Or real subsumption.
The following claims are sometimes made.
1. The postfordist class composition involves the following traits:
- mobility
- flexibility
- immaterial labor (in at least three senses – the production of symbols and ideas, production of affect and social relations, linguistic labor) and the importance of general intellect
- blurred or absent boundary between work and nonwork
2. These traits and related activities are central to and hegemonic in the production process now (and are newly central and hegemonic, but not new as such).
3. Based on the newly hegemonic or central role of these traits and related activities, some received theoretical tools and organizational forms do not suit us in the present in the way they (may have) served prior. Other theoretical and organizational forms suit us better in the present.
Claims 1 and 2 are about the technical composition. Claim 3 is about the political composition (with implications on the relationship between political and technical composition) as well as about theory (with implications on the relationship between theory and both technical and political class composition).
I don’t have strong opinions about claim 1. One could probably quibble over to what degree these are and are not the case, but I’m not compelled to do so.
I have slightly stronger feelings toward claim 2, though not very clearly formulated views. I do have some questions and reservations.
It may be the case that these traits called hegemonic are hegemonic. One could quibble with this as well and I’m more inclined to do so than I am inclined to quibble with claim 1. More than that, I’m inclined to wonder what if the hegemonic or non-hegemonic nature of these traits is a particularly productive type of assertion. I’m also inclined to say that at least some of these traits are actually general determinations of life under the capitalism mode of production, general determinations to which some are newly attentive and which are mistaken for being new determinations in the present.
Bracketing that, assuming both previous non-hegemony of these traits/activities and present hegemony of them – what kind of hegemony is this? Hegemony in the production process is different from other forms of hegemony – technical vs political hegemony, perhaps? – and I’m not at all clear what the importance of this (technical) hegemony should be or how it relates to anything else.
I’m much more hesitant about claim 3. At least some of the theoretical and organizational arguments rejected in the present were, to my mind, never adequate at all, which means their inadequacy in the present (perhaps “their being even more inadequate”) is less striking to me. Similarly, I think some of the claims about what suits us better in the present also suited better in the past, so again the present strikes me as less striking. Also, it’s not at all clear to me why changes in the technical composition should be seen as making possible the new political composition. I prefer to reverse this, telling the story of technical compositions as (in an important sense political) responses to (and the taking on by the technical composition of characteristics of) different political compositions. I also prefer to think of the technical composition less as the condition of the (that is, of one most adequate) political composition and more as the (in an important sense political) target of a political composition (of which there are many possible).
A few things seem to follow from this as next steps.
1. Elaboration of the argument that traits called traits of postfordism are general determinations, with examples.
2. Elaboration of arguments about the inadequacy in the past of what is called now inadequate in the present due to the allegedly new qualities of the postfordist class compostion.
3. Elaboration of historical research on moments where a local/sectoral class composition involved the traits in claim 1, in the technical composition and/or the political composition.
4. Elaboration of arguments about the relationship between political and technical composition.
to be fair sometimes 2. is like that but often it is more like
2. These traits and related activities are increasingly central to the production process now, and continue the on a wider level transform other production as well.
On the third bit I think there’s a way its true in the sense that widespread societal shifts and shifts in work change people, their power (think about the difference between the factory as workshop vs. assembly line shift), and what will resonate with them politically consequently. All the marxist garbage about it finally being a time for decentralized structures is I think hiding dirty laundry, hyper-historicizing/periodizing (the Jamesians did it with Hungary, Negri with post fordism), and comes from a lack of a theory of power and hierarchy outside of economic concepts.
“Similarly, I think some of the claims about what suits us better in the present also suited better in the past, so again the present strikes me as less striking.”
What is the standard of “suitability” or “fittingness?” Is the standard political, or is it technical-pragmatic?
If the standard is technical-pragmatic, then the “tendency” towards post-fordism is relevant, because it helpes to define the operative context of organization.
If the standard is political, then it’s something that’s not determined by or even necessarily related to any particular economic formation. Could the political standard be said to be universal? Such that all organization should take the form that is determined to be most “suitable” or “fitting?”
cm
hi Todd, Colin,
“These traits and related activities are increasingly central to the production process now, and continue on a wider level to transform other production as well.”
