kalanick went on to explain: “When there’s no other dude in the car, the cost of taking an Uber anywhere becomes cheaper than owning a vehicle. So the magic there is, you basically bring the cost below the cost of ownership for everybody, and then car ownership goes away.”29 The goal of a car without a driver is also pursued by Lyft, Uber’s competitor in the United States, which has agreements with Ford, Google, Jaguar Land Rover, and is controlled by Tata Motors and the startups Drive.ai and NuTonomy. The company also has a partnership with General Motors, which has invested about five hundred million dollars in driverless cars. Ford plans to invest one billion dollars over five years in Argo Ai, a company that works on artificial intelligence.30 Unmanned cars will make labour-power redundant by allowing companies and customers to “magically” contact one another. The same might happen with drivers of public transport, cabs, trains and, why not, airplanes and submarines. Since the labour-power of the many produces the wealth of the few, it is necessary to remove the existence of the few and pretend it is unmanned machines that produce for the few. This pretence is the building block of the Silicon Valley’s dazzling marketing. The latest predictions suggest that autonomous driving will be real between 2025 and 2030. Compared to the initial prophecy made by Sergei Brin, co-founder of Google, automation is at least twelve years behind schedule. In 2012 it was supposed to be 2017.31 In the field of innovation it is normal to make wrong predictions and unrealistic announcements, which serve to increase the hype effect on the stock market. The history of fiction-technology is full of examples: in 1968 Marvin Minsky from MIT announced the development of machines similar to Hal from 2001: A Space Odyssey. The prophecy was not fulfilled. Two thousand years have passed since resurrection was promised, we cannot wait as many years for robots to come to life and reproduce thanks to a “miraculous” immaculate conception such as the one shown in Blade Runner 2049—where an android gives birth to a human after a techno-bodily encounter with her hunter. Automobile manufacturers—Fca, BMW, Volvo or General Motors—exploit the appeal of this technological fantasy, but limit themselves to more modest levels of autonomy. The Society of automotive engineers (Sae) has drawn up a scale from one to five: most automation systems are limited to providing assistance in case of overtaking or parking (level two). Tesla claims it wants to reach level five, total automation. In many other cases, billions of dollars are spent on tests to boost brands 29 See

Newton [39]. “Ford Motor: si allea con l’anti-Uber Lyft per sviluppo veicoli autonomi”, Radiocor-Il Sole 24 ore, (27 September 2017). 31 See Niccolai [40]. 30 See

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in the stock market before the middle of August or after Christmas. The hype approach to automation does not provide any certainty regarding the ability of “intelligent” systems to commit fewer errors than the “human” systems they intend to replace.32 Google Cars have caused fourteen accidents in six years of experiments and the first injuries involving interference caused by another car driven by a human. For automation to deliver its promised benefits there must be no more cars piloted by humans. The programme is an ambitious one, as we say in these cases. Cinematographic nightmares also contribute to render this prophecy fascinating: in a distant future Google Cars might well be hacked and made to behave like the crazy truck in the film Duel by Steven Spielberg. Also an autopilot may cause a plane to crash into a mountain. The same could happen to the four-wheeled robotic car used for shopping. Something concrete can be said in the midst of this confusion between imagination and reality. Like all technology, also automatic machines will be subjected to programmed obsolescence: they will stop working when manufacturers decide to place a new product on the market. When the total automation of some consumer goods for the global middle class is announced, another paradox is always omitted: the same robots that are supposed to make the labour of the workers in the automotive industry unnecessary require the work of thousands of other workers to carry out their task. Companies operating in this sector employ thousands of workers in offshoring and outsourcing countries such as India and China. The apps we use on the sofa work because there are thousands of cyclists or drivers waiting for a call. Unmanned cars will function thanks to the digital work of those who will have to teach robots to recognise pedestrians and cyclists. Granted that an automaton will be able to perform human work, the looming possibility of error will produce new jobs in the areas of control, services, programming and insurance to prevent or remedy the damage produced by Google Cars. There are legions of labelling workers in charge of tagging and categorising thousands of hours of video footage, frame by frame, recorded by prototypes of automatic machines that roam around Pittsburgh or Phoenix. Machines might even be able to deliver super-powers, but data workers will still be tasked with helping algorithms become intelligent and with sending data to processing centres where it will be reprocessed and stored by yet other data workers. Data workers will in turn re-process data, transcribe small audio clips, tag photos, insert unstructured text into databases, moderate comments, select ads for user profiles,33 and guide algorithms based on a certain culture. This work has allowed considerable progress in computational power and will help robots tell the difference between a bush and a dog on the motorway. Humans will continue to refine the search for algorithms in the ranking wars: engineers will rely on workers called raters—contractors who often work on personal computers in their homes—to evaluate the search for pages and rank them. “Classifiers” will label pages as “vital”, “useful”, “quite relevant” or “spam”. Google engineers will import the ratings into Hummingbird, an algorithm composed of 32 See 33 See

Bainbridge [41]; Parasuraman and Riley [42]; Caio [43]. Chen [44].

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specialised extensions: PageRank will rate web pages based on links; Panda will improve search results; Penguin and PayDay will limit spam; Pigeon will improve search results; Top Heavy will lower the ranking of sites that are full of advertising; Mobile Friendly will reward web pages that can be viewed on smartphones; Pirate will fight copyright infringement. RankBrain, a self-learning algorithm based on artificial intelligence, will identify new and more advanced versions. Behind this device there will still be its users, those who with their labour-power produce billions of searches then reprocessed by algorithms and monetised thanks to ads on GoogleAds.34 The concealment of all this work responds to a general rule imposed by the financial market on technology companies: they must attract investments and demonstrate that they do not employ manpower.35 It is a law of the venture capital market that reflects a widespread belief in contemporary economy: “work is over” because now Capital produces it. To demonstrate this metaphysical thesis, employment data are manipulated: when we talk about “unicorns” worth more than one billion dollars, improperly defined as startups,36 only direct employees are counted, not personnel employed intermittently by platforms and spin-offs. Digital platforms do not need to employ thousands of people because millions of users work for them for free by providing their profiles to commercial offers. Uber and home delivery companies employ hundreds of thousands of people who work in a non-subordinate way, while in fact they are subordinate workers in all respects. The fact is that they are invisible. While waiting for the day cars and bicycles will move around by themselves, humans will continue to drive because intelligent machines are not able to improvise. Automaton is not capable of using tacit knowledge to boost unplanned development of operational knowledge and cannot incorporate material culture or bodily memory into a process that cannot be defined in advance.37 Its algorithms depend on how they are used by their owners and users. On their own they are unusable. They live in the interaction between human and machine and in their mutual incorporation and individuation. The relationship between labour-power and automation is an immanent one. Variables are something else—the industrial cost of machine learning for example. In the case of automated driving, creating and updating maps for all US cities will cost billions of dollars every year. Not to mention the 3D map updates needed to recognise unexpected objects and behaviours. This will require significantly more data collection than what led to the creation of Google Maps. Even when the four million miles of US public roads have been digitised, unforeseen events to which a route is subject to will still have to be updated continuously—a new

34 See

Pasquinelli [45]. Bradshaw [46]. 36 See Lee [47]. On the rise of digital “unicorns” in China see Leplâtre [48]. 37 See Leroi-Gourhan [49]. On tacit or implicit knowledge versus explicit or operative knowledge, see Polanyi [50]. On the use of these concepts in human resource management, in an entrepreneurial perspective, see Nonaka and Takeuchi [51]. 35 See

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traffic light, snow, rain or a one-way street coming out of nowhere.38 Or kangaroos: this is the problem of Volvo’s automatic car that has, however, made progress with deer, moose and caribou.39 Automation is not simply a matter of machines that carry out the work of men, it is about computerised organisation that needs living labour at every juncture of its network. This trend can be observed in logistics where the automated economy governs gigantic aggregations. It can be seen in the logistics hubs in the Italian regions of Emilia Romagna, Veneto and Lombardy, for example, where companies continue to concentrate masses of workers in one place and manage them with flexible networks of contracts and subcontracts. In the United States there are at least sixty clusters, three of which employ at least one hundred thousand people each: the port of New York and New Jersey, Los Angeles, Long Beach and Chicago.40 Railways, trucks, transportation, warehouses and infrastructure make up the supply chain.41 Companies make an intensive use of information technology and mathematical models of specialised software. Thousands of humans guard machines, move goods, coordinate the computerised activities of cranes, assign an algorithm to the trajectories of a cargo ship in logistics platforms. They are incorporated into an infrastructure managed by programmers who design algorithms, their labour-power is reduced to a cybernetic data feed-back from which algorithms extract value, optimising productivity. Automation affects the transport and distribution of products and has brought about the transformation by which one of the greatest production centres—the United States—has gone from being a producer of goods to being a developer of logistics and goods handling.42 Another field where there is a tendency to conceal the labour-power and promote the fantasy of machines that write and translate on their own is journalism. There is a widespread belief that what produces the fake news shared on the web is a series of programmes that automatically respond to messages (bots) or are used to create malware (botnets). This is not true. In fact, it is freelancers and workers of click factories around the world who, in order to earn a salary that cannot be made in any other way, invent hoaxes that generate advertising and revenue for online companies. The pirates of the Web have become tools and conscious actors of electoral campaigns. They offer the market their services. The most sensational case was that of the Macedonian, Georgian, US and Canadian sites that supported the electoral campaign won by Donald Trump in 2016.43 Keeping silent about the existence of these people, ignoring digital opportunism and attributing their production to machines, does not only mean confirming algorithmic alienation, but neglecting the material reality of platform capitalism: automation takes place alongside the disintegration of wages, while the search for income takes unthinkable paths. 38 See

Gomes [52]; See Id. [53]. Zhou [54]. 40 See Brooks and Moody [55]. 41 See Grappi [56]. 42 See Slaughter [57]. 43 See Ciccarelli [58]. 39 See

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5.5 Human Services in the Gig Economy In digital platform capitalism labour-power is understood as a passive condition, a natural accident, a hindrance or a gift. In the best cases it is considered to be a fruit found on trees waiting to be picked, or given as a gift, by a mechanical arm that will replace seasonal harvesters. Its naturalisation serves to tame docile bodies and transform them into the helpers of automation. Let’s take the gig economy. This expression is used to describe the jobs of riders and drivers who deliver food for Foodora or Deliveroo, Uber drivers or workers who take on electronic micro-jobs for Amazon. What has been eliminated from the expression “gig economy” is the root “work” which connects the activity of those who lend themselves to the figure of the worker. There is no relationship between the English word “gig” and the word “work”, arbeit, trabajo, travail. Nor does the word contain a reference to the sacrifice or effort expressed by the Latin labor or the Greek ponos.44 Also the Greek root of ergon has been eliminated, that is, work understood as energy, work or action that cannot be taken separately from the skills or capacities of those who possess them. “Gig” in English means “dead-end job”, “performance” and “show”. What these subjects do is lend themselves, not their work: they perform a task that is controlled by an algorithm. This performance is viewed as a show—a game, because it entails no effort. “Gig-work” is unrelated to “work” as in “paid performance”. The severed semantic connection between “gig” and “work” causes workers to be described with animal metaphors and fantastic references. TaskRabbit, a digital platform in the area of domestic work acquired by Ikea, defines workers as “rabbits”. They are tasked with cleaning and must disappear like rabbits before the owners come home. What counts is the execution of the task decided by the algorithm and the request of the employer or the platform that mediates the request and “activates” the subject. Workers are identified with the commodity they produce: the shoemaker is the shoe, the potter is the pot, the Mechanical Turk is a hyper-simplified task for intelligent primates. Their work is pure execution and is indistinguishable from the objects being produced, which are signs created by a high frequency exchange without any subjects.45 As in the ancient Greek world,46 also in the case of the digital revolution we cannot speak of one single abstract function called work that includes all trades, but of a plurality of different trades, each of which defines a particular type of activity that produces a specific type of work. Labour-power is not what allows algorithms to become “smarter”, it is the application of an algorithmic intelligence that develops without the help of humans.47 In the jargon of Amazon Mechanical Turk this work is called “Human Intelligence Task” (HITs). It consists in providing services that machines cannot do: recognise images, transcribe codes or texts, assign algorithms to a client’s profile to produce customised advertising offer on a platform. The human at the service of the 44 See

Jaccard [59]. Zehle and Rossiter [60]. 46 See Vernant and Vidal-Naquet [61, 24]. 47 Irani [62]. 45 See

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machine performs very elementary tasks somewhat similar to activities carried out until recently by those who logged on a blog to compile Captcha codes (Completely Automated Public Turing test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart). These are images used by developers to distinguish people from algorithms that try to parasitise an operating system. Human work increases the power of algorithms, but it is not acknowledged. Its priority over machines is denied because it is viewed as an input or support at the service of powerful algorithms (algocracy). Amazon defines its digital micro-workers as human-as-a-service, not workers.48 The choice of this category invalidates modern labour law and recalls the Roman law that made a distinction between work for service and work for profit. Service was provided by slaves, while profit49 was generated by free men. At that time, however, the distinction was not so rigid because it was possible, for example, for a slave to reach a position as manager of an agricultural enterprise. And vice versa: free men could be exploited like slaves.50 The reference to Roman law is useful to explain how contemporary labour-power has been reduced to capital, i.e. to the ownership of those who govern platforms, not of those who provide a service. The idea of work as a human service results from the total subordination of workers to their employers and from the removal of the very meaning of productive activity in the eyes of workers. The identity of workers—understood in the modern sense of sellers of labour-power—is replaced by that of “things” owned by proprietors. Work is no longer the action that puts labourpower—whose only proprietor is the worker who transfers it—to work in exchange for a salary, it is the expression of the ownership of those who obtain a profit from work that belongs to them. This expropriation of the value produced by work is accompanied by the removal of work as a modern category. To identify it with a service, in fact, means to deny the existence of an employment relationship linked to the production of a commodity. This does not in any way invalidate the fact that work as a service still produces profit. When Roman slaves worked outside the domestic environment, they continued to be viewed as property of their master: they did not produce value because they were part of an income that multiplied spontaneously, without any need to acknowledge the existence of their work. They had no right to this income, which was like fruit picked from the master’s tree—in other words income was not the material production of their actions. Masters were the owners of the slaves they used and they remained the owners of the fruit produced by their activity. Many workers find themselves in the same situation today. Most of them are not slaves, although they are in a servile position. They are not holders of an employment contract because they are not subjects of law. If a contract does exist, its signatories are the owner of a digital platform and the client, not the worker. The employment relationship is denied beforehand: the picture is that of an owner who takes charge 48 Irani

and Silberman [63].

49 On the crisis and resources of labour law in the digital revolution, see Del Punta [64, 330]; Allegri

and Bronzini [65]; Tullini [66]; Perulli [67]. 50 Thomas [68].

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of the tasks performed by workers while what workers do is not provide their time and activities, but donate these as if they were pursuing a hobby. The use of men and women and their work are the same thing, while the profit made by the owner is confused with the personal service provided by the workers. In the case of digital micro-jobs, labour-power is the organic extension of the platform, just as slaves in Rome were extensions of their master. Men and women are things among things, a “fruitful” thing without subjectivity. Their work is a form of natural service, they are not subjects of a production process.51 Nothing is owed to them, certainly not the rights and the recognition of the legal status of “workers”. The new representation of work has also changed the meaning of the category of “human”. In platform capitalism we speak of human-as-computation: computational being actualises Martin Heidegger’s analysis of technology. Humanness is reduced to machination [Machenschaft] and is the expression of a will to power, a manifestation of the “oblivion of being”.52 From this reduction of life to the digital what emerges is the same feeling of irreversible destiny, of an ontological imprint left by technology on human beings. This situation is considered merely as the expression of a power that is exerted by an impersonal and omnipotent machine. As in the ontological vision of technology, power is naturalised and is viewed as being objective and irreversible. Automatic computing appropriates some functions of human intelligence and substitutes the behaviour of living beings, performing a function that is not only passive but also proactive. “We are moving towards an increasingly marked separation between the world of people and the world of machines, due to the growing autonomy of the latter. The transfer of the power of definition of persons and of their identity from the sphere of human evaluation to that of automatic decision making is becoming more accentuated.”53 The proprietary view of work and its technical ontology reduce labour-power to an IT application.54 A worker is activated with a click and can be “switched off” with a button. Life is transformed into a binary code—1-0-0-1—and follows the criteria of algocratic governance. Algocracy intervenes on the difference between what is determined and what is determinable in life, on the desire for something and the affirmation of a desire that goes beyond the ratio of a purchase, an object, a commodity. It structures the possible field of action of individuals in a pre-conscious way and determines the way they conceive of the faculty to use life.55 Algocracy does not erase reality, but aspires to determine it in advance through a transparent government that involves individuals themselves. Individuals no longer aspire to criticise their condition that is subordinate to the will of others, but to a government not of men but of machines which may prevent the unpredictability of human choices and ensure the apparent neutrality of the management of human services. A narrative has taken shape that contaminates the foundations of emancipation and does away with the 51 De

Robertis [69, 22]. [70]. See Id. [71]. 53 Rodotà [72, 328]. 54 De Stefano [73]. 55 See Foucault [74, 635–657]. 52 Heidegger

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notions of criticism and ethics, the main tools for creating a different subjectivity in a power relationship.56 The idea of abstract labour, however, has not completely disappeared. Today it constitutes the remote memory of discontinuity with respect to a technological, juridical and economic dispositif that denies the existence of work in general—what Marx called labour tout court, or abstract labour—and the possibility of restoring the dignity of human beings through work. Already Roman law acknowledged the abstraction of labour, but not of capital.57 Today it can be recognised better because of a widespread awareness, and because of the rules of labour and constitutional law still in force. However, it is fundamental to stress that the possibility of subjectification beyond work understood as the “human service” of digital capital does not derive from a metaphysical principle, but from a power that is available to become labour: labour-power. The existence of labour in general can be invoked only when there is a process that leads to production and extraction of value. Per se, considered as an abstraction, labour is alienation.

