A central task for reimagining society today is to develop an alternative management of the common wealth we share.
two distinct but related domains of the common:
– ECO ecological (natural) common [but this category is insufficient] – earth and all of its ecosystems, including the atmosphere, the oceans and rivers, and the forests, as well as all the forms of life that interact with them.
– ART social and economic (artificial) common [but this category is insufficient] – products of human labor and creativity that we share, such as ideas, knowledges, images, codes, affects, social relationships, and the like.
ECO & ART:
common in both domains confounds the traditional measures of economic value and imposes instead the value of life as the only valid scale of evaluation.
contradictions (ale ukazuju sa ako complementaries):
ECO – pro conservation, since earth is limited, logic of scarcity; ART – pro creation, open/limitless nature of production of common; ALE: both perspectives refer fundamentally to production/reproduction of forms of life, which are happening simultaneously (since eg. work-time vs non-work time collapsed)
ART – interests of humanity as central (ie. extend our politics to all humanity, overcome hierarchies/exclusions of class and property, gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity..); ECO – interests much broader than human/animal worlds; ALE: navzajom sa mozu ucit eko-aktivisti a humanrights-aktivisti
The claim for centrality of the common relies on the hypothesis that we are in the midst of an epochal shift from a capitalist economy centered on industrial production to one centered on what can be called immaterial or biopolitical production. Toni Negri and I have argued this hypothesis over the course of three books — Empire, Multitude, and Commonwealth.
– {industrial capitalism THEN} Industrial production has been central, rather, in the sense that the qualities of industry — its forms of mechanization, its working day, its wage relations, its regimes of time discipline and precision, and so forth — have progressively been imposed over other sectors of production and social life as a whole, creating not only an industrial economy but also an industrial society.
– {industrial capitalism IS OVER} industry no longer marks the hierarchical position in the various divisions of labor and, more significantly, that the qualities of industry are no longer being imposed over other sectors and society as a whole.
– {immaterial/biopolitical production NOW} (central position of industry is taken over by) production of immaterial goods or goods with a significant immaterial component, such as ideas, knowledges, languages, images, code, and affects (health care workers and educators, fast food workers, call center workers, and flight attendants). The cognitive and affective tools of immaterial production, the precarious, non-guaranteed nature of its wage relations, the temporality of immaterial production (which tends to destroy the structures of the working day and blur the traditional divisions between work-time and nonwork-time), as well as its other qualities are becoming generalized.
+ property: immobile (eg. land) => mobile (eg. commodities) => immaterial (discussions about patents/copyrights; question of exclusivity and reproductibility)
2 contradictions, 2 shared logics form significant basis for understanding guises of common & struggle to preserve/further them; foundation for linking forms of political activism aimed at the autonomy and democratic management of the common:
I. contradiction between private property and the common.
ART: bwn need for common in interest of productivity and need for private in interest of capitalist accumulation
ECO: bwn private nature of accumulation and social nature of resulting damages
II. the common defies traditional capitalist measures of value (or obey radically different scale based on value of life, which we have not yet invented)
ART: value of biopolitical/immaterial goods is immeasurable using traditional system of measure of econ.value; economists cast them as “externalities”, accountants as “intangible assets” (of esoteric value), (global bankrupt largely derives from this)
ECO: value of the common is immeasurable (eg. how much $ is damage costs of having half of Bangladesh under water? or permanent draught in Ethiopia? or destruction of trad. Inuit forms of life?)
watch out (when struggle for the common operate according to opposing logics in ECO and ART):
III. preserve ECO vs limitless prod ART
IV. humanity as frame of reference @ART vs broader @ECO
next: UN Climate Conference, Copenhagen, Dec 2009
next: the common @identity and identity politics; the common @social institutions (family, nation, ..)
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