Marx and Living Labour

Baronian, Laurent

doi:10.4324/9780203402566

Cited by 39 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…Fixed capital appears now within bodies, imprinted into them and at the same time subordinated to themthis is even more the case when we consider activities such as research and software development, where work is not crystallised in a physical product that is separate from the worker, but remains incorporated in the brain and inseparable from the person. Laurent Baronian (2013), finally, stresses, by returning to Capital and its analysis of the relations of production, that the power of bodies and minds is generalised in the figure associated with the qualifying element of fixed capital. Fixed capital is here social cooperation.…”

Section: The Changing Relationship Of Fixed and Variable Capitalmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Appropriation of Fixed Capital: A Metaphor?

Negri

2024

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In the debate on the impact of digital technology on society, considering that digital technologies have profoundly changed the way we learn and communicate, and especially the “mode of production”, and remembering that this transformation takes place in an era of capitalist economic hegemony – the hypothesis often arises that the producer is transformed by the use of this machine. There is speculation that the user incorporates the instrumentality of the digital machine. Furthermore, when one recognizes that capitalist production develops its process of value creation by using cognitive labour power (and that this form of value production becomes more and more prominent) the technological incorporation of the cognitive cooperation of workers, seems to become ever more central to capitalist exploitation. Consequently, in the Marxist debate, people have started talking of an “appropriation of fixed capital” by the digitized worker and by the cognitive producer. This article asks: Are these simply metaphors? It discusses the relationship of living labour and digital machines. It stresses that digital machines do not determine society and human fate but can be appropriated by social struggles for the commons. It grounds the analysis of the digital in Karl Marx’s works on technology and fixed capital. It concludes that autonomous spheres of digital self-valorisation can be established through social struggles that aim at advancing social co-operation and the commons. Acknowledgement: This article was translated from Italian to English by Michele Ledda with editorial support by Christian Fuchs, David Chandler, and Sara Raimondi. The paper is based on a talk that Antonio Negri gave at the 7th ICTs and Society Conference “Digital Objects, Digital Subjects: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on Activism, Research & Critique in the Age of Big Data Capitalism” on May 20, 2017, at the University of Westminster in London. The video of this talk is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htm5xwAl-kE The video of the commenting and Q&A session that followed can be watched here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-smmdOz9gIU The manuscript of Negri’s talk was published as part of a conference volume. It is reprinted based on a Creative Commons licence. Acknowledgement: Negri, Antonio. 2019. The Appropriation of Fixed Capital: A Metaphor? In Digital Objects, Digital Subjects: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Capitalism, Labour and Politics in the Age of Big Data, edited by David Chandler and Christian Fuchs, 205-214. London: University of Westminster Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16997/book29.r. License: CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0. The original article was published in Italian in the journal EuroNomade and translated into English with permission: https://www.euronomade.info/appropriazione-di-capitale-fisso-una-metafora/

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Section: The Changing Relationship Of Fixed and Variable Capitalmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Appropriation of Fixed Capital: A Metaphor?

Negri

2024

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“…The MAP turn provided the basis for historical materialism ( HM ) because it offered a material conception of history and explained the centrality of value as 'socially necessary abstract labour' in Marx's theory. The essence of this is captured in a letter from Marx to Kugelmann in 1868 in which he states, "the form in which proportional distribution of labour asserts itself, in the state of society where the interconnection of social labour is manifested in the private exchange of the individual products of labour, is precisely the exchange value of these products ( Baronian, 2013 ).…”

Section: Materials As Praxismentioning

confidence: 99%

Why and how ontology matters: A cartography of neoliberalism(s) and neoliberalization(s)

Knio

2022

J Theory Soc Behav

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In this article, I discuss the importance of ontology and its implications, demonstrated in the examples of different approaches to neoliberalism. The lack of careful ontological considerations leads to confusing and often contradictory usages of the term 'neoliberalism', obfuscating its usefulness. Instead, I suggest a cartography which consists of integrating two ontological debates -structure-agency and material-ideational -through the interplay between

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“…Fixed capital appears now within bodies, imprinted into them and at the same time subordinated to them -this is even more the case when we consider activities such as research and software development, where work is not crystallised in a physical product that is separate from the worker, but remains incorporated in the brain and inseparable from the person. Laurent Baronian (2013), finally, stresses, by returning to Capital and its analysis of the relations of production, that the power of bodies and minds is generalised in the figure associated with the qualifying element of fixed capital. Fixed capital is here social cooperation.…”

Section: The Changing Relationship Of Fixed and Variable Capitalmentioning

confidence: 99%