5.6 Digital Work The productive activity carried out on platforms has been defined as digital work. The English word “digital” derives from the Latin digitus. Digital work is, literally, the work performed by a click of the finger. The action of a finger on a mouse, on a button or a screen is the material activity that connects the subject to a screen, it is what a series of experiences have in common, from a “like” on a social network to the sorting of videos, of tweets, the transcription of digitised documents, the moderation of comments, the writing of blogs.58 In a more comprehensive way, digital work is the training that allows algorithms to become intelligent. This activity is the product of cooperation between machines, workers and consumers and is influenced by cultures, experiences, knowledge, consumption and public opinion. Their interaction is the basis of a new economy that extracts the wealth produced by human labour-power, but that does not return it to those who have made it profitable. It distributes it to the owners of digital platforms in the form of profit. Digital labour is the productive activity carried out for the profit of digital platform owners. On these e-Infrastructures the labour-power of consumers and users is employed twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week in the creation of free or paid relations and content; in the connection of customers with independent suppliers of goods or services; in the transfer of goods and information in real time on the Internet and in industry, services, communication or logistics. Platforms act as intermediaries between individuals and the marketplace; they recruit labour-power through mobile applications and portals; they allow to automatically match digital labour supply and demand in an online marketplace; they combine two or more people online 56 See

Rouvroy and Berns [75]. Y. Thomas, L’ «usage» et les «fruits» de l’esclave, cit. 58 Casilli [76, 17]. 57 See

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and remotely govern their interactions. The conflict between labour-power and the owners of the applications that organise and exploit it characterises “digital platform capitalism”.59 Digital work is a social relation of production whose very nature is contradictory. On the one hand, it favours the activation of “creative”, responsible and innovative individuals; on the other hand, it places these same individuals in a state of working, economic and psychological subordination. This condition affects a growing number of people who carry out more or less specialised activities in a continuous way and constitute a subclass of social phantoms at the service of algorithms.60 Their number is considerable, though alone this number is not able to account for the phenomenon. It is life, as well as work, that has been subsumed by digital capitalism: anyone can create profit for platforms by using them daily. Digital labour involves the intellectual, manual, biological, relational and sexual faculties of the available labour-power. These are the same faculties employed by women in care or domestic work, also concealed in a capitalist and patriarchal society.61 Today these capacities are required of everyone, also through platforms, and are subject to the same conditions of precariousness, flexibility and gratuitousness.62 It is a shared experience, characterised by the fragmentation of services and a plurality of forms of subordination.63 In this context hidden digital work that allows platforms to develop artificial intelligence, automatic learning of algorithms and Big Data have often been compared to the care work that takes place in private homes, to cleaning in offices carried out mainly by women and immigrants at dawn or dusk, when they are invisible to others. Digital workers make platform economics possible in the same way that care work makes domestic work possible.64 The types of digital work can be classified as follows: • Prosumerism, is the general activity of labour-power permanently engaged in a global digital infrastructure for production and consumption.65 It derives from the word “prosumer”, in which the producer and consumer cannot be distinguished—“prosumer” is formed by these two words.66 Digital economy studies use the word “prosumption”, which means the autonomous creation of value for companies with no compensation. From this activity, prosumers obtain another type of payment in return: personal visibility through which they believe they are enhancing their “human capital”, while this visibility is actually the instrument devised by a system whose purpose is unknown. Prosumers are a living 59 Abdelnour and Méda [77]; Vercellone et al. [78]. Prassl [79]; Srnicek [80]; Vecchi [81]; Huws [82]; Fuchs [83]; Scholz [4]. 60 Grary and Suri [84]. 61 Federici [85]. 62 Armano and Murgia [86]. 63 The process has been defined as “feminisation of work”, see Dini and Tarantino [87]; Morini [88]; Power [89]. 64 Irani [90]; Lohr [91]; Irani [7]. 65 Stiegler [92]; Crary [93]. On the concept of total mobilisation of labour-power see Supiot [94]. 66 Toeffler [95]; Tapscott and Williams [96]; Dujarier [97]; Ritzer and Jurgenson [98].

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contradiction: on the one hand, they believe that theirs is not a job, but a way of spending their free time; on the other hand, they behave like “Ego entrepreneurs”, like “person-businesses”67 who work for themselves, but who actually pursue the interests of platforms, companies or digital demagogues who use the net to create political consensus68 ; • Microwork: consists in electronic micro-jobs, on-demand work, piecework and subcontracting, sold by a widespread and global labour-power that trains automatic systems based on algorithms. It can take place in a click farm, in homes or on smartphones. These workers are dehumanised and defined as Humans-as-aservice. Their digital work is called “Human intelligence task” because it trains algorithms to perform actions more efficiently; • Freelancing online, is carried out by a specialised and flexible workforce with technical and professional skills, able to update and develop relational skills. The online freelance marketplace includes micro-jobs whose execution responds to the logic of a job opportunity announcement on a platform. These activities take longer than the execution of mechanical tasks because they are part of more complex projects. The following forms of labour-power recruitment have been identified within this framework: • Crowd work, where the task is not assigned to a specific individual but to a group of people or small units that cooperate and is assigned by companies that use crowd-sourcing to recruit crowd workers; • Gig work: the task is performed by a person, directed by an algorithm, in a given space-time; • Cloud work: it is carried out by freelancers and piece-workers and is advertised on online markets.69 Digital work takes place in a grey area between subordinate work, selfemployment and enterprise. Along this frontier hybrid figures have emerged where the subject may be both self-employed and an independent contractor; both worker and dependent contractor; freelance or prosumer. In the course of a lifetime the same individual can be recruited as a micro-worker in the field of crowd work or gig work and as an online freelancer on the cloud work market, or vice versa. Every day he or she works as a prosumer for platform owners. This grey zone is the product of the “casualisation” of subordinate and autonomous work.70 Its specificity is to prevent digital work from being appropriately acknowledged. This happens in particular on on-demand platforms where a subordinate worker coordinated by algorithms tends to be treated as a self-employed worker. These are frequent techniques that can be found throughput the labour market, not 67 See

Nicoli and Paltrinieri [99]; Abdelnour [100]; Dardot and Laval [101]; Gorz [102]. [103]. 69 Schmidt [104]. 70 De Stefano [105]; Id. [106]. Aolisi and De Stefano [107]. 68 Fuchs

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only in the digital one. They are used to offload business costs onto the shoulders of workers; avoid employment contracts; maternity, paid holidays, accident insurance, social security, sick leave. In these cases the employment contract is replaced by a service contract. In other cases there is an auction system in place: a job is sold on a platform for a few cents, candidates answer a call and take part in a tender. Whoever wins does the job for a few cents. This system is not regulated by a waged-employment relationship, but by a digital employment relationship based on the “taskification” of work, which translates all work into piecework. Platforms treat this work as limited performance, evaluated in real time on the basis of strict performance indicators and outsourced with respect to the company that treats its workers not as workers, but as operators of a function, suppliers, “collaborators” who are not granted any rights. Labour-power is not the expression of a faculty possessed by real people, but a service on which the degree of customer satisfaction depends.71 Digital work retains some characteristics of the organisation of labour in the manufacturing industry starting from the eighties. For this reason it has also been termed “Taylorism 2.0” and is considered an important element of the “uberisation” of work.72 Compared to the first generation of Taylorism, created between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and based on the adaptation of the worker to the needs of the machine, the second generation called, “toyotism”, adopted the criterion of mutual interaction. The worker is both the object and the subject of an ergonomic control of performance. This system is designed to prevent risks linked to stress, regulate production timing and increase productivity. The “Taylorism 2.0” of on-demand work platforms has applied the same logic to the occasional services of gig workers, suppliers and customers. Although they occupy different positions, all these figures can be evaluated—even though the platform coordinating the exchanges and making the most profit has the last say. The tasks of digital workers are not mechanical tasks. Workers actively take part in the evaluation system. They experience the paradoxical condition of heterodirect autonomy: they are free to work at any time, but are obliged to perform certain tasks when they work. The introduction of digital work in factories and its impact on labour should also be considered. In Italy there has been much talk about how innovative the platform called “Industria 4.0” is, compared to information technology and just-in-time production protocols introduced in factories starting in the eighties. There are many shared elements with the computer integrated manufacturing system—“Computer Integrated Manufactoring” (Cim). The so-called “Fourth Industrial Revolution” is an improvement in the control of labour that has been developed in the last decades: the “World Class Manufacturing” (Wcm) method, applied in Fiat-Fca factories in Italy with the name “Ergo Uas”, is an example of this.73 New applications improve the integration of information along the value chain from

71 Rossiter

[108]. [109]. 73 Tuccino [110]. 72 Scholz

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supplier to consumer, multidirectional communication between production processes and products, cyber-security of networked and open systems operations.74

5.7 The Role of Platforms Digital work takes place on platforms. The following list, given by way of example, classifies the existing models that organise production: • Work on demand platforms: for instance digital piecework on Amazon Mechanical Turk that combines recruiters and workers to perform small, repetitive, unskilled tasks to train artificial intelligence systems; Crowdflower/FigureEight recruits workers to help clients develop algorithm learning technologies; platforms that subcontract micro-jobs from large orders (ClickWorker); platforms that connect self-employment to demand in the field of domestic work, moving, delivery and handywork sectors (TaskRabbit); platforms that sell freelance services to businesses and collaborate remotely with the self-employed (Upwork); platforms that connect passengers and drivers (Uber and Lyft); Deliveroo or Foodora food tech companies that organise the work of riders and drivers through an algorithm and connect customers and businesses by profiting from the reduced costs of labour. These are the platforms that produce the gig economy; • Advertising platforms such as Google, YouTube, Twitter or Facebook that extract information from their users to resell their profiles in the form of advertising slots; • Cloud platforms such as Amazon Web Services that create hardware and software for digitally dependent markets, sell them to businesses of all kinds and create a monopoly based on knowledge; • Capital platforms aimed at fundraising and crowdfunding: Kickstarter and Indiegogo, for example; • Real estate platforms that match supply and demand for micro-rentals in the field of tourism: Airbnb75 ; • Logistic platforms that control the movement of goods travelling by land, air and sea and coordinate the material work carried out in warehouses, supermarkets, ports, hubs: this is the core business of Amazon e-commerce76 ; • Industrial platforms such as General Electric or Siemens that build hardware and software, lower the costs of manufacturing production, transform goods into services (so-called “Industry 4.0”); • Product platforms such as Spotify or Netflix that generate profits from subscriptions to music, film or other entertainment products; • Dating platforms such as Tinder that allow people to meet for sexual purposes.

74 Garibaldo

[111]; Menez et al. [112]; Maier and Student [113]. [114]. 76 Malet [115]. 75 Gainsforth

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Platforms may also acquire functions from other platforms or create new activities. For instance Facebook, Google and Apple aim to open up to banking. Google is interested in data relating to the health of the population in order to develop software for preventive diagnostics to be sold to insurance companies and hospitals. Uber is also a platform for on-demand work, digital piecework and light urban logistics for hire. Facebook and Google are also publishers and have the power to decide the fate of newspapers. The tendency to create conglomerates has been recorded in the Asian area: in China, for example, with Badu or Tencent; in South Korea with Kakao, a galaxy of services ranging from online payment to Uber-like taxis to video games. The integration between different systems of work organisation and the growing specialisation in production has been achieved in a lasting way, for example, by a company such as Amazon whose main activity is the delivery of goods ordered on its e-commerce platform. Work inside the company is divided in various areas: flexible labour; self-employed work of drivers who deliver goods for the main suppliers and sub-suppliers of the company; online micro work carried out by “Mechanical Turks” on the Amazon Mechanical Turk platform; IT work to produce software for cloud technologies and ensure a monopoly in the digital economy; employee work in supermarkets and monitoring of automated checkouts; cultural work necessary for the production of content or entertainment, namely TV series. These activities are digitised to increase productivity and turn-over in a production process that requires a large number of people to function. Amazon is a demonstration that digital work is intertwined with the materiality of production and is part of a revolution in logistics that involves material infrastructure (roads, ports, planes), intangible infrastructure (platforms) and services.77 All platforms are part of an on-demand digital economy surveyed in over a hundred countries. By 2016, an estimated 131.5 million adult citizens in the US had already provided digital work by offering services on platforms. 12 million users offered their services on platforms such as Upwork, while competitors like freelancer.com had more than 24 million users,78 CrowdFlower had 5 million. Uber had 160,000 drivers in 2015 in the US alone, its competitor Lyft had 50,000. In 2016 more than a quarter of the 5 million digital workers surveyed in the UK claimed to earn a share of their annual income from platforms. The same year in Austria only 2.4 per cent of workers claimed to make all their income on platforms, 1.7 per cent in the Netherlands and 2.6 per cent in Germany.79 In the area of service sharing platforms, known as witkey, in China more than 7 million users were recorded for Witmart, 3.2 million for Taskcn, and more than 3 million for Epweike. These figures do not indicate jobs, but individual services provided at least once on one of these platforms.80

77 See the investigative report on work in Amazon, LaVecchia and Mitchell [116]. On the revolution

underway in the area of logistics see Grappi [56]. Bologna [117]; Id. [118]. 78 Steinmetz [119]. 79 Feps Studies [120]; Huws Ursula and Joyce [121]. 80 Casilli [122].

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The on-demand economy is part of an international digital division of labour. This economy is based on the provision of products and services outsourced online. It is a global multiscale system that includes the extractive industry of the materials necessary to produce smartphones or personal computers: Coltan in Congo, for example; assembly factories such as Foxconn in China81 ; digital micro-job factories, known as click farms, connected with clients in a system of outsourcing and offshoring; personal computers and smartphones on which users carry out filtering activities and moderate comments on social networks. These activities provide the material and work for the production of digital capitalism. In the on-demand economy, a digital micro-job system has been devised that connects the former colonies with the former colonising countries through procurement and subcontracting networks. It has been calculated that the countries where this work is carried out are the Philippines and India; the countries that buy it are the United States, Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom.82 The division of labour responds to a mobile economic geography where exchange takes place between the new economic powers and their suppliers: for example China and neighbouring countries. It also takes place between supplier countries and other subcontractors. The South is not the only place where digital micro-jobs are performed, nor is the North the only privileged area buying this work thanks to its economic power. In fact, the production and purchase of digital work takes place both in the North and in the South, and at all other latitudes. Specialisations change from country to country, but the common element is the exploitation of marginal subjects on the labour market who are in a condition of social, racial or sexual subordination and are willing to perform tasks on one or more of these platforms.83 As the continent changes, purchasing power changes. In some countries a modestly remunerated activity makes it possible to survive. In others these activities supplement a precarious income. Indeed also in Western capitalist countries, where we are witnessing an aggressive comeback of absolute poverty, digital work is often needed to survive. In the global digital piecework labour market, mass connectivity has led to an oversupply of labour, especially among the low-income segments of the world’s population. There are fewer jobs than people willing to do them. The logic of relocation has always been to cut and suppress costs. It should therefore come as no surprise that online outsourcing has accelerated this trend. In addition, turn-over prevents the creation of stable employment relations. The lack of physical meeting places prevents solidarity and increases competition. Platforms limit the information that workers can collect, while the fact that production is divided and carried out in different places makes it impossible to organise collective actions. Although it is possible to use digital tools to find work the other side of the world, workers know little or nothing about the system they are part of in their own country. They cannot improve their position economically, nor do they have control over the means of production. Platforms are not public spaces, but private marketplaces. They tend to avoid taxes 81 Ngai

et al. [123]. et al. [124]; Graham et al. [125]. 83 Fuchs [126]. 82 Wood

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because they operate beyond national jurisdictions and claim self-regulation. Laws protecting workers are ignored in some cases, sometimes intentionally.84

5.8 Total Mobilisation Digital platforms govern labour-power in real time in the modalities that characterise Taylorism 2.0, also known as the “uberisation” of work.85 First generation Taylorism organised labour-power and measured the “merit” of worker-machines and the quality of their work. With the new generation of Taylorism, algorithms collect data on human performance and insert the data into a system for the industrial organisation of tasks. With this mode of production, an independent labour-power is hired and subjected to a repetitive performance mechanism. Its purpose is similar to that of an assembly line: “developing in the worker to the highest degree automatic and mechanical attitudes, breaking up the old psycho-physical nexus of qualified professional work, which demands a certain active participation of intelligence, fantasy and initiative on the part of the worker, and reducing productive operations exclusively to the mechanical, physical aspect.”86 Platforms govern labour-power through continuous competition, performance, evaluation; they enhance widespread social subordination and conceal to what extent cooperation is necessary for the algorithms to function. The subjects captured by these dispositifs have no alternative: they must be employable—i.e. available to carry out any type of work—and ready to perform a task in the hope of earning an income in exchange. Idleness is viewed as the fault of individuals, the moral condition of a “wasted” labour force.87 New work technologies function like a sort of moral blackmail and force individuals to be active, to consume an enormous amount of psycho-physical energy, in what is the total mobilisation of labour-power: [Ernst Junger’s] concept of total mobilisation influenced Carl Schmitt’s concept of the Total State and Hannah Arendt’s concept of totalitarianism. Its heuristic value remains powerful, because it exists today in the new form of the Total Market, in which every existence is converted into a quantifiable resource and the inhabitants of every nation of the world are precipitated into an unceasing, and pitiless, economic war.88

The transformation of the traditional concepts of employment and unemployment is complete89 : The neo-liberal policy with regard to unemployment in particular is perfectly clear. Whatever the rate of unemployment, in a situation of unemployment you absolutely must not intervene 84 Graham

and Amir Anwar [127]. [109]. 86 Gramsci [128, 290]. 87 Bauman [129]. 88 Supiot [130, p. 228]. 89 Zoberman [131]. 85 Scholz

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directly or in the first place on the unemployment, as if full employment should be a political idea and an economic principle to be saved at any cost. What is to be saved, first of all and above all, is the stability of prices. Price stability will in fact allow, subsequently no doubt, both the maintenance of purchasing power and the existence of a higher level of employment than in an unemployment crisis, but full employment is not an objective and it may be that a reserve of unemployment is absolutely necessary for the economy. As, I think it was Röpke said, what is an unemployed person? He is not someone suffering from an economic disability; he is not a social victim. He is a worker in transit. He is a worker in transit between an unprofitable activity and a more profitable activity.90