I think that’s what Negri and Hardt mean by “hegemonic” (such that I think they should drop the term). This is more nuanced than how I phrased it, but doesn’t change any of my response to it.
Colin, I think part of the argument I have with this stuff is about this question of suitability. I think the criteria for determining suitability are political (though I want to split the difference: political-pragmatic, rather than political-principle, though I want elements of the latter as well) rather than objective. That is to say, multiple forms might ‘fit’ or be ‘suitable’. The claim is more strongly negative and less strongly positive. That is, the vanguard party, social democracy, business unionism, etc was not a good idea which has expired. It was and remains a bad idea (perhaps a worse idea, I don’t have strong views on that). Similarly, some alternatives to the above idea(s) in the past (roughly, the historical alternatives that I – and I think Todd and you as well – prefer, which we might say were the ‘more multitude-like’ alternatives) were not premature such that the time is only now right or only starting to be come right for them.
More specifically re: the postfordism stuff and politics/organization – I don’t see that network production and/or affective labor (of the type(s) said to be central in postfordism) is a necessary condition for the forms of politics and organization put forward by advocates of the postfordism thesis. Multitude as a form of political composition of the class does not require the existence of a (prior) technical composition which is multitude-like.
Is that clearer?
I’m not sure about the universality or not.
cheers,
Nate
I am inclined to think that one way to parse these difficulties is to rephrase claims 1 & 2 — and especially 2 — to say that what is new and different about, and specific to, post-Fordism, is that, in it, capitalism has become more purely and more fully capitalist than it ever was before. If Marx in Capital provides us with a sort of map or model of capitalism, then post-Fordist capitalism brings us closer to the model than was ever the case before, closer than was the case when Marx was actually writing. This is the sense in which psot-Fordist organization would be “hegemonic”, and it would be pretty much equivalent to saying, as Hardt & Negri do, that we have moved from formal subsumption to real subsumption.
Then, as regards claim 3, it would fit very well with your suggestion that “one of the theoretical and organizational arguments rejected in the present were, to my mind, never adequate at all, which means their inadequacy in the present (perhaps “their being even more inadequate”) is less striking to me.”
A description and explanation of the development of “fordism” to “postfordism/walmartism” may eventually have to acknowledge that there two classes, not one, involved, and transforming, throughout the period under scrutiny.
hi Steve, Colonel,
Colonel, can you expand on that?
Steve, I think part of your comment could be incorporated into #1 1, by adding the point “labor under postfordism (or real subsumption or whatever the name given to the present period) is more purely capitalist labor than labor in prior capitalism”
And a point could be added to either #1 or 2, akin to what Todd suggested, which is “labor under postfordism is increasingly taking on the above listed traits”.
The thing is, and this is a different objection/doubt than the ones I raise in the post, it’s not clear to me what “more purely and fully capitalist” would mean. If it means
“approximating more closely to the abstract schematized capitalism offered by Marx in v1 of Capital”, well, I can understand that claim. But I have four reservations with this.
First, I don’t understand what work the argument does such that it’s needed or productive.
Second, the argument would need to show how traits of the type listed under point 1 (and their importance as noted under point 2) figure in Marx’s account and in earlier capitalism, since these matters are linked to our era being post-fordist rather than fordist.
Third, the claim implies that Marx’s account gets at the essence of capitalism (since the claim is that postfordism is “more capitalist” rather than “closer to Marx’s model” – that is, postfordism is said to be the second because it is the first). This would also have to be shown, and the process of identifying essence from nonessential historical accidents would have to be demonstrated. I don’t find the appeal to essence here appealing. I think it’s problematic. I prefer to think about developments in the history of capitalism as maneuvers between classes rather than charting developments according to a metric of more and less conforming to an ideal-typical capitalism.
Fourth, I think the argument involves problematic assumptions about formal and real subsumption in terms of their spatial scope and their being successive rather than co-terminous. That is, I think there’s something like a geological time scale here.
I’m gonna focus on the fourth objection here (this is something I’ve been meaning to blog about in more depth for a long time, in reference to the passages in Marx that refer to these issues, thanks for helping me get the ball rolling).
