Immaterial Labor and Subjectivity

* Article: Travail immatériel et subjectivité. Toni Negri and Maurizio Lazzarato. Futur Antérieur 6 : Été 1991

URL = https://www.multitudes.net/category/archives-revues-futur-anterieur-et/archives-futur-anterieur/numeros-ordinaires/futur-anterieur-6-ete-1991/articles178/

Summary

Reading notes from Michel Bauwens, 2006:

Two great tendencies are transformation contemporary production

- 1) the autonomy of the productive activity from the capitalist organisation of work

- 2) the constitution of an autonomous subjectivity around 'mass intellectuality'

Social productivity is no longer caused by entrepreneurialism, but the opposite is true. Production is now located in the social factory, and the whole of life has become productive. The control and surveillance functions are now excercized within the productive function. These processes are more and more evolving to another mode of production: that of the social cooperation of immaterial labor.

Lazzarato then reviews the 3 political periods of modernity.

- 1) The classical period of domination, facing revolts

- 2) the period of representation, facing re-appropriation

- 3) the period of communication, facing self-constituting subjects

- In the first period, the intellectual is outside the process of production (he's an ethicist or philosopher);
- In the second period he is inside and engaged with one of the classes;
- in the last period, he is directly productive himself; the intellectual can no longer be separated from the productive machinery.