Employment is a revolving door: it is the permanent transition between different contracts, from a badly paid activity to a free activity, and vice versa. Consequently, unemployment should not only be considered as the lack of paid work, but also as the permanent activation of subjects in search of more formally defined employment within a structurally precarious condition. This search is, in fact, itself work, which does not however coincide with a job, or with an employment contract. It increasingly corresponds to the objectives, the system of rewards and punishments imposed by so-called “active labour policies” aimed at activating, or reactivating, precarious and unemployed people. Total mobilisation makes it possible to explain the digital revolution as a revolution in the logistics of real-time government of the flow of goods, services and information. This government needs labour-power to be employed intermittently in traditional, innovative and poor services. The digital revolution consists in the transformation of tasks into data (datafication), tasks (taskification) and piecework. The digitisation of work makes it possible to permanently mobilise the digitised labour-power—which is in other words reduced to being a sign, a code, an electronic pulse. Labour-power is referred to as a “crowd”,91 it is not the reserve army of labour, a concept Marx coined to understand how the unemployed are used to curb the increase of wages and to replace workers who strike with cheap labour. Mobilisation forces labour-power to be always on the move, regardless of the actual jobs workers might have and of their workplace: it is a mode of production that demands round-the-clock attention.92 What is on the move is an anonymous “crowd” of generic workers, who can be activated or are already at work. No job will modify the condition of marginality crowd-workers find themselves in, nor will it encourage them to develop an “esprit de corps”—crowd-workers constitute the army of the excluded or the poor, they are a kind of “lumpen-proletariat” as the original Marxian expression suggests. Crowdworkers wage an individual war in a “digital swarm”.93 In the swarm, workers are isolated, they do not communicate with their peers except on the occasion of casual encounters to perform a task. Labour-power is switched on and off by a digital device. However, this idea of a “crowd”—or “swarm”—lacking intelligence, composed only of separate individuals and incapable of creating solidarity, does not correspond to 90 Foucault

[132, 139]. [133]. 92 Citton [134]. 93 Han [135]. 91 Standing

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the experience of the crowd-workers of Amazon Mechanical Turk, for example. A crowd, in fact, is intelligent and is able to network and cooperate.94 Workers build solidarity formally and informally, creating relationships over the phone, setting up forums and chats on Facebook, organising groups and unions, sharing information regarding the most lucrative tasks.95 The human, productive and political traits of cooperation have not been lost. A crowd reproduces itself devising new forms of solidarity and is the engine of total mobilisation. Where worker do not adhere, the engine stalls. And when it functions, it turns them into a digital crowd. Digital platforms have created an original employment relationship. Compared to subordinate employment agreements, signed by a worker and an employer, here a third subject has entered the scene: the provider of a contract, the platform that provides services and tasks on the network. The platform plays an intermediary role, it organises the labour-power so it can meet the needs of clients. In turn, workers have several potential clients and can work on several platforms. In addition, workers may also work as employees or with a VAT number outside the platforms. Not to mention that they may also become clients of the companies they depend on to be earn a living. The digital employment relationship is presented as a commercial exchange between a contractor, a provider and a supplier. The commercialisation of the employment agreement eliminates the contract, whereby the employer maintains power, but surrenders a share of economic freedom, while workers give up their independence and accesses social and personal security.96 This exchange is not contemplated in digital capitalism. The worker’s role is concealed. Only the other two parties remain: the employer (the platform) and the contractor (the client) who decide whether, when and how to activate workers.97 A worker is taken into consideration when he or she applies for a job offer. If he or she does not, the job is given to someone else. In the gig economy, providers consider themselves exempt from the taking responsibility for an accident; from having to deal with conflict caused by disagreements over an intermediary’s evaluation of a service provided by a worker; from the employment relationship that binds the worker to a company that uses the services. If there is a mistake, or an injury, the responsibility lies with the worker or the intermediary. Platforms thus protect themselves from any legal consequences deriving from the improper application of labour or safety laws. This is because they are not formally bound by any mutual obligation to workers.98 It is also for this reason that platforms call themselves technology companies and not production companies. Unlike a traditional company, a technology company does not sign employment agreements.

94 Rheingold

[136]. et al. [137]. 96 On the history of subordinate employment relationships see Supiot [138]. 97 Rogers [139]. 98 Id. [140]. 95 Gray

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It claims to be an interface that facilitates relations between contractors and subcontractors with online outsourcing and pretends to do away with the power employers once had by simply applying a software programme, while it is in fact exercising it unilaterally. Obligations only apply to employees whose goal is to gain reputational capital. This capital is created by an arbitrary assessment of their behaviour, merits and biography (i.e. rating). The aim is to implement ranking in order to force workers to compete for lower prices, a better position and more visibility in the eyes of the company and customers. Having a “bad” reputation means losing one’s job.99 The tool for assessing the legitimacy of this ranking system is an audit: administrative control, company monitoring, the comparison of figures by an algorithm. The audit gives an aura of objectivity to reputation and makes it possible to establish the value of a job in relation to the criteria chosen by the company. This comparison is not public, but discretionary. It remains the prerogative of the platforms which have a monopoly over data. The asymmetry of information allows its owners to maintain the power deriving from this evaluation. Reputational work is designed to satisfy the customer’s every whim and ensure the success of the company.100 Uber drivers are paid on the basis of how their reputation is rated by the customers of the platform; a bookshop sells more when it has a good ranking on Amazon, where it is rated by customers who have bought a book; a restaurant increases its turnover if it receives positive ratings on TripAdvisor; a rider is ranked on the basis of how the speed of deliveries is rated. These practices create a relationship of dependence, also a psychological one, between individuals and a platform. These procedures are presented as automatic, aimed at improving the quality of a service, while they are actually techniques of market control and workforce management, areas in which companies accept no interference on the part of institutions and trade unions. This mechanism leads a worker to compete for a reward or to be punished when he or she does not meet targets. The score may vary, but the race is rigged from the start. With on-demand work platforms, the rules can be changed from one day to another to prevent bargaining. If workers do not accept, they are “disconnected”, they are fired with a click.101 The same power is exercised by Facebook in the race for visibility among its users. The platform changes the criteria of algorithms and makes some contents more visible than others, to the point it causes publishers to fail. It can delete content and posts by political actors that do not meet the criteria approved by its owners at any given moment. In the platform economy, consumers who believe they are engaged in a pastime or game are also put to work. Their activity has been defined as free labour: free, unpaid or voluntary work in charitable activities, internships, video game entertainment.102

99 Arvidsson

and Peitersen [141]. and Stark [142]; Van Doorn [143]. 101 Aloisi [144]. 102 Terranova [145]. 100 Rosenblat

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In this respect we speak of “playbour”, “gamebour” or “weisure” (work + leisure).103 These expressions indicate the way play has invaded the domain of work and the gamification of life.104 These processes affect those who sit at a desk in front of a computer as well as a person’s professional life, which is reduced to being voluntary activity—people must pay to work because work does not pay. The subjects of these activities are “prosumers”, a hybrid between producers and consumers who reject both the liberal image of the worker as a passive executor of tasks and wage-earner, and the Marxist image of a conflictual wage-earner. Prosumers are seen as leisure entrepreneurs who seem to have solved the problem of how to survive and are fulfilled by their own “egolatry”. This fictitious narrative is also supported by the companies that refuse to recognise the subordination of Uber riders and drivers—people who freely choose to deliver goods or offer a ride in their car. Who in other words do not do it for work, but for fun. What they are actually doing is performing an activity in exchange for an income: in order to consume they must earn, to earn they must work, and to work they must obey the discipline imposed by the algorithm. Faced with these pressing demands, prosumers discover what they really are: digital workers. The activities of a prosumer take place in the economy of promise, characterised by the idea that unpaid and precarious work is a way of achieving status, a reward, an income.105 In this paroxysmal situation a particular reversal takes place: work is no longer a subordinate activity but a gift of one’s time by people who believe in sharing, in generalised altruism and generosity. Their activity is no longer aimed at a salary, but at creating wealth for companies. Digital platforms also promote aspirational work 106 : voluntary work that sponsors brands and, at the same time, produces the self-exploitation of those who create them. It is an activity based on moral labour through which individuals convince themselves that their own wellbeing coincides with that of entrepreneurs. The misunderstanding of oblative work, an affective service offered without asking for anything in return, has generated a type of subject that suffers from a tragic reversal: the confusion between one’s own freedom and that of the state or the market. Such work leads to a desire for subordination in a system of control that promises social recognition and postpones it indefinitely.107 These characteristics are also present in the affective digital work carried out by prosumers on platforms.108 The result of a double process of datafication of affections and emotional transformation of data, this work produces digital emotional commodities (e-modities).109 It is an evolution of the production of emotions that appeared in the nineteenth century when the fashion, consumer, literary or art industries began taking advantage of the ideas of authenticity, sincerity and intimacy. Since 103 Kücklich

[146]; Lund [147, 63–79]; Fuchs [148, 26–41]. [149, 107 ff]. 105 Bascetta [150]; Id. [151]; Id. [152]; Coin [153]; Ciccarelli [154]. 106 Duffy [155]. 107 Deleuze [156, 177–182]. 108 Alloing and Pierre [157]. 109 Illouz [158]. 104 Ippolita

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then, emotional life has been incorporated into the sphere of production, as well as into the disciplines of psychology, medicine and social control. Digital capitalism has put this decisive aspect of subjectivity to work, asking it to perform affective, relational and communicative work.110 In the new political economy of affect, prosumers seek to capture the attention of others and respond to the imperative of identifying the strategies needed to make intimate life authentic and original. Their work is based on the three cultural models of identity: emotional authenticity and the expression of affects; self-control for professional purposes; and self-knowledge for psychophysical well-being inspired by productivity, “best practices” and “resilience” to market demands.111

5.9 Work Has Not Ended, It Has Increased Digital work proves that work has not ended, and that, on the contrary, it has increasing. The digital revolution has changed the meaning of the concept of work and the position of the labour-power in a process that has rendered every aspect of our existence productive. What has ended is only a model of paid employment, while precarious work increases with automation, together with temporary work, self-employment, apps, in a manner that is very different from the predetermined employment model of the past.112 Technological piecework, divided and isolated tasks, and computerised psycho-physical performance is how labour-power will be described in the next generation. The “fourth industrial revolution” serves to intensify the exploitation of digitally poor labour and to concentrate it in production flows. The prospect is that digital labour will grow in the context of a new standard of generalised temporary work that will replace permanent employment. The way forward has been decided: we already live in a society no longer characterised by fixed employment113 where poor workers—who earn wages but have no employment contract—are paid less than two-thirds of those who are employed full-time.

110 See Lordon [159]; Marazzi [160]; Arvidsson [161, pp. 39–59]; Citton [162, 45–123]. The definitions of “digital labour” and of the political economy of affect are similar to those of “immaterial”, “cognitive” or “virtual” labour: see Gorz [163]; Lazzarato [164]. Fumagalli [165]; Bifo Berardi [166]; Wilkie [167]; Gill and Pratt [168, pp. 1–30]; Vercellone [169]; Hardt and Negri [170]. 111 Citton [171]. 112 This trend was recorded by the ILO in continents where fixed employment has never been the main type of employment, such as South East Asia, South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, and where the average number of employees in total employment is lower than in the rest of the world. In Europe and in OECD countries, there is a strong trend of transformation of subordinate employment into temporary and precarious work. In 2015 less than 40% of employees had a full-time, permanent contract; 60% had temporary fixed-term or part-time contracts, the majority of them were women. Not to mention that more than a quarter of part-time work is involuntary in nature and is the result of a shortage of full-time job opportunities. See International Labour Organization (ILO) [172]. 113 Aronowitz and Di Fazio [173].

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This fact contradicts the dogmatic thesis according to which automation will render the very concept of work redundant.114 It is the repetitive and badly paid jobs that are expected to disappear, while those requiring a higher level of skills will be increasingly fewer and more in demand. This process will accentuate the macroscopic differences between incomes. Compared to other waves of automation, the digital wave is supposedly characterised by a low replacement rate between old and new jobs. It is believed that technology will require less human labour and that the spread of personal computers that began in the eighties has exacerbated the risk of potential job losses. The idea of job polarisation is controversial.115 In fact, some researchers believe the opposite is true. Not all low-wage workers can be replaced by machines, while also high-wage jobs are susceptible to some degree of automation. Only 5% of all occupations will be replaced entirely by machines.116 More research has confirmed the modest impact of automation in Europe: here on average slightly less than 10% of all jobs are at risk of full or partial automation, in Italy it is 9%, in Finland 6%, only in Germany it is 12%.117 The debate tends to be dominated by arguments that fuel the clash between those who claim there is a direct link between automation and unemployment and those who blame wage cuts on digital automation but claim there is no direct link with unemployment.118 This confusion is caused by the lack of data demonstrating the correlation between automation and job losses.119 In 2014 more than 800 economists out of 1900 argued that applications interconnected to robotic media would lead to the loss of more jobs than those they would create by 2025.120 In the same year other economists gave the opposite view: automation is one of the causes of average wage stagnation, despite labour productivity growth, and historically it has not reduced employment.121 The example of the agricultural sector, which at the beginning of the twentieth century employed 41% of the labour force in the United States, was cited to demonstrate this. Today it employs only 2%. Despite this epoch-making transformation, unemployment has not increased in the long run, while the ratio of employment to population has risen. It can be assumed that automation will replicate the same dynamic, although it must be kept in mind that the high growth rates recorded in part of the twentieth century may not repeat themselves in the “secular stagnation”.122 114 See Frey and Osborne [174]. For a more problematic and less alarmist analysis see Mit Work of the Future, “The Work of the Future, Building Better Jobs in an Age of Inteligence Machines,” Mit (November 2020); World Economic Forum, “The Future of Jobs Employment, Skills and Workforce Strategy for the Fourth Industrial Revolution,” (January 2016). 115 Katz and Kearney [175]. 116 “Harnessing automation for a future that works,” McKinsey Global Institute (January 2017). 117 Arntz et al. [176]; OCSE [177]. 118 Freeman [178]. 119 Mishel and Bivens [179]. An attempt to empirically demonstrate the thesis from the perspective of economic and labour market theory can be found in Acemoglu and Restrepo [180]. 120 Smith and Anderson [181]. 121 See IGM Forum [182]. 122 Summers [183]. Id. [184].

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Nor is it certain that automation will lead to the loss of low-skilled jobs; on the contrary, it causes the increase of jobs in the areas of retail, packaging and warehouse activities, requiring unskilled staff in food services, such as cooks, bartenders, secretaries, truck and lorry drivers, taxi and van drivers. Professions that are likely to embody the “fourth industrial revolution”, such as software analysts and designers, are not very different from receptionists in the areas of tourism. Rather than a form of substitution between labour and robots, we need to talk about the creation of broad and dynamic employment chains that increase based on the needs of production and combine digital labour with logistics and warehouse activities. This is indicative of a profound transformation taking place in the labour market, where back office jobs are increasing and front office jobs are decreasing. More people are employed in the handling of goods than in direct sales, which involve contact with consumers. The fact that these workers are invisible because they work at dawn, in suburban warehouses, or after office shifts and university lectures, does not mean they do not exist. The debate on so-called “technological unemployment” has been too busy predicting the end of work and has lost sight of one of the structural elements of this digital revolution. Automation fetishism has inspired the idea that human labour will be replaced by robots.123 This has in turn led to believe that technological innovation is the main factor behind the loss of jobs and rising wage inequality. The computerisation of production is viewed as the cause of increased employment in areas in which jobs pay well, and of unemployment in the areas in which the pay is bad, leading to the polarisation between these types of jobs.124 The theory of the labour-power is inspired by another interpretative model according to which wage inequalities are the result of a process of substitution of subordinate work by precarious work brought about by the political use of technology.125 In this context, digital automation plays a completely different role:126 • it does not eliminate physical workers, but makes labour-power invisible in the production process; • it distributes the necessary labour across the planet, especially where it cannot be seen; • it conceals the relationship of subordination to a capitalist who owns the means of production—a digital platform can, for example, be downloaded by smartphones; • it increasingly multiplies the opportunities for temporary work at the service of platforms, worsening labour conditions; • it neither increases nor decreases unemployment, but manages existing unemployment by putting precarious and unemployed people to work in forms other than the paid employment relationship;

123 See

Cohen [185]; Finn [186]; Morozov [187]. and Osborne [188]; Brynjolfsson and McAfee [189]; Katz and Kearney [175]; World Economic Forum [190]; McKynsey [191]; Arntz et al. [192]. 125 Mishel et al. [193]. 126 Ekbia and Nardi [194]; Zuboff [195]. 124 Frey

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• it increases the productivity of the workforce, through the continuous activation of individuals who carry out online work that is not recognisable by official employment statistics. Digital work, in particular that which falls within the realm of prosumerism, makes it possible to highlight the structural features of the new forms of employment of labour-power: the continuous connection to a platform makes it possible to enhance living labour, that is, all productive aspects of people’s behaviour, lifestyle and relationships. This process can also be observed in the so-called sharing economy. Originally, this economy was based on horizontal relations among peers (“peer to peer”). Later it became clear that platform capitalism uses social cooperation for its own profit, and for this reason the type of language it uses is ambiguous and opportunistic, it allows it to present financial transactions as altruistic actions that are in the interest of a community. Today, peer-to-peer sharing does not promote social equality, it is a tool used by some companies to take control of their customers’ lives and turn them into advocates for their brands. The sharing economy has been absorbed by the on-demand digital economy based on the sale of labour and the use of goods and services in exchange for an occasional or symbolic wage. A car, a flat, a bicycle can be used or be given voluntarily in exchange for a percentage of the transactions between an online service provider and a customer. What drives this economy is the hope that the loss of income and the impoverishment of the middle class will stop. This happens episodically at the cost of funding companies that speculate on a condition of distress in return for a fraction of the profit made. In a society in which low wages, precariousness and growing inequalities are structural, that is disrupted by increasingly violent and recurring economic crises, casual work on platforms and temporary rental of property are viewed as an alternative. These means are a last chance to occasionally escape poverty. However, the working and middle classes, heavily affected by the 2008 financial crisis and the 2020 coronavirus crisis, will not be relieved of poverty and their condition will only worsen. The new law is: what is yours (of the customer, worker or owner) is mine (of the platform). The exact opposite of the equality and horizontality of sharing that prevailed in the early days of the internet—what is mine is also yours.127

5.10 Beyond Surveillance Capitalism Digital capitalism intervenes constantly in the life of the labour-power. Its aim is not to liberate it and allow it to achieve its potential at a given moment in history, but to eradicate all forms of becoming other than the ones that have been programmed. This is the goal of “algorithmic governmentality”: the government of life through the application of profiling algorithms to huge amounts of data produced by the 127 Slee

[196]; Sundararajan [197]. Frenken and Schor [198]; O’Connor [199]; Singer [200]; Pasquale and Vaidhyanathan [201].

