not

+ research:

http://burundi.sk/dusan/carrythatweight/index.php/Tactics_of_leaking_and_politics_of_the_common

THIS BOOK
is sequel to Empire {which described a current form of global order as networked power of nation-states (G8), institutions (WTO, NATO, IMF) and corporations, being constituted by permanent state of (civil) war}
Empire (new global form of sovereigny–empire) => Multitude (emerging global class formation–multitude) ~ reverse of Hobbes’ De Cive (1642; social body and forms of citizenship–nascent bourgeoisie which needed political power above it as abs.authority) => Leviathan (1651; future form of sovereignty–nation-state)

PREFACE
war
democracy
multitude = possibility of democracy on a global scale; also provides means to achieve it; alternative growing within Empire; is network in which all differences can be expressed freely and equally; is not identity / the people (is unitary conception; is single identity; is one); is not uniform / the masses (are indifferent; where all colors fade to gray); is not the working class (separates workers from owners who don’t work; separates industrial workers from service/agricultural workers; separates waged workers from unpaid laborers); has good model in internet (nodes are different but connected; new can always be added); internal differences of multitude must discover (or rather produce) the common that allows them to communicate/act together (while remaining different)
shifts in global economy – industrial working class no longer plays hegemonic role in global economy; production is not only in economic terms, but social production (of communications/relationships/forms of life)
the common = not the commons (refers to pre-capitalist-shared spaces that were destroyed by advent of private property); our communication/collaboration/cooperation are not only based on the common but they in turn produce the common in expanding spiral relationship; production of the common = central to every form of social production + is primary characteristic of new dominant forms of labor today
biopolitical production = newly dominant model of production; it not only involves the production of material goods in strictly economic sense but also touches on and produces all facets of social life, economic, cultural, and political; is strong pillar of multitude
“political” organization = second pillar of multitude; resistance/revolutionary orgs as not only means to achieve democracy, but to create internally the democratic relationships
Empire = new form of global order (no longer as imperialism via nation-state extending in a foreign territory)
network power = new form of sovereignty; its nodes = dominant nation-states + supranational institutions + major capitalist corporations + other powers; is “imperial”, not “imperialist”; is tendency; unilateralism (USA as dominant power) neither multilateralism (UN) are not just desirable but not even possible; perpetual war ~ state of (civil) war is inevitable in Empire and functions as instrument of rule; imperial peace (Pax Imperii) is false pretense of peace

WAR
[12-13] war si becoming permanent social relation
Clausewitz: war is a continuation of politics by other mean; today some theorists: war is becoming the primary organizing principle of society, and politics merely one of its means or guises
Mao: politics is simply a war without bloodshed
Gramsci: political strategies: either wars of position or war of maneuver
war has become regime of biopower – form of rule aimed not only at controlling population but producing/reproducing all aspects of social life
[14-15] consequences:
– limits of war are indeterminate, both spatially and temporally
– int’l relations and domestic politics become increasingly similar and intermingled
– reorientation of conception of the sides of battle or conditions of enmity (eg against terrorism)
[38-39] shift in int’l rels: not that much 1989, as 26 may 1972, when USA+USSR signed Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty which regulated nuclear weapons production of 2 superpowers ~ mass bombing like @WW2 could no longer be part of art of war; war begun to be less oriented twd defending against coherent mega-threat and more focused on proliferating mini-threats; less intent on general destruction of enemy and more inclined twd transformation or even production of enemy; high-intensity police actions (~low-intensity warfare; eg US @Vietnam or Latin Am, or USSR @Afg) rather than all-out large-scale combat
[39] early 70s: 1971 delinking US$ from gold standard; 1973 first oil crisis; bgn of destruction of welfare state; bgn of shift of hegemony of econ.prod. from factory to more social/immaterial sectors
[40-41] “military-industrial complex” = simplification eliminating any real considerations of class conflict, insurgency, and movements of multitude; term was created to name a confluence of interests in imperialist phase of capitalist development bwn major corps and state military/policy apparatus (eg. Knupp steel works and German army; Dassault aviation manufacturing and Gaullist military policies; or Lloyds insurance and British imperialist projects; or Boeing and Pentagon); now rather “military-vital complex”

MULTITUDE
[196-197] flesh of the multitude produces in common in a way that always exceeds the measure of any traditional social bodies, and it doesn’t produce chaos and social disorder, but what it produces is common, and that common we share serves as the basis for future production, in a spiral, expansive relationship (eg. communication as production: we can communicate only on the basis of languages, symbols, ideas, and relationships we share in common, and in turn the results of our communication are new common languages, symbols, ideas and relationships); today this dual relationship between production and the common–the common is produced and it is also productive–is key to understanding all social and economic activity
[198] singularities interact and communicate socially on basis of the common, and their social comm. in turn produces the common; multitude is subjectivity that emerges from this dynamic of singularity and commonality
[199] shift from habit (american pragmatist philosophy) to performance as core notion of production of the common
[202] production of the common tends to displace trad.divisions bwn individual/society, subjective/objective, private/public
[203-204] WRONG: “private” = includes the rights and freedoms of social subjects together with the rights of private property, blurring the distinction between the two. this confusion results from the ideology of “possessive individualism” in modern legal theory, that conceives every aspect/attribute of subject, from its interests and desires down to its soul, as “properties” that are owned by individual, reducing all facets of subjectivity to the economic realm; “private” = subjective + material “possessions”; “public” = state control + what is held and managed in common; WE NEED alt legal strategy/framework: conception of privacy that expresses singularity of social subjectivities (not private property) and conception of public based on the common [commonality] (not state control)–one might say a postliberal and postsocialist legal theory; good example: “postsystems theory” school, which is molecular conception of law and production of norms that is based on constant/free/open interaction among singularities, which through their communication produces common norms
[204] community = often refers to moral unity that stands above population and its interactions like sovereign power
[204] the common IS NOT community; IS NOT public; it is based on communication among singularities and emerges through collaborative social processes of production
[205] neolib. legal frameworks – privatization of public goods (water, air, land, and all systems of mgmt of life: healthcare, pensions) and privatization of public services (telecom and other network industries, post, public transp., energy sys, edu); these public goods and services were very basis of modern sovereignty in hands of nation-state

/ Sylvère Lotringer has criticized Negri and Hardt’s use of the concept for its ostensible return to the dialectical dualism in the introduction to Paulo Virno’s A Grammar of the Multitude

http://burundi.sk/monoskop/log/?p=399

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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