[unomada-info] Entrevista con Michael Hardt (inglés)

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Lun Ene 24 22:07:57 CET 2005


Autopsy Interview with Michael Hardt (by Nate Holdren)
Enero de 2005

In Labor of Dionysus, you and Negri write that the definition of
labor is a political matter. Part of what is attractive in your most
recent work is the expansion of the definition of labor. How does this
expansion work? Is it that some non-labor has become labor? Or is that
we have realized that certain activities which weren't called labor
actually were labor after all?

I found very useful in this regard something that Diane Elson wrote
several years ago about "the value theory of labor," and I think
socialist feminism in general is the field in which these questions
have been most clearly thought out.  Determining what activities are
accorded economic value is often a political struggle.  This was at
stake in many of the past feminist struggles to recognize domestic
labor or caring labor or kin work as productive.  And, to take a very
different perspective, one might consider the entire notion of
productive externalities that economists talk about as activities
productive of capital but not recognized as such.  We should note too,
and this has historically been a strong part of the feminist debates,
that there can be negative consequences to claiming certain activities
as labor.  Some would say that calling labor what I do for those I
love (reproductive labor for children, partners, etc) degrades the
activity.  Or, others might say, if everything I do is labor then I
can never escape from capital.

Another way to approach this question would be with Deleuze and
Guattari.  In Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus, all is production.
Think of desiring-production as a way of expanding what is considered
labor.

One other aspect to emphasize is that capital too progressively
modifies what counts as labor.  In general, my view is that capital
follows behind the instances of refusal in this regard.  I remember
that Toni and I made an argument âEUR" or, really not an argument, a claim
âEUR" in chapter 3.4 of Empire that the primary qualities of the refusal
of work of the 1960s and the corresponding expansions of what was
considered productive âEUR" including intellectual, affective,
communicative activities âEUR" were subsequently the primary bases for the
reorganization of capitalist production in the 1980s.  This is just
another example of the general hypothesis of the active and creative
nature of the working classes and their refusal of work and the
reactive nature of capital.

How does the formation of new kinds of labor relate to the becoming
of the multitude you identify? Is there a becoming-multitude linked to
a becoming-productive, or 'realization of being multitude' linked to a
'realization of being productive'?

Yes, this is exactly what we are trying to explore with this notion of
a becoming-common of labor.  In question here is not only the
expansion of what is considered labor but also the possibility of
communication and cooperation among the various different forms of
labor.  This is one way in which you might think of our notion of
multitude as being very close to a traditional notion of proletariat,
that is, the class of all those who produce, once the notion of
production itself has been sufficiently revised and expanded.

I should note also that "productivity" might not always be the right
way to think of this.  Sometimes "creativity" seems like a better
term, but that doesn't always do either.  Because we want to be able
to include in this not only coming up with a new idea in the shower or
lying in bed, but also sitting down for a cup of tea with a friend. We 
need to think about what is productive of social relationships, of
society itself.


We understand some of your writing to say that all of social
life-time is productive. This concept is attractive in that it expands
the definition of labor and of who can be a political subject. On the
other hand, do you mean that literally all of social life-time is
productive for capital? If we are always already productive for
capital, how can we think and practice ruptures and breaks? What sense
can Exodus have here, if we are always within Pharaoh's Egypt?

In general I think of this as being "inside and against."  Not all of
what the factory worker does while in the factory is directly
productive of capital.  There is authorized and unauthorized time off,
and there are a thousand tiny subterfuges, and then there is sometimes
coordinated sabotage and revolt.  I think it is in general terms the
same for all of us in capitalist society.  Remember, of course, that
the capital that we are producing is not just commodities âEUR" they are
really only a midpoint in the process.  The capital produced is
primarily a social relation.  So we need to try to understand how in
all social life-time, as you say, through innumerable activities we
are producing and reproducing the social relation that is capital.  Of
course, there is time off in this process, there are a thousand tiny
subterfuges that we invent, and sometimes we manage to mount
coordinated sabotage and revolt.  My notion is that all this goes on
from the inside, if my topological imagination makes sense to you. Our 
exodus or our nomadism is one that never leaves that inside, and
yet nonetheless manages to mount an opposition and pose an alternative


Do you intend the concept of 'always-already multitude' to be a
critique of the idea that only the one can rule, that the many can not
rule itself (that is, the social and political body has always been
multiple, the many has always been able to rule itself, and now we
understand this) or a diagnosis of historical exhaustion of the rule
of the one (that is, the rule of the one was the only possibility
before, earlier attempts to produce multitude were pre-mature, only
now is the era of the one's rule passing)?

I would tend to agree with your latter formulation, that the
exhaustion of the rule of the one and the formation of the multitude
are only possible today for the first time.  The "always-already" is
meant to refer to the virtual existence of multitude.  But I wonder if
there really have been earlier attempts to produce multitude or rather
if only today in retrospect we can read our history in those terms. 
Maybe it's something like that line of Marx in the Introduction to the
Grundrisse about the anatomy of the human preceding the anatomy of the
ape.


Following up on this question, if you intend the term multitude as a
form of criticism, how does it become action? On the other hand, you
are articulating the historical exhaustion of the one, is there an
avant-garde, a spearhead that leads the process?