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labour-power combined with the data obtained from its interactions with physical and informational space. Its aim is to shape the mindset of individuals by pushing them to act in a predictable way.128 Labour-power is considered free raw material and its experience is transformed into a “proprietary behavioural surplus” obtained by means of advanced manufacturing processes called “algorithmic intelligence”, enhanced by the development of predictive products that seek to anticipate what we want or desire. The value of these products is determined by the market of “behavioural futures” where digital platforms sell data to the insurance industry, biomedicine, advertising, telephony and marketing, law and order state surveillance, and to all forms of production. The profits made by digital capitalism are the product of one of the most profitable economies in the world that bets on future behaviour and invests in data to increase profits. The fact that there is no bargaining between direct producers of behaviour and companies that mine the data makes this operation arbitrary and speculative. The labour-based “behavioural surplus economy” is not just about satisfying existing demand, but about creating new demand.129 Today the role of labour-power in the creation and legitimisation of “surveillance capitalism” is very often underestimated. Whoever uses a digital platform, and is used by it, is not an automaton manipulated by an omnipotent machine, nor is he or she a victim, but an active part of the process of alienation and exploitation of digital labour. His or her participation may be the product of a state of need, but it is often a free choice. This situation is not unprecedented. The ambivalence between freedom and need has existed since the beginning of capitalism and is experienced by both the work-force and the unemployed. It should also be considered that digital labour is a social relation with capital, not just an individual relation with algorithms. This is an important theoretical distinction both with respect to the thesis that claims the subject of digital labour is merely an individual-consumer, and with respect to the thesis that argues for the existence of a “human nature” forced by capitalism into behaviour that is contrary to its “authentic” nature. According to this idea if capitalism were to disappear, or change, “human nature” could be restored to an order more respectful of human beings. This is not possible because all types of capitalism, so not only digital capitalism, have given “human nature” its own ideal form by denying the idea of an essence presupposed by its historical manifestations. Behind the alienated nature of labour there is no original human essence, but the social and production relations that organise human beings in an instrumental regime of life and production. There is another thesis related to the theory of authenticity, according to which life, also on digital platforms, is without exceptions capitalist life. This nihilistic view posits an insurmountable system of domination. It is therefore necessary to understand what digital capitalism really exploits, and what enables this exploitation to be challenged, by contextualising the various existing interpretations. A cultural revolution in our mindset depends on this issue, one that could lead to an alternative to digital 128 Rouvroy 129 Zuboff

and Stiegler [202]; Rouvroy and Berns [203]; Id. [204]. [205].

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capitalism, starting with an understanding of how it works in the present. Digital capitalism is not grounded in psychological subjects, people reduced to “commodities” by algorithms that programme the automated behaviour of individuals. Rather, it rests on labour-power: the unique and irreplaceable faculty of human beings possessed physically and mentally by each person who expresses a “living personality” beyond nationality, social role, professional status and employment status.130 Capitalism has understood how to exploit its power and used it according to its historical, moral and cultural characteristics. Today, digital platforms can make huge profits thanks to the exponential increase in its productivity. What we must ask, however, is whether the forced subalternity of the labour-power is proof of absolute and unavoidable domination. The answer to this question is no, because what grounds this system is a power that capitalism can direct but not possess. Digital capitalists are aware of this, they are interested in making a profit from the labour-power of the future. The project always lacks something. And this is why it is constantly reinvented and adapted to the agency of the labour-power. Stunned by miraculous innovations, immersed in the constant propaganda that boosts the latest technological invention, we neglect what really allows digital capitalism to profit: our potential to be other than what we are at present. This potential is an irreplaceable characteristic of labour-power and becomes manifest in all its material and intellectual actions. Labour-power is not only capacity for labour programmed according to the needs of production, it is a potential that does not coincide with its current commodification. It can be abused, alienated, violated, or oriented in its behaviour as labour capacity. Yet still, as the power of being otherwise, labour power generates the value that capital lacks and needs. Labour-power must therefore be understood as being conflictual and twofold: on the one hand, it is the man-power object of capital; on the other hand, it is the subject without which there is no capital. It is from the conflict between what labour-power is for capital and what it can be for itself that production, resistance and possible alternatives arise continually. Some may argue that without capital, labour-power cannot survive. This is a debatable argument, also in the case of digital platforms, which pay wages that do not serve this purpose. What is certain, on the other hand, is that without labour-power there is no digital capitalism. Without drivers, Uber cannot connect customers on its platform; without searches on its browser Google grinds to a halt; without the affects and relationships between users, Facebook is a desert. Empirical observation proves that this is how platforms work. And yet we still don’t see it. Our gaze is obscured by a triumphant technological determinism that attributes the potential of labour-power to machines, overlooking the fundamental relationship between machines and human beings and their labour-power. We credit automated interactions with the power to decide what our shared world will look like. We delegate social and cognitive matters to platform owners: since we no longer have to chose what game we are playing, we

130 See

K, Marx, Capital, cit.

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are limited to accepting or refusing the rewards given to those who are trained by pre-established digital rituals.131 It is necessity to rethink these relations. And to do this, it is in turn necessary to develop a theory of labour-power that will allow us to regain possession of what we produce, prevent it from being continuously expropriated, and imagine a different way of employing a faculty available to all human beings, that no-one, however, owns. We may start from these premises: • The digital revolution is not only a project for the alienation of labour-power’s potential, it is also the most advanced form of production and reproduction of the faculty and ability of human beings of becoming other than what they are by using all values, including economic ones; • Labour-power is an indocile faculty that makes life changeable beyond the predictive power of digital capitalism; • Where life seems to be driven by technological automatisms, there is a power relation between those who govern and those who are governed by algorithms; • As long as capitalism exists, the problem of how to freely determine one’s existence will continue to be posed.

5.11 The Struggles for Rights Collective organisation, acknowledgment of digital work, rights and protections, cooperative digital platforms132 : these are the main issues that have emerged from the struggles for rights in the digital economy. Conflict arises from an observation: labour-power is central, not invisible, in digital capitalism. It is therefore a question of making it visible, transforming existing power relations so that those who possess it are governed as little as possible. This is the idea behind demands for insurance, social security and wage protection for digital labour; for transparency with regard to how platforms function, conditions of the services provided, and the costs of their environmental and social sustainability. These issues have been put forward by workers, accepted by trade unions, and are voiced in large technology companies as well as in large cities.133 Awareness of social justice in digital labour is also growing among data protection institutions, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the European Commission. Requests to check and evaluate working conditions on platforms have increased. An example of this is the website FairCrowdWork.org, created by the German trade union IG Metall. The same work can be done by independent platforms inspired by 131 Ippolita,

Tecnologie del dominio, cit., 227. et al. [206]. 133 See the investigation into struggles in large American corporations: Ciccarelli [207]. On the struggles against Amazon’s new headquarters in Queens, New York, between 2018 and 2019, see Ciccarelli [208]. 132 Armano

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Turkopticon. Created by the researchers Lilly Irani and Six Silberman, this platform is a tool that seeks to reverse the information asymmetry of Amazon Mechanical Turk.134 Turkopticon has allowed crowdworkers to rate their clients, so not just to be rated. On platforms such as TurkerNation, MTurkGrind, HITsWorthTurkingFor workers have been able to share best paid tasks; analyse work organisation; judge the fairness of their customers; train newcomers; and create a line of communication with subcontractors of tasks open to exchange. Between 2014 and 2021 a series of struggles demanded the recognition of rights of workers employed by digital platforms in the United States—e.g. Uber—and in the food delivery sector in England, Belgium, France, Germany, Spain and Italy. On 8 October 2016 in the Italian city of Turin, a collective made up of Foodora riders organised the first demonstration of gig economy workers. Similar attempts to self-organise took place in Milan, Bologna and Rome in the following years. The demands being voiced are similar, mainly that the gig work of riders must be treated as subordinate employment. This does not mean hiring all workers as permanent employees of a platform. The demands for fair payment per hour and per delivery, protection against injury and illness, payment of vehicle repair costs, all point to a subordinate employment contract, but this does not mean workers must be hired as employees. During the first five years of these struggles in many European countries, and in the United States, courts issued rulings that have not, however, solved the problems posed by this type of digital labour. A new jurisprudence has developed in the absence of national and supranational rules. For instance, legislation for riders was introduced in Italy in 2019, though it proved to be ineffective. This degree of uncertainty is due to the status of gig workers, who can be compared to traditional “contract employees” or “autonomous employees” who in Italy are not employees but vulnerable workers. Gig workers are not self-employed. Nor are they proper employees. It is wrong to think of them as a wage earners, just as it is wrong to think of them as collaborators. Hiring them as full-time employees could force them to work in companies that structurally pay very little for labour. Regulating this relationship risks institutionalising the trap of precariousness, creating a category of low-wage workers forced to comply with the conditions imposed by companies that continue to exercise enormous asymmetrical power. Also, it cannot be ruled out that the majority of gig workers would reject such a classification, feeling their condition is more similar to “self-employed” workers. The limbo in which they live would then be reinforced, increasing the commodification of labour. What must also be considered is the hypothesis that such indeterminacy is also an opportunity for workers who go from one temporary job to another to escape exploitation. On the other hand, recognition of subordinate employment in the case of gig work should not be completely ruled out because it would give workers at least one instrument to enforce fundamental social rights. Such a legal constraint serves to protect workers from abuse and is necessary to prevent companies from dismissing workers illegally by denying them access to the platform. The termination of an employment 134 Silberman

and Irani [209].

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contract must also be negotiated, respecting the freedom of workers, who must be viewed as such. This is not the only solution to the problems posed by casual work, but it would help to address the fundamental issues. For this reason, in countries such as Italy, the work of riders should be regulated with a national labour contract, which would entail the definition of the necessary tools for a negotiated management of the algorithm, which might even be cooperative in nature, for example by establishing a time bank or redistributing workloads within a company. The institutionalisation of an employment contract would guarantee the bargaining power of temporary workers, and prevent platforms from separating them during the period in which they are engaged in subordinate forms of employment. These legal instruments should be adopted in the light of a broader perspective concerning all workers, not only digital workers. Protecting individuals requires the respect of both fundamental rights beyond the employment relationship and workers’ rights in the context of an employment relationship. It follows that the protection of workers in the context of an employment relationship is inseparable from the social, civil and personal protection of people in society and online. This is why a basic and unconditional income should be provided for those who do not work or who work intermittently, so as to protect them from the blackmail of precarious employment. In the current capitalist context, different from the second post-war period, paid work (not work in general) could well decrease with technological automation, especially in the service sector. In this scenario, work should be considered as the exercise of freedom and self-determination, not as the performance of poor jobs to be had at all costs. For this reason, the right to choose a job should count more than the right to work. Basic income is the premise of this freedom. The debate on the gig economy is still limited to the recognition of employment contracts for certain categories of digital labour. Instead, the claim for a basic income could be a universal goal for workers on digital platforms, for subordinate employment, self-employment and in situations where work is absent. This perspective does not eliminate the claim for decent working conditions, on the contrary it strengthens it with the claim for the right to exist beyond roles linked to production and nationality. The definition of an employment relationship is the consequence, not the end, of the affirmation of the right to existence of those who, out of necessity or choice, work.

5.12 Right to Existence A process of subjectification alternative to the one that reduces labour-power to human service has been identified in the movement of emancipation that aims to transform a condition of invisibility into a visible one. The need to emerge from the shadows has been stressed repeatedly by movements, associations and trade unions of freelancers, digital workers and domestic workers. These workers demand to be visible as “workers”, as subjects who are entitled to rights. Their intention is to “emerge from the shadows” and become visible as “workers”. These expressions

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emphasise that labour-power is not an extension of an algorithm, but an active faculty, the expression of a living subjectivity. Ai Jen Poo, spokesperson for the National Domestic Workers Alliance, has expressed one of the most advanced positions with regard to the new condition of workers: While our decade of work has focused on improving conditions for domestic workers, its significance to the rest of the workforce cannot be overstated. In the early years of organising, the conditions and vulnerability facing domestic workers felt marginal to the rest of the workforce. Today, these issues are affecting a much greater segment of people—lack of job security, lack of pathways to career advancement, and lack of access to social safety nets are issues faced by workers in many sectors. In fact, as more of the workforce becomes, temporary, part-time, or ‘self-employed’, the ‘non-traditional work’ dynamic has become more and more the norm. (…) As a workforce of mostly women, the way we develop solutions is critical. We must ensure that undocumented workers and migrant workers are fully included in our solutions and strategies. We must account for the legacies of slavery and colonialism that shape today’s workforce, as we invest in organising the workforce. Fortunately, that is precisely how our movement has evolved. At the intersection of many identities and experiences, we challenge ourselves to create organising models where everyone has a voice and dignity, where everyone belongs.135

The majority of precarious workers are migrants, especially in large cities.136 The reference to the critical elaboration of the effects of “colonialism” and “slavery” is a decisive contribution to the reflection on the social composition of this labourpower that includes multiple identities. In the case of female domestic workers, for example, we find migrant women, ethnicised women, women from lower social classes. The same is true of digital work and the service sector, where many immigrants are employed, born or raised in Western countries by foreign parents.137 In order to understand contemporary labour-power one must have an understanding of the condition of migrants as well as the condition of women. In this context, there have been many references to the struggles for a “domestic wage” promoted in the seventies in Italy by the feminist movement, an ideal reference also for those who demand a basic income from Facebook. This demand, based on the recognition of women’s reproductive work, has been extended to all workers who claim their status should be recognised by platforms. Still today people demand compensation for care and affective labour in real life and in digital life. In the interplay of historical perspectives, a condition such as that of domestic workers, deemed “marginal” compared to industrial labour, has become central, today it is pivotal also for subjects performing very different tasks. Ai Jen Poo also writes that: “Domestic workers are the original gig economy workers: we have experienced its dynamics, struggled with its challenges, and most importantly found some solutions to survive as a vulnerable workforce.” The relationship between gig-work and domestic work is structural. This ancient profession is being progressively digitised in the gig economy—we may think of dog-sitters, babysitters, the sharing of used clothes and the related market. Studies 135 See

Poo [210]. Harvey [211]. 137 See Van Doorm [212]. 136 See

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on digital work describe on-demand workers as “data cleaners”, a metaphor clearly inspired by domestic work.138 Data workers allow algorithms, on which digital production is based, to become smarter; domestic workers, on the other hand, are the workers that make other jobs possible. This analysis is a relevant contribution to the representation of the new condition of the labour-power: the fifth estate.139 The invisibility that workers contest is one of the effects of a condition of generalised statelessness by which citizens of a State become stateless, while migrants retain their extra-territorial status also inside the national boundaries of a State. These conditions tend to overlap in the precarisation of all labour relations. When applied to work, the category of statelessness allows to define the status of those who produce and are confined to the grey area between work and non-work. Migrants are denied citizenship and certainly have fewer opportunities than hard-working citizens, who remain the reference model of Western democracies in crisis. Migrants are viewed as “those that have no part”, who demand to have a part in a system that excludes them, while hard-working citizens have no part in that they are excluded by a system that does not intend to include them. The ownership that can unite such different experiences, increasingly opposed in the racist and populist discourse, is that of labour-power, a singular and common ownership that belongs to everyone although it properly belongs to no one and that expresses the potential of a human being. This commonality allows excluded, marginalised and poor individuals to recognise themselves and formulate a programme for a “new statute of rights for the labour-power of the twenty-first century:” This demand stems from the recognition of rights in all possible labour relations that a person may enter into in the course of his or her existence. The fight for the contractualisation of work within the framework of labour law (as an employment relationship), not of civil law (as a service contract), guarantees the freedom of individuals in an intermittent employment relationship, not the idea that freedom can be found exclusively in a subordinate employment relationship. This means that the status of “worker” claimed by the movements struggling for the rights of digital workers does not identify people with their job, or with the task they perform at a given time, but as subjects of law where the freedom and autonomy of workers are considered fundamental rights that must be recognised per se. This makes it possible to recognise labour-power as the faculty of intelligent life and as the autonomous capacity to create rights. The equivalence between workers and subjects of rights dates to the drafting of constitutions after World War II, when the idea of “person” was “constitutionalised” and work began to be considered as the instrument, and not the end, that serves to guarantee the dignity of women and men.140 The meaning of “subject of law” has since undergone a transformation: it defines the status of the bourgeois citizen on the basis of ownership, capitalist productivity and patriarchal power. Today the concept of “citizen” is applied to people who are very different from, not to say the opposite of, 138 Lohr

[213]. G. Allegri-R. Ciccarelli, Il quinto stato, cit. 140 S. Rodotà, Il diritto ad avere diritti, cit., p. 153. 139 See

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this type of individual: women, migrants, subjects considered different from a sexual or gender perspective, new typologies of workers. Also: children, handicapped and elderly people. Their claim—or, rather, the conventions that allow to legally affirm such a claim—to be recognised as subjects generates a series of contradictions with regard to the category of subject of law and calls into question the colonial, racist and sexist violence, the commodification of life that most of these subjects fall victim to. Claiming the ability to generate one’s own law and the necessary jurisprudence means being subjects of law, actors of this creation, not objects of an economic transaction, of the hierarchy of norms and of power relations. This type of agency goes against the idea of a subject of law whose freedom derives from ownership, and promotes an idea of subject of law that is independent of the economic order of the market, of which contemporary law has become an instrument. The creation of law by subjects who are not accounted for by proprietary law is the expression of the conflict over the legitimacy of law itself: quid iuris?, who decides on rights and who decides on the subjects entitled to rights? The appeal to labour and social rights indicates a desire to become visible in the eyes of law and not only in the eyes of platforms and their owners. The appeal to the universal character of law, capable of protecting all subjects and their dignity, may seem to be naive. Laws against forced invisibilisation may well become instruments for yet another kind of alienation of labour-power. The gaze of legislators is never neutral, it is fair only if the balance of power allows a judge to rule in favour of a worker. This ambivalence, however, is no surprise, especially for those who advance these claims. Appeals are made to the law because it is also in this field that the legitimacy of a struggle over what work is and who workers are is defined. In this conflict there is room for the recognition of the need to establish measures for the protection of an employment relationship also in the case of intermittent employment: what should be protected is the industriousness of people in all activities, also those carried out outside the employment relationship, so whether the person is employed or unemployed. Given that today people are active twenty-four hours a day, and the value produced cannot always be measured in terms of capitalist exchange value, protection of this industriousness must be extended to the domain of life. Which does not in any way diminish the need to recognise the employment relationship where there is a tendency to conceal it, as in the case of digital platforms. This, however, is not enough, because the recognition of a person’s industriousness in a post-Fordist economy must occur regardless of the type of employment, contract or VAT number a worker has. Protection of workers within the employment relationship is inseparable from the social, civil and personal protection that people should enjoy beyond work, in society and online, which calls into question a political dimension that does not coincide with the existing notions of citizenship and nationality. For this reason, the establishment of a basic income would make it possible to start protecting the autonomy of labour-power. The movement from invisibility to visibility creates new rights when subjects emerge from obscurity and make themselves visible as such. This shift should be understood in the light of the ambivalence of the concept of “visibility”. Guaranteeing visibility should also be the goal of a government that protects the transparency of

