Micro-Politics of Capital, The by Read Jason.;

Author:Read, Jason.; [READ, JASON]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780791486245
Publisher: State University of New York Press

Cooperation, the element of worker subjectivity produced and assembled by the productive process itself, is at the heart of this “antagonistic” production of subjectivity. Cooperation constitutes both the material conditions of its production and the object of its desires. At the heart of the capitalist mode of production there are relations of cooperation, which are not only productive for capital but productive of the material possibility of relations that exceed those reinforced by the competitive market of labor and the hierarchy of the technological division of labor. It is this power—the possibility of these relations—that must be continually contained by these instruments and strategies. Tronti writes that “the socialization of production will always be in advance of the organization of society. The historical margin separating these two moments constitutes a formidable form of political domination that capital has utilized in its favor.”164 The cooperative and collective possibilities of the labor process are contained by the social forces and relations that are their condition, necessarily passing through them.

Marx’s writings on “Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations” and the formation of capitalism assert in a general way the intersection between the mode of production and the production of subjectivity. In Marx’s critique of capital this general problem takes on specific form: Capitalism is dependent on an abstract subjective potential, which is found at the intersection of abstract and living labor, which it must simultaneously develop and control. At the foundation of the capitalist mode of production is the production of subjectivity in both senses of the genitive: the constitution of subjectivity, of a particular subjective comportment (a working class which is both skilled and docile), and in turn the productive power of subjectivity, its capacity to produce wealth. These two senses of “the production of subjectivity” do not or have not coincided in the history of capitalism. In fact it is because they do not coincide that capitalism has a history as the struggles produce legal, technical, and political transformations.165 Thus, as the capitalist mode of production develops, the problem of subjectivity in the capitalist mode of production develops as well, becoming more central as capital encompasses more of social life in what Marx calls “real subsumption.”

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