We have capitalism, which is a social relationship between people existing in space and time. Capitalism can and did (some say does) co-exist in space alongside other forms, at least some of which it related (relates) to. So, at one point in time we have capitalist social relations in England, and not among, say, the Mapuche in South America. Then we have the dominance of capitalist social relations (such that we can say “capitalist society”) in England, but not elsewhere or rather not everywhere else. The space(s) where capitalism exists we’ll called subsumed to capitalism, leaving aside whether it’s formal or real subsumption. The space(s) where capitalism exist tend to expand (or have before anyway) – previously outside space becomes subsumed to capitalism. New places become enmeshed in relationships with capitalist places (a la Luxemburg’s understanding of imperialism), places develop capitalist social relations (for whatever reason), and capitalism becomes dominant in places where it wasn’t (such that we can say there are new capitalist societies). This space can be geopolitical, so to speak – countries etc – and it can be economic – forms of producing certain use values, different industries and activities and different areas of life where there are needs met, that shift (are shifted) toward being capitalist forms of production/having needs met by commodities rather than by noncommodities. In both, the total surface area of capitalism or capitalist societies expands, so to speak. This expansion is extensive. I think that’s one reasonable version of formal subsumption or part of formal subsumption.
Within any spaces which can be described as capitalist – spaces which have been subsumed under capitalist social relations – there is a temporal dimension, bound up with the production of surplus value. As you know, there’s absolute surplus value – more work time without full compensation, extensive expansion of capital temporally – which is also part of formal subsumption. Essentially, taking people’s time and (or, in the form of) taking some of their products so that they work longer. The rate of production may not change but the total produced changes, as does the total expenditure of labor power (ie, effort by laborers). There’s also relative surplus value – the intensity of work. With real subsumption, people work harder and/or produce more product in the same time. This means the total produced may not change, but the rate of production changes. This can involve also a more intense level/rate of work for workers, but it doesn’t have to theoretically. So, real subsumption seems to be intensive temporal expansion of capital.
The thing is, I don’t think the separation implied here holds in at least some cases. The extension of work hours in time is not simply a temporal extension of work time but is also intensive from the perspective of the laboring body and mind. Overtime laws recognize this, to some extent. As one gets more tired, the time passes differently at work. (And getting off of a 14 hour shift when one has to be back at work in 10 hours is different when one has the weekend off, etc.) The hours aren’t equivalent from the perspective of work in the way they are equivalent from the perpsective of the capitalist. (I think one could map Benjamin’s now-time vs empty homogeneous time onto this distinction.) Depending on the perspective of analysis, formal subsumption is always already real subsumption to some degree.
Also, historically, these two modes of capital expansion do not exist in a sequence of one following the other or a supercession. Longer work hours can happen with the pace of work staying the same, the work hours can stay the same with the pace being increased, or both work hours and pace can be increased at the same time. One or the other can occur in one firm or industry or the other, with the impact on practices in other firms/industries depending on the relative proximity or distance (same industry/market, different but connected in the supply and distribution changes, unconnected by industry/market but same region/country, unconnected by industry/market and by region/country, etc).
All of these and other distinctions are flattened in the epochal framework of an era of formal subsumption followed by an era of real subsumption. And, that framework implies a claim about anachronism: instances of real subsumption prior to the era of real subsumption are precursors, in but not of (becuase ahead of) their time. Formal subsumption in the era of real subsumption is a throwback, in but not of (because behind) their time. That doesn’t strike me as particularly productive contention, and I don’t think the postfordism periodization can be done without something like that being implied.
There’s some stuff related to this in the book by Sandro Mezzadra that I (roughly) translated a bit from here -
Mezzadra calls for “placing into question the presumption, based in reality more in some marxist currents than in the pages of Marx himself, following which capitalist development has a linear trajectory from the extraction of absolute surplus value to relative surplus value – that is to say, from “formal subsumption” to “real subsumption of labor to capital.” The persistence of unfree forms of labor throughout the entire arc of the history of capitalism defines in other terms a terrain in which formal subsumption and real subsumption, with the distinct forms of surplus value extraction that pertain to them, necessarily coexist simultaneously.”
