Class and Multitude?

[Commie73]

Im currently looking for a good explanation of multitude as put forward by Hardt and Negri etc. From what I understand of the concept, im not sure how it differs from concepts of the proletariat, other than its a trendy word used by academics. I think i need a better explanation of the concept of social labor. I had this argument with a friend about multitude where I said that:


it is not simply the final product of labor that is a commodity, but when workers sell their labor power - their ability to work, then labor itself is commodified. So if the worker sells their labor for a wage, i dont think the product they labor at really has much bearing on their status as proletarians. The marxist notion of Proletarian should not only be considered as industrial workers or the poor, but all wage workersTo which he replied that I had basically described the multitude. Could someone help me out here?

[Die Neue Zeit]

From what I understand of the concept, im not sure how it differs from concepts of the proletariat, other than its a trendy word used by academics.

"Multitude" was a trendy word used by academics, but now it has been supplanted by the much more credible "Precariat."

[Sasha]

The multitude is an post-Marxist term to include everybody on our side of the struggle with capitalism. So its an expansion of the proletariat to include groups like lumpen, unemployed, precarious white collar workers, the middle class etc etc.
It's an way to re-establish an clear distinction between the exploiters and the exploited

[Die Neue Zeit]

Ever since the crisis and the popularization of "precariat," "multitude" has lost credibility. Remember: we're talking about trendy post-modernists here!

[Zanthorus]

I'm not as familiar with this subject as I'd like to be, but I think the most important point is that Marx's term 'proletariat' is tied up with his view of the reproduction of capitalist society as being constrained by value-relations, whereas Hardt and Negri's 'multitude' is predicated on a version of the idea that capitalism has superseeded it's value constraints and surplus-production is now based on the 'general intellect', a concept pulled spuriously from Marx's Grundrisse. Marx's theory of value of course is tied up with his theory of alienated labour, and the theory of alienated labour is an essential moment of what makes the proletariat the proletariat - it's confrontation with it's own creations as an objective power opposing it. No value, no alienated labour, no proletariat, which means of course we need a new revolutionary subject if the communist project is to continue to have any kind of meaning, and so in steps the concept of 'the multitude'. The journal Aufheben did a review of Nick Dyer-Witherford's 'Cyber-Marx', who has some very similar ideas to Negri, here (http://libcom.org/library/aufheben/aufheben-14-2006/review-cyber-marx). The conclusion really speaks for itself:


Anyone reading this magazine would find much of interest in Cyber-Marx. But if what they are really interested in is ‘cycles and circuits of struggle in high-technology capitalism’, the return of wildcat strikes last year in the Post Office, and this year’s dramatic wildcat strike by catering workers and baggage handlers at British Airways suggests that there will be better, if less evocative, ways of understanding the class struggle today than those proposed in Dyer-Witheford’s ‘battle for the general intellect’.

Searching around on libcom for material I also found a book named 'A Grammar of the Multitude (http://libcom.org/library/grammar-multitude-paolo-virno)' by Paulo Virno which sets out the multitude thesis in some detail as well as a review (http://libcom.org/library/language-retreat-review-virnos-grammar-multitude) again by Aufheben.

[Mr. Natural]

Here's a revision I believe Marx would make, given advances in knowledge and science.

Capitalism is an attack on all forms of life. I see capitalism as having captured the human species--mentally as well as physically. We all work for The Company Store now, whether we're a CEO, a store slave, or a field slave. Or unemployed.

Class categories refer to their relation to the means of production. We have all been subsumed by capitalism--eaten, digested. Isn't it worth considering that the new "class warfare" needs to be that of the human species against capitalism?

I'm not shedding any tears for the ruling class, but for the human beings who have been shaped by capitalism and trapped within its inhumanity. That's now all of us.

[ZeroNowhere]

Capitalism is an attack on all forms of life. I see capitalism as having captured the human species--mentally as well as physically. We all work for The Company Store now, whether we're a CEO, a store slave, or a field slave. Or unemployed.

Class categories refer to their relation to the means of production. We have all been subsumed by capitalism--eaten, digested. Isn't it worth considering that the new "class warfare" needs to be that of the human species against capitalism?No, I am not in favour of the revision of the Marxist programme on the basis of emotional rhetoric.

[black magick hustla]

No, I am not in favour of the revision of the Marxist programme on the basis of emotional rhetoric.

its not really "emotional" rhetoric, its cammattes thesis. whatever you wanna say of the guy and how bonkers he turned, he was p. sharp, especially on his early, more bordigist stuff

[ellipsis]

The multitude is an post-Marxist term to include everybody on our side of the struggle with capitalism. So its an expansion of the proletariat to include groups like lumpen, unemployed, precarious white collar workers, the middle class etc etc.
It's an way to re-establish an clear distinction between the exploiters and the exploited

This is my understanding as well, based on my reading of Hardt and Negri. I would add that there is a definate transnational aspect to their conception of the Multitude.