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democracy, or of digital platforms that manage systems for profiling and controlling data extracted from users. No longer being invisible could mean being visible in the eyes of the algorithmic governance that already controls people’s lives. Or, as in the case of digital workers, it could mean being able to avoid the gaze of power that renders the materiality of labour-power’s existence invisible by reducing it to an optical impulse on a screen or a number in an erroneous statistical category. As in the case of law, also the domain of what is visible is at the centre of a political struggle that determines the content of visibility and the laws that bring about the condition of invisibility. In 1968, acts of speech of the excluded and the stateless took place in the domain of what was enunciable: the oral and written word acquired a power similar to the “storming of the Bastille”.141 Thanks also to that power, today the continuous flow of words and images has saturated the field of what is enunciable, while digital technologies have structured the primacy of vision over utterance. Acts of speech occur mainly in the domain of visibility. According to those who denounce a condition of invisibility screens of personal computers and televisions have not made everything visible, on the contrary, what is essential still remains hidden. To claim that we are invisible is to go against the regime of visibility which reduces labour-power to a human service. Behind an automated and predetermined reality there is a life that has been removed, which is, however, a common life. On the one hand, visibility means showcasing one’s self-entrepreneurial skills; on the other hand, visibility means the truth about the conditions of labour-power, which has become imprisoned in a fiction that renders existence intolerable. Forcing invisibility to become visible means making the condition of subordination visible, the condition from which subjects intend to free themselves even if they are forced to submit to a fiction that makes existence intolerable. It is from this contradiction that the desire to go from invisibility to visibility arises, to escape the representation of algorithmic power and affirm the truth about this condition. This desire is the expression of the courage of truth, starting with the truth about oneself and the power that governs us.142 The truth in question is not that of the representation of subjects reduced to human services or a businesses, but that which affirms a material condition lacking protection, the need for compensation, protection against an accident, the right to maternity. The urge to make this invisibility visible is the expression of a right to existence143 through which labour-power manifests the will to transform its condition and lead an autonomous life. The right to existence [ius existentiae] requires going beyond the “degree zero” of existence where the most basic forms of subsistence are ensured by poor work or mere survival. Added to the biopolitical reductionism of this perspective is the technological reductionism that binds existence to an algorithm, i.e. to labour 141 See

De Certeau [214, 27]. Foucault [215]. 143 S. Rodotà, Il diritto ad avere diritti, 232–249. 142 See

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without labour-power and to a labour-power lacking life. The only way to regain possession of the right to existence is to go back to material demands such as those for a salary or an income, reuniting life with its material existence and the latter with its virtual dimension. The virtual is an expression of becoming which goes beyond the limits imposed by a notion of normality constructed in an apparently natural way, while in fact it is artificial. Every form of life, including the poorest, is politically determined by the access and exercise of a power (potestas) which should not be considered as a metaphysical quality of being, but as a faculty available to a historical and individuated life in continuous transformation. Today, a free and valuable existence is considered to be one that opposes everything other and different—whereas otherness and difference constitute the basic condition for ensuring that people have the bare minimum to survive in a world that has been emptied of all the riches that come from the notion of becoming. This situation is also determined by a certain idea of digital automation that attributes the ever-increasing multiplicity of possibilities created by nanotechnology or bionic and neural digital interfaces to the spirit that miraculously powers machines, not to cooperation with labour and among humans. Subjectivity is separated from these intertwined processes and its existence is alienated from the rights that express its strength and intelligence: social, political and civil rights, freedom of speech and expression, freedom of religion, from want and fear, associated with a responsibility towards oneself and others. The right to existence frees the relationship between labour-power and machines from this determinism because it affirms the self-determination of subjects beyond the patrimonial and algorithmic legal relation. Subject are not only economic agents, subjects individuate themselves in the vaster and changing becoming of a life. Even when denied or reduced to being an animal or a digital metaphor, deprived of subjectivity and reduced to pure visibility, labour-power continues to impose its presence in unpredictable forms, as well as in its irreducible concreteness and in the freedom of choice and intelligence required to complete a task, even the most modest one. In this elusive permanence, labour power is a power that, on the one hand, is identified with a legal referent or even something incompatible with what it is; on the other hand, it is in contact with a becoming that cannot be exhausted. A faculty such as labour-power will find complete realisation in the act of labour that realises it, or in the technological dispositif that simulates its existence. Its power cannot be confined to a contract or software that precludes its becoming. Labourpower goes beyond the limits of a legal status and cannot be reduced to a task or a profession. This is its limit, but it is also its potential. The choice between one and the other depends on the historical moment and the subjectivity put to work. It is a condition that affects the whole of human and productive experience and also characterises the being-in-the-world of those who today are reduced to being “human service”. Ius existentiae affirms a right in use, not a characteristic of the social contract or of work and private entrepreneurialism.

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Ius existentiae is an “autonomous fundamental right”144 based on the capacity of a life that strives to persevere in its being, which is conatus.145 This right must be considered beyond the usual referent of subordinate work and its relationship with self-employment, within a multiverse consisting of informal and informal activities, both professional and unskilled, mechanical and intellectual, that range from digital to agricultural work.146 Labour law seeks to regulate this right by protecting the person in the a workplace. But when the workplace is spread in time, space and virtuality, labour law protection proves to be insufficient. It binds labour-power to the transfer by which freedom is renounced in exchange for the social security obtained from employers—this security can hardly be defined as such today. The theory of labourpower, on the other hand, is based on a material reality: whether it is service or profit, work is the employment of life, of its time, the act of putting a common existence to work. This living time is the expression of a living personality, a characteristic of labour-power that must be freed from the falsely objective measure imposed by work and understood as an important, though not exclusive, element of an active life (vita activa). Ius existentiae is the right of those who grasp this conatus, actualise it potential, initiate the conflict that leads to the expropriation of its value which is re-signified into something opposite. Moreover, labour-power is never equal to itself. It does not take shape before or after the transfer of labour-power, but together and simultaneously. It is not possible to reduce it to a substance. It is praxis through which subjectivity is expressed and it is the totality of the operations that transform work and produce value. Labour-power is that which is most intimate but does not belong to anyone. It is what is common and owned by someone. It is the dwarf of history—working men and women—without which there is no capital, no labour and no automation.

References 1. Silberman, M.S., Irani, L.: Operating an employer reputation system: lessons from Turkopticon, 2008–2015. Comp. Labor Law Policy J. (2016) 2. Orain, G.: Sur Amazon Turk, les forçats du clic. Le Monde, 22 May 2017 3. Malet, J.-B.: En Amazonie. Infiltré dans le «meilleur des mondes. Paris, Fayard (2013) 4. Scholz, T. (ed.): Digital Labor: The Internet as Playground and Factory. Routledge, London (2012) 5. Fuchs, C.: Digital Labour and Karl Marx. Routledg, New York (2014) 6. Cardon, D., Casilli, A.: Qu’est-ce que le Digital Labor?. Ina editions, Paris (2015) 7. Irani, L.: The cultural work of microwork. New Media & Society (2013) 8. Howe, J.: The rise of crowdsourcing. Wired Mag. 14, 6 (2006) 9. Id.: Mechanical Turk targets small business, crowdsourcing.com (2008) 10. Poe, E.A.: Maelzel’s Chess-Player. In: Thompson, G.R. (ed.) Essays and Reviews. Library of America, New York (1984) 144 Ibid.,

p. 265. Ethics, III, 7. 146 See Roth [216, 197–237]. 145 Spinoza,

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Chapter 6

The Entrepreneurial Self

In neoliberal societies labour-power pursues the career of the entrepreneurial self which is psychological, rather than professional. Subjects who have interiorised the rule of their own exploitation, i.e. capital, and replaced it with the principle of their own liberation, i.e. labour-power, are the expression of a condition that is divided between the desire to be integrated and subordination to command. In this process a space of becoming emerges. It is historically determined although it cannot yet be determined by the power that precedes and regulates the representation of human capital. The process of liberation, in fact, is never ending.

6.1 Becoming Startup In the first decade following the 2008 crisis and before the Sars Cov 2 pandemic, “entrepreneurial self” became the dominant narrative. Propaganda stated that since work was about to end and would sooner or later disappear altogether, individuals could recreate work in their own image by reincarnating as a company. This belief has led to the creation of a mythological entity, half-human and half-company, composed of two distinct elements: an individual, i.e. a body and mind that possesses labourpower, and a company, i.e. an organisation composed of infrastructure and technology, relations and commercial and legal agreements, which results from the cooperation of several people with different roles who create profit in exchange for wages. According to this modern ideology work is no longer a human activity carried out on behalf of third parties in exchange for means of subsistence, but an activity in which individuals express their personality, know themselves – it is almost a mystical encounter (…). From this ideology comes the idea of work as a ‘gift’ of individuals to the community, the justification of free, badly paid work. The Marxist principle that views work as the primordial terrain of both social antagonism and cooperation among individuals, the terrain of both conflict and solidarity, is eliminated.1

1 S.

Bologna, Knowledge workers. Dall’operaio massa al freelance.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Ciccarelli, Labour Power, Lecture Notes in Morphogenesis, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70862-7_6

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This ultra-modern mythological animal takes on all the roles of an enterprise: the leadership of men and women, the execution of an order, the distribution of products, the relationships that generate new orders. Subjects become their own agents. It is a paradoxical formula that turns the structure of self-employment and that of salaried work into a new kind of subject, which is reflected in the following expressions: inventing oneself,2 training for performance,3 becoming “an entrepreneurial self4 or “an individual enterprise”,5 “egopreneur”,6 or “ultrapreneurs”7 in the age of “egocracy”.8 Today we speak of “existential startups”.9 These expressions are the result of logical and philosophical short-circuits and the consequence of a crisis of enterprises. Too busy announcing the crisis of labour, little attention was paid to the transformations brought on by changes to the centralised organisation of factories, namely the creation of a widespread, outsourced and online model of factory. Business has become a moral idea inspiring the daily life and mentality of those who have never worked as labourers, and who will never be CEOs either. Shaped by the heroic figure of the entrepreneur—the romantic protagonist of capital’s progress—10 this idea has been made to adapt to the entire population. The insistence on the empty signifier “startup” on the part of leading political figures of our time is indicative of the phase we are in. “Startup” should not only be understood as referring to policies aimed at setting up small companies in the field of technology—this model has proved to work only in the Silicon Valley or in the case of state-programmed companies in China.11 The idea of “becoming a startup”— of subjects as well as States—12 alludes to the mobilisation of all the imaginary and anthropological resources of subjectivity. The possibility of becoming one’s own startup is of particular interest to those who have been persuaded to perceive their labour-power as a financial and technological problem. This concept, derived from digital capitalism, is in fact a metaphor useful only to capture the attention of the marginalised who have no other means of emancipating themselves from the condition of human service and of perceiving themselves as being different from a trained gorilla working on digital platforms. Rather than referring to a type of business—which requires knowledge, relationships and capital, inaccessible to most people—“to start up”, “to initiate”, “to activate” life are moral rules needed to train citizen-workers and do away with those who have proved incapable of embodying the type of subject that power needs in order to validate its conception of the world. 2 See

Rose [1]; Sloterdijk [2]. Simone [3]. 4 See M. Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics; Brökling [4]. 5 See Gorz [5]. 6 Magakian [6]. 7 Clayton [7]. 8 See Lacan [8]. 9 See Nicoli and Paltrinieri [9]. 10 See Drucker [10]; Schumpeter [11]. 11 For an overview of startups in Italy see Gerosa and Arvidsson [12]. 12 See Mundubeltz-Gendron [13]. 3 See

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This neo-entrepreneurial discourse entails a humanistic idea of labour. The entrepreneurial subject derives personal pleasure from performance, experiences the artisanal dimension of “free workers” who no longer work in the industry, a condition that is praised by the economy of enrichment,13 which includes the luxury food industry, the idea that culture generates the wealth of a country, craftsmanship, organic farming and art fairs, wine and food tourism as a tool for territorial development and marketing. In this economy, the work of existential startuppers represents a positive value: it reveals a type of personality that “invests” its “creative” capacities, “talents” and “skills”. Work is associated with the idea of creation, uniqueness and skill, which is also aesthetic, to distinguish it from subordinate, precarious, repetitive and therefore “conservative” work. It is part of a symbolic market economy in which the national identity of a country becomes visible: “made in Italy” or “made in France”. This conception of work has a strategic economic utility, as international rankings of public or private brands reflect global competition in trade.14 All references to the contradictions of productive activity have been removed from this discourse on how to achieve emancipation through work: subordination to a client or an employer; the difficulties one encounters when attempting to demand respect for social rights; subcontracted work; the search for a financier or venture capital. These aspects continue to exist, but are never mentioned. Startuppers are projected into a world where labour-power loses its dual nature of commodity and power (potency) and is conceived of as an individual, a non-social activity, that pursues goals no longer reflecting needs but only freedom. The entrepreneurial self views the ability to manage oneself as a company as indicative of autonomy and authenticity—these values are no longer identified with solidarity or political equality with competitors. The perception of oneself as something unique, capable of individuation by means of one’s work—where this individuation is not the result of power relations that also govern work—signals the end of an idea of social individual, of a contractual individual. The new subject conceives of him or herself as “capital” and adapts the techniques employed in the management of funds to his or her existence: accounting, budgeting, investment, credit and debt, cost/benefit analysis.15 This new subject learns about these notions at school, studies them at university, uses them in the world, searching—often in vain—for the funds that may help his or her startup acquire the status of a corporation.

6.2 Lifelong Managers The entrepreneurial self thinks of life as a manager would. Traditional managers are neutral technicians who concentrate on the outcome of the work of others, measuring

13 See

Boltanski and Esquerre [14, 21–106]. Bruno and Didier [15]. 15 See Laval [16, 321–346]; for a more in-depth analysis see Dardot and Laval [17]. 14 See

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it against the objectives of a company which have been set in advance. For an existential startupper business is not a professional matter, but a condition that lasts from birth to death. This transformation is present in management theory, which has gone beyond the pre-critical phase of Fordism and Taylorism and today presents itself as a philosophy, rather than a “science”.16 Once supervisors of the productivity of workers, today managers are seen as spiritual guides. This is where Fordist and neoliberal management differ. The former studied how to command. The latter views individuals, and itself, as being autonomous. This project is part of an idea of society based on managerial citizenship. Its model coexists with the workerist idea of citizenship developed between the nineteenth and twentieth century, according to which employment was a condition for the exercises of citizen rights. Today citizens are advised to manage their work—and non-work—like a manager who is promised access to citizenship where what counts is wealth, not universal rights. The profile of today’s manager may well be disliked. Before judging this figure, however, it is necessary to understand the origin of this concept, in order to clarify what makes this figure a positive one in institutional politics, its links, in other words, to the idea of governmentality. To govern a State like a manager would is not just the whim of a tycoon who has made a fortune and become the head of a government. The idea stems from a precise conception of politics, religion and morality. The verb “to manage”—to direct, administer or lead—contains the history of the concept of governmentality, which is different from that of the State, in that it makes a distinction between “direction” and “domination” in the governance of the home, the soul and the universe (oikonomia).17 Oikonomia, the original sphere in which the government of persons and things applies, is a polysemic concept. It has meant embodiment, plan, design, administration, providence, service, commission, lie and cunning.18 To lead is the prerogative of he who directs (regere), administers and governs according to the ideal of “good life”, not of he who imposes, with the same aim, the command of a tyrant (imperium).19 A manager governs by exercising two virtues: phronesis, wisdom capable of referring theoretical knowledge to practical life—the ability of those who can deliberate over the goods man creates20 ; and metis, the wisdom that allows navigators to form an idea of reality by experiencing it from within, adhering to its course in a ductile, chameleon-like and ambiguous manner.21 Practical, theoretical and charismatic virtues merge in the formation of the ability to govern, which consists in directing, not dominating, administering, not only commanding, guiding the behaviour of a dispersed flock of souls or a multitude scattered over a territory. 16 See Deslandes [18]. On the role of management as “ideological configuration” see Boltanski and Chiapello [19]. 17 See Foucault [20, 169]. 18 See Mondzain [21, 27]. 19 On the difference between regere and imperium see Senellart [22, 20 ff]. 20 Platone, Symposium, 209 a; The Republic, 518 c ff.; Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, VI, 5; VI, 8 e VI, 9. 21 Vernant and Detienne [23].

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The function of guiding souls, of governing things and men is part of a “pastoral structure” that characterises the relationship between men and their sovereign, between God—or gods—and men (God, together with his envoys, is a “shepherd of men”); between God and the sovereign of men, (who is the “subaltern shepherd of men”).22 These functions represent the “matrix” of the procedures of the government of men, the embryo of the policies in place before the rise of modern States: today they are back in fashion among politicians who are intent on discovering the figure of the manager as a point of reference, for his charisma and pedagogical value that can be applied to individual care and religious salvation. In Christian pastoral care, the bond between spiritual leader and the flock of men is evident. In Paul it indicates God’s plan for the salvation of humanity, whereby the pastor has the onerous task of achieving it on earth. His power is not repressive, but benevolent, he watches over his flock, he does not threaten or kill its members because he abides by the maxim of the Gospel: “I am the good shepherd. I know My sheep and My sheep know Me, just as the Father knows Me and I know the Father. And I lay down My life for the sheep.”23 In neo-liberal pastoral care the charismatic trait of power is more evident, and it is this aspect that most interests management and political theory. Charisma is embodied in the figure of the leader. There can be no leadership without the ability to govern (management), otherwise the sovereign subject would yield to the will to power. Also, a manager must have the ability to lead or command.24 A manager is “force”, “drive”, “vital momentum”, he embodies the will to achieve success and become a leader. Businesses and politics seek “glory”.25 There is also reference to the theology of the “invisible hand” of the market. The manager is its guardian angel, he administers the harmony of the world on behalf of God, he is an exceptional individual ready to take over this burdensome task and guide people to the achievement of Good by means of work. All entrepreneurial selves aspire to embody his example of virtue. Even before one’s ability to accumulate assets, profits and wealth, what is assessed is the subject’s willingness to imitate the charismatic posture of the manager, regardless of one’s occupation or employment. The objective of lifelong learning—learning that lasts throughout a worker’s life—is to develop the ability to become a leader of oneself and others, demonstrating the general ability to manage one’s own skills like the investment portfolio in a financial fund. Today students, already in high school, are taught to manage a “skills portfolio” along with a resume. The reward for lifelong learning is not a salary or a honorarium, but recognition of merit. For an intern, a volunteer, an apprentice, but also for workers who intend to train for a new job, the paying currency is not money, but the fact of being given a price on the market (merit 22 M.

Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 169. 10, 14–15. 24 See J. Gosling, H. Mintzberg, “The Five Minds of a Manager”, Harvard Businss Review, vol. 81, no. 11. 25 See Agamben [24]. 23 John,

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comes from the Latin mereor); receiving a part of one’s destiny as if it were a gift (in Greek the word for merit is meiromai)26 ; the moral recognition of the ability to manage an existential budget. Obviously, not everyone can become a “manager of oneself” because of discrimination on the grounds of nationality, wealth or social class. And also the mass of individuals for whom this discourse is intended—the middle and working classes— is hardly able to harmonise the constant threat of precariousness with a generalised sense of failure—experienced by those who believed they embodied the manager’s ideal but were rejected by a society that does not actually intend to achieve disintermediation and efficient automation. The dream of being one’ own boss coexists with its opposite: dependence on those who continue to preach entrepreneurial athleticism and guilt—brought on by the awareness of not living up to this agile and performative model.

6.3 Valuto Ergo Sum This tragic voluntarism, together with the disconcerting vulnerability of the hero of our time, displays some traits in common with the doctrine of predestination that played an important role in the construction of the mythological figure of the bourgeois.27 The bourgeoisie judged its own destiny according to the merits accumulated through work: God gives grace to those who feel they are destined to salvation. The tribunal in front of which the bourgeoisie presented their resume of merits was constituted by individual conscience, solicited by a confessor. This is not the case of manager-workers. In their case, personal conscience has given way to nonrepresentative bodies somewhere in between the State and the market: it is evaluation and certification agencies that establish the value of their conduct. In what has been called the Audit Society, a society based on permanent consultancy,28 evaluation agencies have acquired a religious aura of objectivity: the fate— merit—of human beings depends on the judgment they pass. This aspect is omitted in the story about the adventures of these subject-businesses. Individuals free to decide—if they so wish—on their own life depend on the results of the evaluation conducted by third parties perceived as neutral as they are invisible. The “free will” of managers is determined by the hyper-bureaucratic control of administrations— not controlled in turn by anyone— that guide the existential enterprise—without however dominating it—in a relationship of subordination to “calculocracy”, the power of calculation of which the manager is supposed be the guardian, while in fact he is only a subordinate. The freedom of “creative” work—and the freedom of those who set up a business—must comply with criteria established by an evaluation system that, in turn, is tasked with measuring and legitimising it. This situation is not 26 See

Michaud [25]. Weber [26]; Tawney [27]. 28 See Power [28]. 27 See

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new: from the revolution of Toyotism, which radically changed the organisation of the industrial sector, to the management of human resources, the freedom of subjects has always been conceived of as a form of delegation with respect to the systems for the evaluation of the labour-power.29 The paradox of evaluation is a fundamental aspect of contemporary life. It can be observed in digital platforms. Platforms alone are evanescent mediators: their function, which is to connect and direct, seems to be carried out in an impersonal way in the interest of consumers who buy meals (Deliveroo, Foodora), drive around town (Uber, Lyft), or rent an apartment (Airbnb). Consumers are given the freedom to evaluate the service they receive, and by doing so they are able to demonstrate a certain lifestyle which is based on the product they choose. The universal accessibility guaranteed by platforms has become a metaphor for efficiency because it eliminates the role of intermediaries (agencies, distributors or retailers) in the buying and selling of goods and services (in this sense platforms dis-intermediate). After all, this is also the goal of managerial citizenship: to do away with enterprises and States, in other words, to “do it yourself”, by becoming your own boss. Despite this narrative, however, the truth is that platforms produce a new level of intermediation because they impose a predetermined form and purpose on labourpower. This is evident in the case of labour platforms, but also in the political sphere dominated by populism. The elimination of the State, of traditional bureaucratic and social intermediaries, coincides with the creation of new intermediaries: managers, engineers, professional evaluators and certifiers, advertisers, influencers, journalistgurus, innovation experts, entrepreneurs and political fortune-tellers. The kind of disintermediation that was supposed to ensure the end of conflict between capital and labour channels labour capacity and faculties into the commercial logic of intermediation. The entrepreneurial self who believed he or she had been freed from labour relations—because now individuals create their own work—is actually at the centre of an even more perverse system. Today these individuals must build a reputation in order to be paid. Reputation is established by customer ratings on platforms. Based on restaurant ratings on TripAdvisor or stars on Facebook, rankings are created, strong and weak points are assessed, and on the basis of this compensation, funding and “visibility” are accessed. The tool to establish the legitimacy of these rankings is the audit system, which motivates all the actors involved to improve their “performance”, to measure the potential of “human capital” and satisfy every whim of their customers.30 An audit process consists in analysing data to establish the value of a performance based on comparison. This comparison should be public, though it never is. It remains the prerogative of the platform owners who maintain a monopoly on the data produced by the activities coordinated by their algorithms. Despite it is evident how arbitrary these operations are, judgements continue to be presented as unquestionable, and individuals must conform. In Italy, where this system has been applied 29 See

Nicoli [29]. and Stark [30]; Van Doorn [31].

30 Rosenblat

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in universities in a maximalist way by the National Agency for the Evaluation of University Research (Anvur),31 evaluations based on algorithms are unappealable. They are “scientific”, they are not personal judgements. Evaluation inspired by this technological determinism has undermined the possibility of articulating a critique of the authority that has established these criteria and that defines what is assessable and what is not. The only decisions that count are the one taken in the name of the so-called efficiency of the system. The neo-managerialism that inspires the narrative of the entrepreneurial self and the digital revolution is authoritarian. Rating also creates a relationship of dependence between individuals and platforms. The possibility of starting an individual business or start-up in the field of technology; the desire to increase social mobility through personal success; the competition to win a prize and make a leap in ratings; the possibility of being acknowledged by a company as being the creator of a “best practice” are not things an individual can achieve, they are concessions of private platform owners and of “experts” who run public platforms on behalf of the State.

6.4 As You Wish, Master The desire to become a “master” comes from the idea that the essence of subjectivity resides in the consciousness of individuals. The possession of consciousness makes this individual “ equal only to himself”; having an “independent, enduring will”, and the “extraordinary privilege of responsibility”. “(…) the consciousness of this rare freedom and power over himself and his destiny, has penetrated him to his lowest depths and become an instinct, his dominant instinct:—what will he call his dominant instinct, assuming that he needs a word for it? No doubt the answer is: this sovereign human being calls it his conscience …”32 The digital revolution further enhances this feeling of “sovereignty”. The complacency with which opinions are expressed in “hate speech” on Facebook is indicative, it is in many ways similar to the self-assurance of consumers who order a Japanese meal using the Deliveroo app on a rainy evening. These online purchases, the interactions and the apodictic statements are expressions of “sovereign freedom” and confirm the impression that the world revolves around the choices made by individuals. It is also the outcome of a general tendency to be in permanent contact with a medium that does not allow to actually see the work of others and therefore turns it into a personalised service. In fact, the only place in the world where it is possible to experienced such freedom is on a platform. Outside of the digital bubble there is no such freedom. This illusion created by the possibility of reflecting one’s ego in a platform should not be understood only as egolatry or narcissism. It is the product of the work subjects carry out on themselves, which produces effects in the real world. It is not the type of 31 See

Pinto [32]; Dal Lago [33]; Del Rey [34]. [35, 37].

32 Nietzsche

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work that produces an object or that is regulated by a contract. Rather, it is an activity aimed at constructing an ego based on notions such as individual responsibility and self-discipline. This activity can be described with an expression: to be one’s own employer. The expression is used as a synonym for “self-employed”. Which does not, however, correspond to reality, because workers continue to work for someone else and are therefore dependent on someone, also when they are not in a subordinate relationship. In fact, being an employer of oneself presupposes a divided subject: one part of the subject acts as the employer, the other as the worker. The subject adapts to playing different parts and lives inside a theatre where identities are frantically swapped. This gives the impression workers are actors capable of playing all the parts in a play. Hence the sense of omnipotence that digital platforms inspire and profit from. And the sense of exhaustion of the subjects who are asked to perform this double job, to play the part of a subordinate worker and the part of the decision maker. Individuals must simultaneously obey and command. If this were not an interpretation of what actually happens, it might well be the description of a state of madness. The border between normality and abnormality is a thin one—we may think of Pirandello’s play Come tu mi vuoi (As you desire me). The subject is always a representation as is the staging of the ego. Its ostentatious affirmation always takes place in front of an audience—Facebook users, HR recruiters, voters, one’s conscience—and changes according to the tastes and moods of the players. The important thing is that the ego of this subject must always appear as being the master, the way an actor masters his or her character. The ego should be understood as one of the parts at play in the theatre of subjectification,33 not as a monad that has no relation with the outside world in which it is performing. The desire to be master has a broader meaning than the proprietary instinct which influences the entrepreneurial self. It points to the need to master a role. If it is a job, then it should also be understood as a way to earn and reproduce, not just as a way to please an employer. Contemporary workers do not stick to the role they have been given, not even to the one simulating the existence of an ego which supposedly represents their originality. It is from this impossibility of coinciding with the work being carried out that the faculty of labour-power resurfaces, whose peculiarity consists in not belonging to anyone, not even to those who possess it and are therefore recognised as workers. This capacity of the workforce not to coincide with the role and work assigned is a widespread practice and is influenced by a certain cynical way of feeling that characterises the entrepreneurial self.34 Come tu mi vuoi, padrone (As you desire me, master) is the trick performed by those who have no other means of resisting than to identify with this model of hyper-subjectification. To show how virtuoso one is as an actor is the last resource available to those who wish to protect their autonomy. Posing on the stage of the digital revolution or astutely writing a resume that may correspond to a company’s 33 See 34 For

Legendre [36]. a theory of the affects and passions of post-Fordist workers see Virno [37, 13–36].

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profile are examples of individual responses. They attest to the fact that subjectivity is not (only) a victim of exploitation, but a major player. This is clearly not enough to overturn the dispositif that attempts to tame subjects, forcing their expression to be in line with the criteria regulating evaluation processes. An actor on stage is anything but free. The narrative centred on the end of work and the expectations linked to automation have led people to believe that the masters have left the theatre and that now everyone is their own master. The opposite is true: today people work more than before, because they play at least three roles: they obey themselves, direct others, manage suppliers. People are indeed dependent on the market, which is the real ghostly master—absent on stage but all the more present off stage. The desire to become master is destined to fail: in fact, the ghost will never take on the appearance of those who seek to become masters of themselves. Actors and entrepreneurs reveal the antinomy that contemporary workers experience: work is supposed to be the means of self-affirmation of an always active and ascending subjectivity, a symptom of the Master’s “pure self-consciousness”, and at the same time the repetition of the slave’s dependence—“impure” selfconsciousness—35 on a master who no longer needs to show himself but continues to command. The gap between the ideal and one’s will, the creative impulse of the manager and the distress caused by debt with suppliers and producers, make his conscience unhappy.

6.5 Psychological Contract A “psychological contract” allows subjects to live and cope with existential failure.36 In management theory, this contract binds the contracting party to the emotional implications of a company’s organisation and aims. Subjects identify with this way of interacting, considered to be both necessary and natural, and view it as being their own. By doing so, they accept to be the object of surveillance, control and management. In return, they have the feeling of being part of a responsible community. The concept is useful to describe the mentality of those who spend their lives in dead-end jobs, alternating between intermittent employment and unemployment and undeclared work. The “psychological contract” is an agreement a subject enters with him or herself, which entails the belief that the entrepreneurial self is valuable and will be successful. This belief reflects a moral stance based on an absolute principle. The fewer the permanent contracts, the stronger the temptation to tailor contracts to one’s own image and likeness, to the point of incorporating the instrument that guarantees subordination. The content of a contract—salary, tasks—is confused with its beneficiary, whereby form and content merge to create an embodied abstraction. Subjects themselves become personified contracts, while contracts becomes persons. 35 Hegel 36 See

[38]. Nicoli and Paltrinieri [39, 49–74]; Ciccarelli [40, 25–40]; Ciccarelli [41].

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The structure of the psychological contract explains the mentality of the entrepreneurial self: the contract is structured around self-obligation, which grants maximum freedom of choice and the power to sanction the actions carried out. In disciplinary societies where employment contracts are the norm, the power to sanction is external to individuals and is applied when a pact is not respected. In societies of control, such as neo-liberal ones, the sanctioning is done by the subjects themselves on the basis of a conscious activity of self-surveillance and self-discipline.37 The psychological contract explains this self-afflictive twist on the basis of a contradictory conception of freedom: freedom is superimposed on the execution of the command, free choice is the manifestation of subordination. When subjects accept this, they are deluded into believing they are affirming their own identity, that is, the ownership of themselves, the inalienable foundation of their consciousness created by the coincidence of being and sovereignty. This is clearly not the case because this ownership is a fictitious story subjects must believe in order to continue playing in the theatre of the digital revolution. The pact that subjects force themselves to agree to is the manifestation of alienation in the absence of wage labour, which in turn is the manifestation of alienation in a capitalist society. In cases in which subjects are engaged in wage labour, alienation is twofold. In this singular interpretation, an obligation is recognised as having universal validity, as being applicable in a neutral manner, independently of the negotiation of the limits of this obligation that allows subjects to receive material and immaterial benefits in exchange. In fact, an exchange does take place, but it cannot be understood as resulting from a bipolar relationship formed by a dominated and a dominant party, by a passive and an active pole. Subjects are always active and, when they are not, they are forced to be because they are the main actors of the social order, the guardians of the law, the controllers of their relations, the keepers of themselves. The protagonist of the “surveillance society” is the subject under surveillance. This is evident if we look at Facebook: every user has a “friend” to control and users control themselves. In doing so, they play a part in the system of norms established by the platform’s code of conduct and by the style chosen to communicate individual contents in the cognitive frame of reference. The way the subject chooses to be visible responds to a broader moral regulation that digital platforms have imported and certainly not invented. It can be found in all dimensions of life put to work. The regulation responds to a mentality and behaviour shaped and profiled by social dispositifs, as well as by the subjects themselves, who appropriate and develop them in an original way. The psychological contract is the outcome of this intense work. It is not to be understood as a juridical act, but rather as a moral, social and rational act with which subjects avoid experiencing events that might upset them, and shield themselves against any opening that might lead to new possibilities. Such an attitude is typical of those who do not trust others, or themselves, and appeal to a ghostly Super-Ego that helps them tell Good from Bad, and, in the absence of a master, dream of creating a power of their own in their own image and likeness, while in fact it is power itself that acts through them. 37 Deleuze

[42]; Deleuze [43].

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Subjects can sense the anomaly in this situation because they are still capable of distancing themselves from what they are. Their critical capacity returns once they have experienced the cognitive, physiological and moral limits of an unsustainable situation in which freedom cannot be the equivalent of servitude, and vice versa. Very often the realisation of the paradox is not followed by a reaction. The distress experienced by contemporary subjects is caused by their having to continuously verify that there is no possible alternative—an alternative that is political but above all ethical— to their material and psychic condition. This vulnerability leads to self-sabotage and depression.38 The consequences caused by the psychological and physical distress are not limited to the private sphere. Here the medicalisation of the mind and body comes into play, both in the workplace and in society. Very often it is the subjects themselves who voluntarily turn to social services because they admit they are not up to the obligations they have imposed on themselves when signing the psychological contract. This decision should be considered as a vital fact because it expresses a truth belonging to the body: it is the symptom of resistance to the psychological contract and a protest against the failed model of the entrepreneurial self; the perception of a norm that is wrong; the painful admission that this system cannot be overcome at present. It may also indicate a refusal, on the part of psychosomatic workers, to comply with the performative obligation to happiness, well-being and productivity.39 And yet it can translate into the paralysis of body and mind. Contemporary moral subjectivity is the labyrinthine expression of these oscillations between depression and enthusiasm. This behaviour is the contrary of what is professed by the entrepreneurial self. Yet, it is subjects themselves who, melancholically, agree to become the actors of clinical and pharmacological surveillance that tie life to original guilt, which derives from the absence of an identity able to honour the obligation to be free and productive. Psychic implosion is the reaction of those who do not know how to respond to the paradoxical injunctions of neo-liberal freedom and have not yet found a way out. The psychological contract should therefore be explained as an attempt to place between oneself and the machine that generates mass psychopathology—the daily micro-fascism of relationships—a barrier to shore up a split subject and heal its wounds. All this, however, turns out to be useless: the appeals to conscience, to an imaginative ought-to, to conflict and revolution—which may make the world a better place—are not enough. The subject was, and remains, in an emotional desert, hostage to the “liberogenic” character of the entrepreneurial self: born to affirm the freedom of enterprise, this subject ends up articulating it in the form of autophagy. In doing so, freedom is both enhanced and destroyed.40 This condition is not the result of psychopathology, but of a political orientation based on the logic of the reversal into the opposite, the very reason for contemporary ethopolitics41 : the desire to be free to enjoy and practise the fundamental rights recognised by constitutions translates into voluntary subordination to an imperative 38 See

Fisher [44]; Fisher [45]. Davies [46]. 40 See M. Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics. 41 See Rose [47]; Honneth [48]; De Carolis [49]. 39 See

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that denies its principle. The self-optimisation of an automatic subjectivity should have produced joy, but reproduces impotence. This is not the exception, but the rule. Individuals are encouraged to believe that failure, poverty and unemployment are the consequence of their inability to respond to the command of their own will. This sense of failure stems from the inability to become what one wants to be. Its causes are not considered to be part of the cause and effect chain that determines and over-determines life, but a personal fault. Subjects who are prisoners of “magical voluntarism”42 are led to believe they are the incarnation of an abstract will that does not need the body and its connection with labour-power. The inability to live up to this intention is interpreted as a psychic anomaly, a moral fault, and not as the contradiction of a political structure. Individuals end up relying on a class of specialists—doctors, managers, politicians—to whom they delegates their power of self-determination in the hope these figures will facilitate their development with techniques such as psychiatry and pharmacology, HR management and labour market policies. The most widespread social demand is to be re-educated in the management of the “resources” and “skills” of the “human capital”. This clinical orthopaedics reduces social dialectics to a psychological fact, psychology to individual physiology and biology. In this framework, human essence is located in the brain. The content of this “essence” is said to consist in a somatic identity, the “neurochemical self”.43 This extreme reductionism strips the labourpower of its faculty and associates it with a mechanical or computational metaphor. The world that subjects inhabit is the mind, which functions thanks to mechanical balancing devices. The entrepreneurial self is the citizen of his own world, of the world. These subjects act as their own parliament, not as people who claim fundamental rights. In fact, they do not need these rights because they believe they already possess them. All they have to do is put their “neuro-ethical” resources to work and invest them in the theatre where the representation of the ego takes place. Physical and mental health are the focus of massive investments by labour and social policies. The imperative to maximise the assets of personal capital—the subject’s “assets”—is reversed in the pathological enhancement of psychic subordination. Workers must protect their psychic “normality” as the most valuable asset of their “competitiveness”, which is exposed to the mortal threats of consumption, waste (“inefficiency”), unforeseen events or weaknesses judged as being catastrophic. Unemployment, inactivity or precariousness are viewed as symptoms of a personal malaise. One is precarious or unemployed not because of a lack of demand for labour, a crisis in productive investment or a crisis of businesses, but because of an inability to activate personal skills and adapt them to the demands of total mobilisation. Labour policies aim at the behavioural activation of subjects, forcing them to submit to a series of rewarding and punishing technologies to acquire standardised skills that respond to a pre-established labour market segmentation. The most important “asset”

42 See 43 See

Smail [50]. Pacioni [51].