The second question is kind of self-contradictory, isn't it? 
As for the first part, Multitude isn't just a form of criticism; it is
also a mode of social organization.  And to answer the question of how
it becomes action, perhaps the best thing is to look at what people
are doing.  In other words, how is it that today people are creating
horizontal, multiple organizations of singularities.  Here is a time
when a theoretical question might be best answered by looking at
practice.


You talk about a not-yet multitude, a multitude to-come. What do you
mean by this? How does this relate to Agamben's "coming community?"
And how does this not-yet/to-come relate to struggle?

It does relate to Agamben's coming community, if I remember that
correctly, especially in the sense that he describes it as not being
based on belonging.  He was experimenting with the notion of a
non-identity way of thinking and making social organization.  That too
is the project of multitude.  In philosophical terms, like Agamben, we
are trying to displace the contradictory couple identity/difference
and instead work with the common, singularity, and multiplicity.

But our notion of "not-yet" is really very simple.  In addition to
aluding to Bloch's notion of utopia, we merely want to emphasize that
multitude is a project, a political project, that must be brought into
existence through collective struggle.

To follow up, in reading Agamben we get the sense that the only
reason the coming community did not erupt in Tiananmen Square was the
power of the Chinese government's tanks. This suggests that the
primary problem for the coming community or not-yet multitude is how
to survive attacks from bosses and the state, a matter of organizing.
How does organization relate to the temporality of the multitude, its
status as not-yet or to-come?

How to survive attacks is certainly an important question, and more
generally the question is how to organize in a way that is powerful
enough to destroy the contemporary regimes of power.  But I wouldn't
say that is the only or even the primary problem.  Here is just one
other problem: how to deal with conflict within the multitude?  The
multitude, of course, is not just a field of the common but also a
field of conflict.  There is no guarantee of agreement among
singularities, nor should there be.  That is the beauty of the
multitude, after all, its real multiplicity and its free expression of
differences and even conflicts.  I suspect that the question of
conflict within the multitude is one of those questions better
addressed in more practical terms rather than at this rather
philosophical level.

If multitude is defined as a political project, is this a telos? If
so, how is your approach different from those Hegelian marxism which
have sought to define the class according to a 'revolutionary'
essence, thereby relegating those aspects which are not
'revolutionary' to the terrain of 'false consciousness'?

Toni has talked for a long time about a materialist telos, and this is
just what he means as a telos that is constructed through our desires. 
There is nothing necessary or ideal or pre-given about this telos. Think 
of is as something like the log-book of our successive
collective desires and aims.

The far right in the US today has proven very capable in organizing
and mobilizing many people through talk radio, televangelism, and the
affective labor of missionaries, youth groups, etc. How does this kind
of activity relate to multitude? Can the multitude be or become
reactionary? Or is there a reactionary "anti-multitude" built on the
same ground as the multitude? What is the relationship between these
formations, whether it be 'good and bad' multitude, or 'multitude and
anti-multitude'?

First of all (I know you're not asking this but it's useful to
repeat), it makes no sense to associate the concept of multitude with
that of Nazi masses or crowds, à  la Kracauer or Canetti.  All the
definitions of multitude make this distinction clear.

Some definitions of multitude, however, do leave ambiguous its
political nature.  If you define multitude in merely formal terms âEUR"
for example, as a horizontal, distributed network structure âEUR" you
could have reactionary multitudes.  And then it would be important to
pose criteria that help us distinguish between them.

I'm more inclined to give a more substantial definition of the concept
of multitude that limits these ambiguities greatly.  For example, when
one poses the free expression of difference (which is included really
in any conception of multiplicity or singularity, it seems to me) then
you make clear how all of these reactionary phenomena, from US
populist formations to terrorist networks, have no relation to
multitude.

If the destiny of the multitude lies in global citizenship, then
what do you see as the relationship between the project of the
multitude and the emergence of a global humanitarian militarism?

I'm not sure I understand this question.  Why should citizenship imply
militarism?  Citizenship, in any case, is a troubled concept and it's
not immediately evident what it means.  (I've admired, by the way,
what Etienne Balibar has made of it.)  In Empire we used the notion of
global citizenship primarily in a negative way, that is, to indicate
the destruction of boundaries and thus the freedom of movement for
everyone.  Citizenship can also have a positive face to include a
whole series of positive rights.  But that isn't how we were using it
there in Empire.

You have called for a general citizen's income, and recent movements
in Europe make similar calls. As we understand you, you justify these
calls by saying "we are all productive, all the time, since we are
always producing we should be paid a general income." You seem to be
posing a general income as a fair and reasonable thing, instead of as
a demand to be fought for and imposed upon the bosses (like the eight
hour day). Some movements of precarious workers call for a general
income with a different tone, they seem to be saying instead "we need
this income to live, the present arrangement is not working for us."
What is the status of the call for a general income? Do you see it as
something that is in the best interest of both capital and the
multitude, at least for the moment? Or do you see this as a possible
recompositional demand, something that the multitude can rally around
to start and spread new struggles going beyond capital?

I do think you're right that a demand for a basic income especially
when associated with unemployed or precarious workers is a powerful
demand that can help frame and organize struggles.  That, as you
imply, I think, is the central point.

Our argument was simply that it is also justifiable using only the
logic of capital itself, that is, basing income strictly on productive
labor.  This is a rather ironic argument, but a rather useful one, it
seems to me.  It's an instance when capital's own logic points beyond
capitalist relations.
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