Following Dipesh Chakrabarty, he also calls for “a critique of the “historicist” temptation implicit in the distinction between “formal subsumption” and “real subsumption of labor in capital” which, while extremely productive in the analytic arena, poses a univocal reading of the history of capitalism it poses, in other words, authorizing the idea according to which “real” capitalism means “final” subsumption, that is to say, the pregressive annulling of the operative marks of “historical difference” within a world disenchanted and uniform precisely because of the domination of capital and its logics.”
I find that tremendously compelling, and I think it applies to postfordism as well.
None of which is to say that nothing is new under the sun. Rather, some attempts to treat the present are wearing mittens, so to speak, such that they catch both some of what’s new and some of what’s old but was only recently noticed (by the mitten wearer) and call it all new. Sorting new and old is I think less important than some proponents of the real subsumption thing hold (Negri for instance, and I think they hold so because they’re aiming for an objective rupture in order to underwrite a subjective rupture), but also doing such sorting requires a better approach (unmitten-ed hands, so to speak).
take care,
Nate
Sorry, forgot the URL, the Mezzadra excerpt is here:
http://whatinthehell.blogsome.com/2006/06/05/do-you-give-a-dead-communist-for-a-belated-birthday-gift/
“I prefer to think about developments in the history of capitalism as maneuvers between classes rather than charting developments according to a metric of more and less conforming to an ideal-typical capitalism.”
Exactly. And understood this way, we know the distinction between formal and real subsumption is not to be found on the social surface, but pertains to a relation between a class of proprietor appropriators and a class of propertyless producer/consumers, and that the state resulting from real subsumption is not the eternal druthers of either of these two classes. Real subsumption is the constitution, in the course of struggle between a class holding a certain form of property and labour, of a set of conditions which gives rise to the designation ‘capitalism’: the dominance of a mode of production in which capitalists controlling capital organise formally free labour in commodity production for markets. The state resulting from real subsumption – ‘capitalism’ as distinct from other modes of production – is characterised by competitive markets (labour, commodity, capital). Of this condition – capitalism is its ‘exemplary’ state – Marx noticed several things, among them that competition between capitalists leads to innovation (the imperative to increase productivity).
Perhaps because this state became known as ‘capitalism‘ it is often imagined to be the ideal or desired state for its ruling class, the capitalist class, viewed by them as an end in itself (a position advanced in recent years by neoliberal propaganda but contradicted by neoliberal practise); a belief of a religious tenor arises that the capitalist class is somehow always trying to achieve a ‘purer’ capitalist condition (the slippage of the referent of ‘capitalist’ from class to mode of production/social order goes unnoticed) – the condition resulting from what is called real subsumption. But in fact the capitalist class is always trying to accumulate and to protect its accumulation. Full stop. And capitalism in this exemplary state – in which the proprietor appropriators are subject to market forces – is not only its opportunity and conditions but a complex of obstacles it perpetually attempts to overcome. That these obstacles are somehow eternal or necessary to the reproduction of the class as a ruling class (the historical importance to the grounding of the ideological nature of its form of property aside for the moment) is a kind of uninvestigation assumption cropping up in a lot of discussion which posits an epochal change dating from the end of the global boom with reference to the automobile industry. Here the Brenner-generated debates about the transition from feudalism to capitalism are immensely relevant, and the position of the analysis of the “political marxists” an especially helpful precedent for the approach to the current situation.
Over time the development of “capitalism” has shown a tendency toward real subsumption, but capitalists don’t have a preference for it or any tendency to prefer actions which bring it about. This distinction is really important, especially for understanding the transformation of the last several decades during which financialisation has effectively abolished “industrial capital”, an indispensible protagonist of the “real subsumption” resulting in the market-organisation of “exemplary capitalist” society described in the 19th century, and replacing it with financialised industrial capital, whose relations with the state and extra-economic powers have developed in several ways. In the production of the most labour intensive commodities, like “security”, rentier capital is itself organized to organise labour by management entwined with the state and the principle consumer market is made up of states. In vast areas of telecom and ‘entertainment’, productive labour is exploited without the intercession of a labour market, without a wage, and the financialised industrial capital accumulating the surplus is relieved of both risk of investment and competition by the state.