Also that they position vis-a-vis with "Empire," which I am not too familiar with.

I was in college when multitude was hip, file under "often cited, seldom read"

[Mr. Natural]

ZeroNowhere, Is my brief presentation just "emotional rhetoric," or am I using clear, popular language to address the class issue--a most important "stuck place" for Marxism?

Is there content beneath the language?

[Mr. Natural]

black magick hustla, What is "cammattees' thesis"?

I'll match my commitment to Marxism and communist revolution with anyone, but I try to express myself in the sort of popular language that can create popular understanding and a popular, red-green revolution.

Of course, this language often attracts backlash.

But wouldn't Marx and Engels have gotten around to a revision of their working-class based revolution a long time ago? Capitalism has developed, and so has the proletariat. What is the "proletariat" now? I believe that was the original question in this thread.

[ellipsis]

Despite its trendiness, the book does contain some interesting analysis, particularly in regards to redefining class and class antagonism, looking beyond the traditional Marxist dichotomy.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

What is the "proletariat" now?

A class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital. These labourers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce.

[Mr. Natural]

Nothing Human Is Alien, I see humanity as being enveloped and subsumed by global capitalism. We all now work for The Company Store (if we can find work), but our various atomized roles no longer bring us together in ways that lend themselves to traditional revolutionary organizing (or at least traditional economic roles are greatly diminished). The traditional proletariat of Marx's and Engels' day no longer exists in the West.

The human species desperately needs to learn to organize against a capitalist system it often ignores, and there are many potential new groups and methods of organizing that need to be explored. As things stand, we are going down without any struggle--at least in the West.

"This is the way the world ends/ This is the way the world ends/ This is the way the world end/ Not with a bang, but a whimper."

I hate the idea of going out in the manner of T.S. Eliot, but that's all I see right now.

[JustMovement]

Its shit like this that makes me want to bang my head against a wall. Was the comrade Negri a "trendy hipster" when he went house to house pamphlateering at 5 in the morning to organise rural and factory workers? Or was he a bourgeois academic when he spent 14 odd years under arrest for being sentenced as the "mandante morale" of the Moro murder? Not to mention the time he spent in exile?

What I understand of multitude is that you first have to understand that Negri comes from the tradition of Italian operaismo where the struggle was organised around the factories and factory life. With the decline of this model of organisation of production, at least in the west, the multitude becomes an attempt to expand the scale of the factory to other sectors. This creates encompasses the workers in the social factory (service jobs, IT, and so on), as opposed to the traditional industrial factory. The rest was explained I think by people in the thread above.

[Thirsty Crow]

"Multitude" was a trendy word used by academics, but now it has been supplanted by the much more credible "Precariat."
It is clear that you have no idea what you're talking about.

I don't have the book by my side, but the basic point of H&N in "Multitude" is twofold:

1) criticism of the alleged character of the political subject in Marxism - the prolateriat, which is according to them a category which upholds industrial, fordist if you like, labour as a hegemonic form; they seem to think that Marxists exclude the poor and long term unemployed from the picture

2) the multitude, as a political category, rests upon the new hegemonic form of labour - cognitive and immaterial work.

And all of this has nothing to do with precarious conditions of work.

[Die Neue Zeit]

1) criticism of the alleged character of the political subject in Marxism - the prolateriat, which is according to them a category which upholds industrial, fordist if you like, labour as a hegemonic form; they seem to think that Marxists exclude the poor and long term unemployed from the picture

And they're obviously mistaken in this stereotype.


2) the multitude, as a political category, rests upon the new hegemonic form of labour - cognitive and immaterial work.

That was part of the proletariat from the beginning.

[ellipsis]

Its shit like this that makes me want to bang my head against a wall. Was the comrade Negri a "trendy hipster" when he went house to house pamphlateering at 5 in the morning to organise rural and factory workers? Or was he a bourgeois academic when he spent 14 odd years under arrest for being sentenced as the "mandante morale" of the Moro murder? Not to mention the time he spent in exile?


No, but that doesn't change how his book was received. As I said I was in college when this book was new-ish and still en vogue, the idea of multitude was a new popular idea to talk about and it made its way into lots of discussions and curricula.

Around the same time Battle of Algiers was VERY popular, I watched it for three different classes in three consecutive semesters, then screened it a forth semester as a TA. Discussion of the film was very trendy at my school and around the nation, and in the military. Does this mean the algerian revolution was also tredndy? No.