What in the hell …

I’ve been meaning for a long time go back and read the three part Aufheben article on decadence theory. (This piece played a role in Aufheben’s exchange with Theorie Communiste, which I’ve still not read except in a very cursory fashion.) One of these days (after ch25 of Capital! and after my latest round of Hamerquist’s writing!) I’m going to have to dig into this stuff.

For now, Hardt and Negri in Commonwealth:

a “symptom of capital’s illness: its failure to engage and develop productive forces. When Marx and Engels describe the centuries-long passage from feudal to capitalist relations of production in Europe, they focus on the expansion of productive forces: as feudal relations increasingly obstruct the development of productive forces, capitalist relations of property and exchange emerge to foster them and spur them forward. “At a certain stage in the development of these means of production and of exchange,” Marx and Engels write in the Manifesto, “the conditions under which feudal society produced and exchanged, the feudal organization of agriculture and manufacturing industry, in one word, the feudal relations of property became no longer compatible with the already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder.” Every mode of production, capital included, at first powerfully expands productive forces but eventually holds them back, thereby generating the foundation of the next mode of production. (…) Capitalist relations of property are becoming increasingly such fetters today.” (298.)

Capitalism, from once helping to now hindering progress. From progressive to decadent social formation.

Another post consisting of notes written in bits and pieces over much time which means I’ll need to review it when I’m done and try to write a a summing up. This is all I’m capable of much of the time anymore. Still need to write one of these on ch25 of Capital! Anyways, this is on Don Hamerquist’s essay on Althusser. I’m about 2/3 of the way through it, will just keep updating this post as I read further. Folk should read the essay, folk interested in Althusser and also folk following the recent Lenin discussions. (more…)

I finally got a draft of that talk on the common done. I’m not happy with it except the done part. This is as good as it’s gonna be, given my time etc. Say la vee. As they c’est. (more…)

I made up this term, at least I think I made it up. I call it an argument from adequacy. It’s not a very good term, but I want some term and it’s all I can think of right now. I find arguments from adequacy annoying. Here’s what I mean by the term. (more…)

In a recent post, Steve Shaviro suggests that Hardt and Negri are economistic. I agree. In a recent piece, “The Common in Communism,” Hardt approvingly cites Marx from the 1844 manuscripts, about the growth of one form of property opening up new political possibilities.

Of course, changes in forms of property and so forth *do* change existing possibilities. (more…)

Getting closer to an actual draft of talk I agreed to give on “the common.” Regular readers of the blog may recognize pieces of prior posts here, sorry about that y’all, those posts have been part of me working my way up to/around to this.

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I’m going to talk about some recent writings by Antonio Negri and others on what they call “the common.” Before I get into that, though, please consider the images below. I’ll lay out some things that I think are interesting about these images.

Each of these photographs takes an image out of its context and holds it up for our consideration in a new context. (more…)

So I’ve been reading around in Hardt and Negri’s new book Commonwealth, as part of my ongoing interest in their work and as part of trying to finish this talk I’m supposed to give on Negri and others’ writings on what they call “the common.” As anyone whose ever discussed this stuff w/ me knows I’ve engaged with this stuff for a while and have moved from being very enthusiastic to being frustrated by it. I think that’s legitimate and I do of course think I’m right in my criticisms and so on, but I think my tone get annoying sometimes, a tone of exasperation. This annoys me too, in that these days I sort of lose sight sometimes of why this work is worth engaging with at all. This work was a formative intellectual influence for me despite my current disconnects. (This is part of the source of the tenor of my reactions, a feeling that people I like and respect are falling short of what they could be doing with their abilities and know-how.) And despite my disagreements with a fair bit of their work nowadays, there remains a big chunk of it that is still (at least for me) a really important thing to think with - even though increasingly I feel like I’m thinking with it by thinking against Hardt and Negri’s positions on a lot, that thinking is for me quite clarificatory.

Long time readers of this blog (all three of them) will know that I often write about my dissatisfaction with the work of recent German marxist and post-marxist writers such as Antonio Negri, Paolo Virno, Louis Althusser, and Gilles Deleuze, among others. (more…)