It is tempting to view this as evidence of ‘capital’s capacity to transform itself endlessly’ or whatever, a kind of out being taken into vagueness and mysticism where ‘capital’ becomes so flexible a term it can be designate history, capitalists, the state, the weather, domination in the abstract, the combined assets of the working class, etc.. With capital the term working in this way, similar to the divine principle in a religious discourse, to say we see “real subsumption” is to say not very much and to further certain equivocations which obfuscate the relation between two classes whose clarification may be useful in emancipatory projects, or so it is usually assumed.
In all the developments, capital has to be understood as a form of property controlled by a class whose activity is of great significance in determining the state of play, not a function or element of the atmosphere which mindlessly prefers this state of things and seeks it like water seeks a level. That is, for capitalists as a class, the state resulting from “real subsumption” is not ideal and this is why even states so constituted (the result of real subsumption) are altered under pressure from and through the actions of that class. The tendency of capitalists to try to place workers in commodity production in various forms of bondage enforced extraeconomically is not new; the ability of capitalists to do so has however developed and changed, increased and decreased and increased again.
So in sum, I think Nate some of the problems you find in the arguments about “postfordism” arise from a habit of treating capital, capitalism and capitalists as more or less interchangeable terms, and the neglect of the recognition that “capital”, a feature of the compared historical situations (“fordism,” “walmartism”), is not a force of nature and an element of the atmosphere in which a single class exists, but a form of property controlled by a class which, despite the propaganda, has no innate preference for capitalism as a mode of production nor for the ‘purer’ states resulting from real subsumption over other states often more convenient for extracting and enclosing wealth.
Macherey on Multitude:
The representation of work, which Marx, in his time, had serious reasons to enclose in strictly defined limits, on the model of industrial production, … finds itself at one blow enlarged; it becomes biopolitical work, which creates new forms of social life. This analysis, which I have summarised very generally, certainly corresponds to an evolution which is accomplishing itself before our eyes, and has doubtless yet to produce all its effects; and no one would deny the problems of work pose themselves today in different terms than when Marx composed Capital, or that new concepts are indispensable for thinking contemporary reality. All the same, is there really a reason to place back to back, as Hardt and Negri give the impression of doing, these two figures, both exclusive and inevitably essentialised, of the modern material and postmodern immaterial labour, as if the second figure had definitively expelled the first and taken its place? That the analysis of labour must be actualised, taking into account the transformations in progress of its modalities of execution, its objects and results, is clear; but does this mean that this analysis must align itself with the discourse that accompanies these transformations, a discourse incontestably ideological, the background of which must be plumbed and discussed and not simply reproduced? Must we not, to counteract the evolution in progress, or better to counteract the manner in which it spontaneously represents itself, rematerialise the conception that we have of labour? This work that one calls immaterial because it is not executed necessarily at fixed hours between the walls of a factory, isn’t it still, though under new forms, material labour, and exploited labour? Understanding the present is not making an apology for it while neglecting to adopt with relation to it a critical distance; and there is in the dominant way we are fed – by those who claim to direct it and who derive the benefits, let us call them by their name: capitalists – the vision of this process of immaterialisation of work, which justifies its flexibilisation, a term very fashionable lately, something rather too insistent, and also too interested, for us to merely accept it and take it at face value. And this could be the object of the first question posed to Hardt and Negri: their concern to adhere to the present circumstance, to better root their vision of the possible in reality, hasn’t it led them to establish, in opposition to the image of modernity they seek to demarcate, the unilateral image of a postmodernity entirely different to what preceded it, an image without doubt conforming to the very portrait that this self-proclaimed postmodernity offers of itself, but which is perhaps not in the least equal to its deeper reality of which it itself reveals, finally, nothing but the false consciousness? To be brusque about it, are there not very grave reasons to distrust the representation of a postmodernity the system of which situates itself in complete rupture with that of modernity?
Related to this -
http://whatinthehell.blogsome.com/2009/12/09/is-right-and-wrong-with-autonomist-marxism/
and
http://whatinthehell.blogsome.com/biopolitical-capitalism/