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to be “activated” is that of the self-esteem and efficiency of the unemployed or precarious workers: it is necessary to restore their ability to work on their own ego in order to be active in life. It is assumed that unemployed people guarantee greater participation in the labour market, while inactive people withdraw from the market. There is no escape from this pattern: time is spent between unemployment and inactivity, while self-esteem turns into self-censorship. Rather than dwelling on the rituals of the crisis of the subject, and on the melancholy for lost authenticity, it is necessary to understand the transformation of subjectivity. The constitutive depression of the performative and egoical subject points to two things: on the one hand it is the limit of proprietary individuals who miss the symbolic regime of the fathers and the ancient systems of obedience linked to salaried and subordinate labour, on the other hand it is the perception of a power (potency) of the labour-power—men and women’s most intimate and common faculty of acting, producing and thinking—of subjects who are both the objects and the actors of their own alienation. In both cases, this limit marks the perimeter of sovereign beings where psychic liberation and individual initiative, insecurity concerning one’s identity and inability to act tend to coincide, while depressive implosions are followed by explosions of addiction to drugs or to relationships which confirm subalternity. This condition is the exact opposite of the ideal represented by the entrepreneurial self, but it also institutes a new kind of unity: the lacking subject and the compulsive one are the two faces of Janus.44

6.6 Human Capital The theory of human capital is the foundation of the system described so far. If Marx’s philosophy of labour-power is a reversal of Hegel’s philosophy of labour, the theory of human capital is a Hegelian reversal of the Marxian concept. The Phenomenology of Spirit is a source of inspiration for the philosophy of labour in the neo-liberal era. Unlike the Hegelian System of Ethical Life and the First Philosophy of Spirit, in The Phenomenology of Spirit Hegel leaves behind the material reality of society in favour of a philosophy of consciousness. “Human capital” is a continuation of this operation that does away with the human, political and legal traits of labour-power in the construction of a trajectory in which consciousness becomes an immediate unity of singularity and universality. The theorists of human capital have developed the Marxian definition of labourpower as living labour only insomuch as it has been purified of qualitative traits and variables, failing to recognise the real force of the synolon of use-value and exchange-value, materiality and historicity, potentiality and actuality. Labour-power is transfigured into a singular type of spiritualism: its faculty is transformed by the cult of “talent” and “charisma” and into a behavioural creed where responsibilities linked to action are made to depend on individual rules of conduct, on morality, 44 See

Ehrenberg [52]; Godani [53].

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and on the value of individual assets. In so doing, these theorists believe they have established the priority of the “living personality” over labour, while in fact all they are doing is reducing this personality to a psychopathology, transforming it into a puppet that experiences the impossible identification with capital.45 Labour-power is dematerialised, deprived of its “living” nature, reduced to being an automaton, a “machine”. What is alive is capital, not the “living personality” of labour-power. Human capital aspires to retrieve the “concreteness” of labour-power and, at the same time, to assert its unique value as if it were the result of a divine gift. The concreteness that is supposed to contrast the “abstract” approach of Marxism is attributed to an “inner” and individual rationality, which characterises individual interests and the tendency to quantify and monetise personal qualities expressed by a price. This rationality is separated from its social context and is functional to the organisation of enterprise and production. The behaviourist spiritualism of the theory of human capital is a contradiction in terms: on the one hand, it affirms the exclusivity and singularity of a potential available to humanity; on the other hand, it reduces this potential to an objectifiable capital, ready to be transformed into a commodity or a service that respond to the job descriptions developed by those in charge of the evaluation process. The neo-liberal theses on human capital constitute a break with Adam Smith’s liberal tradition: the latter exposed a theory of the division of labour in which the consideration of the subjectivity of labour has no place. Human capital, on the other hand, stresses this subjectivity and reverses the image of workers as objects of the supply and demand for labour-power.46 The transference of labour-power into capital is decisive in neutralising the Marxian idea of alienated labour understood as the separation between workers and the ownership of the means of production. Equally decisive is the impoverishment of the idea of wage—now treated as “capital rent”47 and understood as a return on capital composed of skills, knowledge, language and relationships.48 While Marx sought to remove labour-power from private and commercial law, pointing out that living labour is not destined to be commodified, or crystallised in a contract, because it is the expression of a power (potency) that cannot be appropriated, neoliberalism naturalises capital as something human and envisages a free and commercial use of labour-power. Freedom is viewed as the consequence of possessing assets, not as the affirmation of life as a means of itself. It is the thing that asserts what exceeds the subject, not the subject that establishes a difference with the use of the tools that increase its autonomy. The heart of human capital follows the rhythm of the patrimonialist ideology, which considers people as things and things as people. Which is why everyone lives in a condition of minority and poverty.

45 See

Becker [54]. Becker and Murphy [55]. 47 See M. Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics. 48 See Fisher [56]. 46 See

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Human capital is different from Roman law, which regulates the subordination of labour, only apparently. The entrepreneurial self, the main character of this fictitious emancipation, has only strengthened these ties. Self-determination has been reduced to the ability to appropriate things. The ability to carry out such appropriation is the central element that brings to an end the unity of humankind in capitalism. Workers, like entrepreneurs, possesses human capital as human beings. An entrepreneur’s capacity, however, is greater than that of individuals who cannot call themselves entrepreneurs, even though they might perceive themselves as being equal. Not all human beings appropriate the same portion of humanity, not all are masters of themselves the moment they are forced to sell themselves in order to survive. Not everyone has the capital to start a business. This material situation is concealed because, like labour, human capital is a theory based on the metaphysics of humankind (Gattungswesen). The human part of this capital alludes to the generic authenticity of the value of people, but this value can in no way be distinguished from its commodification. According to this theory a commodity is no longer only an object, it expresses the living personality of the subject who is involved in the self-valorisation of the abilities needed to produce it. It is not enough to conceal the reference to the concept of labour-power to remove the conflict characterising it: that between the personification of the thing and the thingification of the person. Human capital takes this to its extreme consequences: it naturalises commodities and humanises its value. The commodity-person is thus the product of the identification of labour-power with its work and of labour with the human essence contained in the object produced. And having been turned into a commodity, such a person cannot express any original value. The “living personality” it claims to possess as its own capital is a set of homogeneous and standardised performances evaluated on the basis of the achievement of pre-determined goals. The crude determinism of this theory reduces labour-power to the psychosomatic properties of a body (tissues, organs, uterus) and to the commercial value of personal, gender or social identity. This value must be made to profit like a financial bond or treated as one of the factors of economic growth and general well-being. Human capital is the number of the skills possessed by an individual. The essential quality that defines the humanity of a capitalist is defined by the quantity of things possessed. It is the private wealth of skills that determines the value of an action, not the general movement of the labour-power that belongs to no one. “To skill” is an English verb that indicates the possession of personal knowledge, a practical ability acquired through experience, expert knowledge developed managing codified actions, a versatile attitude of a subject who is able to discern his or her own interest in conflicting situations. “To skill” also means to separate and create a difference. “Competent” subjects demonstrate that they are different from their peers and therefore stand out as individuals. They are able to render their capital productive and to express the quality of their personality on the basis of the merits they have acquired. Skills can be used both at work and in social life and refer to a moral capacity of the individual to conduct life in strategic terms. This is the new vision underlying the idea of labour-power: a “living personality” aims at the accumulation of its human capital, at the creation of a number of skills that together constitute its identity.

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In Marxian theory, labour-power is not only potential labour, it is also potential capital. According to the theory of human capital, potential capital absorbs potential labour. Labour power is swallowed up by capital and separated from the living. Workers do not perceive themselves as sellers of a commodity, holders of a contract of employment or providers of labour, but as the managers of the only property they have: themselves. Human capital naturalises property and forces subjects to interiorise it by signing a psychological contract. Adherence to this system aims at perfecting an idealised human nature that cannot be reconciled with its material conditions. In return, subjects are endowed with a humanity which translates into mere economic freedom. There is nothing objective about labour-power, no part of it can be thingified in capital, nor can it be reduced to the image of the “quantified self” produced by knowledge of numbers provided by statistics, search engine indexing and algorithms.49 The “living personality” of labour-power is not a substance, an instrument to attain a human essence, nor is it an original pathetic subjectivity that appears at the moment of a person’s birth and persists unchanged until death. The “living” is such when life is conceived of as the means that expresses itself, the end in itself of becoming, which is never objective, the dice roll that will never abolishes chance.50

6.7 Liberation Some might object: here we go again, this is the usual inability to cross the border, to go over to the other side, to listen to and understand what is being said elsewhere or down below; it is the same decision to side with power, with what it says or forces one to do. However, we have taken a step forward. Crossing the line of power means reaching a terrain where existence is given, but not its modalities. These cannot be determined by power, which it is not able to capture everything, nor by the living. It is only from a terrain that belongs to no one and simultaneously to everyone that the modalities of existence can be defined: this is the terrain where labourpower is established. What power does is tend to appropriate the inappropriable property of labour-power. It shapes it, sediments it, enhances it, and exchanges it as a commodity. This action is inspired by a patrimonialist conception of life: becoming is a personal asset that is exchanged, sold, accumulated in the form of human capital. Yet labour-power, which is a twofold faculty, is always reactivated differently, it is available to become someone else’s property. And the moment it becomes someone else’s property, it still remains everyone’s faculty. This movement to and from the property regime reveals the inappropriability of all property, starting with that of labour-power.

49 See 50 See

Ippolita, Quantified self , in Ippolita, Tecnologie del dominio, 223–226. Mallarmé [57]; Bussoni and Martino [58].

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For this reason, becoming human capital is not irreversible, it is one of the possible forms that regulate labour-power and its movement. The entrepreneurial self is one type of contemporary subjectivity, not the only one, and as such it can be fought. This liberation is a fundamental political problem, together with the fight against inequality and the policies that cause it. Other possibilities emerge from the conflict that involves all dimensions of the “living personality” of labour-power: sexual life, intellectual life, social, labour or political relations. No dimension of subjectivity is excluded, least of all that of labour. The terrain of conflict is that of freedom, of which a proprietary version is always given: freedom is what allows one to accumulate personal assets that are exchanged or sold as human capital. The neo-liberal ratio forces the entrepreneurial self be free and, with an equal and opposite command, urges it to desire its own servitude in exchange for security. In this vicious circle freedom is consumed but not exercised, while subjectivity collapses. Freedom is actually the condition of coming into contact with the unpredictable ways in which life is determined and its potential expressed. Freedom is an exercise, it means working “upon oneself as a free being”.51 This work is the practice of criticism of one’s limitations, not the activity of selling oneself on the market. “Being free” is not a demonstration by a performer in the showroom of life, but the practice of a critical attitude towards oneself and others. It is being open to the potential of labour-power, which cannot be determined a priori, the driving force behind the “work upon oneself”, from the which also the entrepreneurial self is born. Criticism is not a widespread practice in our neo-liberal societies: it is only accepted when it refers to the paroxysmal, or pathological, dimension in which subjects acknowledge their own errors on a digital platform. It is never understood as a way of testing one’s limits through work upon oneself as a free being. Criticism is an attitude that manifests itself in relationships with that which is other—the government, sex, work, technology—and is an expression of resistance, of the ability to disconnect life from human capital in order to affirm a desire to be governed as little as possible.52 This resistance brings forth the exceeding element of a force that belongs to the faculties available to a subject, hence also to labour-power. Ethos, that is, the capacity to use these faculties, makes it possible to remain in contact with what destabilises the subject: the unknown, excess, what has no foundation. The impact with a force that needs no duplicates, or transcendental references, is tremendous. That is why the temptation to seek refuge in the master’s house is always there. People prefer to voluntarily embrace servitude, disguised as neo-liberal freedom, so as not to come into contact with a force which, according to Nietzsche, is beyond conciliation, reassurance and revenge, resentment and victimhood—which is the force of a self-sufficient life.53

51 Foucault

[59, 1393 ff]. Foucault [60, 23–82]. 53 See Nietzsche [61]. 52 See

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The practice of criticism is part of the work with which subjects face the uncanny. This work serves to structure a way of living and to avoid being overwhelmed by the force of external things or by things that cannot be given a form.54 By working, also the entrepreneurial self comes into contact with its own limitations, and this testifies to the impossibility of expressing the labour-power. The unprejudiced use of ethos means we must not condemn this form of life. It is part of the present; it is the product of work done by many. Only the practice of criticism makes it possible to overcome it and force the system to develop differently. Talking about ethos allows to understand the work of the Ego in a different light, as a relationship with something that causes one to lose control over oneself, as what can be measured only with the highest degree of indeterminacy. This work, which characterises the history of modern subjectivity, makes it possible to undermine the self-performing subject. The ability to distance oneself from what one is now is the result of a strategic and counterfactual use of the techniques, rules and institutions available at present. Let us start with what is available to us. Since subjectivity at present is an elaboration of the elements that compose Freud’s metapsychology— dreaming, mourning, repression, culture, sexuality—55 which it applies to the work of the ego, it is necessary to consider these elements as means of production and use them in a different way. The entrepreneurial self separates these means from the construction of the “living personality” and installs them in a pulsional machine at the service of productivity and as end in themselves. Instead, these means should be considered as a modulation of the power (potency) of the labour-power, so as to restore the perception of the immanence of life in the “living personality”. The work of the ego can be understood as the generation of power (potency) and, consequently, of living labour. The generative conception of labour-power makes it possible to release it from the constraint of productivity which responds to falsely objective and completely arbitrary standards governing labour-power. What weighs on the entrepreneurial self is the dead labour of subordination to human capital. Reconnecting its “living personality” to labour-power, and to the movement that renders the properties it possesses not appropriable, frees the living from the grip of the dead. This can be done by stressing the metapsychological, bodily and social elements that constitute its subjectivity. The aim of a philosophy of labour-power is to identify an operative subjectification able to shed light on the work carried out by a narcissistic and mournful surplus in which neoliberal subjects are trapped. The operation is effective when criticism is directed against the dualistic pattern that constitutes the foundation of total and atomised individuals. Who oppose egoism to altruism, the individual to the collective, in the name of a proprietary conception of the world. Their guiding principle is profit, identified as that which allows unlimited enjoyment of human capital, viewed as inexhaustible totality.56 This pattern must be 54 See

G. Deleuze, Foucault. Dejours [62, 186]. 56 See P. Dardot, C. Laval, La nouvelle raison du monde. 55 See

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replaced by one of modulation and difference. Individuality is the actual expression of the modification of a power (potency) that constitutes its own subjects: it does not transcend them or underlie them, rather, it expresses itself through them and among them in an operation of continuous differentiation. The concept of utility can thus be employed in a different way.57 This way of using the concept appears when men and women recognise the usefulness and value of the mutual employment of what exceeds the force available to them. To recognise this potential is neither automatic nor peaceful. The realisation is triggered when we come into contact with that which is intolerable: the structure that shapes its individuation also denies its free existence. Overturning the entrepreneurial self is, however, difficult: this self generates habits and a certain fascination and, when its promises turn out to be delusional, we are very often left dazed, with no sense of initiative other than the desire to search for a new form of subordination. Disgust and indignation are not enough. A further step is needed, which must originate from an observation: when one is deprived of means, property or real freedom, there is nothing more useful for a man and a woman than another man and another woman. The knowledge of mutual usefulness is the premise of the common use of a type of freedom conceived as practical.58 Political liberation starts from material conditions: the lack of wages or income, a relationship that must be changed, a project to be realised. The shame experienced by those who have no part can become the instrument to open a breach in the current order of things. This opening is the product of an ethical and political experience that cannot be determined beforehand but only in the contingency of its becoming possible. The effect of this experience can be compared to that of conversion or revelation: when men and women come into contact with conatus, with the desire to persevere in their own being, and affirm life in the immanence of their potential being, it is like delivering a blow, a shock, to damaged life. Damaged life can feel that true life does not correspond to an already formed subjectivity, but to the detachment from its identity which opens up to what is beyond.59 Reconnecting with becoming causes an opening through which existence can develop outside itself and in an unpredictable way. This experience is unthinkable in our world where there seems to be no alternative. And where it does exist, it is inevitably linked to the becoming of startups. In the perspective of political liberation, however, distancing oneself from 57 See

Balibar [63]. workers’ politics is grounded in mutual benefit. An example of this is the movement of workers in the entertainment sector in France. See Maurizio Lazzarato’s discussion with Luc Boltanski and Ève Chiapello, who in Le nouvel esprit du capitalisme articulate an interpretation according to which the claims of precarious workers develop on the terrain of the political representation of the self, not on the economic one, a trend that originates in May 1968, viewed as the incubator of “neoliberalism”. The book is relevant because it represents a critique of the neo-liberal and conservative reversal of the claims for liberation and revolution that have characterised social movements over the last fifty years: see M. Lazzarato, “Mai 68, la «critique artiste» et la révolution néolibérale”, Revue des Livres et des idées, no. 7, September–October 2008. On the same subject see P. Dardot, C. Laval, La nouvelle raison du monde, which is a response to the work by Boltanski and Chiapello. 59 See Jullien [64, 113 ff]. 58 Contemporary

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what one has become is accompanied by the discovery that one is not alone in the world. Today, one can free oneself from this pattern in order to co-produce norms achieved with the activation of the faculties available to life.60 Men and women can begin to use themselves as means for others and to create a common institution in the name of mutual utility. Freedom does not depend on the human capital one possesses, but on what can be done and conceived together, before possibility is defined as “human capital”. Political liberation does not mean evoking a primeval nature, or the deferred promise of a kingdom yet to come. It is the product of a critical reflection on the way we live, the premise for understanding life in a different way. This conduct, in turn, may be reversed. Liberation is always contingent, it is exposed to shifting power relations. The entrepreneurial subject may resurface with the narcissism of self-promotion and its moral system based on generalised resentment. However, the attempt to restore this situation depends on the subject’s resistance. If liberation is effective, the entrepreneurial self will be confronted by a type of subjectivity that is unwilling to renounce this new conduct, this new way of living regulated by new limits. The ethical and political capacity that has been achieved allows to react to what we are today. This liberation does not take place in an intimate sphere. It is the product of a practice that involves the broader dimensions of the economy and the institutions, it can be identified with the clash between two conceptions of freedom. Neo-liberal freedom promotes emancipation starting from a specific work of the ego and confines labour-power to the dimension of property, linked to the capacity to buy it, not to the person who owns it; political freedom opposes this conception of property, as it embraces what is “improper” in life and relies on the only faculty which allows the subject to actualise its potential: labour-power. In life there is no property to return to, but a movement by which subjects achieve liberation, a movement that is justified by the awareness of how necessary and useful this achievement is. A force comes into being with the capacity to construct a subjectivity based on corporeal intelligence and material intelligence.61 The ethical and political experience of liberation is based on experimentation. It marks the beginning of a process of subjectification that suspends prevailing norms in order to practise new ones. This process is the result of an assemblage of alternative conducts which derive from a practice of the self opposed to the dominant process of subjectification. This practice responds to an ethics and transforms forms of life by using life in a different way. It is not easy to achieve this objective because entrepreneurial subjects have incorporated and transformed personal, community and class identities. However, in no period of history has a new subjectivity been affirmed by merely working on previous patterns, nor has it been constructed starting from the reproduction of the structure that makes it possible. What is new is affirmed 60 See 61 See

P. Dardot, C. Laval, Marx, prénom: Karl, 691–2. Dejours [65, 23 ff].

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against the present and in the name of what can be achieved now. It will always be possible to cross the border and continue the work of the process of liberation which has already begun.

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62. Dejours, C.: Travail vivant. 1: Sexualité et travail. Payot, Paris (2009) 63. Balibar, E.: Dall’individualità alla transindividualità. In: Balibar, E. (ed.) Spinoza, The Transindividual. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh (2020) 64. Jullien, F.: Vivre en existant. Une nouvelle éthique. Gallimard, Paris (2016) 65. Dejours, C.: Travail vivant. 2: travail et émancipation. Payot, Paris (2009)

Conclusions: What Can Labour-Power Do?

We never know what potency is, how it is acquired, where to look for it. And yet it is constantly at work in our labour-power, otherwise we would not even be alive. And if we do not strive to become active, we will never know. Labour-power asserts itself in the dispute over things and people, over use-value and exchange-value, over living labour and abstract labour. Librated from its definition as a commodity, from the performative nature of tasks established by contracts, from the compulsive drive to gain personal visibility, labour-power interrupts the frictionless transition between the personalisation of things and the thingification of people, it proves that law is not the unilateral application of a norm and that power is not the unilateral imposition of command on a person. Labour-power questions the distribution of power relations and affirms both the availability of power (potency) to be appropriated by someone and its being a faculty available to all which however belongs to no one. The conflict over labour-power highlights a conflict between heterogeneous magnitudes and singularities in the economic, legal and political order. That which is new is not to be sought outside the dispositifs that govern life in imagined or primeval communities, in transcendental notions such as the people, sovereignty, nation, class, or in automation, which considers labour-power as an organic extension of algorithms. That which is new is to be sought in the tension between the inside and the outside of the assemblage of the dispositifs, on the threshold where ruptures occur and differences are produced. This conflict affects the most important aspects of labour-power: production, contracts, subordination and freedom. It involves, and disrupts ethics, where subjectivity is affirmed and where the definitions of what is good or bad for active life emerge.1 Good, strong, free life is life that uses labour-power, as far as its capacities allow, to establish a rule of conduct, to emancipate and self-determine itself with regard to a self-conscious desire that tends to appropriate something. Bad, subordinate, enslaved life is life reduced to random encounters, that suffers the consequences of passivity and the effects of its own impotence and thus seeks liberation in the desire 1 See

Deleuze [1].

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to be master. The composition of negative power relations increases the awareness of this subordination, but destroys life with resentment, against oneself and others, identifying freedom as another way of being a slave. A positive composition of these power relations, on the other hand, allows to strengthen this power (potency) together with that of others. Both become one with the desired object. The distinction between the philosophy of labour-power, the philosophy of labour and the theory of human capital has to do with the difference between ethics and morality. The former addresses the use of a power (potency) that an individual possesses and can use together with others; the latter establishes obedience to an instituted law whose purpose is obedience. It is a matter of obeying an imperative, a task, a duty, sometimes justified and indispensable, other times the expression of domination. Obedience to a moral, social or productive law produces no knowledge, freedom or empowerment for those who use labour-power to live. A philosophy of labour-power, on the other hand, records a difference that emerges continuously between the command imposing obedience and the knowledge and practice of a power (potency) available to life. There is nothing but conflict with labour and with the command that is expressed through it.2 The conflict over labour-power shows that law is not the unilateral application of a norm and labour is not the imposition of power on a person. As an expression of labour-power, conflict alters the formal balance between labour viewed as a commodity and the worker as a function of production. Labour is not a universe separate from life and its forms, regulated only by private or commercial law. In fact, fair legal and commercial exchange does not solve the basic problem of justice: who decides on rights? And who decides on value? Conflict emerges with the figures of the slave, the worker, the proletarian, the freelancer, the precarious worker, the unemployed, the entrepreneurial self, and with all figures of contemporary labour. It embeds itself in the deepest layers of subjectivity, it intersects them when labour-power is transformed into commodity, it reverberates in the social relation that is the foundation of the contract, it materialises in the conflict between ethics, which denounces what separates us from the power (potency) of labour-power, and the law, which contrasts Good and Evil as values, conceiving of subjects as the result of obedience to the unalterable criteria of a company. The transformation of life into an automated simulacrum does not erase its way of existing and of exerting labour-power, according to the power (potency) that belongs to it at a given moment. Hence the importance of the ethical question, which pertains to the individuation of this power and the way in which it breaks free from a specific individuation. We live in a state of not knowing: we do not know what labour-power is capable of, we do not the full extent of its power (potency).3 From beginning to the end, our existence is determined by passive affects, it is separated from its power, from what it can do. And yet, through knowledge, practice and experimentation, there is a way to test our not knowing. Life remains open to all determinations, even

2 Spinoza, 3 See

Ethics IV, 18. Deleuze [2].

Conclusions: What Can Labour-Power Do?

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when it seems to have none at all, in the context of a digital revolution that aims to reduce that which is unexpected to automation. We never know what potency is, how it is acquired, where to look for it. And yet it is constantly at work in our labour-power, otherwise we would not even be alive. And if we do not strive to become active, we will never know.

References

1. Deleuze, G.: Spinoza. Practical Philosophy. City Lights Books, San Francisco (1988) 2. Deleuze, G.: Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza. Zone Books, New York (1992)

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Index

A Abolishes the present state of things, 65 Absolute surplus labour, 51 Abstract labour, 57, 109 Abuse, 43 A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, 54 Actoratus, 77 Actors of this creation, 132 Addictio sui, 76 Adynamia, 46 A Failed Parricide, 48, 54, 55 A Grammar of the Multitude, 54 À la carte, 101 Algocracy, 107 Alienated capacity to work, 22 An actually existing abstraction, 5 An actually existing potency, 5 Ancient Economy, The, 69 A posteriori, 45, 48 Appetite (appetitus), 5 A praesenti, 45 A priori, 45, 48 Arbeit, 37, 106 Arbeit/labour, 2 Arbeitskraft, 1, 2, 15, 20, 32–39, 57 Arbeitsvermögen, 2, 15, 32–39 Artifex, 79 2001: A Space Odyssey, 102 Aspirational work, 120 Auctor, 77 Auctoramentum, 74–78, 85, 87 Auctoramentum militae, 74 Auctoramentum servitutis, 74 Auctorare, 77 Auctorare se, auctorari, 75 Auctoratus, 74–78

Auctoritas principis senates, 77 Auct¯oro, 77 Auct¯oror, 77 Augere, 77 Autocracy of capital, 49

B Bio-labour, 51 Bios, 21 Birth of Biopolitics, The, 144, 154, 157 Blade Runner 2049, 102 Bohéme, 89

C Californian ideology, 10 Capacity, 33 Capacity to work, 2 Capital, 45, 54, 56, 57, 60 Capitalist arrangement, 60 Capitalist mode of production, 56 Capital Results of the Direct Production Process, 56, 72 Changeable, 27 Chauffeur, 101 Civis romanus, 32 Come tu mi vuoi, 151 Come tu mi vuoi, padrone, 151 Commodity, 57 Commodity-person, 158 Commonality, 31 Compagnie franches, 84 Completely Automated Public Turing test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart, 107 Conatus, 3–5, 23, 27, 73, 135, 162

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174 Conatus sese conservandi, 27 Condotta, 84 Condottieri, 84 Condottiero, 84–86 Conscience, 150 Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, 58 Courage of truth, 133 Cupiditas, 5

D Desire, 5 Die wirliche Bewegung welche den jetzingen Zustand aufhebt, 63 Difference and Repetition, 25 Differentiation, 23 Digital work, 109 Digitus, 109 Disconnect, 36 Discourses on Livy, The, 66 Dispars, 25 Dispositif, 21, 38, 48, 50, 56, 65, 95, 109, 116, 134, 152, 153, 167 Dominus, 70–73, 75 Doppelsöldner, 85 Duel, 103 Dynamis, 5, 37

E Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, The, 54, 55 Economy of enrichment, 145 Economy of promise, 120 Effort, 1, 2 Eigentumslosigkeit, 64 Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, The, 44, 45, 89 Emerge from the shadows, 129 Energeia, 5 Energy, 1, 2, 106 Enterprise, 82 Ergastula, 77 Ergon, 106 Esse alteri iuris, 73 Esse alteri juris, 73 Essentia actualis, 5 Esse sui juris, 73 Eternally actual potency, 3 Ethos, 160, 161 Exauctorare, 75 Expropriation, 38

Index F Faculty, 1, 2, 33, 59 Faculty of faculties, 23, 24, 33 Faculty or potency, 2, 22 Feel, 162 First Philosophy of Spirit, 156 Flâneur, 87–89 Flâneurie, 88 Force, 2, 4, 27, 33 Forcing invisibility to become visible, 133 Formally, 13 Fortune, 86 Forza lavoro, 2 Foucault, 161 Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy, 54 Fundamental form, 47 Futur antérieur, 15

G Galateo, overo de’ costumi, 86 Gattungswesen, 158 General Intellect, 50 Generation, 38, 161 Generative, 161 Generative power, 36 Gentleman, 85 German ideology, 10, 54 Gig, 2 Good, 57 Governmentality, 146 Grand seigneur, 88 Gratuitum, 80 Grundrisse, 45, 60

H Homo faber, 42, 44 Honorarium, 79, 147 Horm¯e, 4 Horror vacui, 59 Human beings, 158 Human Condition, The, 53, 69 Humanity, 12, 158, 159

I Il diritto ad avere diritti, 131, 133 Illusionslosigkeit, 64 Il quinto stato, 131 Immanent cause, 4 Imperium, 146 Impersonated wage, 72

Index Impresari-entrepreneurs, 84 Impresario, 74, 76 Inappropriability of all property, 159 Inappropriable property, 159 In concert, 20 Inflicted, 60 Intersection, 19, 20 In these conditions, 6 Invisibilisation, 11 Invisible, 104 Ius existentiae, 133–135 Ius imperandi, 75 Ius praetorium, 79 Ivanhoe, 83, 84

J Jihad, 97 Job, 2

K Knowledge workers, 82, 83 Kraft, 1, 33 Kraft/Power, 2

L Labor, 10, 57, 82, 106 Labour in general, 57 Labour-power, 2, 31 Labour relations, 57 La Crainte des masses, 49 La new workforce, 83 Lanista, 74, 77, 84 La nouvelle raison du monde, 161, 162 Lavoro e lavoratori nel mondo romano, 75 Lavoro (work), 2 Length of life, 41 Le nouvel esprit du capitalisme, 162 Les fleurs du mal, 89 Le sujet des normes, 54 Le vin des chiffoniers, 89 Lex Julia Municipalis, 75 Liber in mancipio, 76 Life in use, 46 Limit, 156 Limited period, 34 Living, 35 Living labour, 124, 161 Locare, 79 Locare se, 75 Locatio, 76 Locatio conductio, 79

175 Locatio conductio operarum, 79 Locatio conductio operis, 79 Locationes operarum, 75 Locatio operarum, 76 Locatio operis, 76, 79 Locatio rei, 79 Locatio sui, 74 Logic of sense, The, 33 M Machenschaft, 108 Machination, 108 Main contradiction, 19 Making of the English Working Class, The, 82 Managerial citizenship, 146 Mandatàrius, 79 Mandàtor, 79 Mandatum, 79, 80 Master, 151 Master a role, 151 Materially, 13 McKinsey Global Institute, 122 Means of production, 161 Mehrwert, 35 Meiromai, 148 Menschliche Gattung, 55 Mercennarii, 75 Merces, 76, 79 Mereor, 148 Metabolé, 27 Metabolic, 27 Metabolic relation, 26 Metafisica, 60 Metis, 146 Microwork, 111 Mobilise, 117 Morphé, 27 Multipositionality, 19 Mutual usefulness, 162 Mythe et pensée chez les Grecs, 69 N National Domestic Workers Alliance, 130 Natura naturans, 63 Natura naturata, 63 Neo-liberal, 157 Neo-liberal freedom, 163 Nicomachean ethics, 146 Non-class, 17 Not a theory of labour but of labour-power, 54

176 O Oberst, 84 Objectified, 41 Objectified capacity, 53 Oblative work, 120 Obligatio, 77 Officia, 79, 80 Oikonomia, 146 Oikos, 52 Order of Things, The, 59 Ownership, 34

P Passage, 87, 88 Pater familias, 75, 76 Perception, 156 Person, 39 Personified contracts, 152 Phenomenology of Spirit, The, 156 Philia, 81 Phronesis, 146 Physis, 27 Physismorphism, 27 Poiesis, 24, 43, 44, 61 Polemos, 66 Polis, 21, 69, 70 Political force, 2 Political freedom, 163 Political liberation, 162 Political relation, 32 Political Treatise, 5, 71 Ponos, 106 Positive, 146 Potency, 1, 2, 22 Potentia, 2, 4, 5, 23 Potential, 35 Potential being, 3 Potential capital, 159 Potential labour, 159 Potential life, 46 Potential power, 36 Potenza, 2 Potere e potenza, 2 Potestas, 2, 134 Pouvoir, 2 Power, 1, 2, 23, 46 Praxis, 24, 43, 44, 46, 61 Praxis-poiesis-techne, 45 Present state, 66 Process of Production of Capital, The, 56, 60, 72 Production, 44

Index Productive, 35, 51 Productive force, 38 Productive power, 36 Proles, 51 Prosumerism, 110 Puissance, 2

Q Quaderni del dipartimento di economia politica, 72 Quantified self, 159 Quartiers, 88 Quid iuris, 132

R Real, 46, 58 Real executor, 56 Reality, 65 Real subsumption of labour, 56 Regere, 146 Regula universalissima, 86 Relation of power, 31 Relative surplus labour, 51 Reproductive, 52 Reputational work, 119 Revolution in the logistics, 117 Revue des Livres et des idées, 162 Rights of Man, 89 Rights of ownership, 39 Right to exist, 129 Right to existence, 133 Robbing, 41 Roman Statutes, 74

S Sans phrase, 57, 63 Scientific, 64 Selbstbetätigung, 46 Shortening the life of labour-power, 41 Social, 47 Social combination, 60 Socially combined labour capacity, 56 Socially necessary time for production, 41 Social relation, 31, 57 Social relation of production, 60 Societas, 81 Soil and the worker, The, 50 Spleen, 88 Sprezzatura, 87 Storia del diritto romano, 81 Strength, 1, 2

Index Subicere se imperio atque potestatis alterius, 75 Subjectification, 38 Subject of law, 132 Sui juris, 74 Surplus-value, 63 Synolon, 156 System of Ethical Life, 156

T Tabula Heracleensi, 75 Techne, 43, 44 Technical, 47 Tecnologie del dominio, 127, 159 Tekhn¯e tou biou, 77 Thanatopolitics, 21 Theological-Political Treatise, 3 Theses on Feuerbach, 54 Tout court, 75, 109 Trabajo, 106 Transference, 157 Travail, 106

177 U Un parricidio compiuto, 58 Unpublished Chapter VI, 60

V Value of labour-power, 40 Value of values, 53 Valuto Ergo Sum, 148 Virtuoso, 151 Vita activa, 135 Vita da freelance, 81, 83

W Werk/work, 2 Will (voluntas), 5 Witkey, 114 Work, 2, 161 Workerist idea of citizenship, 146 Workers and capital, 44, 54 Working classes, 82

Z Zwieschlächtig, 32